EPISODE 1 (part 1)
EPISODE 7 (part 1)
EPISODE 7 (part 2)
I woke up after 1 PM. Latest I have woken up in a long time, but I needed rest. It was good to wake up unforcefully for a change and I felt better as soon as I realized it. But it was all shattered when I remembered that I had to meet with the resistance leader in seven hours. It might not have been the worst thing ever, and I even thought that it could be fun… if everything goes to plan. If only a single little thing goes wrong, it could lead to a civil war in the Equilibrium. And this wouldn’t only stop in UG-Crimson, the chaos would spread through all the facilities and humanity would be doomed. There would be no one left to protect it. Yeah, you can kill cryptids with explosives but most of them will ambush troops instead of just running into battle like a horde. And bullets wouldn’t really work because of all that special metal thing. I mean, they would probably damage the cryptid’s skin but not much more than just that.
Anyway, back to my day. I relaxed and tried to enjoy what could possibly be one of my last few hours alive. I don’t do that before going on hunts since I got used to them, but cooperation with the leader’s enemy… no, that was a different thing. The enemy also wasn’t so harmless or innocent. One of Allan’s guards was found dead not so long before then. He had the symbol of the resistance carved into his chest. A shield in front of the sword. It meant that we were created to protect before anything else. That was something I could agree with.
I decided to walk around the facility for a little bit and see what was going on with some other hunters. Most of the people I’ve talked to weren’t really my friends. Only people I knew from seeing them around the facility or remembering them from our education. I decided to walk through the park a bit. While passing next to a café on the edge of the park, I noticed someone sitting at one of the tables. It was Claire, the girl who I saved from the CR-Bigfoot… and brought her here. She has forgiven me by that point and we actually had some nice conversations here and there. She was sitting alone by a table next to a small stream.
“Mind if I join you?” I asked her putting my hand on the chair opposite her.
“Damien,” she smiled. “Please, sit. Where have you been?”
“You know,” I chuckled while sitting down. “I mean we only go hunting, right?”
“How did it go?”
“Pretty badly,” I replied before lifting my arm to call the bartender. “No real injuries. I just didn’t sleep for two days.”
When the bartender walked up to the table, I ordered some coffee and turned back toward Claire.
“CR-Basilisk,” I explained. “It was also a… great cryptid. Alex told me that that’s what people call the transformed cryptids.”
“Us younger folk do,” she smiled. “Older hunters like to call them higher cryptids. If you ask me, there’s no difference and both kinda sound a bit stupid.”
“I find them stupid too, but now that I think of it, I don’t know what else you could call them.”
“Powered up cryptids. It’s literally what they are.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” I said. “When did you return?”
“Two days ago. From a CR-Mosquito hunt. He was around a hundred years old so pretty young for them. He used his looks to attract young women and drink them dry. I found where he put what was left of them. It was absolutely disgusting.”
“I can only imagine,” I replied.
“I’m sure that you’ve seen worse,” she told me. “You’ve been on more hunts and hunted more dangerous cryptids after all.
“Depends on who you ask but I can’t deny that I’ve seen some terrible stuff.”
“We all did,” she replied. “Have you heard about Carla?” Claire asked me. “She got here a bit over 6 years ago. She was only 17 at the time and she only got qualified to become a hunter a few months ago.”
“What about her?” I asked.
“She probably had the worst interaction with a cryptid. It was a CR-Stormbringer.”
A CR-Stormbringer isn’t a cryptid that I mentioned before. It’s very similar to CR-Skinwalker and CR-Mime. Its appearance is more animalistic and monstrous than the other two. It has more animalistic and otherworldly behaviors and features, but its abilities are essentially the same. It can skin other creatures and use their skin as a disguise and stuff like that. Instead of being bipedal and walking with its spine pointed straight upwards like the other two, its torso is bent forward and it walks on all fours. It can straighten its back, but it uses that rarely since it doesn’t need it.
Its mouth is in a shape of a smile making it look even more unnatural to us humans. They are also much bigger and filled with much sharper and larger teeth. On the other hand, their teeth are much thinner since they swallow their prey whole. They use their teeth to prevent their victims from escaping. They are also much more aggressive and much less shy than CR-Mimes and CR-Skinwalkers. Unlike those two, this one will charge into a group of people.
