Reyna looked down at Myrrah's dead body and at the pile of dust that was now Adam Fenix and sobbed. She fell to her knees and sobbed until she felt there was nothing left in her, and then continued to sob some more.
Reyna was sobbing so hard she didn't hear the boots on the ground behind her. "Hello there," a soft feminine voice said.
Reyna turned around and saw the blonde haired woman from Adam's room. "What are you doing up here?" she asked.
Reyna sniffled a bit and said, her voice still shaking, "I lost my mother."
"I'm so sorry Sweetheart. Did she work here?"
"You could say that." It wasn't a complete lie, it just wasn't the whole truth. Reyna now knew some of her mother's reasonings for them.
"I'm sorry Honey," the blonde woman said, putting an arm around Reyna. Reyna shoved her away and stood up, legs shaking.
"I know how you feel," the blonde said, walking towards Reyna. "I lost my mother in the other war. So many people died. But look on the bright side. The war is over! We finally won!"
Reyna considered the woman's words and sighed. The humans had won the war, but she wasn't sure if she was happy for them. For the longest time, the Locust were her people, and she wanted to see every human destroyed.
But then she met Adam. Adam had told her that the humans were as much of the victims as the Locust were. He opened her eyes.
"I'm Anya," the woman said, snapping Reyna away from her thoughts. "What's your name?"
"Reyna," Reyna said without thinking.
"What a pretty name. Where did you get your pretty skirt?"
Reyna looked at her green skirt with the swirling designs and said, "I took it before my home was gone." Reyna watched her wording carefully, not giving too much information but still not lying completely.
"Come on now," Anya said, holding out her hand. "Let's go into the hotel."
Reyna looked at Myrrah's body and, sighing, walked into the hotel with Anya.
The next day, Reyna woke up in a different bedroom than the one she had been used to. She had moved rooms due to hers being torn apart by a stalk.
She walked downstairs into the dining area and saw massive groups of humans, all in armor. They weren't wearing the giant bulky armor that she had seen in the Hollows, but rather the basic armor that mostly just covered their chests.
Reyna grabbed some food and, feeling depressed at the fact her entire family had just been killed, sat by herself.
As she ate, the group of soldiers she had seen in Adam's room stared at her. She could see that they were talking amongst themselves. One of them, the biggest dark skinned man, got up from the table and grabbed his food.
Reyna saw he was walking over to her, and she immediately pretended not to notice. He sat down across from her and asked, "What's going on Sweetheart?"
Reyna immediately recognized his voice as the one who was on the speakers in the Hollow. She ignored him and continued picking at her eggs. She still wasn't completely used to the taste of eggs and preferred to just eat bowls of berries, but the soldiers who were serving the food insisted she ate more.
"Not a talker, huh?" the man asked. "Shit, I get it. A lot of shit happened, huh? But, hey, we finally won! The goddamn war is finally over! Whoo!"
Reyna jumped at the man's loud 'Whoo!' and he laughed at her. "My name's Cole by the way," the man, now named Cole, said to Reyna. "But I'm sure you know me from watching Thrashball back in the day, huh?"
Reyna looked confused by his words. Apparently, this basic soldier had once been someone famous, so why wasn't he leading them? He seemed to be happy where he was, but he was much more massive and looked much more strong than the others. "You never saw me play?" Cole asked.
Reyna shook her head no, and Cole asked, "How old are you anyway?"
"Seventeen," Reyna said quietly.
"It speaks!" Cole teased lightly. "Aw, shit, I'm just messing with you Baby. But damn, if your only seventeen, no wonder you never saw me play. You must have just been a baby when those scaly assed grubs came up to greet us, huh?"
Reyna nodded her head yes and Cole asked, "How did you get here anyways? Only about a hundred Gears and the Gorasni came here. Were you a scientist's daughter?"
Reyna nodded her head and Cole asked, "Well, I'm sorry to hear that. The grubs killed all of them brilliant minds. But how did you escape?"
"I hid," Reyna said, lying through her teeth.
"Well you must have done a damn good job seeing how you're still here. Sorry your parents were killed."
She was killed alright, Reyna thought to herself. But not by the Locust.
"What's your name Baby?"
"Reyna," the former princess said quietly.
"Well hello there Reyna. If you need anything, don't be afraid to ask. Now I gotta go start helping clean up. I'll see you around."
