Chapter 10: Hunting the Hunted
The problem with being fast was that running revealed exactly how fast you were.
Orin carved through the merchant quarter's geometry, boots hammering cobblestones in a rhythm that screamed anomaly to anyone listening. Behind him, the contractors moved with the patient efficiency of people who tracked prey professionally. Not panicked, not rushed. Just inevitable.
He vaulted a fence, landed in someone's courtyard where sculpted hedges reminded Orin how the wealthy would spend money on ridiculous things when others were starving. A dog barked, chained and furious at the intrusion. Orin kept moving, he crashed through a gate on the far side, emerged into an alley that smelled like kitchen waste and earthy damp.
The void stone pulsed against his palm, responding to adrenaline or threat or whatever passed for emotion in crystallized moonlight. That new sense, the Essence Sight, was trying to activate. He felt it scratching at his awareness like a cat wanting inside during a storm.
*Not yet. Don't reveal more than they've already seen.*
Footsteps behind him, closing the distance. Professional, coordinated. They'd split up, probably, covering parallel streets to box him in. Standard hunting tactics for cornering something that ran faster than it should.
He needed to lose them or hurt them... Preferably both.
The slums rose ahead like a wall of collective failure, buildings leaning into each other for support that was more architectural necessity than kindness. Home territory, if home was defined as places where violence was ambient noise rather than shocking interruption.
Orin plunged into the familiar maze, taking routes only locals knew. Gaps between buildings narrow enough that broader men would wedge themselves stuck. Rooftops connected by boards that couldn't support much weight but could support his. The accumulated knowledge of fifteen years spent learning how to disappear when violence came looking.
The contractors followed, which meant they knew the slums too. Worse, they were gaining. Green-stones, probably, their enhanced speed eating the distance his knowledge created.
*Can't outrun them forever.*
The warehouse district opened before him, three blocks of abandoned commerce where the city had given up pretending economics worked for everyone. His old sanctuary sat there, probably compromised by guards but still offering options that open streets didn't.
Orin hit the warehouse at full speed, crashed through a door hanging by one hinge, landed in darkness that smelled like a rotting kingdom of rats. He didn't stop, kept moving deeper, navigating by memory and moonlight filtering through collapsed sections of roof.
Behind him, the contractors entered. Slower now, cautious. Darkness was the great equalizer, turning essence-enhanced speed into liability when you couldn't see the pitfalls.
"Blackstone!" one of them called. Male voice, professional calm. "We're not guards. We're offering an opportunity."
Orin pressed himself against a support beam, controlling his breathing, listening to their positions through the warehouse's acoustic peculiarities.
"Collector named Thorne wants to meet you," the voice continued. "Studies anomalies, pays well for research participation. No violence, just examination. You walk away richer."
Translation: they'd dissect him slowly while calling it science. Marrow's warnings echoing through different mouths.
"Alternatively," another contractor said, female this time, "you run, we catch you, Thorne gets you anyway but we keep the capture bonus. Your choice affects our profit, not your outcome."
Honest, at least. Refreshing in a diseased sort of way.
Orin moved silently, forty dexterity translating to footwork that barely disturbed dust. The contractors were spreading out, covering angles, professional hunt tactics in a building that wanted to kill everyone equally.
He needed an advantage beyond attributes. Needed to use their coordination against them.
The warehouse's second floor was accessible via a staircase that optimistically identified as functional. Orin climbed it, each step a negotiation between his weight and physics' patience. The wood groaned, threatened, held.
Below, the contractors were converging on his last position. Three shapes moving through darkness, green birthstones glowing faintly as they channeled essence for enhanced vision.
*There.*
The Essence Sight activated without permission, overlaying his vision with information that shouldn't exist. He could see their essence flows now, circulation patterns moving through their bodies like rivers made of compressed violence. Could see where they concentrated power, where they left themselves vulnerable.
The first contractor passed beneath him, focused on ground level threats.
Orin dropped.
Forty-three strength plus gravity plus surprise equaled devastating education. He landed on the contractor's shoulders, rode him down, felt something important snap on impact. The man gasped, tried to roll, got Orin's elbow across his temple for the effort.
Unconscious or dead. Didn't matter right now.
"Contact!" the female contractor shouted, already moving. Her birthstone flared, essence flooding her system. She closed distance with green-stone speed, knife appearing in her hand like it had been waiting for an introduction.
Orin grabbed the fallen contractor's weapon, some kind of weighted club designed for non-lethal compliance. He swung as she arrived, aiming for her knife hand.
She blocked, redirected, countered with a kick at his ribs. Connected. Forty-three durability absorbed most of the impact, but most wasn't all. Pain bloomed, familiar and clarifying.
They circled, predators reassessing each other. She was good, trained beyond what essence enhancement provided. Military background, probably, or something worse.
"You're stronger than the reports mentioned" she said, conversational despite the violence. "Blackstones don't move like you move.. not possible"
"Maybe your records need updating."
