Mother of Insects

Draft
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Bryce took off the necklace he's been wearing around his neck, opening the small pendant.

The phantom of a young man was projected from an old electronic projector at the belly of the pendant.

The pale man quietly stood on Bryce's palm, silently smiling at him.

"I wish you were still with us, Xavier, you always knew what to do-"

Bryce lowered his gaze, watching the figure of the man named Xavier, he muttered to himself.

"You promised that you'd take good care of Lin Xi."

Pity that Xavier couldn't keep his promise.

...

"Achoo-"

Lin Xi sneezed.

Maybe someone's thinking about him.

He thought, rubbing his nose.

The hatch of his cabin slowly moved. Inside the dark room, the life support device with the Star Butterfly's egg case emitted a faint blue light, the furniture and mundanes near the it were all stained with a hazy layer of unreal blue.

A little jellyfish turned and bobbed, gently and slowly inside the not-too-fancy life support device. Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe it really sensed something. After Lin Xi walked in through the door, the egg case also changed direction accordingly.

The tentacle, which was only slowly swinging mindlessly in the viscous culture fluid, slowly stuck to the transparent glass inner wall of the device. From his perspective, it looked like it was approaching Lin Xi's direction.

This scene looked somewhat weird, but Lin Xi was used to it now.

He pulled down the power switch, the lights came quickly, filling the room with soft white illumination.

Then, Lin Xi threw everything off his person to the ground, and fell straight towards the bed. Helios' hard beds made his bones ache, making Lin Xi miss the thick and comfortable Simmons in his teacher's dormitory back on Earth like never before.

"I'm so tired..."

He buried his face on the bed sheets and murmured wearily.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with the water gall orchid that Lin Xi's been carefully cultivating.

But the plants he's taking care of still cost him a lot of work.

Lin Xi had already used every method he could think of, but the pest plague still showed no signs of dying down.

He really was exhausted, and if this continued, he might develop the cheek to go to those exploration team boys, and ask for some insecticides specially used for the environment mapping outside the spaceship...

"Grrrrr-"

Just when Lin Xi was troubling about work with a terrible headache, a wet and sticky voice came to his ear... It was as if something was belatedly responding to his previous words.

Lin Xi turned his head, putting his face on his arms, and staring at the direction where the voice came.

This position was just enough for him to see the egg case on the bedside table in a comfortably and relaxedly.

The egg case had changed considerably.

From when it was first sent to Lin Xi, the thin transparent tentacles dragging under it had a diameter of nearly two millimeters, it's color had changed from completely transparent to a translucent white.

And the case itself had also grown in size, the egg case covering the rows of slender eggs had also begun to become thinner and more transparent, allowing observers to easily see the inside of the eggs.

At the area closest to Lin Xi, there's an egg better developed than others-although the contrast wasn't too obvious, but if you look closely, you'll find that the egg is larger, and there's a little bug curled up tightly inside. The outlines were also clearer.

Lin Xi could even see two small red dots affixed to the inside of the eggs, even in the absence of light, they still shine in a subtle red hint that was hard to miss.

That should be the Star Butterfly's eyes.

Lin Xi guessed, intrigued.

He gave the best-developed egg a nickname "number one".

Whenever he was extremely bored, he'd occasionally call it like this, and then talk to it. Well, more talking to himself really, never expecting a reply of any sort.

Seeing a small life develop from chaos to this stage was actually a rare and interesting thing in an extremely monotonous spaceship life. Lin Xi scored through the ship's database for it, wanting to find more information about Star Butterflies. It's a pity that this sacred being holy to the Sunu people was too mysterious in the past, even the information on adults were pitifully scarce, let alone their eggs.

That's to say, Shizuo Ando, ​​who has a mixed-race Sun wife, could recognize that this was the Star Butterfly's egg case...

Now, Lin Xi could somewhat understand Ando's persistence and enthusiasm for the little thing.

"...after all, you're really interesting. Right, number one?"

Lin Xi muttered.

"How long will it take for you to hatch?"

He stretched out his fingers, causally tapping the transparent shell of the life support device lightly.

According to Ando's request, this was to give the eggs slight external stimulus, to help them develop- Lin Xi thought with pleasure.

The tentacles growing out of the egg case were stimulated, they swarmed to the other side of the glass at a speed visible to the naked eye.

And the two red spots on "number one" that Lin Xi thought were eyes also trembled slowly.

For a moment, those two red lights flickered at a level that humans couldn't follow.

Seeing the tentacles gradually approach his finger, Lin Xi raised his brows, playfully put his finger on the other side of the device and tapping.

The tentacles immediately began to slowly move towards the other side of the shell, but there were too many of those tentacles now, so when they are clustered together to change directions, it looked specially panicked and clumsy.

Lin Xi almost laughed out loud.

But after chuckling, he took a few more glances at the life support device.

The device seemed a little too small for the egg case, which had grown and fattened up so much by now.

Lin Xi was a little unsure if this was even the right volume, maybe he should really follow what Bryce said, and find Shizuo Ando?

But this time, Lin Xi never expected that finding Ando would be such a difficult task.

Shizuo Ando wasn't in the office, nor was he in the laboratory.

When Lin Xi visited his laboratory, he could only see two students and assistants busily working inside. Judging from what Lin Xi could observe, neither of the two students were prepared in the slightest to take care of the alien life in Shizuo Ando's laboratory, even if almost all of them were in a state of cryogenic dormancy.