The blade glints in the light that breaks through the shutters.
Dust motes lazily dance in the illumination, like galaxies spiralling away from The Big Bang, sending her mind to thoughts of fractal patterns, never-ending repetitions of mathematical formulae that are mesmerising in their complexity and beauty.
She can see everything now, the enhanced vision they gave her at sixteen just one of the many upgrades that apparently make her better, faster, stronger. She’s supposed to be more than human but, somehow, feels lesser, as if this isn’t meant to be.
Idly, she flips the knife again, catching it at its point, balancing it on her fingertip before launching it into mid-air, her eyes closed. The cerebral upgrades calculate the weapon’s path, and she delicately plucks it from its arc once more.
They should be here by now.
The street outside is quiet, unusual on this godforsaken hellhole of a planet. The spaceports are closed, all comms, on and off planet are silenced, anything that might generate an EM signal or show signs of intelligent life, stopped.
No-one wants a repeat of Kepler 425B. The same alien fleet sniffing around this quadrant had swept through that system leaving devastation in its wake. The vidnews tried to position it as a minor military defeat, but everyone knows the truth – it was a rout. Scouting ships sent to search for survivors returned with both crews and AIs irretrievably insane.
So, she’s having to sit on this backwater dumpster fire, this shithole of a world, until curfew is lifted… and when people have their tech shut down, they find other ways to entertain themselves.
They drink, or fight, or fuck, or take illegal stim-drugs until the tedium abates and, when the hangover wears off, they do it all again. Sometimes, they persecute those who are different.
One of the more persuasive of the planetary leaders has convinced a small mob to go after the enhanced, claiming that they aren’t pure humans and should therefore be eradicated. She’s seen them tear an innocent child limb-from-limb yesterday on nothing more than a rumour.
And now they’re hunting her.
What they don’t know, of course, is that whilst some of her kind are only intellectually enhanced, and therefore considered a substantive and existential threat, she’s had both the mental and physical upgrades…
Ah, they’ve located her. Catcalling, screaming, rushing towards the building where she waits. They storm the stairs, bearing clubs and guns, smash into the room where she’s sat, almost entirely motionless, apart from the somersaulting dagger. They spread from the door like a wave bursting a dam, an overwhelming mob of dead-eyed, drugged-up, killers.
When they’re six feet away, finally, she moves.
Dancing like a ballerina, a pirouette here, a plié there, the sharp edge singing as it sweeps through bone, cartilage, and flesh.
Two minutes later, she is at rest, her easy breaths punctuated by the sound of drippjng blood; game over.
The blade glints in the light that breaks through the shutters.
