Dhinha shakingly glanced at what was left of the creature as it fell to the ground.
Mostly bits of its legs that had avoided the sonic wave that had torn through it.
He swallowed the saliva in his mouth and felt the pain of hunger from before return.
He then cautiously inched towards the scraps of meat and grabbed one.
This was something he could have never imagined back when his meals were prepared by private chefs and were guaranteed safe to eat.
Dhinha threw away whatever pride he had left and threw the warm piece of meat into his mouth.
It was a foul as he imagined, being both fatty and rubbery.
It tasted like rot.
There was no other way to put it.
But...
Even with all this in mind, Dhinha continued to chew and swallow
He fought back the urge to vomit as he swallowed and proceeded to pick up another piece of meat, which he ate as quickly as possible.
What followed was a wave of nausea that brought him to the ground again.
His head painfully pounded with each heartbeat, and his vision darkened.
A part of him regretted eating the meat, but a much larger part of him felt really good.
A sharp spike of joy flooded into his mind as he had filled his stomach, where it felt as though something was wriggling within.
Dhinha writhed and whimpered as euphoric tears fell from his eyes.
It was such a sweet discomfort, the slight pain that came when whatever was in his stomach ever so slightly stretched his insides.
He eventually began to drool ceaselessly, and it wasn't long before he vomited out what looked like a little mantis shrimp, only it was dark blue in colour.
It softly peeped and wriggled as, without a second thought, Dhinha gently picked it up and cupped it in her hands as she sat back up.
The thing she held was small, ugly and pathetic, but... It warmed her heart to no end knowing that it was alive.
She didn't care where it came from or how it grew in her stomach; she just wanted to hold it.
It, as far as he knew, was the only family she had.
A twisted smile formed on her face, and she shed more tears as the little thing somehow sent a message into her mind.
A single sound.
A name.
One that was universal to all living things, regardless of how it was said.
"Anoona".
She knew that the little thing had been the one to call out to her because of a feeling that coursed deep in her every vein.
She froze as suddenly the sounds of movement filled the air.
More of those gnarly-toothed creatures emerged from the flesh forest beyond.
They skulked towards Anoona and her child, but she knew what she was capable of now.
She could protect her child and herself.
So, after taking a shaking breath, Anoona screamed at the creatures, making sure to shorten the burst of energy each time.
Seven creatures had emerged from the forest, and seven of them had their flesh peeled from their body with waves of sound.
She hissed out the heat her voice box had generated, her pointed teeth visible for all to see.
A warning.
Of course, she was being protective of her newborn.
In this new world, which seemed determined to test her, the small thing in her hands was the only thing she could claim.
And so, as more of the dark world churned because of her presence, she stood and roared back at it.
More of those gnarly creatures emerged from the flesh forest alongside many other shapes that bore their violence at her.
It was as if the world had awoken along with Anoona, and she let out another scream, killing everything that was too close, but it wasn't enough.
The wave of teeth and claws closed in on her, but even as her throat ached and burned, she screamed.
Some were able to get close enough to cut at her arms and back, but she screamed repeatedly.
Her lips cracked, and her throat began to bleed as her vocal flaps were pushed to their limits.
One of the larger creatures managed to push her down, allowing the others to sink their claws and teeth into her.
Anoona choked on her pained breath as parts of her back and head were ripped off.
Not even the agony of hunger compared to being mauled apart and eaten, and this brought out a scream that knew no equal.
A cry that tore through her throat and sent out a shockwave that flattened the horde.
So many creatures had been turned into a thin mist that it began to rain their dark blood.
Blood which fell onto Anoona, who still cradled her child.
And, even as she bled, seeing that it was safe brought a twisted smile to her face.
A smile which turned into a soft giggle.
A giggle which turned into deranged laughter as her cells absorbed the blood around her.
Her wounds rapidly healed, and plumes of steam rose from her body as she metabolised everything her body came into contact with.
She ate it all and even gave some to her child, letting the blood drip from her finger and fall into the child's mouth.
"There, there." She giggled in a voice that sounded like a lullaby and an agonised scream
Her child responded by drinking up energetically.
It was like a mantis shrimp, its back lined with wide, hardened plates, and its two largest arms were folded. Its eyes resembled those of its mother, puddles of cyan coloured light in the darkness.
"You... I don't... This place..." Flashes of the past came and went as Anoona regenerated.
A boy who was taught that the value of a single human life was directly tied to how much work they could do for as little money as possible.
Money.
What worth did a single note hold?
And how much did it weigh against the life of a single human?
Anoona chuckled at this thought.
It was totally something she would have thought of in passing during her first life.
Now all she could think about was her child, who looked to be asleep.
