The Hunter

Nehmen bursts forward from her hiding spot and charges toward the brummen. Predictably, it charges forward at her as well. Dodging to the side as it draws closer, Nehmen swings her mace, but the brummen proves too agile as it quickly adjusts course. It flies high and doubles-back for another pass. After three or four attempts, Nehmen notices the brummen’s pattern. She swings at an angle in the same direction the brummen adjusts, making firm contact, knocking the beast off balance.

Watery blood pulses from the side of the creature, as the droning sound changes to a higher pitch. It’s flying becomes more erratic. Still, the brummen circles around for another pass, this time much wider. Nehmen strikes with the full force of the mace as the creature crashes to the ground.

Success! She stands, studying the creature’s peculiar wings. One, the spot where she had first made contact, stopped moving altogether, but it had three others. But these wings don’t move the way a bird’s do. Instead, they … rotate! Before Nehmen could process this, a flash of sparks erupts from the brummen as it begins to smoke. Bending down, she timidly attempts to tap the creature with her rock. Rather than a tough, leathery surface, she feels a sharp “clang.” It’s made of… metal!

Rather than a tough, leathery surface, she feels a sharp “clang.” It’s made of… metal!

Dropping the rock, she grabs the brummen in her hands, lifting it up. She doesn’t find a mouth, and its single eye seems to be made from glass. Two sharp needles protrude from the underside of the “carcass” about the same distance apart as the bite-marks she recalls from its victims. Behind each needle is a small, plastic tube, one was filled with a strange liquid. The other empty with plastic tubing disappearing back into the creature’s “belly.”

She flips it over, exposing strange markings on its belly. After studying these for a few minutes, she recognizes the markings as “words.” A sort of written language she remembers her father trying to teach her. Reaching into her pack, she pulls out her father’s notebook, checking the markings, the words, on the front cover. A perfect match for the brummen’s belly.

Stunned, Nehmen drops everything on the ground and begins shaking uncontrollably. As she takes a few steps backward, her gaze finally looks up. Her encounter with the brummen brought her to the edge of the forest. As she looks across the valley, she spies something entirely new. A massive city, enveloped in fog, with a giant wall running around as far as she can see. A swarm of brummen fly past, over her head, disappearing through tiny openings in the wall, as others emerged from the same openings, heading past her into the forest from which she had just come.

A massive city, enveloped in fog

On the wall, she recognizes the same words from the now-destroyed brummen and her father’s notebook: GENETIC RESEARCH FIELD TESTING – San Francisco Division.