“Her school was ordered to go on lockdown since there were reports of a tornado,” Claire told me. “They had a bunker in the school. Don’t ask me why. All I know is that they did. Anyway, the thing killed and disguised itself as one of the kids and after three days slaughtered everyone except three students and our hunter who was unable to stop the carnage. In the end, he did kill the cryptid, but it was at the cost of the lives of too many kids and school staff. He told me that the sight was so terrible he could barely keep himself from showing fear in front of the kids. It was a sea of bodies torn apart and the entire walls and ceiling were covered in blood.”
I didn’t have a reply to that. I lifted my coffee cup to my mouth, took a sip, and looked at the small stream behind Claire.
“What was the first thing ever saw?” Claire asked me.
I looked into her eyes.
“The day I met… saw CR-Phantom. It wasn’t the death of my best friend or my second-best friend. It was a death of a girl that I hated. She hated me as well but we had a deal that we’ll endure each other’s presence for the sake of our friend group. She was one of the people I hated the most at that time and I even wished for her death a few times.”
“That’s terrible,” Claire interrupted me.
“Oh, she wished the same for me, but she told me that. I didn’t tell her mine. But when I saw her die that night, it was so frightening and… disturbing. I wouldn’t wish a death like that upon anyone, no matter how bad of a person they were, no matter how much I hate them. No one deserves to die like that.”
“How did she die?” she asked me.
“She was lying on the floor in front of the CR-Phantom. It opened its mouth as much as it could and from the darkest depths of its maws exited 3 organic hose-like tubes. They looked like intestines and they started to slowly spin. As they did, blood started to leave the girl’s body. But it was not through a wound. She had no wounds. At first, it was from her mouth, nose, and ears, but soon it started to leave through her eyes and her skin. She started screaming so hard I still have that scream embedded in my mind. I can still hear it every single night before I go to sleep and it is the worst sound I have ever heard.”
I noticed a tear forming in Claire’s eye.
“She started shaking her head left and right trying to free herself from whatever was holding her down. While doing that, she saw me standing further away and looking at her. She managed to lift her arm towards me and scream help before her eye popped and her body started to shrivel as she was losing most of her blood. Soon after, she didn’t have enough strength to hold her arm or scream so her arm fell back to the floor and I noticed as her breathing started to be slower and slower. The blood was leaving her body in small drops making it look like it turned into a red gas. The strong smell of iron suddenly hit me and was so terrible. After a few seconds, the girl was lying on the floor, dead. The only thing left was her skeleton and her skin hanging from it. All the tissue and organs that were in between them were gone.”
She didn’t say anything. Instead, she took a sip of her coffee and looked down at the table concerned. She apologized for reminding me of that, but I told her that it was no problem. Over time I used to deal with terrible stuff like that. We talked for some time and even took a walk around the park, but I had to return to my apartment and get ready for my meeting with Liberta. It was more like a psychological thing than a physical one. When I got back to my apartment, I went into the bathroom and washed my face with water. I looked at myself in the mirror.
“What are you getting yourself into?” I asked the mirror version of myself. “This is becoming insanity. You should leave this hell as soon as possible.”
At about 6:40 PM, I was finished preparing, I picked up a bag that had the journal in it and hid my hunting knife under my shirt. I honestly don’t know how I managed to do it since it was a large knife. Don’t blame me for taking it, I don’t know the people I was about to meet. Also, I’m one of the most successful hunters and am a bit more well-known than some other people. This means that these people think that Allan likes me. It was a tricky situation in a tricky place at a tricky time.
When I left the apartment, I checked if anyone thought that I was suspicious. The guards were a huge problem. They sometimes asked people to search for them. They didn’t have the right to do so, but they were Allan’s guards. So, if you didn’t allow them to search you, they’d tell Allan and he’d make sure that you’d suffer for that. He’d see that as a sign of you trying to hide something from him and he never liked someone hiding stuff from him. Fortunately, no guards tried stopping me but I saw them giving me suspicious and hateful looks. They acted like that towards everyone.
