Growing up is usually a series of small milestones: first steps, first words, first day of school.
For Elara, growing up was a series of dissections.
Her guardian, the multi-limbed spider-lord who called himself Krixis, did not read her bedtime stories. He read her the biological schematics of the galaxy's species. He did not teach her to ride a bike; he taught her which vertebrae to sever to paralyze a man instantly versus which one to sever to kill him slowly.
They lived in the hollowed-out shell of a skyscraper, the "Spire of Silk." It was a nest of webbing and trophies.
"Human bodies are soft," Krixis chattered, his mandibles clicking as he held up a struggling Resistance fighter he had captured. The man was suspended in a web, gagged. "Show me the femoral artery, little one."
Elara, holding a scalpel she had scavenged from a ruined hospital, stepped forward. She didn't tremble. She traced the line of the man's thigh. "Here. Protected by the muscle wall."
"Strike it," Krixis commanded. "Precision. Not force."
Elara struck. A single, fluid motion. The blood didn't spray randomly; it jetted in a rhythmic arc.
"Good," Krixis purred, stroking her hair with a claw stained in ichor. "The artery empties the vessel in three minutes. Watch the light leave the eyes. It is the only truth in the universe."
Elara watched. She timed it. Two minutes and forty-eight seconds. She noted the discrepancy in a notebook.
The world had settled into a dark hierarchy. The Monsters—the "Highborn"—ruled the surface. They lived in the cities they had conquered, turning office buildings into nests and hives. Humans were cattle. They wore collars. They worked in the mines digging for heavy metals the monsters ate, or they served as pets.
But there were the others. The Iron Dawn.
A resistance group. Humans who refused to kneel. They lived in the sewers, the subway tunnels, the deep bunkers. They had guns, explosives, and hope.
Krixis found them annoying. Elara found them fascinatingly stupid.
She was sixteen when she killed her first squad of Iron Dawn soldiers. They had tried to ambush Krixis while he was feeding on a deer in the park.
Elara dropped from the tree canopy. She moved like Krixis now—low to the ground, silent, scuttling. She didn't use a gun. She used two curved karambit knives.
She hamstrung the first soldier before he raised his rifle. As he fell, she vaulted off his back, spinning in the air, and drove her heel into the throat of the second. The cartilage collapsed with a wet crunch. The third soldier, a large man with a beard, aimed at her.
Elara didn't dodge. She threw her knife. It didn't hit his chest; it went through his eye socket, severing the optical nerve and entering the frontal lobe.
When the dust settled, Krixis looked at the bodies. "You wasted energy on the spin," he critiqued. "But the kill was adequate."
Elara was no longer the girl in the dirty dress.
At twenty-one, she was a myth. To the humans, she was a traitor, a demon in human skin—"The Silencer." To the monsters, she was a curiosity, a "Pet with Claws."
She wore armor made from the molted chitin of Krixis's kin—black, iridescent, lighter than steel but harder than diamond. Her hair was chopped short, practical. Her eyes were voids of grey ice.
She didn't fight for the monsters. She didn't fight for the humans. She fought for the highest bidder. In a world where currency was useless, she was paid in "favors," in rare weapons, and in gold, which the Highborn used to decorate their nests.
The meeting took place in the ruins of the old Grand Hotel. The chandeliers lay shattered on the floor, but the velvet chairs remained.
The client was human. A collaborator named Gregor Vane. He wore a silk suit that was too clean for the apocalypse. He was a "Slaver King"—a human who sold other humans to the monsters to keep his own position of power.
Elara sat opposite him, sharpening a long, serrated dagger. Krixis waited in the shadows of the ceiling, his red eyes glowing like embers, watching over his charge.
"Commander Thorne," Vane said, sweating despite the cool air. "He leads a cell of the Iron Dawn in the Western District. He... intercepted a shipment of my 'merchandise' meant for Lord Zorgath."
"You want him dead," Elara said. Her voice was melodic but empty, like wind passing through a tomb.
"I want him obliterated," Vane hissed. "He is rallying the slaves. If he lives, the Highborn will blame me for the lost shipment. I will pay you five thousand Imperial Credits and a crate of pristine pre-war ammunition."
Elara stopped sharpening. She looked at Vane. "Thorne is in the Subway Fortress. Highly guarded. Turrets. Traps."