"Maybe you need dissecting to find out why." She attacked again, knife and kicks working together in patterns that suggested she'd killed people this way before.
Orin blocked, dodged, felt the Essence Sight feeding him information about her next moves. She was faster, more experienced. But he could see her attacks forming before she made them, essence concentrating in muscle groups half a second before they fired.
He caught her knife wrist, twisted. She rolled with it, used the momentum to throw him. They hit the floor together, grappling now, technique versus attributes in a contest that was more wrestling than combat.
The third contractor arrived, flanking them. Male, older, his birthstone glowing with the steady intensity of someone who'd cultivated for decades. He raised a crossbow, aimed at Orin's center mass.
*Shit.*
The female contractor realized his intention, her eyes widening. "Don't! Thorne wants him intact!"
"Thorne wants him. Didn't specify condition." The man's finger tightened on the trigger.
Orin threw the female contractor at him.
She crashed into her partner as the crossbow fired. The bolt took her in the shoulder, punched through whatever armor she wore beneath her clothes. She screamed, more anger than pain and hit the floor bleeding.
The male contractor was reloading, mechanical and efficient. Orin charged before the bolt seated, covered the distance with speed that made forty points feel inadequate. Hit him low, drove him backward into a support column that cracked under the impact.
The crossbow fell. Orin grabbed it, reversed it, brought the stock down on the man's skull twice.
Stillness.
Three contractors, all down. Probably not dead, definitely not functional. Orin stood there breathing hard, adrenaline fading into the exhaustion that followed violence like shame following mistakes.
The female contractor was still conscious, clutching her shoulder, blood seeping between her fingers. Her eyes tracked him, calculating odds of further resistance and finding them pessimistic.
"Who's Thorne?" Orin asked.
"He's a collector. Rich enough to own people without calling it slavery." She grimaced, pain cutting through professional composure. "Studies birthstone anomalies. Has a private laboratory in the noble quarter, full of specimens he's acquired over decades."
"Specimens."
"People like you. Sports, mutations, anything that breaks the normal patterns." She coughed, tasted blood, spat. "You cost me tonight's pay. Probably cost me this arm, infection's going to set in. Least you can do is die somewhere he can't find you."
The logic was bitter and sound. She'd hunted him for profit, failed, and was offering advice out of professional respect or spite. Hard to distinguish.
"Where's his laboratory?"
"Westridge Manor. Behind the magistrate's residence, which is why nobody investigates what happens there. Not that anyone would care.." She closed her eyes, breathing controlled. "Don't be stupid enough to go there. Thorne collects anomalies. He's got dozens, all locked up, all being studied. You walk in, you don't walk out... Your strong but not that strong."
Orin left her bleeding, took the crossbow and what bolts remained. Outside, the slums were settling into their nocturnal rhythms, violence and commerce blending until they became indistinguishable.
He couldn't go back to Sera's place. Couldn't risk contaminating them further with his accumulated consequences. Couldn't stay in the warehouse district with contractors hunting and guards searching.
Couldn't do anything except keep moving until exhaustion or enemies caught up.
The five gold marks sat heavy in his pocket, fifteen more needed in less than thirty-six hours. Tuition deadline approaching like winter for people without shelter.
*Accept Marrow's offer. Become a research subject, get the money, survive.*
The thought tasted like surrender dressed as pragmatism. But surrender was just another word for living when the alternative was principled corpsehood.
He was halfway to Marrow's shop when the Essence Sight flickered, showing him something ahead. A concentration of essence, multiple sources, arranged in what felt like waiting rather than wandering.
*Ambush... Fuck fuck fuck.*
Orin stopped, pressed into shadow, studied the street ahead. Six figures, all green-stones judging by their essence signatures. Not contractors this time. Too coordinated, too military.
Guards, probably, who'd been tracking him through informants and elimination.
*Boxed in from both sides.*
Behind him, the warehouse where contractors were probably regaining consciousness. Ahead, guards who'd arrest him at best, kill him at worst. To either side, the slums' architecture offering no escape routes that didn't end in dead ends.
The void stone pulsed, hungry and patient. It had eaten monsters, guards' blood, combat in an arena. It could eat more if fed properly.
But feeding it required essence, required monster parts or alchemical extracts, required resources he didn't have and time that had expired.
*Unless.*
The thought arrived like broken glass, sharp and cutting. The contractors behind him were unconscious, maybe dead. Their birthstones would still hold essence, circulation slowed but present.
Could he absorb from living people? The void stone had consumed everything he'd fed it. Why not human essence?
The idea felt like crossing a line drawn in something more permanent than morality. But lines were just boundaries, and boundaries existed to remind you where you'd been, not where you were going.
Orin turned back toward the warehouse, toward the fallen contractors and their green birthstones glowing faintly in darkness.
Toward a decision that would either save him or confirm he'd already become the monster, as dangerous as they insisted he was.