41-1 Hunt
>Two years have passed since the outbreak of the Punishing Virus.
Shrubs sprawl freely along the riverbank, geese claim the dead reeds for their nests, and a cold wind cuts through the withering landscape. Ripples carve their patient scars into the surface of the water.
Beneath their feet, the shore drifts slowly away.
Lucia...
Shh...
Lucia signals for Luna to stay silent, then drops into a crouch and slides a rusted hunting rifle from beneath the boat.
This is her last weapon. She still remembers watching her father use this same rifle to pick off rabbits nibbling at the garden vegetables. If he could do it, then she should be able to...
Her gaze shifts toward the geese sheltering in the reeds. A hollow ache sounds in her stomach. She hasn't eaten all day.
Lucia... what are they doing?
Luna echoes Lucia's movements, crouching beside her. She follows her sister's gaze out to the birds, who preen their feathers in the cold light, utterly without care.
Migrating.
Lucia's fingers find two bullets in her pocket. She holds them gingerly, as if they might shatter, before turning the rifle over and easing them into the magazine port with a soft, metallic click.
The geese would go back to their warm homes every year around this time.
Lucia works the pump, hears the shell seat home, then reaches for Luna's hand. She guides it to the grip, wrapping her sister's fingers around the worn stock.
Are you ready?
R-ready for what?
Luna copies her sister's hold, fingers clenching around the shotgun's stock until her knuckles pale.
Hold tight. Finger right here... on the trigger. Then...
Once she's sure Luna has the shotgun braced right, Lucia turns away and reaches for one of the stones she'd gathered earlier and left resting in the boat.
Splash!
The stone strikes the water with a sharp splash. Ripples shatter outward. In the next breath, the geese explode from the reeds, wings thrashing, a frantic tide of feathers rising to choke the sky.
Now! Shoot!
Don't they need to go home?!
Yes, but we need to survive.
Lucia's hand closes over Luna's, steadying the shotgun's weight.
Together, they lift the barrel and draw a bead on the panicked flock wheeling against the cold sky.
Lucia narrows her eyes, sighting down the barrel's spine.
Eat the sin. Eat it all and let the weight be yours alone.
Somewhere deep in the folds of her mind, an adult woman's voice loops endlessly.
Above, the geese scatter and bank. Lucia pushes the voice aside.
Just as one day, you will have to kill me to survive...
BANG!
The shot erupts in a thunderous spray, countless pellets tearing outward into a shrieking wall of steel. It engulfs the panicked flock mid-flight.
Several geese, still clawing for altitude, are caught in the spread. There is nowhere to run. Dull splashes follow—one, then another—as lifeless bodies strike the water, sending up splashes of white.
Sob...
The recoil's heavy punch draws a quiet whimper from Luna. Lucia sets her jaw and pulls at the oars. Comfort will have to wait. The boat glides forward, narrowing the distance to what they have done.
One. Two. Three...
Crimson tendrils unfurl across the water. Lucia leans low and gathers the bodies, one by one. Their portion for the coming days. No more, no less. Exactly eleven.
...
Her fingers tighten around the geese. Blood seeps warm between her knuckles as she lifts them clear of the water.
The moment she pulls, her viewpoint climbs. Her finger bones elongate, stretching unnaturally. Below, the shadow on the water's surface fractures, tearing apart in violent ribbons.
She stares at the figure in the crimson waves. Familiar, and yet not. Decades carved out of her life float there, adrift in red.
Then her palm registers the change. The wet down against her skin vanishes. What remains is smooth and strange—the soft, giving resistance of synthetic flesh.
...!
She jerks her arm up. The geese in her grasp have become familiar faces. Her hands are clamped tight around their throats.
Liv, Lee, Vera, Bianca, Wanshi... Xun, Murol...
The river cracks apart. The boat dissolves at the shadow's edge. White light swallows everything, then her vision punches through. Blood drips. Below her, a landscape of corpses rises in heaps and ridges, an ocean of slaughter. She stands at the seam where shadow tears away from light.
...
......
............
She sees a rugged path winding into gray fog, the way forward uncertain and veiled.
She sees a blood-red sun bleeding into dusk. Figures locked in combat side by side, carrying the fragile weight of what hope remains.
She sees an academy bathed in radiant light. Jagged crimson crystals and bones bleached white, drifting through the infinite expanse of the universe.
The magnificent and the shattered blur together, folding into a distant, silent void.
At the farthest edge of the vision, she looks down upon herself, standing before the mirror.
Light and shadow tear through her spine. She stands where the Ascension-Network ends. She becomes
