Elara lay staring at the cracked ceiling of her safehouse, the water stains forming shapes that looked like continents on a map she would never visit.
Sleep was usually a simple equation for her: Exertion + Exhaustion = Unconsciousness.
Tonight, the math didn't add up. Her mind was a chaotic ledger of debts and promises.
She raised her hand, counting on her fingers.
One. Zorgath, the Highborn Lord. He had summoned her via hologram a week ago. A human on the Council? It was unprecedented. It was power. It was the ability to look down on the monsters who had eaten her neighbors.
Two. Krixis. Her father figure. Her mentor. He was facilitating Zorgath's deal, acting as the broker. "Thirty thousand credits, little one," he had chattered, polishing his chelicerae. "He was greedy, but he was family.
Three. Valerius. The target. The paradox. "Kill me," he had whispered, "and I will give you the world. I will make you a Queen."
She closed her hand into a fist.
A Council Seat. A Fortune. A Crown.
Three prizes for one corpse.
But the corpse refused to stay dead.
"Focus," she whispered to the empty room. "The reward is irrelevant if the target is immortal."
She rolled out of bed, her feet hitting the cold floor. It didn't matter who paid her. What mattered was the puzzle. And she had a promise to keep.
Acid.
She chose the defunct Industrial Sector, specifically the OMEGA Chemical Processing Plant. It was a rust-bucket of a building, filled with vats of chemicals that had been fermenting for decades.
Elara didn't rely on the old chemicals. She brewed her own.
She spent three days mixing a cocktail of Hydrochloric acid and Hydrogen Peroxide-Piranha Solution-enhanced with a corrosive enzyme she had harvested from the stomach of a Spitter Beast. It was a neon-green sludge that bubbled aggressively, eating through the glass of her test tubes if she wasn't careful.
She filled the main mixing vat-a steel container the size of a swimming pool-with the mixture.
Valerius arrived on time. He always did.
He stood on the catwalk overlooking the vat, peering down into the bubbling green abyss. The fumes were strong enough to strip paint from the walls.
"Pungent," Valerius noted, sniffing the air delicately. "Notes of sulfur, rotting biological matter, and... is that lemon?"
"Citric acid acts as a catalyst," Elara said, standing by the control panel. She wore a heavy hazmat suit, her face obscured by a gas mask. "And it covers the smell of what's about to happen."
"You remembered," Valerius smiled, leaning over the railing. "I asked for acid. You are so thoughtful."
"I aim to please," Elara deadpanned.
She pulled the lever.
The catwalk didn't break. It dissolved. She had sprayed the metal grating with a delay-action solvent hours ago.
Valerius fell.
He didn't scream. He spread his arms like a diver executing a perfect swan dive.
SPLASH.
He hit the Piranha Solution.
Elara stepped closer to the edge, activating the floodlights she had rigged above the vat.
It was horrific.
The acid reacted instantly with organic matter. The moment Valerius submerged, the liquid began to boil violently.
His skin didn't just burn; it liquefied. It sloughed off his body in red, soupy sheets. His hair dissolved into black sludge in seconds.
He surfaced, gasping, but instead of air, he inhaled the corrosive fumes. His throat melted.
Elara watched with clinical fascination. She saw the layers of him disappear. Epidermis. Dermis. Subcutaneous fat. Muscle.
In under a minute, he was a Red Skeleton thrashing in the green soup, held together by dissolving tendons.
"Die," she whispered, gripping the railing. "Just... dissolve."
The skeleton sank. The bubbling slowed. The green liquid turned a murky, brownish-red.
Elara waited. Five minutes. Ten.
"Nothing survives that," she muttered. "Not even him."
Then, a hand broke the surface.
It wasn't a skeletal hand. It was raw, red muscle, devoid of skin, dripping with slime.
Valerius pulled himself up the ladder on the side of the vat. It was a slow, wet climb.
He flopped onto the metal grating of the walkway. He looked like an anatomy chart come to life-no skin, just raw beef and exposed eyes. Steam rose off him in thick clouds.
