genes like honey
by greensilver
---
You remember what the city looked like when it was in bloom, and you're a little nostalgic for those times. The new inhabitants brought their own furnishings and adornments, and those new trappings make the city look utterly ridiculous; primitives have overtaken the jewel of an entire galaxy, and it shows. If it were in your power to pluck that jewel from them, you would, but in their own limited way they've unlocked just enough of the city's power to protect themselves. Those defenses held against you when the city was new, and they hold against you now, and that infuriates the entire hive more than you can adequately express. The new inhabitants are infuriating in other ways, as well; for instance, they don't taste nearly as good as the old inhabitants did. Even so, they taste better than most of the galaxy's food stock, which seems inutterably cruel. While you were sleeping, all the flavor seeped out of the gene pool, and now you're left grasping for stale crumbs.
Even those crumbs aren't enough to sustain the awakening generation, not nearly enough. You can feel the drought rolling toward you from some distant place, like a fully armed armada you never thought would arrive, and you can already feel the burn of weapons fire. Your hunger builds and builds, even now, in times of plenty: because there isn't enough - no matter where you go, there will never be enough - and some panicking part of your physiology is trying to fatten you up before the lean times arrive.
All things considered, the primitives could at least have the decency to taste good.
But then, sometimes, they do.
On increasingly rare occasions, you get a fleeting taste of the old flavor - a throwback, more closely related to the city-dwellers of old than to the current crop. The gene pool hasn't gone completely sour, after all, but those bursts of sweetness are difficult to come by. Sometimes you can sense them nearby - a very few resonate strongly enough for you to pick them out of the herd. John Sheppard is one such. The doctor who manufactured the genetic weapon is another. One of the primitives currently in your care has a faint buzz to him - not strong enough to be a complete throwback, but still promising something sweet.
But you aren't allowed to touch him, and that infuriates you all the more.
You've been between worlds for a long time now, and the food supply is being carefully conserved, so you hunger, hunger, and he would be so sweet, so sweet that your entire being aches to reach out and drink him in, and that ache resonates across the entire hive and comes back to you a hundredfold, until your hunger and your fury are brighter than a supernova. When you reach his planet, oh, yes, when you get to that new feeding ground, you're going to feast on every throwback you can claim for your own, and then you'll eat the crumbs, just to make him suffer for making you suffer, and when it's all done, then, then you'll take him, and it'll be slow, and his sweetness will sustain you for a long, long while.
You don't care what happens to the primitive he's with. That one doesn't buzz at all; someone else can feed on him. Even if the famine does come, you aren't going to settle for crumbs anymore, no, not you. When your entire hive has gorged itself on all the worlds this new feeding ground has to offer, you'll go back to the city, and you'll see just what it is that makes John Sheppard's genes beckon so urgently. In fact, you'll overcome every primitive inside that city, and then you'll rule there: not the hive, not the Queen, but you, and you'll cultivate throwbacks like primitives cultivate their cattle. While every hive in existence fights over the crumbs, you'll feast on throwbacks alone, and nothing stale and sour will ever cloud your palate again.
But for now, you only hunger, hunger, and the old flavor is so close at hand, and the new worlds are so far away....
So maybe you'll pay your captives a visit, after all, and sample that sweetness before someone else does.
After all, there will be a rich feast where you're going; you won't need him there, and you're hungry now.
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Author's Note: Written for the "Seven Deadly Sins" challenge at sga_flashfic.
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