He was running. I was running. He was crushing through the bushes, almost hitting one of the trees, but he was faster than that, his thoughts a dozen times more magnificent than mine. And yet he was running and I was hunting him. His breath was loud and his face almost white. All his blood was in his hips, his legs, his feet. His arms felt weird, almost shrunken. Thats the problem with those thinkers, they are bad at running – or fighting.

Not that he had a chance. I was behind him for 10 minutes now and I was not going to stop. But he was on the edge of his seat, staring down the abyss, probably watching his life’s movie now, trying to focus on running and calculating a path to escape me. I tried not to smile, but I felt his fear and his calculations were all wrong.

His breath became faster and faster. His arms flapped on the side of his body. He was heavy, a thinker class B. He was not made for running. He was made to live a nice life, have a few women and mistresses, living in the towers over the main-hub. But now he was not there.

He was not there, because he was here. I didn’t know, why he was here. I didn’t care. Its my job to hunt them. Those people, who try to run away from their lives. Their lives and their work. Their brains are thinking too abstract, too disconnected from reality. He was probably thinking, that he would be able to make a few steps towards thinker class A or supervisor class C or even B. But that’s not his job. His job was here. And how he was leaving it and I was here to solve that problem.

His mind was trying to give up, but the fear in his muscles and in his spine was driving him forwards. There would be people waiting for him, maybe a dozen military guys in black suits and bulging handgun-slots, faces hidden by black sunglasses, guys with military cuts and arrogant faces, not only concentrating on their work, but smirking because it felt easy. A classic headhunter-hostage-situation. But not today.

The bushes became thicker and the trees shrunk. We were already reaching the outer rim of the woods, the parkland was arriving, a kind of no-man-zone. But I was not human and he was soon dead. The military guys would be waiting at one of the waterfalls, which would be pushing garbage and excrement in the sea. A thinker class B should have chosen another path to escape, but he surely was full of wonder and magic for his new job. I suppose, he was already wrong the moment, the thought of defecting. They would never give him more than his old job, maybe jail him for a few decades in a little house to work hard and get all the info out of his circuits and DNA-storages, squishing him out like an orange.

The bushes grew and I felt the smell of the water in my nostrils. He probably did the same. But I didn’t need to get him right now. I still felt the rush for the hunt in my old bones and flesh, although it was barely my own body. I a mostly something else and only sometimes I become more than I was. I don’t remember, but memories are a waste of time. I was hunting and I was getting him – soon.

The trees stopped and an opening was visible, an old path from one of the caves on the south of the district, a battle-worn path, smelling of old death and new sweat, the sweat of the guy, who was trying to go away.

I saw them faster than he did. He was focused on surviving – I was enjoying the surrounding, the heat of the hunt. And I had been right. They were at least 5 military cut guys with black sunglasses over their flesh-masks, cheap wet works in some military factory in the north-west. Some stuff always comes from Japan to Alaska, mostly wet-work-magics.

They did see him but they didn’t see me, at least for a few moments. A man with a round face, maybe 5 feet small nodded and smiled. He was wearing a suit which cost more than all of the military guys suits together. He had a pair of glasses, which was not necessary, but a choice. His head was pointing towards the runner. His men were getting ready, having pulled out their guns for security reasons. A few had guns, but two or three of them had larger guns, specific guns, maybe a rocket thrower. What did they expect, a tank?

The runner was leaving the opening and was now on the free space between the woods and the levitating gunboat.

It was time.

I jumped. The metal-enhanced bones of my legs were crushing the rock, when I landed. My overpowered muscles were getting the battle-drugs, I needed. I didn’t think anymore, just reacted.

The runner saw me and screamed in panic. My hands were claws. My spine was steel. My new head was a brutal mix between wolf and men. I heard the runner scream some more, but before I was able to rip him and his new friends in half, the military guys fired, but not the handguns.

The rocked thrower wasn’t a rocket thrower. A large net, made from silver and pain got me, pushed me backwards. Electricity tried to melt my fur, my skin, ripped my flesh open. My heart overclocked, pushed drugs in my body. My claws ripped at the net. Opened it. Another explosion, another net.

Behind the pain and the flashes, the small guy left the gunboat and came towards me. He stepped in front of me and while I tried to get him, he smiled some more.

When they got my body into the gunboat, they shot the runner. His blood splattered on my fur, but I wasn’t able to smell it. My mind was the only thing, which was alive, when they took me away to some clinic in Alaska. But that’s another story – or not.

Saturday, ‎2. ‎July ‎2022, ‏‎10:24:13