Unsurprisingly, the mass-fab was a godsend once we got it working. Excess or inedible food could be broken down into organic molecular bases and recombined at will. Unfortunately, having no blueprints to go off, and with AEGIS being both the only way to make new blueprints, and apparently having terrible taste, we hadn’t gotten further than turning hunks of mushroom into equally disgusting biological goop.

Still, having a variety of disgusting things to choose from was better than just one. And food didn’t rot while it was sitting in canisters as random molecules, which meant I didn’t have to worry about refrigeration. I hoped that we were one breakthrough away from me being able to eat steak and potatoes for every dinner, but in AEGIS’ words, programming blueprints which tasted good was about as easy as programming a blind robot to replicate a painting using colored sand.

In order to fuel the experiments, and get a break from eating mushroom for the third day in a row, I was out hunting again. North of the ruins this time, where the woods were deepest; the very opposite end of everything from the bunker.

I’d already had some small success. I hit a rabbit and slowed it down enough to be able to chase it down and finish it off. Felt like I’d chased the damn thing for an hour, and wasn’t sure it was totally worth it…until I remembered what other food options were waiting for me at home.

I was under a large tree in a clearing, and had my lightning knife out to cauterize the wound and keep it from bleeding all over me on the trip back. Suddenly, I felt a rush of wind and heard what sounded like a very loud, very low airplane. I looked around, confused. Nobody should be out here, wherever here was. If nothing else, they would never exile me to a place where there were other humans around. Or maybe this was one of the two Saga mentioned?

Still, looking out under the tree, I couldn’t see anything. I still heard it though, a soft roar, like a jet on the runway. But…the only place it could be is…straight up?

I dropped my bag under the tree and walked away. There, hovering just above the top of it was a human figure, floating, arms crossed menacingly, suspended by a jetpack with short spindly wings in all directions.

“Exhuman! Your injustice ends here!” she roared, her voice clear and strong even from this distance. The engines of her jetpack flared to life with wisps of blue plasma trailing behind the many wings and traced a spiraling gyre as she dove towards me. I tensed as she flew past me, but she was still well overhead, and gracefully turned to land facing me.

“You are a creature of sin and an abomination! God has tasked me with cleansing the earth of your kind!” she proclaimed, thrusting a finger at me violently. I noticed that she had a rather staggering amount of weapons hanging off each of her arms, guns strapped to each of her legs, and grenades or canisters strapped across her chest, riding the contours of the form-fitting drab-and-camo flight suit hugging her large chest.

I gave myself the credit of noticing the guns before the large chest.

Her face was inscrutable. She had a small frown, but was wearing a bulky headpiece which extended from above her nose to her forehead, and covering both ears. It had two thin red horizontal lines which glowed eerily, like a pair of horizontal eyes. Those lines, and the array of short stiff antennae protruding past the back of the visor and behind her ears must gather data of the surrounding area and feed it into her visor giving her increased awareness. It would explain how she was able to find me from the sky, even under a tree.

“Hey, I’m uh, peaceful,” I said, raising both of my empty hands in a placating gesture. “I don’t know about creature of sin and all that, but I’m an Exhuman who turned myself in and isn’t trying to hurt anyone.”

“In fact,” I said, feeling a little bold and trying to solve this diplomatically “I can’t even talk to you. It’s against the terms of my exile. So if you could just–“

“Do not think to seduce me with lies, vile serpent!” she hissed. Her pointing finger became a clenched fist, and one of the several weapons mounted on that arm began to hum. “Do you truly think you could corrupt God’s chosen champion?”

“I’m not trying to corrupt anyone. I just want to be left alone.”

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good to do nothing! You cannot be allowed to exist!” She sneered and flipped her head at me, making her short blonde mohawk flip from one side of her visor to the other.

“Lady, look–“

“I am no ‘lady’, I am Karu. Master bounty hunter and chosen of God. I take no greater joy in this life than blotting the darkness from the light of His world. Darkness such as you, Exhuman.”

She lowered her face towards me, her visor glowing menacingly as she spoke. She was lowering her chin to protect her throat. This was an instinctive stance people took before fighting, and something we had to practice hard to train out of us when going for a tackle…way back in football practice. As soon as I saw that, I knew she was ready to attack, and there’d be no talking out of this.

“I never meant to hurt anyone,” I pled.

“Yet you killed twenty-one. You are a monster, Athan Ashton, and you will be purified.”

I was too stunned by her words to properly move, but my body took over, playing by muscle memory. I saw her hurtle towards me, head down, a blade extended from her wrist in her trailing hand. She would cut with greater force that way, but her attack would be slower and wider, needing to cross her entire body first.

