Hellstrom's Hive

At the eighth switchback door on his upward flight, Janvert brought himself to a stumbling, panting halt, slumping against the door. He could feel its coolness through his hair as he pressed his head against it, looking down at his bare feet. God, it was hot in the tunnel! And the stink was worse. He felt he could not move another step without rest. His heart was pounding, his chest ached, sweat poured from his body. He wondered if he dared venture back into the main tunnels and search for an elevator. He pressed an ear against the door, listened, could hear no special activity on the other side. This worried him. Were they waiting there for him to emerge?

Only faint sounds of machinery and an omnipresent sense of human movement came to him. An odd sense of almost silence beyond this door, though. Again, he pressed an ear against it, heard nothing he could identify as a direct menace.

There would be more people out there, though, these weird denizens of Hellstrom’s hive. How many were there? Ten thousand? Not one of them on the census rolls. He knew this. The whole place conveyed a secretive sense of purposes that cut across everything outside in the sharpest and most outrageous ways. Here were people who lived by rules that denied everything the outside society believed. Did they have a god in here? He recalled Hellstrom saying grace. Sham! Pure sham!

It was a damned crawling, revolting hive.