The meeting was supposed to take place in a larger room that isn’t used often. It was a mixture of a few different types of rooms. It was like a merge of a hallway, janitor closet, some sort of a steam room (if you can call it that), and a storage room. It was in a part of the facility rarely visited by anyone so it was easier to go unnoticed.
When I got to the door, I stopped, took in a deep breath, and knocked on the door with a secret code we decided to use. After I finished with the code, I heard some commotion on the inside. The door opened a few seconds later. A head with a mask peaked out of the small gap between the door and the wall. It was a white mask with small gaps for eyes and red paint just below the gaps.
“Damien?” a male voice came from behind the mask.
“Who else would it be?” I replied.
He opened the door fully.
“Get in,” he said nodding towards the room.
He was a huge man. He was at least 6’7 and had huge arms and a belly. I barely managed to pass through the doorframe. He took almost the entire space.
“I can beat him if it comes to that,” I reassured myself in my mind.
I believed I could. Even though he was 4 inches taller and much heavier, I was and still am pretty strong for my size. I noticed him leaning back to check whether anyone saw me come in. He silently closed the door behind him and covered us in darkness.
“What is this?” I asked.
Exactly when I finished my question, a light turned on behind me illuminating the big man. He had his arms crossed and noticed the huge beard protruding from behind the mask. I chuckled and turned around.
“You know how suspicious this looks?” I asked rhetorically.
There was a large but thin curtain standing a few feet in front of me. The light source was behind it. But someone was sitting on a chair in between the light source and the curtain. They, or more precisely, she was turned to the side and I could see her profile. She seemed like a very attractive individual. There was also someone standing a few feet away from her. That person was barely illuminated so I could only see the shape.
“Don’t ask unneeded questions,” a higher and younger female voice came from my right.
When I looked in its direction, I saw a much smaller person sitting on a table with her hands strongly gripping the edge of the table. She was wearing a similar mask to the man behind me. It was a bit wider and had horn-like shapes on the upper parts of its sides. Instead of red below the gaps, there was blue and it went all around the gaps. She pushed herself off of the table and dropped to the ground.
“Don’t ask questions at all,” she ordered me. “You will be the one answering us.”
She must have been around 5’2 making me think that she’s still a kid.
“What are you? 13?” I asked.
“You’ll listen to me,” she told me. “Or something bad will happen.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“I…”
She was about to say something when the hidden figure started speaking.
“I’m sorry for the behavior of my soldier. She can sometimes be a bit… much,” he said.
She was clearly unhappy with that comment. She turned towards the figure, sighed, and took a step towards the table she was sitting on previously. It was then that I noticed another person sitting at the table there. She was wearing a similar mask as well. Instead of coloring below or around the gaps, there was green coloring above them. Her mask had horns as well, but they were at the bottom of the mask making it look more like tusks pointing forward.
“We came here to discuss the information you possess,” the hidden man said. “These three are here just for drastic measures.”
“Oh,” I smirked. “You find me dangerous.”
I noticed that the two soldiers that were sitting at the table quickly turned their heads towards the hidden man. I assumed that the man behind me did the same but I decided not to check.
“I would be an idiot if I didn’t,” the hidden figure replied. “To be quite honest, I don’t think that these three are enough but we didn’t intend to fight you. We had this meeting to talk, or more precisely listen.”
“Thank you,” I replied. “So… what are we starting with?”
“Tell us about the journal,” the hidden figure said. “Where did you find it? Who else knows about it?”
“I found it in your friend Donovan Wayne’s house. He was killed by Darwin. A hunter who accompanied me since we were sent to hunt down something big that was terrorizing a smaller town. The creature wasn’t identified at first, but we figured out that it was a CR-Bloodbat. What we didn’t expect is to find a 60-year-old man training it.”
“We didn’t know about that,” the taller woman said.
“I know,” I replied. “And I’m sorry about Donovan. Darwin can sometimes be unpredictable and would do almost anything that Allan tells him to do. He has his reasons.”
“Excuses,” the shorter woman said. “Why are you defending Allan. I bet that he sent you to kill us,” she said putting a hand on a handle that was just next to her hip.
