I awoke with a start, going still and holding my breath to try and hear over the thudding cadence of my heart, ears seeking out what might have tugged me out of my light doze. I almost forget what true sleep is like. It'd been what feels like an eternity but according to the dying chrono on my arm it was barely six months.
Six months that had changed me so drastically from the person I had been before. Before the Wraith came. Before my world was destroyed and fed upon. Before I was taken for sport.
I once crossed paths with one of the few others like me. He was tall, strong and an experienced warrior. I was none of those things. I'm still not. My job was behind a desk, the assistant to a minor government agent. Over time I had become lax and soft. I had resigned myself to old maid status. No man seemed interested even when I had worked at looking better so I instead spent my time behind a terminal instead of on an exercise machine. I had learned three languages. Languages that do me no good now that my planet is gone and no others speak those tongues. At times I feel like the last bastion of knowledge of my homeworld. It didn't seem fitting that the last representation of my people was an out of shape girl in a work dress. I cut my hair short and developed muscles across my stomach and legs and arms that I never knew were possible.
Once I had thoughts of winning this terrible farce of a game. Settling onto a quiet planet and spending the rest of my days writing out the history of my people as best I could remember. Now I know how futile it is to hope. To dream. To want.
Now, my life is spent in snatches of rest and constant fear. Oh, and I do fear. I never understood how deep my actual cowardice went until the Wraith took me for this twisted game. I try to comfort myself with a memory of someone once saying that bravery is not absence of fear but the ability to fear and still do what needs to be done. I pretend I am brave. Truth is, I just don't want to die.
I spent time angry before being resigned to this new life. I plotted and dreamed and decided to abide my time before I could strike back and have my vengeance. Now I fight giving up by giving myself small milestones. I can last one more day. One more hour. One more week. I can't die, I won't die until I have killed three more of them. One more. Seventeen more. I need to end on an even number. I need it to be the last day of the month according to my chrono. I need it to be on a day I've been fed and managed to bathe. I won't die dirty. I won't die hungry. I won't die on my knees but in the air, flinging myself into their path in hopes of taking out at least one final demon.
Games with myself are all I have left. I have no homeworld. I have no job. I have no bed. For a time I had no clothes. While my clever brain, and it is indeed clever, has made me an opponent of worth, my body did not. It was for mere hilarity I think I was taken and implanted as a Runner. Perhaps they thought I would be an easy target. Perhaps they intended me to be a training exercise for someone with terrible aim. I do not know. I do not want to know. I just know that over the many weeks I have been running, my body has reshaped itself. I am now lean where I was once soft. My clothes, or the rags that had once been clothing, were large on me after the first few weeks. I suffered through the headaches of withdrawal of the stimulant drinks and vices that had been parts of my life for so long. I adjusted to the aches of sleeping on something that was not the softest bed money could buy. I stopped sleeping and started dozing, alert for whatever came into my vicinity. I no longer awoke slowly and with a grumble, pushing the delay button on my alarm. Instead, I immediately awoke, silent and with an alert clarity I had never been capable of before.
It was one of those moments of alert clarity that I found myself in now. I listened, hearing the faintest whisper of movement. I ignored the press of my bladder that would have woken me before long, begging to be emptied. Slowly I shifted, a hand sliding to my side to withdraw my weapon as the other hand cupped the handle of the knife sheathed across my chest, the handle sticking out between the buttons of my jacket I'd stolen when I had no clothes that fit.
I felt their presence. I think three of them. Something, perhaps my honed senses, screamed three at me. And they were quiet and they were good, but I was becoming better. It likely surprised them as much as me that I lasted this long. I intended to see this through.
As I sat up slowly, I pulled out my weapons and held them at the ready. They were close. I could feel their presence with every one of my senses. They had turned me into a sharp dagger point that they didn't expect.
Carefully I slid my back up to the wall and rose. The room was empty still. They were in the hallway just beyond.
I smiled, a dark angry thing that I never thought myself capable of. I was now a killer. A hunter of the hunters. They made this a game and made me a player in every aspect of myself. I turned the corner and started to fire and as I did so, I heard it in my head as I reminded myself, "Run."