The clicking sound of claws on the stone floor at my back alerted me as to Brees’s presence. Her rough snout bumped against my hand when she stopped next to me. The small grunt she emitted told me everything I needed to know.
I telepathically projected an image of feces to her. She snorted in agreement. I then projected the image of a flame and a cooked larva, but the female shook her head. My shoulders slumped. There wasn't enough food to last us much longer. A few weeks back, Brees and the other Creckels would have eaten the dead larvae, but not anymore. They were rotten like everything else here. Later today, I’d offer them to the membrane, shuddering at the thought of what even murkier water it would produce after eating those corpses.
I fed the spoiled vegetables to most of the surviving larvae, giving none to the three biggest ones, which I brought to the worktable on the other side of the room.
Brees slipped her wide, flat tail under the sizable metal container in which we would carry the meat to the young and the rest of the Creckels. Folding the spiked sides of her scale-covered tail to keep it from falling off, she came to stand next to me as I began to slice the larvae in thin steaks. This one was pleasantly plump, too big for my hand to close around it. At least, my companions wouldn't be too hungry today.
I dropped the slimy pieces of meat into the container. Even after carving all three creatures, the container looked pathetically empty. Brees insisted on us pursuing that old ritual. To me, it only made the terrible state of our situation even more glaring. There was a time, the container was so full that I never could have carried it to the great hall that now served as our living quarters. With the explosion having destroyed our former bedrooms, we’d moved the cages out of the great hall and settled there instead.
Brees’s imposing body gracefully swayed as she made her way out of the hatchery, dragging the container on her tail. I followed in her wake as we walked past the debris that blocked the old lift—the only way out of the base. Claw marks still defaced the stone and the metal from our countless efforts over the years to move some of it away in an attempt to allow the Creckels to try and climb up the long shaft to freedom… in vain.
I felt slightly lightheaded and couldn't say if it was due to the increasingly spare levels of oxygen or to hunger. Chances were, it was a mix of both. I hadn't planned on eating any of the larvae. In fact, I had avoided it for the past few weeks. But the smell and texture of the vegetables I had brought for the larvae had convinced me otherwise. I feared I wouldn't survive another bout of food poisoning, especially not in my current state of dehydration. As we reached the door of the great hall, I pushed it open, my arms trembling from the effort. This was also a toss-up as to whether my shakiness was caused by a lack of food or the door’s increasing disrepair. Brees had suggested keeping it open, but what little oxygen the alveoli on the ceiling still provided needed to be kept contained within the common room.
Despite our dire situation, seeing all the Creckels perking up at the prospect of food, especially the younger ones, always put a smile on my face. Trug, the youngest at three years of age—and Brees’s firstborn son—still struggled to rein in his enthusiasm. Folding himself into a ball, he rolled towards us before unfolding to stand on all fours.
Like the rest of the nineteen surviving adults and eight young that shared this living space with me, he stood on longer legs than a regular Creckel. A series of long horns adorned his forehead, the top of his head, and part of the back of his neck. My friends were the result of the sick experiments the Kryptid General Khutu had forced my parents to perform on these highly intelligent creatures. He’d hoped to turn them into lethal battle weapons that he could use against the rest of the galaxy in his mad obsession for conquest. But the Creckels had not submitted to his will. They were not only too intelligent and too inherently good, but also too mentally strong to be brainwashed or mind controlled. While it saved them from becoming the General’s bloodthirsty puppets, it also condemned us to this slow death.
One by one, the Creckels each came to receive their small ration. They bumped their snouts on my hand or against my leg in gratitude, some even projecting a comforting or affectionate image. None of them complained, even though it was nowhere near enough, especially for the adults, and even more so for the males.
My throat tightened again, and I fought the wave of despair that wanted to crush me. There were too many of us, too many mouths to feed, and not enough food to go around. They had stopped reproducing three years ago when the first signs of trouble became obvious. Even without that, the base wasn’t big enough for them to move and get the exercise their species required. If I didn't find a way to fix what was left of the membranes, we were all done for.
I looked up at the ceiling. My bad eyesight didn't help assessing the current state of the ventilation membrane there. Created like the lining of a lung, the alveoli breathed in the carbon dioxide we exhaled and sent back fresh oxygen for us. Like the membrane, most of the alveoli had stopped functioning or decayed. And the glowworms that fed from the bacteria growing on the ventilation membrane while providing light for us had also slowly started dying. Once again, I suspected the membrane had been eating them to sustain itself. We could no longer sleep next to the remaining membranes for fear they would eat us, too.
I picked up the final piece of larvae from the container. Initially, I had considered eating it raw as well to keep the maximum nutrients. However, its lightly musty scent convinced me otherwise. Petting a few of the Creckels’ heads on my way out, Brees shadowing me as usual, I headed to the large laboratory where my parents had once worked. I cooked the thin steak until it lost the sliminess that gave it that horrible smell. It didn’t taste great, but certainly better than the wilted greens from the garden.
Fighting the sense of doom twisting my innards, I pulled out of the last working cooling unit, the membrane cells I had been working on. They had grown a little since last night, but I couldn’t see well enough to confirm if they were healthy or if the cells were defective. I swallowed back the tears that wanted to well in my eyes. I couldn’t afford to waste that moisture, and crying wouldn’t help us anyway. But how was I to save my friends and myself when I couldn’t even see what I was doing? When half the tools were broken or mostly defective? When I didn’t have half the reagents needed? And when I had acquired too little scientific knowledge before my parents passed away?
Sensing the despair that was about to engulf me, Brees rubbed her cheek against my leg, then projected the image of a sun growing from her chest before it wrapped around me. I smiled and hugged her draconic head, being careful not to stab myself on her sharp horns.
“I love you, too, Brees,” I said in a whisper, my voice squeaking from disuse.
Taking heart from this brief moment of affection, I turned back to my impossible task. We hadn’t survived this long just to die like this. I would see the sun again.
2
Reaper
A proud smile stretched my lips as my youngest brothers began their descent, their translucent bug wings flapping almost in sync as they landed one by one on their respective marks. The oldest of the twelve young boys, aged four to six, were finally ready to move on to the next group to learn more advanced aerial acrobatics and the basics of in-flight combat. Those were my favorite classes to teach. But knowing Bane—our oldest brother and leader—he would hog the acrobatics classes and probably the combat ones as well.