“That’s not true,” I calmly replied. “I’m defending someone who’s been manipulated by Allan. There’s a big difference.”
“Excuses, again,” the shorter girl replied.
I suddenly felt something touch the back of my head and as soon as it did, I knew what it was. It was a gun. I assumed that it had a silencer since a gunshot would be heard from far away.
“We won’t fall for his tricks,” the man behind me said.
“What are you doing?” the hidden figure asked. “Put the gun down.”
“No,” the shorter woman said pulling out a katana. “We are doing this to protect our leader.”
“Listen to him,” I told her. “Don’t do this. You’ll regret it.”
She looked me right into my eyes.
“You see my katana? See what it’s made of?” she asked pointing out the dark color of the metal. “It was made for killing monsters,” she said pointing it towards me.
“Your mistake,” I told her.
“Shut the fu…” the man behind me stopped when I interrupted him.
I jumped to the side and grabbed his arm with my left hand. I pulled it towards me and only then he reacted by pressing the trigger. The bullet hit the wall next to me and it turned out that I was right. The gun had a silencer. I grabbed the man’s arm with my right hand as well and hit the wall with his hand. I broke two of his fingers and he dropped the gun. He let out a quiet scream so that no one would notice that we are there. Instead of letting go of his arm, I twisted it behind his back and pushed it upwards. I broke his arm and he fell onto the floor rolling and holding his arm.
I looked up and saw the shorter girl standing in front of me. She was holding her katana ready to fight, but I could see fear in her eyes. She swiped at me, but I dodged. She tried swiping at me once more, but I stopped her by grabbing her arm and stopping it. She let go of the katana with the arm that I caught and swiped at me with her other arm. I dodged and grabbed the other arm as well. Her arms were crossed. I lifted my head and headbutted her. It might seem like a stupid idea since she was wearing a mask, but it worked. The mask cracked on impact and I heard a crunching sound of her nose breaking. She let out a yelp and the katana fell from her hand. I let go of her arms and she fell onto the floor, took off her mask, and covered her bleeding nose.
After I won, I immediately turned toward the hidden figure.
“I’m sorry about this, sir,” the hidden figure said shakily. “We weren’t expecting this to happen.”
“You gonna attack me as well?” I calmly asked the taller woman.
She shook her head left and right.
“I didn’t know that they were going to do that,” she replied.
I gave her a friendly smile.
“I must apologize for this,” Liberta said.
I noticed that the man and the short woman stopped turning on the floor and whining. They were looking at Liberta. She had a deep voice for a woman with a slight Scottish accent. Her head was turned towards me.
“We are kind of on edge because of the guards. That does not negate what my followers have done, but it gives you the reason,” she continued. “I…”
I cut her off before she said anything.
“Look, I don’t give a crap about this,” I said. “I just want to be over with this.”
There was no reply for a few seconds. I felt every one’s eyes were pointed at me. One of the tips Alex gave me was not to cut her off.
“I agree,” she replied. “Please, speak.”
I took out the journal and lifted it into the air showing it to everyone.
“This is the journal,” I said giving the journal to the taller woman.
The woman walked up to the hidden figure and gave him the journal before returning to her previous position. He checked the notebook and then walked up to Liberta and gave it to her. She opened it and checked a few pages.
“You can keep it,” I told them. “Neither I nor Alex have a need for it anymore. There’s a ton of information about CR-Bloodbats and about your movement. He didn’t fully agree with some of your ideas but he preferred you over Allan. There’s also some stuff about his life so you might find that interesting.”
“And what about the translation?” Liberta asked me.
“Straight to the point,” I chuckled. “I like it.”
I took out a piece of paper from my pocket and handed it to the taller woman. Once more, she gave it to the hidden figure who then passed it to Liberta.
“It’s not much. Only something about Allan that we already know,” I told them. “Alex also mentioned that you believed that this was meant to be seen by someone who knows vampiric. I thought that it was supposed to be sent to someone who can decipher it.”
“Alex mentioned you classified information?” the hidden figure asked.
“He knows he can trust me,” I replied. “I didn’t give him up to Allan after all.”