"Spicy," he gargled. His lips were gone, so the word came out as a wet hiss through his exposed teeth.
Elara stepped back, revulsion warring with awe.
The regeneration began. It was visible to the naked eye. A thin, white film spread over the raw muscle-new fascia. Then, pink dots appeared-new skin islands growing and connecting.
"You are disgusting," Elara said, her voice muffled by the mask.
Valerius sat up, the skin racing to cover his face. His eyelids grew back with a wet pop.
"I feel..." He took a deep breath, his new lungs expanding. "...exfoliated."
He stood up. He was naked, glistening, and completely healed, though his hair was still short and growing out.
He walked toward her. The acid dripping from his body sizzled on the floor, but his skin was now immune to it, adapting in real-time.
"You have a vicious streak, Elara," he purred, cornering her against the control panel. "It's intoxicating."
"Back off," Elara warned, reaching for her sidearm. "You're dripping slime on me."
"You tried to turn me into soup," Valerius laughed, wiping a glob of green goo from his cheek. "And yet, here I am. Fresh as a daisy."
He leaned in, trapping her. "Tell me, Little Hunter. Where does it come from? This... creativity? This need to hurt?"
Elara stared at him through the glass of her mask. She wanted to shoot him. She wanted to run. But his gaze was heavy, pinning her down.
"I was born wrong," she said. The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Valerius tilted his head. "Define 'wrong'."
"I didn't play with dolls," Elara said, her voice flat. "I played with insects. I took them apart to see how they worked. My parents... they tried to fix me. They beat me. They locked me in the basement. They called me a monster before the real monsters ever arrived."
She looked away, focusing on a rust spot on the wall. "I don't feel guilt, Valerius. I don't feel sad when things die. I feel... satisfied. I feel curiosity. That's why I'm good at this. That's why I'm the only one who can almost kill you."
Valerius went silent. The playfulness vanished from his face.
"A child of the void," he murmured. "Punished for your nature."
He reached out. He didn't grab her throat. He didn't strike her.
He ran his hand down the side of her hazmat suit, his fingers tracing the curve of her waist, then lower, resting on her hip. It was a possessive, intimate touch. Even through the thick rubber, Elara felt the heat of his skin. It made her flesh crawl, a shiver of revulsion and adrenaline shooting up her spine.
"I thought I would get bored of you," Valerius whispered, his voice dropping an octave. "I usually do. A week, maybe two. But you... you are a bottomless pit of violence. My interest isn't fading, Elara. It is blooming. Like a black rose."
He leaned closer, his lips inches from the plastic of her mask. "You and I... we could burn this world down. We could be gods."
Elara froze. The way he looked at her-it wasn't just hunger. It was adoration. It was a promise of devotion that felt more like a cage than a gift.
She shoved him. Hard.
"Get off me!"
She ripped the mask off her face so he could see the disgust in her grey eyes.
"Do not touch me like that," she snarled.
She drew her pistol-a high-caliber magnum-and jammed the barrel under his chin.
"If you ever touch me like that again," she hissed, "I won't just kill you. I will capture you. I will put you in a box of concrete and bury you in the deepest trench of the ocean where you will drown, regenerate, and drown again for eternity. I will ruin you."
Valerius stared at her. The gun was digging into his soft, newly formed skin.
Slowly, a smile spread across his face. A genuine, terrifying smile.
"Promise?" he breathed. "Oh, Elara. I would love to be ruined by you."
BANG.
Elara pulled the trigger.
The back of Valerius's head exploded, painting the control panel in red and grey matter.
He collapsed instantly, his body hitting the floor with a wet thud.
Elara stepped over him. She didn't check to see if he was dead. She knew he wasn't.
"Freak," she spat at the corpse.
She turned and walked toward the exit, holstering her smoking gun.
"Prepare for the next one!" she yelled over her shoulder, her voice echoing in the industrial cavern. "And put some damn clothes on!"
Behind her, in the pool of blood and acid, Valerius's fingers twitched. His destroyed face began to knit together, the smile the first thing to return.