Slugs and Bugs: Invasion

Slugs and Bugs: Invasion (S&B:I) is one of the massive visual novels written by American author, Brandon Somerville. In the first series of fourteen novels, S&B:I is the first released novel and the eighth novel of the timeline. It takes place, as all the novels do, in the fictional universe known as the Anaxverse. It was originally published on the 18th of October 2016. It was given a quality of life update, including character logs, on the 31st of October 2017.

Title and Publication

Mr. Somerville originally published S&B:I as an interactive novel with adult elements. In the future, he will be writing all the novels as ebooks. In the original versions, they are written in a second-person perspective as the author felt it worked best in a "choose your own adventure" setting. However, in the ebook form, the novels will be written in the third person allowing for far more insight and exposition. This tale is the most popularly viewed title of the initial novels, garnering much praise for its writing, horror setting, and unique eroticism. This tale helped make a name in the scene for Mr. Somerville.

Plot

The Anaxverse series of novels can be read in any order, even though they follow a certain chronology. But, because the novels overlap and the stories are all interconnected in meaningful ways, it does not matter the order they are read.

Plot Summary

Slugs and Bugs: Invasion is told from the view of Justine Day. In the novel, Justine is an employee working for Erebus Financial Services, a branch in the Erebus Building. She is a friendly, midwest girl who has mild fantasies about enslavement. She is well liked by the other employees. In particular, she has good friends among Anne Griffin, Jennifer Callisto, and Katelyn Addams. However, a few people seem to have issue with her, one being her boss Marlena Kress.

As Justine travels to work, she hears reports about the sky turning green and communications around the world going down. It has yet to happen in New York, but she discusses the events with her other employees. At one point, she contacts her mother, only to have the line give out. Shortly later, the sky turns green. Deciding it would be best to leave, Justine goes to exit the building. As she leaves, she sees pods fall from the sky and hit the street. The impact blacks Justine out.

Justine awakens to see an invasion pod attached to a smashed building. Slime oozes out, and slugs start sliding down the surface. She sees them go after people on the street, and she runs back inside the building. She yells to Kate to use the keys to lock the doors, noting that spider like creatures are charging. Justine gets entranced by one of them, but Kate slaps her out of her reverie and locks the door. They split up, Justine deciding to find a way out of the city through maintenance tunnels, and Kate trying to hide and wait it out. As Justine makes her way through the sewers, she sees several other employees as green skinned monstrosities, emerging from pupae. They chase her back up the stairs, and she deadbolts the lock behind her.

Justine makes her way back through the lower floors, noting several employees are covered in purple particles. They state Kate, who had been slugged, was spraying them with a purple pod. Running from them and heading upstairs, Justine encounters more of the employees who have been slugged. On the climb, Justine faces a minder. She is mind linked by it, and her subconscious overwhelms with the thought of giving in. She feels it giving direction. Her attention is only broken by another employee screaming as the employee is slugged. As she breaks away and moves, she discovers that a jellylike substance on the floor in some rooms are the leftover remains of her male colleagues. As she nears the exit of the lower levels, she comes face to face with Kate and her purple pod. The two confront, and Justine realizes the only way past is to kill her friend. She hits her with a brick, but as she moves past, she notices Kate’s eyes open again and she begins to heal. Justine continues past, locking the door behind her.

As Justine moves to the middle hallways, she finds that much of the area is covered in webs. She finds Anne, who was recently poisoned by a spider. Anne starts to mutate, hypnotizing Justine. But the goodness in Anne breaks the trance, and tells Justine to run. Justine does so, finding a fireman's axe along the way. She continues through the halls, hacking away at the spiders. She later finds a mutated version of Anne, and kills her too. Along the way, she discovers a new type of bug, the brain-bug. This one seems to eat the intelligence out of its target. Killing the creature, she finds and kills another Spider mutant, getting her axe stuck in the process. She has to proceed without the axe. She makes her way to the top floors.

As she reaches her office, Justine faces her minder again. She nearly gives in, before thinking over all of her friends she had to kill to get here. Something latent in her awakens, and Justine finds a way to freeze time. She escapes from the minder, and finds several more of the employees either giving themselves up to minders or having mutated into a red skinned minded. Minder tentacles are everywhere, seeking out hiding targets. Luckily, Justine finds Jen first, who appears unharmed. Sticking together, the two go to the top floor. They come face to face with the Over-Master, who tells Justine that they have wiped out the majority of Earth’s population. Justine tells Jen to run to the roof, and goes to fight the Over-Master. The Over-Master grabs Justine, and starts pumping dark energy into her, corrupting her. Justine takes this energy, and sends it back as a psychic storm. She rises up, leaving the Over-Master and her minder. At the top, she and Jen confront a minded Marlena. As Marlena tells her about the betrayals she performed to gain favor with the aliens, Justine’s rage boils out. Her psychic energy spikes, and she obliterates Marlena, taking chunks of the building out with her. The roof collapses, as Justine grabs Jen and starts flying through the air. They land on the ground, Justine drained. They find a car, and are able to drive away from the Erebus Building.