She sat up and looked around at the newly formed swamp of blood that sat beneath the setting sun.
She had eaten, meaning she would give birth again soon, but she couldn't risk doing so in the open.
So she continued to eat the flesh around her.
The world was out to get her for some reason.
It was only a matter of time before it sent something bigger and stronger.
Why?
It was only natural.
Or unnatural.
This was a world of decay.
Anoona understood as much, and the new order of things demanded stagnation and depredation.
Anoona was bound to bring about change and evolution.
Something that the current world couldn't allow.
It had recognised Anoona as a newly arrived threat, and so it was sending its white blood cells to clean up.
It was only a matter of time before the body adapted and released the appropriate antibodies.
Anoona let out a sigh.
It was all so... Tedious.
She could feel that the world was only trying to defend itself, but why didn't it recognise her as one of its own children?
"Tsk." The path ahead was clear.
Just like when the board of directors was being particularly troublesome, sometimes a forceful ejection was necessary, and when asking nicely didn't work, other tactics were necessary.
With humans, financial or social pressure was enough to get someone to change their mind, but Anoona was dealing with what appeared to be a combined organic collective.
It was natural to assume that there wasn't a central core she could scream to death, so she would have to replace the new order of things with her own.
With her as the core.
But where to start?
All profitable companies had one fundamental component.
Cheap, replaceable labour.
That was the bottom rung that held up the ladder.
Anoona looked at her firstborn and saw that he wouldn't do.
He was too perfect.
Not even a day old, and he could already communicate with his mind.
Anoona couldn't even imagine what he would grow to be, but it definitely wasn't a menial position, so she cradled him tighter while closing her eyes.
A strange pulse ripped through her mind, and it came with words, details that she knew in the depths of her being but was visualising for the sake of organisation.
[---Initializing Central Node Identity---
Identity: "Anoona" (Nexus)
Class: α (alpha)
Bio-Signal: 1 000 000/1 000 000Ø
Epidermal Integrity: 100%
Swarmlink Connectivity: 1/1 (Child Node Online)
Noetic Presence: 7 (ML)]
She opened her eyes and saw the details that she had conjured by turning the signals her cells were sending her into simplified data.
To her, each of her cells was an active, autonomous agent that was just as determined to live as the rest of her body.
This allowed for increased adaptive abilities, and was how she was able to tell her body to summarise its condition.
With this, she turned to her Firstborn and had her cells report what they knew.
Knowledge that was being passed along at a genetic level across her body and into her mind.
[Identity: 01
Class: β (beta)
Bio-Signal: 100 000/100 000Ø
Epidermal Integrity: 100%
Noetic Presence: 0.7 (ML)]
Since each cell had to receive this information and transmit it to the one next to it, there was a small delay in when Anoona was able to see it.
She also needed to be in contact with whatever her cells were analysing to get any information, but that much was natural.
She looked at 01 and decided to name him after his number.
It wasn't particularly creative, but he was the first and only One, which was fine with Anoona.
She had a few of her cells leave her body and spread to her surroundings, where they gathered information as she sat.
As she suspected, it seemed as though most of the surface was a biome of flesh from the ground to the very air, which was crawling with microbes that would have eaten her alive if it weren't for how robust her cells were.
Since they were almost sixteen times larger than regular human cells, they were able to contain exactly what they needed to combat foreign bodies.
A common tactic they used was releasing solvents, which broke down any bacteria or viruses they came into contact with, turning them into digestible sludge.
Anoona couldn't see any of this, even with her enhanced eyesight, of course, but it was telepathically relayed to her as a stream of information from each of her cells, which felt a little overwhelming at first, but the more she communicated with them, the clearer each of their voices became.
01 let out a handful of peeps, which signalled to Anoona's body that it was time to feed, and so, driven by instincts that were older than memory, she raised him to her bosom and her body knew to feed him what he needed, although the little ruffian bit her on occasion.
Anoona herself was full, and so she returned to her plan of making worker ants.
According to her current state, she could only produce a single other life form based on how she had eaten, which was fine for testing purposes.
And so, she hunched forward a little and spat out the lump of life that had been crawling inside her stomach for a bit.
Just as she had envisioned, it was shaped somewhat like a worker ant, only it had thicker legs and arms which resembled those of a human, making it look like a deformed hybrid.
Anoona didn't particularly care.
[Identity: 02
Class: θ (theta)
Bio-Signal: 100/100Ø
Epidermal Integrity: 100%
Noetic Presence: 0.07 (ML)]
02 looked up at Anoona for the briefest of moments before getting up on shaky legs and drinking the nutrient-rich blood that it was born into.
While she didn't care for 02 as much, Anoona had high hopes for him and his coming siblings.