”Take the survivor,” I said, pointing down at the squad leader writhing at my feet.
The hunter nearest to Leila stared at the dead men covering the clearing, then shifted his eyes to the groaning squad leader.
“Alive?” ”Yes.” I kicked the dropped weapon into the bush.
“To the interrogation room.” Two hunters stepped forward, grabbed the man by his arms, and dragged him off through the snow.
I wiped my hands on my trousers, checking my arms for blood that wasn’t mine.
There were no deep cuts.
Just bruised knuckles and torn fabric at the shoulder.
Standard field cleanup.
”I need a shower,” I muttered.
Collins walked out from the tree line.
He stopped at the edge of the clearing, looking at the bodies scattered across the snow, then turned his head to scan my face.
His gaze went back to the dead men, lingering on the crushed windpipes and broken necks, before swinging back to me again.
”What?” I asked.
”Nothing.” Collins exhaled a thin stream of vapor into the freeze.
”Good.” I walked past him toward the main barracks.
♡´･ᴗ･`♡ Fifteen minutes later, I stood outside the steel door of the lower holding cell.
Collins waited in the corridor, his back against the concrete wall, his arms folded.
”I’m going in alone,” I said.
Collins shifted his weight, his jaw tightening, but he didn’t raise an objection.
He just gave a curt nod and stayed put.
I opened the door and stepped inside.
The room held nothing but a drain in the floor and a single bulb swinging faintly from a hook, throwing the squad leader’s shadow long and warped against the wall behind him.
He was strapped to a metal chair, his jaw hanging slack at an angle no face should hold, a thin rope of drool and blood swinging from his chin with every shallow breath.
I crossed the room without hurrying.
There was no reason to hurry.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
I placed my palm under his jaw and shoved upward.
The bone found its socket with a wet, grinding pop that echoed off the concrete louder than it should have.
He screamed — a raw, animal sound that bounced twice off the walls before it died.
His whole body convulsed against the straps, and for a moment the chair itself groaned under the strain.
I waited until his breathing settled into something closer to human before I spoke.
“Where are you based?” He stared at me through eyes gone bloodshot and wet, his jaw trembling from the reset, but his teeth stayed locked.
Fear was doing exactly half its job.
It hadn’t finished yet.
”Who issued the order?” I asked.
He spat blood onto the floor and looked away, staring at the far corner of the wall.
”How many units were deployed?” I asked.
He remained silent, his breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches.
I drew a dagger from my belt slowly enough that he had time to see it coming — time to understand, with total clarity, exactly what was about to happen and exactly why he couldn’t stop it.
Then I drove it through the center of his palm and into the arm of the chair beneath, pinning his hand flat like something mounted for display.
The sound he made wasn’t a scream this time.
It was lower, worse — the sound of a man discovering a new floor beneath the one he thought was the bottom.
His boots scraped uselessly against the concrete, searching for purchase that didn’t exist.
”Where are you based?” I asked again.
”Go to hell,” he choked out, sweat pouring down his face.
“You won’t kill me.
You need the information.” ”You’re right.
I won’t kill you,” I said.
“But I’ll make you wish I did.” I pulled the blade free — unhurried, and closed my hand around his bleeding wrist.
One twist, and the joint gave with a wet crunch that made even the guard posted outside shift his weight against the door.
“Stop — stop, please—” “Are you sure?
You don’t sound like a man ready to talk.
I have no patience left for negotiating.” I set the tip of the blade against his thigh, close enough that he could feel the cold of it through the fabric.
“I have all day.
You don’t.” “They call you the Apex Hunter for a reason,” he sobbed, his head dropping forward as whatever had been holding him together finally gave out all at once.
“Wait — wait, don’t, I’ll talk—” ”Then talk.” ”It wasn’t a hit!” he gasped, staring at the steel blade hovering over his leg.
“We weren’t sent to observe a failure!
We were sent to confirm a success!” I kept the knife still.
“Explain.” ”The Class-4 mutation,” he whispered, his chest heaving.
“They wanted to know if it was viable for repeat use.
They wanted to see if you could survive another combat test.” ”Who is ‘they’?” Something behind his eyes simply switched off.
The panic didn’t fade — it was cut, mid-breath, like someone had reached inside him and pulled a plug.
His mouth closed.
His breathing leveled into something too even to belong to a man who’d just had his wrist broken.
He looked at me without seeing me, the way a corpse looks at a ceiling.
I’d seen this exactly twice before.
Both times it meant the same thing: he’d been built for this moment, conditioned to have exactly one door that opened under pressure and one that slammed shut after.
I’d already walked through the first.
The second wasn’t opening today, and beating on it further would just waste time I didn’t have.
I pulled the blade back, wiped the red edge on his shoulder patch, and walked out of the room.
Collins was waiting in the hallway.
He pulled a wet handkerchief from his pocket and held it out without a word.
I took it and wiped the blood off my fingers.
“We now have confirmation that Markus wasn’t a one-off accident.
He was a test run and there will be more.
Someone must be waiting on the results of today’s sweep.” CREATORS’ THOUGHTS Unhinged_Cookie Don’t bluff the Apex Hunter.