After a week of hiding in a cave Devan was miserable. He was even starting to question whether enslavement was better than this freedom. Of course it was too late now, if he went back he’d be killed. So he was committed, didn’t mean he had to like it though.

Service to the overlords was all he’d ever known. He’s been born into it, grown up in it and would soon be sent to the reproduction farm to mate with one of the women. For some reason as the date got closer to his seventeenth birthday he felt this panic welling up in him. He knew reproduction was expected but deep down within him it felt like something significant.

As the time got closer and closer the feeling built, like it was about to explode out of him. Eventually he ran. He took an opportunity whilst moving between his factory job and the sleeping pods and ran. He was still in the young adult groupings so security was light. He got lucky and somehow he don’t think any of the overlords even noticed as he dashed over the nearest hill. He ran for what seemed like hours and eventually found the cave he still found himself in, probably a couple of miles from the encampment. Since then he’d been surviving on rainwater and plants he found. Also one night he ate a dead rat, not his proudest moment but his body needed the energy.

He knew they’d be looking for him, when he didn’t scan into the sleeping pods, it would have alerted security immediately. The drones would have been dispatched and would have been circling twenty four hours a day since, it was only a matter of time.

As if on queue he heard the scraping of something against the rocks. He froze, mid breath, unmoving. All his senses turned up to eleven and he stared desperately at the light of the cave opening, the home made bowl of water paused halfway between his lap and his mouth.

It rounded the corner, a Hunter unit. Light armour, most of its carapace showing, pale underbelly visible peeking out to the top of its torso covering. It’s eye lit up at the sight of Devan hunched in the corner, shaking with cold and fear.

It approached him, the rhythmic clacking noise of its language mocking him, he was sure it was laughing. It unhinged its jaw and opened its mouth wide like a snake, it’s three lizard like tongues writing around within, ready to grasp him.

Devan panicked, stumbled backwards and thrust the bowl of rainwater at it. The bowl smacked it in the mouth, water splashing everywhere. The Hunter screamed a piercing cry of pain, smoke started to escape from its jaws. It closed its mouth, dropped its electro-rod and grasped vainly at its mouth with its claws. More smoke poured out of its mouth, along with some blood and strange green goo. To Devan it smelled like burning hair and rancid meat.

Suddenly he realised, it was dying. Was it this simple, rainwater killed them? The beast fell to the floor, a stranger groan emitting from it as it writhed on the floor. Eventually it kicked one last time, then stopped. Thin wisps of smoke trailed from its mouth. Though now it couldn’t really be called a mouth, half its face was missing and the water was starting to burn its way down its long neck.

Devan breathed a sigh of relief. He needed to get back somehow, he needed to share this news. But how.