“What do you think about this text in vampiric?” Liberta asked me.
“It says what we already knew, but it seems to be hinting at something specific. It sounds like it wasn’t finished too,” I said. “Donovan wanted someone to know something.”
“Anything else?” she asked.
I stopped to think for a second. I remembered Darwin pointing his crossbow towards Donovan and shooting the bolt before the fight even started. Allan must have found out about Donovan before sending us on the mission. He must have ordered Darwin to kill Donovan.
“No. That would be all,” I said.
“You can go now,” Liberta replied.
When I turned around, I saw the big guy standing there. He immediately moved out of my way. I walked up to the door and grabbed the doorknob.
“We could use someone like you, Damien,” Liberta said.
A smile appeared on my face.
“I know,” I replied and left the room.
I stayed at the facility for about a week when I was sent on a hunt. In fact, my team was sent alongside two other teams. I’ve never heard of the people from the two other teams, but it was nice to work with my entire team for a change. The cryptid we were sent to hunt down was a CR-Skunk ape. It’s an insanely dangerous cryptid. Equilibrium isn’t really sure how we are supposed to kill them since no one has ever managed to do it. Their skin is too thick to be pierced by our weapons. They tried poisoning them and that kind of stuff but it never worked. These things seem to be unkillable. We have found dead ones, but all of them died of old age or wounds that were dealt with by another CR-Skunk ape. The only way Equilibrium manages to deal with them is to sedate them, bring them to the facility, and put them in a room where they’d choke to death with gas.
Judging by the name, you’d assume that it resembles an ape or a CR-Bigfoot, but you’d be wrong. This name was given to this cryptid because it lives in a swamp, stinks like hell, and is able to make this insanely loud and blood-curdling roar that forces fear into the bones of every living thing that hears it. However, it does not look like a CR-Bigfoot at all. Instead, it’s like a huge reptilian creature with some mammalian features. Its head resembles that of a monitor lizard. However, its jaws are filled with large and insanely sharp teeth and have a huge bite force. They have longer necks. Not like that of a giraffe, but still much longer compared to ours. Its arms were muscular and long with huge claws that they use to overpower their prey even though the strength they have is high above anything else that lives in their territory. Their torso is somewhat human-like. Its shoulders and chest are larger and broader than its hips. Their hind legs are shorter but just as strong as their front legs. They end in large claws as well, but they aren’t as large as those on their arms/front legs.
Their bodies end in a long, muscular, and thin tail that’s insanely powerful. Only one swipe of it can take off your arm. If it hit your head with full force, there’s a possibility that it could just shatter it with ease. Apart from the physical superiority to… well… everything, they are also insanely smart. It’s considered to be smarter than any animal, but still not as smart as humans. Only living things smarter than CR-Skunk apes are humans and other cryptids that are just as smart as humans. They are for sure the most feared cryptids surpassing even CR-Wendigos. The reason for that is that the CR-Wendigo is much rarer and people have managed to kill them before. There’s a joke between hunters about which one would win in a fight between a CR-Wendigo and a CR-Skunk ape. Honestly, I’d like to see that battle, and personally, I’d have my money on CR-Skunk ape.
CR-Skunk ape is also the only known cryptid that seeks other cryptids and hunts them. That’s why they can also be found in any other environment like deserts, mountains, forests, and even very cold places. One was even caught in the Northern part of Canada. It was found eating a freshly killed CR-Yeti. The team managed to report it back to their handler. However, only seconds after that, all of them were slaughtered. Their handler also mentioned hearing screams while one of the team members explained the situation. Three other teams were sent to sedate the CR-Skunk ape. Out of 12 people that were sent, three of them survived.
CR-Skunk apes are also quite big creatures. They can grow up to be at the height of 7 feet. Usually, they stand at about 6 to 6’6 in shoulders. Their neck is about a foot long so if they spread it out and point it upwards, they can appear even taller. They mostly walk on all fours but can stand up on their hind legs just like monitor lizards. They are also quite fast for their size and can compete even with deer.
