Her shadow loomed over him, so tall, impossibly tall since the last time he had seen her. Glados Flattened her ears back against her head and barred her teeth as she sniffed at the air around him. Her almost, childlike appearance had deteriorated since the last time he had seen her. The soft baby skin of her face was now covered completely in a wash of delicate white blond hairs, which while they were clearly human made it look more like fur. Her adaptid side had taken over her appearance since he had last seen her, from the fur covering her head right down to the massive spikes that made up her feet. The only thing particularly human about her had to be those eyes, bright green and with a dilated pupil that made her look almost manic.

When she bared her teeth they dripped and glittered with saliva.

"Father." She said back.

Her voice was strange, deeper than it should have been, or perhaps distorted like a voice might be through static.

It was the kind of voice you might expect from a creature in a horror movie, though he supposed that was not so far from the truth.

She leaned down to sniff at him.

It was hard for him to wrap his head around the fact she was under two years old, as she was now almost as tall as a horse, or taller than some horses. When she lifted her head on flat ground, she would have been able to look him directly in the eye, though she stood on a root now, and towered over him.

"You took your time." She growled.

"I'm sorry Glados. I'm sorry." He didn't know what else to say."What.... Happened?"

She growled low in her throat but did not speak.

"Glados!" He turned his head towards more voices, and watched in surprise as three other figures scuttled out from the darkness.

Cortana, Vicky, and Eve.

Behind him the marines had sort of bunched together in a tight group. Not using him as a shield per say, but it was close.

The spiderlings, now more like spider giants descended from above their spiked feet digging into the bark of trees as they clambered down.

Cortana made a sort of chirping noise and rushed over. If he didn't know for a fact that that was her being happy, he might have run in the other direction, "Father!"

Her voice was even less human than Glados, but she shoved her head in between them and stuck out her neck. He patted her snout and then hugged her feeling bunched muscle under her fur hair rippling against his arms.

Vicky licked the side of his head

"You're here!"

"Finally." Glados mumbled.

"Maybe he can help." It was Eve speaking this time He didn't remember Eve all that well as she had opted to stay with the colony originally. Her voice was the last human out of all of them, and sort of sounded like a voice might, if you heard it over a warped speaker.

"Help with what.:

"Get his help." Glados snapped, "he's the reason this has happened.'

Adam felt the guilt coming on hard, but Vicky turned and snapped at Glados with her large teeth, "Stop being a bitch, its not his fault. You're just mad we haven't seen him in a while."

Glados went silent.

He guessed he could understand that.

"Again, I am sorry." He didn't bother making excuses.

Vicky shook her head, "Not your fault. After the other hybrids were adopted, Eris offered to take us with her, but at that point it seemed more important to come back here and help the colony." She shook her head sadly, "They have been having trouble."

He nodded, 'I heard, is the queen alright."

"She is alright, you must come, and your friends too.'

Vicky lifted her head and chirped once, "hi Maverick, Hi Ramirez!"

The two marines waved awkwardly.

"Get on our backs, it will be faster."

The spideerlings called over some more of the adaptid monstrosities, one of them who was a good three feet taller than glados, who was able to pick up both sunny and cannan despite them weight somewhere between six hundred and seven hundred pounds combined.

Ramirez and Maverick rode o the back of cortona and the others chose their mounts leaving Glados as the only one left.

She glowered at him.

He smiled rather sheepishly, but eventually she allowed Him onto her back, and held on for dear life as she rushed forward and began clambering up the side of a tree. He almost fell, hands slipping against her fur as she hurried up. The others didn't have so hard a time as their adaptids were careful to take a safe rout.

Glados did not seem so intent on being kind to him in that way, and he felt himself slipping, gripping tighter to the fur of her shoulders as she finally crawled into a hole along one side of the nest. Inside there were hundreds of other adaptids scurrying along the wall, and they looked down in suspicion or anger as glados passed. She growled and hissed at anyone who got to close and eventually they made their way into the largest room at the center of the hollow.

Inside , sat the most massive adaptid of all.

The queen.

She was as large as the largest draught horse. She had no fur on her wolf-like head, or even skin, and it seemed that the muscle of her muzzle and face were exposed for the whole world to see. She had multiple pairs of eyes, both sets milky white, the second set, set wider than the others and a little above.

Glados stepped inside and dumped Adam onto the floor before stepping away a few feet to sulk.

