CHAPTER 3: THE APEX PREDATOR
1092 Words
Selene woke to silence.
For a moment it felt normal. White sheets. Charcoal duvet. City light bleeding through floor-to-ceiling glass.
Then her arms.
Spots spread under her skin like ink in water. Black rosettes over gold. Claws curved from her fingertips, sharp enough to split bone. She didn’t breathe. She just stared.
Was this a nightmare?
Memories slammed back. The raid. The shove. Her lip cracking against steel. The vial shattering in her pocket. Glass. Cold burning through denim into her thigh. Blue LNP liquid soaking into the cut on her finger.
" Could it b." She thought to herself. She’d told Dr. Vant, “It was broken. It’s gone.”
She staggered to the mirror.
The woman looking back wasn’t Selene. Eyes slitted, _ice-blue and pupil-less_ — predator gaze with nothing human left behind. Teeth too sharp. Spots climbing her throat.
“No,” she said. Then louder: “NO!”
The sound tore out of her. She could hear everything. Every insect vibration. Every heartbeat in the walls. Every car horn from twelve stories down. It was too much. Not a scream. A roar.
The mirror exploded. Glass rained down, slicing her bare feet. She didn’t feel it.
“Selene?”
She spun.
_Dr. Vant_ stood in the doorway. Tie loose. Sleeves rolled up. Surprise and horror flickered across his face. He took a step back. “Selene?” he asked, doubt cracking his voice like glass.
Waves of emotion crashed into her. Rage first — hot, animal, ancient. The thirst to rip, to tear, to silence everything that threatened. Including him. _DR. VANT._ The thought flashed, sharp as her claws, and it terrified her more than the spots.
She stumbled back. “What is happening to me? I’m scared,” she whispered.
But the city noise hit like a blade. Car horns. Distant sirens. People shouting below. To her new predator hearing, every sound was amplified 100x, layered, jagged. Her auditory cortex — rebuilt with leopard sensitivity — wasn’t filtering anymore. It was devouring. The noise was deafening. A weakness her animal self couldn’t survive. Predators hunt in quiet. Cities are chaos.
“Make it stop!” She pressed both hands to her ears, claws scraping skin. “Make it stop, make it stop—”
_Dr. Vant_ moved toward her, slow. “Selene, look at me. Breathe—”
Instinct fired before thought.
She lunged. Claws raked across his neck before her mind could catch up. Blood welled, bright against his collar.
She froze.
“I hurt you,” she whispered. “Oh god, Vant, I hurt you. I’m sorry.”
Horror drowned the rage. She backpedaled, hit the shattered balcony door, and went through it. Twelve stories. No hesitation.
“SELENE!”
Wind ripped past her. The city screamed below. Every car, every shout, every heartbeat — needles in her ears. She hit pavement and rolled, bones snapping then knitting, fur rippling over skin.
Run. Hide. Quiet.
Her legs pumped. She blurred through alleys, over cars, past people who screamed. Too fast to film. By dawn she was in the woods outside the city, and then she wasn’t Selene anymore. Just breath. Just dark. Then nothing.
---
*Vant’s version:*
The glass was still falling when she went through the balcony. Twelve stories. No hesitation.
“SELENE!”
He didn’t feel the blood running down his neck. He only felt panic. She was hurt, scared, drowning in city noise her new ears couldn’t filter. Predators need silence. She was thrown into chaos.
He ran. Penthouse to garage in under a minute, shirt pressed to the gash she’d cut in his throat. In the car he pulled up the micro-thermal tag he’d hidden in her coat “for lab safety.” The signal blinked weak, fast, then dropped near the northern woods.
He found her at first light. Human again. Small. Curled in damp leaves, dress torn, breath shallow. His “little thorn” broken.
Pain cut through his eyes. And something older — fear, guilt, and a quiet promise. He didn’t call an ambulance. He wrapped her in his coat, lifted her like she weighed nothing, and drove to the private hospital wing he owned.
In the sterile room he hooked her to monitors and checked her vitals. She looked okay. But Selene’s bloodwork on the monitor told a different story. Anomalous proteins. Accelerated cell growth. DNA markers that weren’t human.
Then he pulled out the shattered cryo-vial — the one he’d retrieved from her pocket after the lab chaos.
He pressed it to the scanner.
His hand stopped.
He stared at the screen, then at her sleeping face. The truth hit him cold: she hadn’t lost the DNA. She’d absorbed it through the cut on her finger when the vial shattered.
His phone buzzed. Encrypted. _Nolan Vire_: _“Coffee? 8 AM. My lab. We need to talk about last night.”_
Vant didn’t reply. He kept one hand on her wrist. The vow he made was silent: _I’m not losing you._
---
*Nolan’s version:*
At 7:30 AM Nolan stood in Virex Biotech’s top floor. The room was dark. Only a single desk lamp lit the space.
He tapped his tablet. Thermal footage played: 11:03:19 — _aerosolized biomaterial + blood exposure. Subject: Selene Thorne._
Across from him, the figure sat in shadow. No face visible. Only the soft _click_ of metal as he snapped a golden lighter open, then closed. Open. Close. Habit.
“The news,” Nolan said, voice eager. “Vant’s research worked. But not on a test subject. On his assistant. She transformed last night. Downtown. There’s footage.”
The lighter snapped once more. In the brief flare, all Nolan saw were lips. Curving upward, slow and wicked.
“I want her alive. Contact the others. The government can’t find out,” the distorted voice said from the black screen behind the desk. “Vant thinks he can play god.”
Nolan smiled. “Already tracking her signal.”
The lighter clicked shut. Darkness swallowed the lips.
---
At 7:42 AM, _NewsNet_ flashed red: _BREAKING: UNIDENTIFIED CREATURE SPOTTED IN DOWNTOWN. MULTIPLE WITNESSES. VANT CORP UNDER INVESTIGATION._
Only one man watching in a cabin full of old research paused the video and touched the screen where her eyes glowed blue.
“The apex. God help us all,” _Professor Rowan Kade_ whispered.
Professor Kade knew it was Dr. Vant’s research. But how it became this magnificent creature, he didn’t know.
“What have you done, son?” he said, staring at the image.
---
- Writer