There were reports of a bear torn to pieces in a forest in the mid-west of the USA. It was blamed on a poacher, but a day later, seven people were killed in a similar way in a town that was positioned about 12 miles away from where the bear corpse was found. Their insides were outside and their blood covered the walls of their houses or the street they were walking in depending on where they were killed. After that incident, it was decided that it was a doing of a large bear with rabies even though no one had proof of that. I guess that it was the only option they could believe in.
What helped in that decision is the fact that none of the victims were eaten. Just butchered and left to rot. This behavior was previously seen in CR-Skunk apes. In fact, it’s very common because of their aggressiveness. Fortunately, the thing was going in the same direction overall. It seemed like something was trying to escape it and the CR-Skunk ape just couldn’t let it go. They have a phenomenal sense of smell and could smell their prey from hundreds of miles away. And if you left a track, they could follow it all the way from the East to the West of the USA without a problem. The things are literal terminators.
Experts at the facility tried finding out what it was hunting and managed to find out that some people from the massacred town were claiming to have seen a werewolf only two days before they were slaughtered. The CR-Werewolves also had a great sense of smell which allowed the individual to notice the CR-Skunk ape. Using that piece of information, the experts searched for other cases of werewolf sightings in the towns that they could come across. They found one where someone claimed that a huge wolf slept in their backyard. They saw it when they woke up and tried calling the police but by the time they arrived, the beast was gone.
Using that information, one town was suspected to be the CR-Werewolf’s next destination. That was where my team and two others were sent to deal with the situation. We were told to capture the CR-Werewolf. It didn’t matter whether it stayed dead or alive, we just needed to be close to the source of the smell. We were given meat with some sedatives to use as bait. We thought that we could maybe use the CR-Werewolf as a weapon against the CR-Skunk ape. We knew that it wouldn’t be able to do anything against the monstrosity that is the CR-Skunk ape, but it would be one hell of a good distraction.
The three of the teams that were sent, of which one is mine, were dropped off in an abandoned town which was on the CR-Werewolf’s path. We decided that we were going to capture it and set up three traps. One in the town, and two of them outside it. There was evidence that the CR-Werewolf stopped only for food and to… relieve itself from already digested food. This made it much easier for us to make traps. We used meat as bait and hoped that the cryptid is hungry.
The traps were set up in such a way that if the CR-Werewolf stepped on it, it would trigger and trap it in a strong thick net that it couldn’t bite through. One team set up the trap in the middle of the town while the other put it in the North-East of the town. My team set it up in the South-West. It was kind of an elongated town so the positions where we put the traps up looked like a continuation of the town. It took us about 5 minutes of walking from the middle of the town to the place where we put up the trap. The other team was about 10 minutes away so it wouldn’t take us too long to get to the place where the CR-Werewolf was captured.
“This whole situation seems very weird,” Jaime said while we were waiting for the CR-Werewolf.
“How so?” Lilith asked while still looking at the trap.
“Where is that CR-Werewolf going?” Jaime said. “I mean, it’s not weird that it’s trying to run away, but that it’s going on almost a straight path. There must be something more to this.”
“That does sound weird,” Alex looked at Jaime.
That was the first time I saw them agree on something.
“You have any ideas why?” Lilith asked.
“Not a clue,” Jaime replied. “But it has to be drawn to something, right? What do you think, Damien?”
I didn’t reply immediately. I was looking at the trap but was distracted by thinking about the creature I met on the CR-Basilisk hunt. I just thought how Allan was slowly getting closer and closer to ending the world without even knowing it.
“Damien?” Lilith called my name.
Only then I snapped out of my thoughts and replied.
“What?” I asked.
“Are you okay?” she replied.
“Yeah. Can you just repeat the question?”
“What do you think about the situation? Why is the CR-Werewolf going in a straight line?” Jaime said. “What is it trying to get to?”
I turned my head back towards the trap.
“I have no idea,” I replied. “I know nothing about anything anymore. Things are starting to get weird and unexplainable. People are becoming more complicated, agitated, and dangerous. It’s like something big is coming up and no one else but me realizes it.”
I couldn’t tell them about Allan’s portal device. I couldn’t tell them about the CR-Phantom’s leader nor about the wyvern thing called Akl’adak. After all, I could have been the only one who knew that the end was coming soon, but I just didn’t have the strength to tell anyone. It was inevitable that Allan would open a portal to a world ruled by the Thorog’nar’s master and unknowingly allow the creature to conquer our world.