Adam didn't let her but stepped over to pat her ears.

She would pretend she hated it, but he knew her better than that.

There were other adaptids in the room too, this ones mostly being that third gender, who were used to incubate the eggs produced by the male and the female. Their heads were rather lizardlike as they stared at him from the walls. Their fur was covered almost completely with tiny spiderlings clambering over them from one end to the other.

The Adaptid queen lifted herself from her nest, Revealing the large male stuck to her underbelly as she moved forward.

Her ears were back.

He glanced at Glados.

"Can you translate.'

She huffed but did as told just as the others were filtering into the room from behind.

"Are you here to cause more trouble like your brethren."

He shook his head, "We were here to speak with you your highness. To make sure you were doing alright. And." He pointed down to his chest where the adaptid male still hung clinging to the front of his shirt, "And to return one of yours. We found him clinging to the corpse of one of your dead."

The queen growled low in her throat, but shifted forward and nosed at the figure. He shifted ever so slightly, very weak and slow in his movements.

More adaptids filtered into the room, seeming to be interested in their conversation.

The adaptid queen looked over to Eve, who perked up almost immediately as she scuttled over. She nosed the figure as well, and the creature finally clambered from Adam's chest and onto Eve's belly, where he settled in against her thick underfur. Eve seemed pleased somehow and crawled back into the shadows to allow them to continue.

One of the adaptids moved forward to stand with the queen, and on her underbelly he was surprised to find another familiar face. Hal turned his head to look at Adam and chirped another greeting. He wasn't much bigger than a medium sized dog, and clung to the belly of a female adaptid. He didn't much look like the male of his species, but he supposed that was to be expected.

The queen scuttled forward looking down at him with her teeth bared.

"We have been run out of our nests and persecuted by your people, the GA."

Adam shook his head, "no, that wasn't us. We would never allow that to happen to you. Please tell us what is happening so we can help."

The queen looked at glados and made some sort of rumbling noise. Whatever kind of communication it was, his translator did not pick up.

But something passed between them and Glados turned her head to look at him.

"We do not know who they are, but they generally come in the daytime when we are sleeping, towards dawn. Tesraki and some humans will come and use tranquilizer darts to sedate and then load us onto ships They have been coming more and more frequently until the latest one when we moved here for our own protections." She gave him a look, "It seems that we were easy enough to follow anyway."

HE shook his head, "No no, you moved recently, and we have a tracker.... Do you know any ore about these people? Have you heard them say anything or seen any strange symbols perhaps?"

They shook their heads, "We were not interested in speaking to them when they were trying to kidnap our young."

Adam glanced over to the side of the nest where the incubators were wrangling their wriggling nest of spiderlings.

He thought he saw a few of them that looked unusually furry around the head.

It was only when one of the tiny creatures turned their head to loo kat him, that he reeled back in surprise.

Those were definitely his mother's eyes.

Glados caught him staring and looked over.

"Oh congratulations, you are now a grandfather."

He was still trying to wrap his head around that as the queen began to speak.

"We made peace agreements with your kind. We were told that there would be friendship between our races, but now this is what we see. You are against your word, you are a traitor.'

IT seemed strange to hear these words coming from Glados from a creature that he didn't know was capable of brining across cu sentiment.

He bowed his head, "It is not so simple your highness. Unlike your colony humans and other aliens are divided, some of us have different motives than others. There are many clans and many groups who would act outside the law of the galactic assembly. If they are trying to steal your young it is likely they are trying to reopen another hybrid factory using your DNA weather that be for commercial or military purposes, I am not yet sure."

She tilted her head.

"not all of your species follow the rule of your queen?"

He didn't correct her understanding on the subject as he didn't have time to get into intergalactic politics with her, so he just shook his head, "No The Assembly is a loose agreement from many groups of individuals. Our groups are very vast and are difficult to control, there are many among them who didn't want to going the GA but were outvoted by others so are forced under those laws. They don't feel any obligation to follow the rules if it doesn't benefit them. We try to keep them in check, but sometimes it is difficult."

The queen mulled this over for a bit, resting back on the ground.

A few of the spiderlings escaped from their handlers and ran over crawling over her legs and her back as she sat thinking. She ignored them for the most part, like a sleeping dog might ignore a kitten.

