Chapter 14 - The last of serenity's light.
The Hunter. 1
Lightning clawed across the heavens, tearing jagged scars through the clouds. Each bolt lit the skies in brilliant white, silhouetting the towering skyline of Bay City against the storm. Thunder followed--deep, bone-shaking--and the windows of the high-rise trembled as if in awe. Rain battered the glass with furious rhythm, a relentless drumbeat that blurred the lights beyond into rivers of neon and shadow.
He stood behind the glass, motionless. Watching.
From this high up--close to a mile above the streets--the world looked smaller, like a toy city drowning in stormwater and noise. The horizon stretched farther than it should have, nearly twelve miles out instead of the usual eight, thanks to the altitude. At ground level, the skyline closed in around you like a cage. But from here? Here, the storm opened everything up. Every pulse of lightning revealed a different slice of the city: glowing towers, flickering signs, the tiny movement of hovercars darting between buildings like sparks in a dying circuit.
Bay City was a monster--steel, concrete, glass, and sin all woven together into one vast tapestry of misery. Even now, in the dead of night, it throbbed with life. Skyscrapers pulsed with interior light. Rainwater raced down neon-lit walls in rivers. Nightclubs blasted silent music behind soundproofed façades. Prostitutes and dealers haunted street corners under the protection of men with guns and insignia that belonged to no one.
From up here, it looked beautiful. Almost like art. But it was the kind of beauty that smelled of sweat and rot when you got too close.
And he had been close. Closer than most.
He knew this city--not just the skyline, but the stories between the cracks. He knew the people who survived here, and the predators who fed on them. He knew where the bodies were buried and where they were left to rot in plain sight. The crime lords, the black market syndicates, the corporate enforcers in their polished suits, the women being bought and sold with almost casual ease--he knew them all. And they didn't know him. That was the trick. That was the point.
But he wasn't here for them.
Bay City wasn't home. His home had been lost a long time ago. This place was just convenient. Big enough to get lost in. Dirty enough that no one asked questions. Dangerous enough that no one paid attention. The authorities had their hands full, chasing ghosts they could see--gangs, smugglers, cartel warlords. They'd never even think to look for the darker shadow hiding right behind them.
He turned his gaze upward.
Above the rain, above the clouds, the twin moons of Heredon were barely visible. Castor and Pollux--locked together in their endless dance, circling the planet in perfect synchronicity. Two pale coins hanging in the sky, untouched by storm or sorrow. Their glow pushed faintly through the cloud cover, not strong enough to light the city, but strong enough to be seen by anyone who knew to look.
The locals revered them. Scientists studied them. Artists painted them. Poets wrote about the way their gravity pulled together to summon the monsoon--this storm, this torrent of water crashing down like judgment twice a year. A natural phenomenon, they called it. Rain and renewal. Cleansing, if you were the spiritual type.
But to him, the storm wasn't symbolic. It was just a fact of life. Wind and water. Noise and electricity. Beautiful, maybe, in the way a blade was beautiful--if you were the kind of person who could admire the clean efficiency of violence.
He didn't see the moons as gods or watchers or signs of fate. They were just part of the backdrop. Like the towers. Like the rain. Like the distant flashes of blue and red from a police cruiser too far away to matter.
What
did
matter was the man in the glass.
He let his eyes change their focus to study his own reflection now, faint in the window's surface. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Built like a soldier, but one lwho had never held any official rank or uniform. His face was hard and sharp, eyes cold and blue, the stubble on his head growing in from a recent shave. His skin, pale beneath the scars, looked almost marble in the reflected lightning.
The scars were everywhere--etched across his arms, his chest, his scalp, even one that ran from the base of his jaw to just below his left ear. None of them were accidental. None of them meaningless. These weren't the medals of a battlefield hero. They weren't the proud wounds of some front-line grunt in a glorious war. These were the quiet, brutal reminders of a different kind of violence--intimate, targeted, and deliberate.
He didn't fight in battles. He ended people.
And they never saw him coming.
Each scar told a story, but not one he ever shared. They were private memories. Reminders of names, faces, final breaths. Some had begged. Some had fought. A few had smiled. Most had died afraid. He remembered them all--not because he cared, but because forgetting would be disrespectful. He wasn't a butcher. He wasn't a monster.
He was just... very good at what he did. It was his purpose.
And he didn't pretend otherwise.
He didn't take pleasure in killing, but he didn't feel guilt either. The universe was full of death. The only difference was that his was precise. Clean. Purposeful. He didn't kill for fun, or fame, or ideology. He killed because someone needed to die, and because someone else had given him the reason he needed to kill them. That was the job. That was the code.
And if he was honest, he liked the quiet that came with it.
Another flash of lightning lit the entertainment district. The clubs. The bars. The dens of noise and flesh and vice. Every one of them filled with people pretending the world wasn't falling apart. Drugs. Sex. Credits. Deals made in the dark. Power brokered between predators, prey, and those too numb to tell the difference.
It all meant nothing to him. He didn't drink. Didn't gamble. Didn't indulge. He stayed clean, focused, in control. Always. That was why he was still alive.
That was why they still called on him.
A soft chime drew his eyes downward. The holopad in his hand blinked to life, bathing his fingers in cold blue light. A new assignment. A name. A face.
He tapped the image.
A girl appeared.
Young. Blonde. Mid-twenties, maybe. Bright blue eyes. The kind of beauty that turned heads without trying. There was a kindness to her expression, an openness that made him pause--but only for a second.
Her name was Emma.
She was a medic. Civilian sector. She worked in a free clinich on Loki's Landing. No military ties, no known criminal record. Nothing obvious that would mark her as a threat.
Which only made her more interesting.
People like her didn't land in his hands by accident.
His clients didn't deal in coincidence, and his work never involved random names pulled from a hat. If she was on his screen, then someone out there had decided--quietly, deliberately--that she mattered. Maybe she'd overheard the wrong conversation. Maybe she'd touched something that wasn't meant to be touched. Maybe she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But it wasn't his job to ask why.
The galaxy didn't care how kind you were. It didn't care how many lives you saved or how clean your record was. It cared about leverage. And if her file had made it to him, it meant someone, somewhere, believed she was important enough to warrant attention.
She wasn't a nobody. That was all he needed to know.
He stared at her image a little longer than usual. Something about those eyes--clear, steady, alive--made his fingers hesitate. Not out of conscience. Just curiosity. He wondered what she'd think if she knew. If she had any idea what was coming.
He doubted it. They never did.
He let the holopad flicker off and exhaled slowly through his nose.
Time was a factor here, but he wouldn't rush, never rushed. There was a difference between haste and speed. It would be quiet, if that was possible, but loud if necessary. Either way, his mission would be completed. And if a message needed to be sent in order for that to happen, so be it.
He could work with that.
The storm roared outside, ripping another burst of thunder across the city. It echoed down the corridors of steel and glass like the war drums of an invisible god.
Bay City kept pulsing, kept breathing. Its sins steamed up from the streets like vapor from a sewer grate. The predators fed. The prey endured. The machines hummed. The system rolled on.