I spun and rolled toward her leading shoulder, getting inside her reach and spinning off of her. Her momentum carried her forward, where she would have fallen forward if not for the pack keeping her aloft. I turned and instinctively looked for a receiver, but there was nobody. My muscle memory wasn’t all helpful.

She was diving again, leading with blades on each of her arms now. I didn’t have time to dodge, and there wasn’t a safe part of her to pass. I stood still for a moment too long, and then turned to run, tripping over my own feet. The stumble saved me, as she roared over my prone form, and I could feel myself scream as the jetpack blasted my body into the ground and burned a line straight up my back. Even after she’d passed, I could still feel the burning.

I put the pain in the back of my mind and rolled to my feet. She’d gone under the tree and was slowly moving forward to avoid collision with it, and I realized this was my chance.

I didn’t want to fight anyone, including her, but I had been on an emotional edge for weeks now. I had been pushing down the guilt, the pain, the feelings of betrayal, the looks in my parents’ eyes, the still bodies of the XPCA soldiers. Now, in pain, attacked again for doing nothing to anyone, the unfairness of it all just poured out of me.

Fuck this girl. Fuck her, and her guns and swords and the jetpack she rode in on.

I roared and felt the lightning coursing through me. I couldn’t see her eyes, obviously, but her mouth was open in a still scream. I could see the terror on her lips, as electricity arced through me. Blades of lightning manifested around me, as though I had a dozen invisible arms holding them aloft, and in my real arms, what felt comfortably like a football, a lightning bulb, solid and yet weightless.

“You want to come here, pick a fight with me? Stoke your own ego, earn your place in heaven with your god? Make a bounty, kill an Exhuman? Well fuck you, Karu. I am fucking sick and tired of people like you treating me like shit just because one day I woke up different.”

“Hell-born demonic scum!” She hissed at me while slowly backing away, nervously checking the tree for clearance. It was almost laughable.

I lined up my throw. She was practically stationary, and the bulb in my hand felt like it wanted to jump forward of its own accord, ready to surge wherever I directed it with barely a thought. If it hit her, I very much doubted she would survive.

The second it left my fingertips, it jumped behind her and exploded, making an insane web of arcing bolts and beams of lightning, connecting the tree to the ground in a thousand places and searing them all black.

She watched the explosion and then turned to me, her mouth agape, her eyes presumably wide behind her visor.

“I said I didn’t want to fight you,” I said. “Now get the hell out of here and don’t come back.”

She swallowed hard and struggled to regain composure. “The darker it gets, the harder the light must fight to overcome it,” she said. It sounded like she wasn’t talking to me.

“Karu, I do not want to fight you. Stand down now.”

My words reminded me of Blackett telling me to stay down, and how much I had burned and chafed at them. I could see the same thing happening now with Karu, how my words were having the opposite effect as she rebelled against them.

“I will not stop. I will not stand down. I am virtuous! I am with God!” she bellowed.

“Fuck you Karu, don’t make me do this.”

“You do this yourself, serpent!” and so saying, kicked on her jets to full and rocketed straight at me, even though she was still under the broad branches of the tree. I could see the small arms of the jetpack making constant micro-adjustments as it desperately compensated against the winds in the enclosed area, buffeting her from every direction.

I stood waiting for her, a dozen blades of lightning floating in the air around me and one above each hand. It would be so easy, I thought, to close them like the door of a cage and watch her fly into it, slice and electrocute herself to pieces.

I sighed. So easy. Dad had always told me I was never one to take the easy way.

I rolled off to the side and let her out of the cage of branches. Her flightpath was erratic, and she seemed to be having problems with the wind as she shot past, and scraped the ground briefly, but then shot high into the sky like a freed bird.

I strolled back into the sunlight and found her waiting for me past the tree.

“In addition to being a liar, a servant of the devil, and a blight upon this world, you are also a fool. I would not have let an opportunity like yours pass.”

“Yeah, well, you aren’t me. That’s obvious enough. Now are you going to piss off or do I have to take back not-killing you?”

She opened her mouth to begin yelling a response when something in the part of her visor on her ears caught her attention. She touched it with two fingers for a few seconds, as though listening to someone or something, and then gave a slow nod.

“Your time is extended for now, evil one. I have matters to attend elsewhere.” She soared higher above the treetops and hovered for a moment.

“This is where she gloats and then flies off?” I asked myself, as she hung in the air dramatically.

“But know this! I am a master bounty hunter, and you are my prey. I have your scent. Wherever you may go or hide, I will find you…and cleanse you of this earth!”

“I’m not going anywhere, Karu. This place is the only home I have left. Next time, I’m not holding back on you.”

“Next time, you’ll be dead,” she promised. And with a deafening blast, rocketed to full speed over the horizon.

“What an incredibly tremendous bitch,” I said, retrieving my dead rabbit from the base of the tree.