"Your people are strange to me, this is not something we understand, but I trust your word as Glados has told me to trust you. If this is the case, than I ask for your help."

He bowed, not entirely sure she would get the gesture, thought it felt appropriate, "Of course your highness." He stood, "I will order a protective nexus be put up around your home world with continual patrols. No one will be allowed on or off your planet without GA protection. I understand that you withdrew from peace talks, but I hope this might be a sign of our good intentions. I will not lie to you and say that everyone of my species has such good intentions. I will not even say that this nexus is going to completely stop the poaching of your people, but I will do the best I can to help, so that your young ones may grow up in peace."

She stared at him and nodded her head slowly before, "I do not suppose more of your DNA will be gifted along with this promise."

He grimaced slightly, "I am afraid that will not be an option, so you will have to do with safety for now. Until then we will protect your colony from the invasion if they do decide to come."

There was a pause and she nodded, "Very well, though you and our others will be watched.'

She turned her large head hungrily over to where Sunny and Cannon were standing.

Cannon stepped back a pace and Sunny crossed her spear over her body, "And what might these be."

She reached out on long forelimb and tapped Sunny's carapace with a long tipped spike, "Natural armor, we do not have this.

Sunny took another step back, "Perhaps another time."

The queen seemed only slightly miffed as she moved away, crawling back and upward until sh was dangling near the ceiling, better able to rest and stared down at the humans who were now clustered together.

Ramirez moved forward and lowered his head so only Adam could hear.

"I really don't want an egg sack attached to me thanks.

"Than probably try and avoid arousing anyone too much."

He sighed, "It really is a curse to be sexy."

Adam snorted, turning and stopping in his tracks foot raised. A large gathering of spiderlings had moved forward across the floor and were gathered around his feet. He put his foot back down gingerly trying to avoid the small bodies. He doubted crushing one of the adaptid babies. Maverick muttered something about spiders where she stood to his other side.

He had no idea what she was saying but he sort of agreed.

One of the spiderlings moved forward and tentatively touched a spiked foot to his leg. Looking more carefully, he could see that this was one of the ones he had seen earlier, the one with bright grey eyes like his mother. It had dark fur on it's head like his brothers, the same sort of darkish brown. He reached out a hand and the tiny creature climbed on as he lifted it up to examine.

It had a shorter face than the other adpatids though it was still dog-like. Its ears were also shorter.

He ran a finger over it's head and it hummed.

He didn't know that adapids reached maturity so quickly.

To think that this technically made him some sort of grandparent was enough to make him more than a little woozy.

He set the tiny creature on his shoulder and allowed it to sit there as he walked around and spoke with the others.

It liked to repeat his words as he spoke them, practicing it's language skills.

He found it interesting how the language of the adaptids would eventually b English, and then after that it might evolve in it's own way perhaps into something different and just slightly to the left.

He had to make a call into the GA to request the funds necessary to protect the adaptids, but he was certainly able to order enough ships and shuttles to make the nexus possible.

He would likely have to argue budget with some of the higher ups in the time being, but they had plenty of material, and he was sure he could convince the GA given enough time.

However, until they had better protection, there small team was going to have to be enough.

A few of the marines set up a watch around the area all of them pared with one of the spiderlings in order for communications to happen ore readily. Where one of the spiderligns could not be provided, an adaptid was offered to them. Though they did not understand one another, Glados translated for them what the intentions were going to be and they seemed to get along just fine.

That is how Adam found himself sitting out in the darkness resting next to Glados.

Alone together and with his promise to help their people, Glados seemed much less angry, though she always did when he was around. Slowly she lowered her head and dropped it onto his lap huffing softly in the cool night air.

He ran a hand over her snout.

"Are you thinking abut staying here." He muttered quietly.

"I do not know.' She said softly, "I do not think I would fit in here. They are different from me somehow, just like humans were different from me."

He patted her neck, "it's pretty easy to feel isolated, even around your own people. When I was younger, I didn't feel like the other humans." She lifted her head to look at him head cocked.

"You'll find some place eventually. I did." He patted her back, "Be patient though. It too k me almost twenty years."

She huffed and rested her head back on his lap.

He continued to stroke a hand over her ears.

"I don't want to wait that long.

"I know. No one likes to wait."

He looked out into the darkness.

Like how he always hated waiting for soemthing to happen. Out there in the dark right now, someone was waiting for their opportunity.