"Can you do it?"
Elara stood up. She didn't smile. "Does a spider ask if it can catch a fly?"
The Iron Dawn had fortified the metro station. Barricades of scrap metal, tripwires rigged with shotgun shells, and spotlights manned by desperate men.
Elara didn't use the entrance.
She found a ventilation shaft three blocks away. It was narrow, clogged with grime and old bones. She dislocated her own shoulder—a trick Krixis had taught her—to squeeze through the tightest bend, popping the joint back in with a sickening click once she was through.
She dropped into the maintenance hallway of the station.
Two guards stood by a fire barrel, laughing.
Elara moved. She didn't run; she flowed. She was behind the first guard before his shadow could shift. She clamped her hand over his mouth and drove a needle-thin stiletto into the base of his skull. Pons shutdown. Instant motor failure. He went limp without a sound.
The second guard turned, sensing movement. Elara didn't hide. She stepped into the light.
"Who—"
She kicked his knee backward, snapping the joint. As he opened his mouth to scream, she shoved a flash-bang grenade—pin pulled—into his mouth and held his jaw shut.
She vaulted over a barricade and rolled away just as the muffled thump turned the guard's head into a red mist.
Chaos erupted.
"Intruder! Sector 4!"
Bullets sparked against the concrete walls. Elara danced through them. She possessed a spatial awareness that was inhuman, born of watching monsters hunt. She knew where the bullets would be before the triggers were pulled.
She drew her twin pistols—heavy, customized hand cannons.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Three shots. Three headshots. The resistance fighters dropped, their bodies forming a perfect triangle on the floor.
She reached the command center, an old ticket booth reinforced with steel plates. Commander Thorne was there, shouting into a radio. He was a rugged man, scarred, holding a heavy assault rifle.
He saw her. "The Silencer," he breathed. "You traitorous bitch."
He opened fire.
Elara slid under the spray of bullets, the concrete dust exploding around her. She threw a smoke canister. Grey fog filled the room.
Thorne coughed, swinging his rifle wildly. "Show yourself! You fight for the things that eat us! Have you no humanity?"
Elara's voice came from everywhere and nowhere. "Humanity is inefficient, Commander. It hesitates. It hopes."
She dropped from the ceiling behind him.
Thorne spun around, but he was too slow. Elara swept his legs, bringing him down hard. Before he could lift his rifle, she pinned his hand to the floor with a knife.
Thorne screamed, a raw, guttural sound.
Elara straddled his chest. She looked down at him, her face blank.
"Why?" Thorne gasped, blood bubbling on his lips. "We are fighting for freedom. For your freedom."
"I am already free," Elara whispered.
She pulled a length of monofilament wire from her belt. It was a gift from Krixis, a wire so thin it was nearly invisible.
"Vane sends his regards," she said.
She wrapped the wire around Thorne's neck. She didn't jerk it. She pulled slowly.
Thorne clawed at the wire, but it sliced into his fingers, severing the tendons. His eyes bulged. The capillaries in his face burst, turning his skin purple.
Elara watched the struggle. She watched the panic turn to desperation, then to resignation. She watched the light fade.
Snip.
The wire cut through the windpipe and the arteries. Thorne's head didn't fall off immediately; it just slid slightly to the left, held on by the spine.
Elara stood up. She wiped the blood from her armor.
She took a picture of the corpse with a small device. Proof of purchase.
As she walked out of the station, stepping over the bodies of the men who had died for a cause she couldn't understand, she felt a familiar vibration in her pocket. Her communicator.
She answered.
"Elara," a synthesized voice said. It wasn't Vane. It was a Highborn.
"Speaking."
"We have a job. A special one. The target is... unique."
"I don't care if they are unique," Elara said, stepping out into the ruined night air where Krixis was waiting for her on the side of a building. "I only care if they bleed."
"Oh, he bleeds," the voice chuckled darkly. "But he does not die. The pay is fifty thousand credits. And a seat at the High Council."
Elara paused. A seat at the Council? That was power. That was true predator status.
"Who is the target?"
"His name is Valerius," the voice said. "Bring us his head. Or try to."
Elara looked up at the moon, red through the smog. A challenge. Finally.
"Consider it done."