And even if that doesn’t become our terrible reality, Equilibrium is on a brink of a ‘civil war’. The resistance is becoming more and more aggressive, Allan is coming up with more and more restrictions every day. If the ‘civil war’ occurs, most of us will die and there will be no one left to hunt cryptids. Their population will grow and they’ll start attacking people and there would a possibility that the human race will be wiped out.
In both cases, the world ends. In both cases, the human race seizes to exist. And there seems to be only one possible solution. Death of Allan. Allan is the main cause of both ends. However, there will be those who will want to continue in his steps, and killing Allan would probably lead to the ‘civil war’ again. Whatever happens, the world was going to end and I was the only one who knew about it.
“Huh,” Alex replied. “Sure, man.”
I felt Lilith’s gaze on me and turned my eyes towards her while still keeping my head turned towards the trap. Her beautiful blue eyes stared back at me filled with sadness, pity, and hopelessness. She understood the tone of my voice. After all, we knew each other our whole lives. The sun shined through the leaves and lit up her ginger hair and her cheeks. I gave her a little smile to show her that despite everything that was going on, I still love her and care for her. She returned the smile and it lightened the moment.
“Then maybe it isn’t,” Jaime said. “If the world’s about to end, don’t you think that more people would know about it?”
“I guess,” I replied. “Even if it’s not, the tension is getting higher and higher at Equilibrium. People are becoming desperate and violent,” as I said that, I took a look at Alex. He was looking back at me and judging by the expression on his face, he knew what I was referring to. “Maybe the fight won’t start tomorrow, but it will soon. The question is whose side are we supposed to join.”
“We’ll know at the moment,” Lilith replied in a soft voice. “We’ll join whichever side is right,” she said looking straight at me.
Even though she was telling this to all of us, it was clearly meant only for me and her. The two of us would join the right side. Alex had already chosen his side. He was part of the resistance, after all. Jaime was a bit different. She usually stood up for Allan and was almost always on his side. However, there is a difference between his less impactful choices and him killing everyone who disagrees with him. The resistance wasn’t any better. They are just as ready to kill as Allan and that’s the exact reason why I didn’t choose to stand on anyone’s side. Both of those are radical extremist groups that won’t accept anything that isn’t exactly how they want it to be.
On the other hand, Lilith and I only wanted to leave all of this behind and live a normal life. I knew that I’d miss the thrill of the hunts and the traveling, but it’d be a small price to pay. The facility is filled with terrible people with an occasional person I could call a friend. It’s just an enormous amount of pressure I just want to lift off of my back. I dream of living just normal life with Lilith, having a family, watching my children and grandchildren grow up and die of old age, and not because I accidentally slipped while fighting a cryptid.
Suddenly, the sound of someone speaking over the walkie-talkie broke the silence.
“This is Team 1, do not answer,” a male voice whispered over the walkie-talkie. “I repeat, this is Team 1, do not answer. We have our eyes on the CR-Werewolf. It’s closely slowing in on the trap. Again, do not answer. This will probably alert the cryptid of our presence.”
All of us looked at each other.
“It’s covered in wounds,” the whispering voice said. “Four claw marks that came from a single hand on one of its shoulders. They are quite deep but they seem to have been mostly regenerated. Its entire arm is covered in clotted blood,” the voice ended in a pause. “It started to eat the meat. We’ll trigger the trap when it consumed enough meat to pass out. You can start disarming the traps.”
Team 1 was the team positioned in the middle of the town. My team was named team 3. Team 2 was on the other side of the town so we were kind of lucky. We stepped out of our covers and walked up to the trap. We disarmed it before we started to dismantle it. After a few minutes, the voice came from the walkie-talkie once more. However, this time it wasn’t whispering.
“We captured it,” the hunter said. “It’s barely trying to get out of the trap. The wounded arm is very weak. It can barely move it.”
“Anything else?” a woman from team 2 asked.
