The cavern was quiet, except for the soft, wet beat of the hundreds of growing pods hanging like a monstrous fruit from the ceiling.
The ASTF team stood still in the shadows, the Broodmother's sad story weighing heavily on them. The mission, which was once just about destroying, had now become a difficult moral problem.
What had begun as a simple mission, go in, wipe out the threat, secure the mine had twisted into something else. Something complicated. Something human.
Benita, the medic, was the first to find her voice. It was a mixture of horror and compassion. "Seraph, we can't," she pleaded, her eyes fixed on the terrifying creature that watched them from the darkness. "It's a victim. It's a prisoner of what was done to it. Killing it now… it would be an execution, not a battle. It would be inhumane."
