"Hey! Who are you?" cried a man, as he came up the path towards them. Several cloth bags were tied to his side, probably in order to get things from the surface.
"My name is Dustin, and this is Olivia. We were chased down this tunnel by giant robots, and I'm pretty sure it was collapsed."
'Well, that's not good. Look, if I were you, I'd go over to that tunnel, over there, and head back up to the surface. You don't want any of the taskmasters to find you. They'll put you to work, and you'll never be able to leave."
"What? Why not?" asked Olivia.
"They put their eggs inside of you, and if you leave, the eggs will hatch and eat you from the inside."
"Then why are you leaving?"
"They just refreshed my egg. I only have a limited amount of time to get back before the egg hatches. See ya!"
They watched the guy jog off towards the other tunnel, and disappear."
"Eggs? Really?" muttered Olivia with a shake of her head.
"I guess it would work for these people. I wonder if there's any Uz'En down here."
Continuing down the path, to the ground floor, they watched as the workers mined glowing crystals out of the rock.
"Do you think the crystals are radioactive?" asked Olivia.
Dustin scanned one and jerked back away from them.
"They're not radioactive, they're alive!"
"Really?"
"They eat the mineral around them and emit a glow as waste," said a worker. "We have to keep mining them, because they die after a while and have to be replaced. The master's aren't very smart. Are you new?"
"Yea, but we better keep moving," said Olivia, raising her hand in thanks.
The guy nodded and went back to carefully chiseling the orb out.
Dustin sent out a swarm of nanobots, too small to see, to search for Uz'En. If there were any down here, he didn't want to leave them.
"Maybe we should get a sample of these things?" asked Olivia, looking at the soft blue glow of a cart full of the orbs.
Dustin touched one of the orbs for a moment, just long enough to get a sample, then jerked away from it. For some reason he felt an intense desire not to touch them.
As the nanobots started to return to him, he was getting conflicting results. Some of them said that the people around him were Uz'En, and others said they were not. It didn't make sense.
"Hey," he said, pausing next to a guy who was in a corner, obviously in pain. They were out of sight of anyone who might be looking. "Are you okay?"
"My egg hatched. You should probably get away before it gets out and comes for you," the man panted. His brow was stained in sweat and his breath was ragged.
"Let me save you," said Dustin reaching for him.
The guy looked at him incredulously, then looked like he would laugh if he wasn't in so much pain.
"Sure, whatever. I'm a goner anyways."
Dustin touched his chest, and sent a stream of nanobots into his body. There was a huge parasite ravaging his gut, eating everything it could. He had the nanobots take care of it by killing it, and then eating it.
(DUSTIN, THIS INDIVIDUAL IS READING AS A UZ'EN, BUT ISN'T A UZ'EN.)
'How is that possible?'
(IT MAY BE THAT THESE INDIVIDUALS ARE SIMILAR TO UZ'EN, OR A PRECURSOR.)
'Would a PED work on him?'
(THE CHANCE IS VERY HIGH.)
With a nod, Dustin slapped the nanobots into a PED and forced him to go into a change. He turned blue for a moment, and his eyes widened, before he returned to normal.
"There. You're good now."
"What did you do?"
"Fixed you."
The guy opened his mouth, then shut it back. Shaking his head, he ran his hand through his hair.
"Look, there are tons of us down here. We're bred as slaves. Do you think you could save us all?"
"That's what I'm here for," said Dustin with a nod.
The guy nodded and waved for them to follow him. On the other side of the tunnel he took them down, he crouched, and the followed his lead. Pointing at a hulking figure, they watched as it grabbed a man who approached it willingly. It shoved a tentacle into his belly button, wiggled around inside him for a moment, then retracted it. He fell to the ground, holding his belly for a moment, writhing in pain, before crawling to his feet and moving away.
"It sucks out the old egg and puts a new one in. If you can't get back before the egg hatches, they leave you to die. You only get a day before the egg tries to hatch, but sometimes it's less. Everyone generally tries to get their eggs changed out twice a day, to make sure that they don't risk getting an early hatcher."
"That's horrifying!" whispered Olivia with a grimace.
Dustin was just staring in horror. The hulking figure had turned and it looked like a giant tick with tentacles coming out of its chest.
"Why does it have to be bugs?" he whispered.
"Dustin," said Olivia, grabbing his arm, but he was already moving.
(INITIATING BLADE HANDS.)
(EVOLUTION COMPLETE.)
He walked up to the thing, and it turned to grab him. Before it could lay a hand, or tentacle, on him, he swiped at it with his blade hands. Its skin was surprisingly thin, slicing easily. Eggs spilled out on the floor, as well as newly hatched worms.
People all around watched in horror as the thing gurgled and fell to the ground.
"Who wants to get the damn eggs out of them?" he asked, changing his hands back to normal.
"Can you?" whispered a woman, stepping forward.
"He removed mine," said the man, stepping forward.
They quickly crowded around him, quietly waiting for him to get to them. Sending the nanobots to replicate, he started making PED's for them all. It wasn't long, after he fixed them, that they spread out, sharing the news. He was going to be here a while.