The night was thick with fog, every sound magnified in the dense forest. Somewhere in the shadows, two gunshots cracked, sharp and cold. The bullets tore into the night without finding their true target. One man, drunk with excitement, had shot blindly at rustling leaves, thinking he had cornered the girl. He didn’t realize he’d just killed one of his own comrades—another predator who had been hunting with him.
The shooter stepped forward, his boots sinking into the damp ground, crushing the body underfoot. He laughed, cruel and stupid, pressing down harder as if the corpse beneath was already a trophy.
“You were a rare piece indeed, little bird,” he whispered, thinking the lifeless body was hers.
But the weight beneath his boots didn’t feel right. He bent down to lift it, only to struggle. Frustrated, he switched on his laser light—and froze. The sight of his dead colleague staring blankly back at him sent a wave of rage through his veins. His laughter died, replaced with curses.
With a furious snarl, he fired a signal flare—a crimson snake of light—into the sky, the message clear: “One of ours is down.”
From another part of the forest, a second flare burst, signaling back: “Where is the girl?”
Panicked and humiliated, the man dropped the dead body, muttering, “She escaped…”
But before he could run, another shot rang out. The answer from his own director. His body dropped like a sack of meat, his last breath escaping in a gurgle.
---
Somewhere close… she was watching.
The girl, barely alive, crouched beneath a fallen log, gripping the blood-smeared gun she’d stolen from the man she had smashed with a rock. Her entire body trembled—half from fear, half from exhaustion. Her hands were shaking so hard the gun felt like it weighed a ton. Every inhale burned her ribs. Her skin was raw, torn in places, bruised black and purple. Her breath was shallow, broken by sobs she was trying to choke down.
Her face was stained with dried blood—hers and theirs. Her lips were cracked, her tongue swollen from thirst. She hadn’t eaten in days. Leviathan had made sure of that. They wanted her weak before they hunted her, to test how long a “specimen” could survive on pure fear.
---
Project Leviathan was hell made real.
Inside the facility, she’d been nothing but a number. They called her “Subject 27.”
They tested drugs on her—poisons that rotted the body from the inside. Injections that made her forget who she was, where she was, what had been done to her. They trained her like a dog, beat her like an animal, and when she screamed, they wrote it down like data.
They carved symbols into her back with blades, branding her as “property.” They starved her until her bones cut through her skin. They forced her to clean floors with her bleeding hands, only to drag her to the cages afterward. Cages where men waited to take turns on her, laughing while she cried. She had been raped so many times that her body no longer recognized pain as pain—it was just normal.
This was Leviathan’s “game.” They called it “testing resilience.” It was a sport for rich, powerful men who watched from behind cameras. Each hunt was entertainment.
---
Back in the forest…
Her tears dripped silently, mixing with the mud under her cheek. She kept repeating to herself:
“Don’t breathe too loud. Don’t move. Don’t die.”
The sound of snapping branches made her heart stop. Someone was close. Too close.
She gripped the gun tighter, but her hands were slick with sweat and blood. Her vision was blurry. Her mind still played tricks—the drugs hadn’t fully worn off. Sometimes she saw shadows that weren’t there. Sometimes she heard screams that belonged to her but felt distant, like echoes of another life.
The rustling grew louder.
A voice—deep, guttural, inhuman—cut through the dark.
“Found you, little bird…”
She froze, her breath caught in her throat. Her heart thudded so loudly she thought they’d hear it.
Then footsteps. Crunching leaves. The beam of a flashlight slicing through the fog.
Her body wanted to give up. To just stop. But another voice, buried deep inside her, screamed louder:
“Run. Run like a girl. Run or you’ll never see the sky again.” She whispered to herself .
