Free Resistance by Samit Basu Page B

her.
    “PragueNet’s calling them ‘Ungeziefers’,” says Ellis. “Though given where it started I think they’ll be called Gregors eventually. Quite funny, really.”
    “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” snaps Uzma.
    “It really doesn’t matter,” says Ellis.
    It had all started, Ellis tells Uzma, with Roman Novak, a literature professor, who’d been on one of the First Wave flights a few days after Uzma’s own. He’d turned into some kind of giant insect, disappeared into the underground tunnels crisscrossing Prague, and had never been heard of since.
    “So Utopic got him,” says Uzma.
    “They claim they didn’t,” says Ellis. “But of course they did, at some point over the last eleven years. More importantly, they knew this was coming. All Utopic subsidiary offices in Prague were cleared out last night. Before you ask, yes, this is Utopic’s doing. And again, there’s no evidence.”
    “He must have broken out of whatever zoo they were keeping him in,” says Uzma. “And now he’s come home.”
    What had Utopic wanted with the insect-man? Had they planned an army of super-insects? What horrors had they subjected the professor to? Why were they trying to destroy a city they owned large parts of?
    Another giant bee-man is caught on the hoverjet’s windscreen, stabbing in vain at the figures seated behind the unyielding glass. Uzma shudders as she watches its horrible torso twitch as it slides off, human hair fused with striped bands of bee fur, now splattering everywhere as the hoverjet’s cannons rip it apart. What other monsters did Utopic have locked away? And what would happen if they all escaped?
    Wingman’s communicator comes online, and Uzma watches through his feed as he slices his way through a man-termite infestation on the balcony of a boutique hotel in Mala Strana. He’s a killing machine when he gets going, but with every plasma burst that takes out the wriggling, squirming, utterly disgusting man-grubs chewing their way through the old building, he’s blasting out the walls and woodwork as well: there will be very little left of the beautiful neighbourhood when he’s done.
    “Are we just on pest control duty here, or is there something I’m supposed to be looking for?” asks Wingman.
    “Is there a central nest?” asks Uzma. “You should work your way towards that.”
    “I’ll know when I find it,” says Wingman, as an empty-eyed grub rears up in front of him and gets blasted into a fine shower of bug-bits. He shuts down his communicator and gets back to work.
    They’d spent the last week knocking super-heads together. A trip to the Ultradome in Las Vegas, where fake superpro-wrestlers (usually down-on-their-luck supervillains looking for a showbiz career) went through the motions for cheering audiences across the world, had proved satisfying in terms of violence, but fruitless in terms of leads. They’d gone to underground super-combat tournaments in Mexico, beaten up super-warlords in North Africa, and broken up an upper-class British secret super-society of human-hunters in Soho. But no one Uzma had Asked knew where this particular apocalypse was coming from, or who was behind it. What was the point of this sabre-rattling from Utopic? Was the insect invasion just a rogue superbug gone crazy, or was it part of some larger, more sinister plan? If this was what one Utopic creature could do, what would happen the day they threw the doors to the whole zoo open?
    Jason comes online. “Uzma,” he gasps, “there’s a problem.”
    “You think?” asks Uzma.
    Through the swirling shield of bricks and metal Jason’s built around himself, she can see he’s running up the path to Prague Castle, leaping easily over lumps of insect wax that have split the cobbled street. As she watches, a caterpillar that appears to be made of several people sewn together bursts out of an antique shop. Jason leaps and rolls as it charges at him, and his viewscreen tilts and