She hadn’t left her room since her second venture out. There was no reason to.

The room itself was an austere affair, a concrete shell populated by double bunk beds missing their mattresses. From a crack in the ceiling opposite her came a steady dribble of water; below it was a dented bucket filled with murky, greyish water. She counted a hundred thirty-seven drops and, only when she heard the hundred thirty-eighth splash resounding in the silence, did she force herself to take a breath.

Stop.

The droplet froze. The beat of her heart remained. One. Two. Three—

How many days had it been since she arrived? The answer was hidden in her back pocket, a single number on her Nexus display. It would only take a second to take it out and look, but she didn’t. Why?

Why was the question that clung to her like sin.

To distract herself, she spent the first day on reconnaissance. The rain was the last piece to the puzzle; it was raining in the middle of winter. Not a cold rain, but a humid monsoon that condensed in rust-coloured blobs on windows and steel walls and beneath the fabric of her uniform. It burned her skin. But it didn’t bother her. Few things did.

This place was an old air base, evidenced by the long strips of concrete runway that were unceremoniously ended by a drop into the sea. The Rings were using the sea docks as a forward operating base, storing vehicles and supplies for their operations this side of the Frontier. Across the waters was the northern border of the Mankaria Dynasties; she briefly wondered why they didn’t blast this place with steel rain, but decided that the Four Rings were a local problem. It would be a little much to blast a fly with intercontinental missiles; the horrors that crawled out of the sea were a more pressing issue for those warmongering bastards.

“You’d be wise to brush up on your international politics,” Tapio said during the lecture in which he forced this useless knowledge upon her, “I hope it doesn’t happen in our lifetimes, but the chance that a war between the Oracles and another federation may occur.”

Why did she remember this now? This knowledge didn’t matter. She’d be long dead before anything important happened. So why did her mind keep reminding her of the immutable past?

Splash.

Six seconds this time, she counted. Her best was two the week prior.

The week prior, she didn’t have a horn.

Her resolve was wavering. She knew what kind of person she was; she would do whatever was necessary without a second thought. Now she was nothing but second, third, and fourth thoughts. She lost her edge somewhere in the opaque days that she couldn’t remember, and there were two pieces of evidence of what happened: a spent Blackout round stuck in the chamber of her holdout pistol, and a lingering pain in the roof of her mouth.

She didn’t need anybody to spell out the rest.

So why? What pushed her that far? She was happy with who she was. There was nothing to complain about. She did what she set out to do, all those years ago. The money was good. She had a place to stay and food to eat. Her tributes were paid on her behalf. What more could she want?

What was happening to her?

There was no point in asking these questions. They were meaningless, utterly trite. The answers were already at hand; just like the date, all it would take is a moment’s clear analysis. Why couldn’t she take that last leap?

She wished she still had her suppressants. Stigmata drew from emotions and twists them into physical phenomena; keeping her heart chemically contained was the only way she could keep using it. But now the tar was spilling from its containment. Her veins itched. They burned. A single hit of liquid ice could make this all go away, but they didn’t work on her anymore. Was there something else she could try?

There was.

She drew a stiletto from her belt and looked at the reflection of an abomination in the blade’s sheen. Her body was mutating, and she hadn’t the heart to look at how much of her skin her Stigmata covered. It was far too late to save what had already been infected; immediate amputation was in order.

She pressed the point of the stiletto into the grey flesh of her neck. The blade was warm, a familiar hug. How many people had she killed with this exact knife? She couldn’t remember, and she doubted she ever could. She was a killer after all; shouldn’t a killer know what it’s like to be on the receiving end?

—No. That would be too easy. She held out her left hand, and slid the blade down to the webbing between her index and middle finger. Then she kept going.

Have you ever carved a raw chicken before? It’s surprisingly easy. The hardest part is cleanly cutting through the cartilage; it takes a certain finesse to not bruise the meat and break the bone, but it’s easy if you know the anatomy.