Reyna watched as Cole got up and went back to his other table. Reyna sighed and, not feeling hungry, dumped the rest of her food in a trash can and went outside, wanting to clear her head.
Reyna eventually wandered into the garden and sat on the bench, sighing. She felt the urge to cry but couldn't bring herself to. She knew she should be sobbing her eyes out. Her mother had died, and the last thing they did together was fight. Adam was dead as well. The man who had showed her human ways, and opened her eyes, was gone. Every single Locust she had ever seen, grown up with, commanded, were now dead. Her entire life was now gone.
So why couldn't she bring herself to cry?
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of boots on gravel. Another soldier, a female with short brown hair, walked into the garden and sat down next to her. "Hey there love," she said. "Why aren't you with the others?"
"Others?" Reyna asked.
"The other civvies in Anvil Gate. How come you're not with them?"
"I lived here," Reyna said, still not outright lying.
"That must mean you lost your parents, huh?"
Reyna nodded and the woman sighed. "So many people were lost in this damn war," the woman said gazing out in the distance. "My dad was killed in the last war, and my mum died just after this one started. I'm sorry about your family love."
Reyna turned away, not wanting to talk, but the woman continued anyways. "My dad actually died before I was born. He never got to see me. My mum named me after him. My name's Sam, by the way. Samantha Byrne. What's yours?"
Reyna had seen Sam at the same table as Cole and Anya and knew that she already knew her name, but told her anyways. "Reyna," the former princess said.
"What a beautiful name! Why don't you come with me? A group of us have been talking about getting back to the mainland, and I'll make sure you're one of the first there."
Sam got up and held her hand out to Reyna, who hesitantly grabbed it. They then both walked back to the hotel.
Reyna walked around the hotel a bit later, wandering aimlessly. She was on the second floor when she heard a shout from the lobby. She ran down, along with a mass of Gears and stood amidst the crowd.
She managed to shove her way to the front and got a good look at who caused the commotion. There was a group of soldiers gathered consisting of Anya, Sam, Marcus, Cole, and the blonde with the goggles.
"What the hell happened?" Reyna heard a Gear from the middle of the crowd ask.
"I don't friggin know," the blonde said. "I was just going to look at some Locust bodies and I saw this shit."
He then moved aside and the whole crowd, Reyna included, gasped. Rather than reveal a Locust body, the blonde revealed a giant shell made out of crystals. "And this isn't the only one," he informed them. "These things have been coming from all over the island. All of the Locust bodies, minus the queen since she's human, are covered in this crystal shit."
The crowd murmured amongst themselves, confused as to what was happening. "That must mean they're dead for good!" someone near the back shouted.
"Yeah, their bodies are gone!" a woman shouted near Reyna.
"While we shouldn't assume that everything is okay, it does appear that the Locust, at least for now, are neutralized," Anya said in her calming voice.
Reyna then remembered words taught to her by Adam Fenix. She had sat there and listened, curious as to what the scientist had to say.
"Crystallization," Adam said to Reyna. "It's a last minute preservation method by some species. It happens when a creature is forced to shut down, and in a last effort to preserve it, the body encases itself in a hard crystal. Mostly common in creatures that were affected by Imulsion. For example…"
Adam then pulled something out of his drawer for Reyna to look at. It was a hard piece of crystal slightly bigger than his fist. "This was originally a Lambent mouse," he said. "It wasn't completely Lambent, otherwise it would have exploded. It was something in between, similar to the Locust. Once it died due to my tests of the anti Lambency bomb, this happened.
"If I can't figure out how to save the Locust entirely, I will at least be buying them some time. I don't know how long they will be here though. Eventually, though, this mouse will emerge from the crystals, stronger and more adapted. The same will happen to the Locust."
So Adam had been right. The Locust weren't truly gone, but rather evolving into something bigger, something greater. And Reyna was ready for it.
I am fully aware that my explanation on the crystallizing of the Locust is a little strange, but I honestly had absolutely no idea how to explain it. I'm not exactly a scientist. But I do think that I got my explanation somewhat right, that while encased in crystal, the Locust evolved into something much more threatening than they were before, such as being able to convert humans into something similar to them. I'm not quite sure how the Snatchers or Carriers came into play, but I'm going to leave that up to The Coalition to explain.