HALF: Dead nor Alive

“Eve?! What are you doing? We should leave,” Archie asked while he rand and stared at Eve who was standing still in front of him.

“It seems that this bug has some grudge against me,” Eve answered as she stared at the dragon-like parasite that was charging at Archie in the distance. “The mother is furious that I killed her child,”

Archie furrowed his forehead and looked at Eve with confusion but then Eve suddenly ran toward him and jumped so high above his head. He stopped running and turned around to see Eve flew toward the parasite with her wings spread open.

Eve punched the parasite’s face before it could breathe fire and her punch was enough to knocked the parasite down. She was smiling with excitement as she stared at the parasite, then she flew down with the speed of sound and punched the parasite on the neck.

The parasite was roaring as it started to breathe fire and turned everything around it into ashes.

Archie watched Eve used her claws and scratched the parasite’s skin on the neck, she seemed to be enjoying it. He didn’t know why, but he looked at Eve as if she had a personal grudge against that parasite because she never saw her like that before, even back then.

The parasite started to bleed because Eve was toying with it as she flew around and dodged all the attacks from the parasite. She flew down and cut the chest down to its stomach open with her claws, it wasn’t really a good idea because the parasite started to get furious at her and the red fire turned into liquid fire.

A single droplet of the liquid fire was enough to melt everything that it touched, and Archie had to run away so he wouldn’t get touched by it._.

Watching how Eve could easily hurt a King-type parasite with her bare hands and how her strength overpowered the parasite made Archie realized that she was no match for him. Archie could see the gap between his and Eve and there was no way for him to be able to survive if Eve decided to kill him.

Eve suddenly flew away from the parasite and landed in front Archie with a smile on her face.

“Let’s go, I had my fun and since I hurt that bug so badly, it will only target me,” Eve said as she grabbed Archie’s hand and dragged him with her to the hole. “I hope that they’re not inside the cave because they will die immediately if that bug breath the liquid fire at them,”

Archie looked back and the parasite was staggered and when it realized that Eve was running away from it, the parasite started to spread its wings and flew toward them.

“Where did those bat-like parasites go to? They disappeared without a trace,” Faye walked as she looked around the ceiling of the cave. “We need to find those parasites because they’re going to be a huge threat to the people around the city,”

“We can think about that later, right now we have a problem that’s approaching us,” Nova replied and looked at the long tunnel that led to the hole anxiously.

“You said that the parasite is like a dragon?” Ruby looked at Nova.

“Yeah, it’s massive,” Nova nodded her head repeatedly.

“Do you think the parasite could fit the hole? We know that the mouth of the hole was tall enough to fit ten story building, but we don’t know about the inside of the tunnel is as big as the mouth,” Ruby crossed her arms and looked at the hole in the distance.

“Yeah, the parasite could fit inside the hole,” Nova answered.

Ruby looked at Vincent, Daniel, Tommy, and Fanheim. “Yeah, that’s enough explanation,” Ruby said as she looked at Nova and Faye. “We don’t want to be in this cave, we need to leave this cave now,”

They started to feel the ground shaking. “Run! Now!” Ruby yelled and everyone immediately started running for their lives because they could hear the fear in Ruby’s voice.

As they ran away to the exit, the shaking got worse and it was hard for them to keep their balance as they ran for their lives. They started to hear a roar from far behind them, and so they turned around and the first thing they noticed was the dark hole went bright red.

They saw Archie and Eve climb out from the hole and they were running as fast as they could. A blaze of flame followed them from behind and it was enough for them to turn their heads back to the front and ran as fast as they could.

“What the fuck was that?!” Tommy asked as he looked at Nova.

“That’s the parasite, it could breathe fire,” Nova answered as she kept running.

“The first thing you should have told us is that the parasite could breathe fire,” Ruby said as she looked at Archie and Eve who were slowly catching up on them.

A head could be seen peeking out from the hole and Ruby was shocked when saw how big the head was and then the whole crumbled as the parasite’s body tried to break through the wall. Everyone was shocked when they saw how massive the body was and its body barely fit in the hole so it had to destroy the walls so it could spread its wings.

“That’s…” Faye was speechless that she couldn’t say anything else.

As they ran toward the exit of Son Doong cave, they saw parasites waiting and screeching at them. Before they could grab their guns, the parasites immediately ran away the moment they saw the King-type parasite charging toward them in the distance with its wings spread open.

“That’s convenience,” Vincent said jokingly and nervously.

They all left the cave safely and the first thing they thought in their heads was, “What’s next?”

“What now? What should we do next?” Nova asked as she looked at Faye.

“Stay away from the cave mouth, we should go toward where the parasites went because they’re animals. Animals know when and where when danger is coming,” Faye answered as she looked at the others. “Let’s go, we don’t want to be spotted by that thing,”

All of them nodded and followed the trace of the parasites that went to the east side of the cave.

Archie and Eve were running toward the exit and the cave was slowly crumbling because the parasite’s wings and tail scratched the walls and pillars. Its head was also touching the ceiling as it tried to fly in a cramped space for its size.

The parasite sprayed the walls with its liquid fire and it was enough to melt the stone, walls, pillars, and ceiling. It was a shame that the beautiful cave got destroyed by the parasite but the good side was the parasites wouldn’t be able to use it anymore.

The liquid fire flooded the cave and it almost touched Archie’s back, but thankfully, Eve was there to pull him and brought him out to safety.

Faye and the others were hiding up the hill when they saw Archie and Eve come out from the cave. They saw the liquid fire pouring out like a stream and melting everything around it.

“I know that we are trying to bring another King-type parasite to the surface,” Faye said as she hid behind a tree and stared at the parasite coming out from the cave. “But if something like that came out, I think we just created another problem,”

“You might be right, but if you look at that parasite’s condition, it seems the parasite has a lot of injuries on its body. We just hope that this parasite could do enough harm to weaken the other King-type parasite that had evolved,” Ruby replied as she squinted her eyes to look at the injuries all over the parasite’s body.

“Hmm?” Nova hummed as she tilted her head with a bit of confusion. “I don’t remember the parasite was like that before because I remember correctly it had no injuries at all when it chased us,” she explained with her eyebrows furrowed.

Ruby and Vincent looked at each other and knew who could do something like that to the parasite, but they didn’t want to say anything because none of them seemed to be curious about it.

“Now that the King-type parasite is out, how are we going to lead it to the other King-type parasite?” Aster asked and looked at Ruby.

“The King-type parasite could sense another King-type parasite the moment it went to the surface. Let’s wait and see if this one can sense the other King-type parasite,” Ruby answered.

They were all paying attention to the parasite, and as Ruby expected, the parasite stopped moving and looked around as if it sensed something.

The parasite roared so loudly that the sky went clear and the cloud disappeared. Not long after the parasite roared, they could hear a faint roar in the sky and they were all looking in the direction of the roar came from.

The parasite spread its wings and it flew up high in the sky as it stared at the distance.

“Another King went to the surface, a challenger has appeared,” Ruby said as she looked up at the sky.