“Nothing special,” team 1 replied. “Just return as soon as possible. No need to rush but you should be here soon. Team 3, you hear me?”
“Affirmative,” I said over the walkie-talkie.
“Good. See you soon.”
It took us another 10 minutes to dismantle the trap and pack it in a way that would be possible for us to carry it around. I took the biggest and the heaviest bag since I was the strongest on our team. We started walking back towards the middle of the town to meet with the rest of the hunters. We expected that the CR-Werewolf would still be awake when we returned since the sedatives in the meat weren’t strong enough to put the cryptid to sleep immediately.
When we got back, team 1 was hiding in a building near the trap. It had 5 floors not counting the ground floor. There were 4 windows on each floor. They were pointed towards the trap and each of them was occupied by one of team 1’s members.
“Hey,” Jaime shouted to get their attention. “Where do we leave our trap equipment?”
One of team 1’s members peaked through the window to take a look at us. He wore a black hood over his head so I didn’t really see his face.
“Climb to the third floor. There should be enough space for it. Each of you should take one window and have someone looking at the trap the entire time. You can switch the duty or one of you could do it the entire time. It doesn’t matter how you do it, but you have to have at least one pair of eyes on the trap at all times,” the man shouted from leaning through the window.
Jaime, who was closest to the building, showed him a thumbs up and started walking towards the entrance of the building. The rest of us followed her. When we got to the first floor, I took a look through one of the doors. There was a small hallway with doors on the left side. It ended with a window. On the floor in front of the window sat a man holding his tranquilizer rifle. He leaned its barrel on his shoulder and put the rifle between his legs. He was looking at us and held his arms on his shoulders. His hand rose but his arm stayed on his shoulders. He was giving me a little wave. I replied with an upwards nod and continued up the stairs.
When we got to the third floor, Lilith and I went into one of the flats while Jaime and Alex went to the other one. Each of the floors had two flats with windows pointed towards the area where team 1 put the trap. I took a little look at it while we were entering the building, but I was quickly distracted by the conversation between Jaime and the man who gave the orders. I took a look through the window. The net hung from a street light. The huge black-furred monstrosity inside the net moved only a little bit. It growled and tried barking but was unsuccessful. It couldn’t do much but wait for its death.
‘I wish I could be like you’ I thought to myself. It hung there, helpless waiting for its fate. Waiting to die. It was destined to die and it didn’t know it. Maybe we were similar after all. Maybe I was destined to experience a terrible faith, but I just didn’t know about it.
“Are you okay?” Lilith asked me.
“Yes,” I lied. “How about you?” I asked. “You look tired.”
“I am,” she replied. “I don’t know what to do anymore. You’re not the only one struggling with changes…” she put her hand on my cheek and softly pulled my head.
I looked right into her eyes.
“I don’t understand my purpose anymore… I don’t understand anyone’s purpose. It’s like… like everyone and everything lost its meaning. Like it doesn’t matter who lives, who dies or who does what, or who is who. Nothing matters anymore,” she said as tears started to form in her eyes.
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“Well, this cryptid hunting. Why are we doing it? Why don’t we just run away, and start a new life? Be happy?”
“We need to protect people,” I answered.
“What people? People we’ve never met? People who we’ll never know or love? It’s cruel, I know, but is it really worth destroying our lives? Aren’t you tired of it?”
I was tired. Even if I wasn’t, we were forced into this life. We were forced to live like this. And the worst thing was that I forced other people to live like that. It was either due to my failure or stupidity and it was my fault that their life was ruined forever. Claire, Kyle, and Lauren. Even Diana who was previously tortured by my boss and who isn’t even human. I ruined so many lives… for nothing.
“I am tired. I want it all to end for a long time. But as I said earlier, it will all end soon. However, I know that it will end in the best possible way and we’ll be happy together. We’ll get ourselves a house near a lake, maybe start a family and all will be great.”
She hugged me and rested her head on my chest. I put my arms around her and kissed her on top of her head.
“You really think so?” she asked me softly and quietly.
“I do,” I lied to her once more.
It was better that way. I didn’t want her to suffer. We stood there for another minute.
“I love you,” she told me.
“I love you too,” I replied as a smile appeared on my face.