Prey

A twig snaps on the ground.

In a tree, a girl of sixteen stirs from an uneasy slumber.

Her breath mists the air and her cheeks are numb. The chill in her limbs is bone-deep, but she cradles the rifle in her lap tight, and vigilant blue eyes sweep the woods around her. Below her.

Dark trunks and barren shrubs. White snow. Still. All still. But the sound… just a woodland critter? Another startled prey creature like herself?

Prey. Is that still what she is? After how many does that change?

Movement. Too big and too slow to belong to these woods. Too graceless in its movements, even as the armored shape attempts to sneak through the shrubs. The alien grips tight his weapon of murder. A crude, bullet-spitting thing that her hands would struggle to keep hold of as it bucked. She knows because Four had one. She’d used it to kill Five. It had overheated then, and left her hand with a burn that still stings despite the cold.

She lifts her hunting rifle slowly. Quietly. Well-loved wood and solid metal. A simple machine. No compacting frame. No disposable heat sinks. She disabled the holographic sights two days ago. They were draining the power cell. And she doesn’t need the glow giving her away. The old-fashioned way works just fine with the right tool.

A notch and a post, perfectly aligned over the batarian’s head. The shot echoes loud through the woods, and leaves her ears ringing. The kick stings her shoulder, but she stays steady in her perch. A flock of birds takes off from a nearby tree, and the snow is painted red as the invader crumples. Eleven.

The rifle is hot in her hands, and she’s quick to pull the bolt on the heat sink vent, hot air sending a plume of steam into the winter chill with an angry hiss. The only way to punch through their shields had been to dial the power of the kinetic coils as far as they would go. She’d learned that lesson the hard way.

One shot. That’s all she gets. One miss, and she’s dead.

Or one alien not stupid enough to go into the woods on his own.

A cry of alarm is the only warning she gets before the tree that is her perch erupts into splinters and shards of bark, a deafening burst of gunfire roaring in response to her solitary shot. Snow cushions her fall less than she’d hoped as she hits the ground, air knocked from her lungs and vision blurred. There’s a sharp pain in her arm, but more alarmingly, her rifle is no longer in her hands.

She tries to scramble to her feet, but unsteady legs fail her. She collapses back down, world spinning around her.

An armed figure approaches. He’s blurry, but she knows it’s one of them. She pulls a hunting knife. A menacing thing too big for her hand. She’s given no chance to lunge before it’s kicked aside. Another booted kick hits her chest, drawing a pained cry from her lips despite her best effort. The stranger pins her to the snowy ground with a knee pressing heavy against bruised ribs.

Vitriolic shouts in a language she doesn’t understand. A cruel, needle-toothed smile and too-close rancid breath as a gloved hand wraps tight around her throat. Her frantic clawing, flailing, prying is futile, so her hand goes searching blindly through the snow.

She needs her knife. Her gun.

She needs air.

Something. Anything.

As reality dims and desperation starts to fizzle alongside thought, her fingers close around something solid. Something sharp.

The face above her changes. Scrunches up. She’s not sure what it means. She’s not sure what anything means anymore. The darkness is too thick, and her thoughts too slippery.

Then the pressure leaves her throat, and cold winter air rushes into her burning lungs.

Reality returns, if not clarity. The darkness recedes, only the wetness in her eyes blurs her vision now, quickly blinked away.

Her face, her chest, they’re warm. Wet.

The figure above her is sitting up now, hand clutching at the shard of wood that’s lodged in his throat. Blood gushes from the wound, danger red and startlingly warm. His clumsy grip does nothing to stem the flow, and his void-black eyes are turning unfocused. Twelve. Soon.

She scrambles away. Up. Free. Heaving breaths. Screaming pain. Hands wipe at her face, at the wetness that’s not tears, and gloves come away soaked in crimson.

She watches him topple before her eyes scan her surroundings. Jerky. Frantic.

She finds the rifle. The knife. She searches him. The invader.

Nutrient paste. Keep.

Credits. Toss.

Flask. Sniff. Toss.

A bracelet. Silly, colorful charms. Ida’s. Her still-aching throat turns thick, hand shaking as she pockets it.

Four days since they took her. Two days since the ship left. Bile crawling up her bruised throat and remembered screams burrowing into her ears.

She crumples, folds up, arms pulled in close in a futile attempt to stave off the nauseating anguish that rolls through her body in relentless waves, ripping hoarse, ragged wails from her deep in her lungs.

How long can she keep doing this? Alone? She’s tired. She’s cold. She’s hurting. She failed.

She doesn’t hear the footsteps until they’re next to her. Exhaustion fills her as she carefully unsheathes her knife out of view, still crumpled over, and as she lifts her gaze and sees the muzzle aimed at her head, and four merciless eyes locked on hers, she realizes this is it.

Her grip on the knife tightens. Death, not capture.

The batarian’s still-cold clip leaves his rifle with a thunk and an error-beep, and he barely has time to look at it with the same confusion that fills the girl before a precise burst of gunfire pops his shields and tears through his skull.

He drops dead, and the woods come alive.

Armored figures emerge from the brush, moving with synchronized precision. Hand-signals and sporadic bursts of efficient comms coordinate the group of a dozen as they move around her. Rifles turn outward in overlapping fields of fire.

Her grip on the knife tightens as one of the figures approaches, and she stumbles back, still on the ground. It stops to peel off its helmet with a hiss.

Short black hair and two concerned brown eyes. An extended hand.

“Hey. Hey. You’re okay.”