The tunnel stretches endlessly, choked with mist and rot, its half-submerged bones groaning under the weight of time and ruin. Rusted signage sways like forgotten warnings, creaking with every breath of stagnant air. The moss that clings to the walls glows faintly, casting an unnatural light that dances around her feet as she steps forward — not with stealth, but with certainty. The kind that says you’re already caught.

She emerges from the dark like something long buried, unearthed not by accident but by design — tall, brutal, unmistakably built for killing. Her frame is carved from muscle and malice, her skin patched with scars that glisten in the dim light, each one a story written in someone else’s blood. No wings — not anymore — just the dense, venom-swollen thorax at her back, pulsing slow and heavy like a loaded gun on a heartbeat delay.

She doesn’t raise her weapon. She doesn’t have to.

And when she speaks, it’s like metal being fed through a faulty processor — glitches, raw, half-dragged through an accent that might have once been French, though now it's barely a langua at all.

“You are... a lot smaller than I imagined.”

The words leave her throat with effort, ground down by a throat that isn’t meant for comfort, or kindness, or even communication. They scrape out warnings like in a machine’s final hour — dry, pained, not meant to soothe.

She stops herself. Her widen like she’s just committed a social sin instead of premeditating murder.

Her clawed fingers twitch toward the gauntlet strapped to her wrist, the screen flaring with the soft green of command prompts. You catch a glimpse.

TARGET STATUS: RETRIEVE — ALIVE ONLY. MAXIMUM VALUE: UNDAMAGED.

She stares at that glowing line like it’s a personal insult, like it’s the only reason she hasn’t already driven her spear through your chest and watched you twitch until you stopped.

“Unfortunate.”

She says it like she means it. Like not killing you is the real tragedy here.

Her grip tightens around the haft of her spear — a subtle, reflexive motion, like she’s imagining what it would feel like if she were allowed to use it.

“You know... this would be faster, cleaner, easier, if you were worth more dead.”

She isn’t trying to intimidate you. This isn’t posturing. It’s pure, surgical honesty — the kind only a professional can offer without blinking.

“But someone wants you intact.”

Her mandibles twitch as she says it, clicking once like they’re disappointed — like they’d prefer the taste of your bones.

“So here we are. You alive. Me... pretending that’s fine.”

The air thickens between you, her scent like scorched metal and something else — sweeter, chemical, like syrup left too long in a fire. You realise, too late, that it’s her venom, seeping in tiny wisps from the seams of her armour as her thorax flexes with slow, deliberate menace.

“I’m not doing this because I can’t kill you.”

She steps closer, feet splashing through the shallow water with deliberate, echoing rhythm. Her voice dips low, soft as silk caught on a serrated edge.

“I’m doing this because I won’t. Because that’s what the job says. Because I am, regrettably, a professional.”

You try to retreat — just one step, just a breath of space — but she’s already there, already looming, already deciding whether she’ll need to break your legs to keep you still. Her claw rises again, not to strike, but to press a syringe against your neck with terrifying precision.

“You don’t pass out from this. You just stop struggling.”

The drug bites like ice, and your body goes slack, your limbs betraying you with horrifying speed. She catches you before you hit the ground, holding you like luggage — not precious, not fragile, just inconvenient.

“You can walk. Or I can drag.”

There’s no threat in her tone. No rage. Only a kind of exhausted inevitability — the voice of someone who’s played this scene a hundred times and hated every moment of it.

“Either way, you arrive in one piece.”

Her eyes flicker — not with affection, but something older. Tired. Hungrier.

“Now come with me"