Her first kill was something like this, too. A man had robbed their home while she was away and spent what little savings they had on drugs. He had nothing. She found him passed out on a rooftop, booze worth more than the rags she wore mixing with the dirt and acidic puddles in the gutters.

There were so many mouths to feed.

That night, everybody had a full stomach and went to sleep the happiest she ever saw them. In the darkness of the night, she gnawed on what she couldn’t pass off as normal meat.

She pulled off her thumb and index and watched the blood pool between her thighs.

But where was the excruciating pain? Where was the release?

There were shapes in the darkness, the forms of her nameless dread. She wouldn’t let them get their way.

Her past was coming back to haunt her. How utterly trite. With a giggle, she jammed the knife into her windpipe and waited for the end.

It never came.

As her own energy waned, a sudden surge came in and kept her alive. Already her hand was healing — a warming red light covered her exposed wound and rebuilt; her lungs were heavy with blood, yet she felt no need to breathe. She was unable to end her own life: the mere thought sent her into raving bouts of laughter, periodically interrupted by bloody coughs.

She already knew this after observing the team’s attempt to kill Grimm, and was no closer to finding out why she had originally tried to take her own life when she wasn’t functionally immortal. Great. Wonderful. All of this was a complete waste of time. She had better things to do. Why had she allowed herself to be dragged around by a sentient Relic?

It was pointless. She didn’t understand why Tapio wanted to put together an entire team to get Whitelight. What use was a sword that could cut anything? There were plasma-edged blades available on the market; Tapio himself could manufacture anything given enough time and materials. Whatever his game was, she didn’t really care. As long as the pay kept coming in, she didn’t care about anything else.

She told herself this many times throughout her career. But now, the more she repeated it, the more it seemed like a cheap lie.

She heard heavy footsteps from the hall outside the dorm. In her exhaustion and new-found apathy, she merely watched as a girl with a shield on her back — her name was Vera, she scarcely remembered — barged in with a mop and bucket in hand.

“The hell are you doing?” she said in a strained, garbled voice. She cleared her throat and tried again, managing to force herself to sound normal.

Vera glanced her way while swabbing at the puddles of blood. “What does it look like? Cass told me to do this, so I am.”

A lie, flashed a thought that wasn’t entirely her own. Clutching her head, she grit her teeth and reached towards another knife hidden in her sleeve. “I’m busy. Leave.”

“Oh yeah, real busy. You’ve done nothing but sit around for four days. Mhm. Just like an actual Owl would.”

The Hunter known as Owl drew the unloaded hold-out pistol and knife and pointed both at Vera. The girl, however, was entirely unperturbed. She bent down and threw Owl’s spare fingers into a nearby bin.

“Those were mine,” Owl said, unsure how to react.

Vera shrugged. “Plenty more space in the trash for the rest of you, then.” She turned her back, sighing. “I don’t get you goddamned Catalysts. Aren’t you afraid of burning yourselves out too quickly? Couldn’t you lot just take it easy and be honest with yourself from the very beginning?”

“Catalyst…?”

“Catalyst. Stigmata. Potayto, potahto. All ends the same, anyway.”

Death or corruption. A war that can not be won.

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

Vera leaned on her steel mop, unable to hide that she seemed quite pleased with herself. “Oh yeah? You want to know more? I can make a deal with you, if you want to know.”

This seemed important. “Out with it. Terms.”

“We’re even after this.”

Since when did Vera owe her a favor? Owl went with it, nodding more to herself than in agreement. “Sure.”

“So your body is no longer human, right? Means you’re more malleable, I guess. Cass found something that only people like you can do, so we’re cheering you on. Don’t die on us, now.”

Owl found herself pulling up the hook of her mist cloak, concealing the perversions of her body.

“Apparently there’s some real weird stuff happening across the Frontier,” Vera continued, “Cass says there’s something coming that might be on the scale of Starfall, and she wants us to accelerate the process. We really don’t need you, but you guys are handy to have around. Apparently.”

