"Silent. Invisible. Invincible. He's in town with a few days to kill."
Amidst a terrible heatwave on Nova Hermes there is a war going on that no one can win but one. The body count is rising and public fear is at a chaotic high. While the citizens o...
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For nearly half an hour Tamara sat in her apartment in utter silence recalling the image of those green eyes that burned into the fabric of her mind.
What the hell was that?! Was it one of the vigilante terrorists, a term news had been throwing out lately? Again, the image of what she had seen flashed in her unwilling mind, the large warbling invisible shape leading to those glowing eyes--it didn't feel human. Even though she was separated by nearly a hundred feet and the thick diamond plated plexi glass window of her booth she could feel the unnatural aggression of the figure clearly. With just a flash of its evil upturned eyes whether it be in warning or intimidation Tamara understood all that she needed to know and responded.
She ran.
Within seconds, she shakily grabbed her discarded garments and bag, running out of the booth. She wasn't sure if the Red Lamp Tower was the next target or what but she had no intentions of finding out. Sitting now on her bed near the one large window her tiny apartment offered, Tamara tightened her arms around her drawn up legs and made herself smaller as she stared out onto the never-ending night of Nova Hermes. Packer had cursed at her as she ran past him, still dressing and shoving an arm through her hoodie after her harried escape naked from her booth. He shouted down the alley after her that there was no way in hell, she would see even one credit for today's work. He could keep his damn credits. There was something out there staring at her and every cell in her body screamed for her to run.
There would have been no point trying to share her fears with any of the bouncers or Packer. She didn't even need to turn back to look to confirm that whoever--or whatever--was invisible again, and that there would be no pair of menacing green eyes staring back for anyone she was able to drag back to her booth to show what she saw. With such a wild story, she would be labeled crazy or worse, reported to the Red Blade for suspicious activity and most likely tortured and questioned by them until she begged for death. No, her only option was to run.
Still shaky, Tamara let go of her encircling grip around her legs and slowly unfolded herself to stand. In the small space between the bed and the window, she nervously stared out the window her eyes jumping from every building ledge and passing airspeeder. Although she didn't spot the wavy heat spot anywhere it offered little comfort. Whatever it was could be invisible whenever it wanted, making all the news reports of impossible feats of carnage understandable.
Guilt suddenly thrummed through her chest as she thought of the girls at the Red Lamp Tower. Maybe she should have warned them, somehow found a way to call in an anonymous tip. But how? How could she tell anyone what she saw and truly felt in her gut, that she was quite certain whatever she saw was inhuman? The galaxy Nova Hermes was located in, Hinter Frontier 3, was as backwater as galaxies got. It was probably the only completley human inhabited planet in space. Sure everyone knew there were other creatures in other galaxies, sentient society building creatures that could either resemble humanoid features and some that weren't human at all in looks or speech, but none of that mattered for the small cluster of sad planets in the Hinter Frontier 3 galaxy, because they simply didn't have any natural species. Pocked with almost unnavigable pockets of blackholes and asteroid debris, Hinter Frontier 3 was an undesirable portion of space, it was only ever colonized by humans due to diamond-nite mining decades ago. But there was a creature here now though, she thought. She was sure of it. A creature that was killing, hunting even. A creature Nova Hermes, wasn't at all prepared to handle.
Feeling sick with guilt she grabbed her data-pad off the edge of her bed, a clear diamond-nite rectangle with a metal alloy frame. Activating it, she typed onto the red holographic keyboard that appeared beneath her fingers and pulled up the news feeds for Nova Hermes. Scouring the blogs, the official and unofficial news feeds, and social media feeds she confirmed what she had concluded before: there were no reports of the vigilante terrorist attacking regular civilian women or any children. None of the girls at the Red Lamp Tower were enforcers in any of the factions, not like the women that were reported dead in the list of reported deaths. Tamara almost let herself relax and breathe easier from the sudden attack of guilt, until her search led her to pictures someone posted in a private chatroom of the latest mass murder of one of the factions. Cold terror iced over her veins and her heart rate picked up like the rapid beats of a war drum. Naked, mutilated Bodies of men were strung up from the rafters. Some had no skin, one had no head and spine, while some were perfectly intact. Hastily, Tamara swiped the screen to shut it off. Standing up, she walked to her small kitchenette area near her bathroom and pressed her food storage unit for a glass of water. Her hands trembled as she reached for the now filled glass. My God, this was why everyone was fleeing!
She had to get out of here. Turning to sit back down on the edge of her bed, since her apartment wasn't big enough for a sofa, she drank the rest of the water and stared bleakly out the window. The fact was, no matter how much evidence and reports came out supporting her instincts to flee there was no option to do so until she could pay the minimum three thousand credits for passage. But how could she go back to work after what happened tonight? Whatever that thing was it had toyed with her, hacking into their system, and forced her to undress for it. No, she couldn't go back to work, not right now, not until things calmed down a little.
Staring out the window, she watched a few airspeeders glide by. At this time there was normally thousands of airspeeders out right now, all coming and going on the busy airlane situated in front of her window; but not now. Counting a few, Tamara stood up and looked down at the lanes below her floor which was on the hundred and second, she estimated there were less than a hundred. Pretty soon whatever it was, wasn't going to have much left to kill.
#
Crouched on the corner of the building, diagonally from the female human's building, he watched her for some time. Sitting there, she quietly stared out the window before eventually moving silently through her small living unit. Switching the readouts in his helmet, he watched her heart slowly begin to calm as she let the feeling of safety relax her. How could hiding in a small, unprotected square living domicile be protection?
She was unlike anything he came here to hunt. A standard human female with no combat training or skills of survival. He was resting from his hunt when he noticed her. Alone and separated from the other women, he watched in boredom at the female's stiff lackluster movements. For nights he had watched her, his eyes tracking hers as she stared out from her box blankly, unseeingly into the distance as she danced in the illuminated box. He watched her as she went home each night, dressed in heavy clothing hiding herself from the people around her, willingly not interacting with any of her kind unless forced. To be certain, he checked his readouts and confirmed she was no synthetic despite her face never changing from the same blank expression. She was unlike any human he had seen. It irritated him how much this odd human intrigued him.
Slowly, a red and black vehicle hovered between him and the human's place of residence, breaking his concentration from the female. Six spotlights, three on each side, moved up and down the buildings as it searched for him. Allowing the light to shine over his cloaked form, the readouts in his helmet indicated the light contained evincing-ions that exposed cloaking camouflage.
The pathetic human light did nothing to his superior technology. Passing over him without pause the vehicle slowly moved past, continuing their search.
After a week of making his presence known, his target finally recognized his adversary and was taking nessacary precautions. This hunt was just beginning.
