The Hunger...
Blood explodes all around me, fellow creatures reduced to smoking gore as the autocannons rip into our ranks. Hundreds of tiny lights wink out inside the Hive Mind as their nerve clusters cease to exist. Perhaps once I would have felt fear, would have dived for cover. But all I knew was the pounding force driving me, the synapse creatures behind me projecting the one, master-instinct.
Feed.
I can sense them, olfactory clusters alerting me of the chemicals they are releasing. Genetic, hard-coded knowledge tells me these signals mean fear, mean that I should press the attack and claim their precious biomass. I push on, all six limbs working furiously, determined to consume. We are closer now, munitions and lasers flying over us as we dart forward, flying over the barricade. My retinas transmit their facial expressions to the Hive Mind, receiving the go ahead in return, their fear driving us on like fresh meat.
I lift my talons, still airborne as my brood plung into the prey's ranks. The razor sharp, chitinous edges scythe downwards, cleaving the glorious unprotected meat. The strange scarlet liquid washes over me, staining my black carapace a deep red.
Delicious.
The Hive Mind tells me this is a good thing, that the lasers and bullets will bother us no more. I dart away, following my brood down into the rocky crag where the rest of the prey is hiding. Clambering up the rockface, I choose an angle and pounce, perfectly synchronized with the rest of my broo-
The pounding force vanishes. I'm naked and alone. Left cold without the Hive Mind to guide me.
Basic survival instincts kick in. Even millenia of genetic selection and breeding couldn't erase the basic needs of an animal. Red beams pierce my carapace, burning the delicate organs underneath. My senses detect all sorts of chemicals, but without the guidance of the Hive Mind I cannot understand them. I'm confused and hurt.
Flight or flight kicks in. I run away, the aliens hounding me, and for the first time, I feel an emotion almost forgotten in the recesses of my gene-pool.
Fear.
Light and heat flash next to me. My left leg is gone, the end of my left claw gone. The talon is bent at the wrong angle. I can't move. Something dark and purple runs from my slashed flank. I can hear them, smell them, but my retina clusters have been torn apart. Pain, a sensation long suppressed by the synapse creatures and adrenal glands, washes over my barely sufficient nerve clusters. Respiration systems seem to have stopped working. My body is fast running out of oxygen. The battle has moved on, away from my dying, battered body.
Hundreds of others like me lie undisturbed on the ground. There are less and less alive every second.
I feel myself slipping away. My nerve clusters are incapable of complicated thinking or emotions, but I feel... something.
As I join the trillions other Tyranid souls stored somewhere, not in the Warp, not in the universe, I recognize what it is like a long lost friend.
A hunger.