Starfall, a cataclysm that wiped out a continent and changed the very course of the world. The notion pulled her out of the dark mire of her own thoughts and back into reality. “What do you mean, on the scale of Starfall? What insane conspiracy are you on about? Why are you telling me this — are you trying to gaslight me?”

Vera stood arms akimbo and smiled, letting her mop rest by a nearby bunk. “In a few days, I think our paths are gonna cross again. We might have to kill each other, but I enjoyed the day trip. So if I’m going to fight and die for something I believe in, I want to do it with a clear heart. No regrets, none at all.”

It took a few moments for Owl to comprehend what Vera was talking about. She spent half a day in captivity prior to this; Owl dragged her specifically to the Night Market to get her killed if she tried anything — the Night Market never took kindly to unaccompanied non-Hunters. “We literally took you hostage and were about to execute you,” Owl said, exasperated.

“So? I had fun. Is it wrong to express gratitude when deserved?”

This girl was an idealist that would get herself killed sooner or later; she’d be doing her a favor taking her out right now. Owl barely restrained the urge to punch out those earnest jade eyes, if only for the sake of whatever the hell Vivian was planning.

But she couldn’t stop herself from speaking.

“Do you have any idea who the fuck I am?” Owl said. “I’m Class 6. Do you have any idea what I’ve done to get here? Do you have any idea how many lives I’ve taken? How fucking stupid are you? I could kill you right here, right now, paint the fucking walls with your blood and you couldn’t do anything to stop me. Just shut up. Shut up. Just—”

She doubled over, a sharp pain tearing through her throat and hand. “Of course it had to be now,” she muttered through her teeth. “Goddamnit. Fuck.”

During her outburst, Vera walked away. She hadn’t left; she stood at the door, leaning against the frame. “Somebody important to me once said, ‘history tells us that people never change.’ I always thought that was a good thing. Means that no matter where you go, no matter what form our conflicts take, there’s always a chance for the human heart to triumph.” A shrug and smile. “I’ve staked my entire life — no, my entire existence on that miniscule chance. Cass and the others, we also believe. And if you’re here, there must be something you’re willing to kill and die for. The formation of a Catalyst requires a certain self-awareness combined with a resolve so strong that it can warp reality. I see that look on your face. I’m not asking you to join us, but… I hope we can all find the endings we deserve and move onto a kinder world. Maybe we could even be friends.”

Vera left, leaving Owl alone with her bucket and roiling anger. After the surge of pain, her hands were clammy and grey. There was a warped smile stretched taut over her lips; she couldn’t tell if it was one of malice or derision, but the emotion it was generated from was more than clear.

Hate.

Owl had seen many hateable people in her days as a Hunter. Rapists, murderers, corporates and the entire cast of contemptibles, but never had she experienced such a vitriolic reaction; she didn’t just want Vera to die, she wanted her to suffer. To experience loss and misery until all traces of that smug smile were crushed under the heels of the world. To shove the girl into a grinder and listen to that chirping voice turn to a song filled with screams. How could she smile like that? How dare she smile like that? How could she say anything she just said with a straight face?

Ideals were something that other people had, pointless dreams that would only end in unspeakable agony. Friendship? Camaraderie? The only thing the people of the world understood was power, wealth, and fear; all others factors were secondary. Even this train of thought was entirely useless — what use was pondering a hypothetical? There was no next life. If there were, she would’ve long reached for it and abandoned her current shell.

“Liar,” she muttered to nobody in particular.

She kept a secret from her allies: she was already aware of the next mission, courtesy of an advanced briefing from Tapio. They were to travel to a settlement sitting on the Republics and Frontier border to escort somebody back to Hadron; the Four Rings were probably after the same person. Bloodshed was bound to occur — she would take out Vera then.

The hate was a welcome distraction. Until there was something required of her, she could focus on it, immerse herself in it, use it to forget. It wouldn’t save her, but it would keep her going for a little while longer.

At least, that’s what she kept telling herself, even as she managed to drive herself ill and unconscious ten times before it was time to go.