This chapter was written by a huge friend of The Hunt, ChristopherOpyr

"No, no, no," Gerald shouted at the screen. "Get back up!"

He couldn't bear it. Not only had his valkyrie brutally slaughtered his former lover, leaving herself as the bloodstained pride of his collection, but now even she might not survive the night.

His emotions twisted, in one moment caught on a tempestuous, storm-ravaged sea and in the next moment smoothing out in the calm of the eye. He wanted to rage at the death of Tabby Cat, and he wanted to skin her butcher, and yet at the same time he battled with a warm sense of pride in his new prize. She hunted as if a seasoned veteran, fighting for her life with a tenacity and a ferocity that could only be admired. She was glorious. There was that word again. Glorious. She ripped out his heart; yet she earned it with her fury. As rage and admiration battled within him, Gerald knew no final verdict could be reached. Not then.

Right now, only one thing mattered; Silent Death had to survive this night.

Once more, Gerald returned to the forums. As he chimed in requesting another favour, a familiar handle greeted him.

Undergroundguru69: Christ on a stick, mate. Again? This isn't a choose-your-own adventure. Just watch the show.

TheUnderlord_92: 75k. Another Stim Pac.

Undergroundguru69: Look, one Stim Pac, whoops, our bad. Two and everyone knows the game is rigged.

TheUnderlord_92: 150k.

Undergroundguru69: Sorry. No can do. Boss's orders.

TheUnderlord_92: 250k.

Undergroundguru69: The audience wants to believe the lie. Shatter that illusion and you break The Underground.

TheUnderlord_92: Listen here. I am the damn audience. I might as well be your patron fucking saint! Now give her the damn Stim Pac.

TheUnderlord_92 has been blocked.

"Shit!"

Gerald hit his fist against the keyboard. A few keys popped off and a satisfying snap sounded as the plastic mould cracked, yet it did little to alleviate Gerald's frustration, and much to worsen his mood, agitating his bad leg with the sudden movement.

A sharp pain stabbed up from his knee radiating into his thigh, causing Gerald to bite his lip to stop himself from screaming. Had he not already been seated he would have collapsed to the floor - collapsed like his valkyrie.

As Gerald tried to ease the pain in his leg, massaging it with one hand (which was about as effectual as bailing out a sinking freighter with a teaspoon), he calmed his nerves and tried to focus. Silent Death had to survive for the next Hunt. He had lost Tabby Cat; he would not lose this prize, too. She had a taste for blood now, one that he could craft into an insatiable thirst, yet for him to do that she had to get up off that floor... or, he realized, The Grim had to die before he found her.

He smiled as his out crystallized before him. He could save her without saving her; he could orchestrate her survival in one bloody act. Unfortunately, that moment of joy quickly soured upon his tongue.

He had been banned from the forums. Sure, he could bypass that, but that tipped his hand. He preferred that the Westcotts believed that they truly ran the show. The whole arrangement insulated him from blowback, plus, subordinates were far more compliant when they not only thought that they were in charge, but also that your decisions were actually their choices. Once he shifted that dynamic, once he revealed his control over the entire scenario, then suddenly the Westcotts had someone to rage against - an opposing party upon which to lay their frustrations and to blame for their grievances.

No, the unnoticed command bore healthier fruit and offered a more ample safety net. Gerald had long since learned the value of taking precautions. He rubbed at his leg, still attempting to ease the pain that he knew he could do nothing to diminish.

The Westcotts needed to believe that they were in charge, which provided him very few options unless —

— an alarm sounded - not a blaring alarm, but a soft ping from Gerald's monitor bank. Someone, somewhere, must have been watching out for him, because the answer he so desperately needed had just fallen into his lap. The ping sounded again, and he swivelled towards the offending monitor: a perimeter breach.

The warning had come through his private channels. The Westcotts were smart enough to set up a warning system should authorities close in on The Underground's location - this hunt was too lucrative not to have some sort of insurance policy in place - however, they were also too ignorant to realise the ineptitude of their systems. That's why, once he had infiltrated their enterprise, Gerald had setup his own early warning system.

The intruders had breached from an abandoned sewer entry on the western perimeter —

— no, north western — south western —

"Damn it, damn it, damn it!"

This wasn't a simple breach; this was a full-scale assault.

Gerald slid back to the shattered remnants of his keyboard, yanking it from his set up and searching for a spare from the parts box that set just under his desk. His leg howled as he bent over rifling through the box, only easing slightly as he installed the replacement and settled back into the seat.

A few jabs at the keyboard and he was in the Westcott's security, manually triggering their alarms. As the first official warning blared through The Underground the feed of The Hunt abruptly ended, plunging into static.

***

Abby jolted to attention, an alarm roaring through the labyrinthine hunting grounds. Had she actually been sleeping? Was she so cold inside that she could ever sleep again after what had happened?

Everywhere that she looked, a pall of crimson had shrouded the world. She rubbed at her eyes, convinced that she was looking through a veil of blood, but the act accomplished nothing. The pall did not disappear nor diminish in the slightest, and as she rubbed her eyes, she could feel her hands sticking against her face. A thick, gummy layer of blood coated her hands, her cheeks, her jaw, everything but her eyes.

The urge to vomit stole over her, a weight crashing down as whatever restraint had been holding it back snapped. She bent over, gagging, and dry heaving, and the world spun with the sudden movement. She could feel herself crashing.

How long had it been since she'd slaughtered that woman? Since she'd embedded her blade into her neck? She tried to tell herself that it had been a kill or be killed scenario, but did that make it better? And how many can one kill in the name of survival and still be considered a moral person? No matter how hard she tried, Abby couldn't even count the number of victims she had claimed over the past few hours.

Hours? To go from upstanding citizen (barring some questionable ties to the resistance) to committing multiple homicides, how could a life change so drastically in such a miniscule span of time?

The questions whirled in Abby's head and no matter how hard she shut her eyes, how tight she locked her jaw, or how much she tried to force down the pain and horror of what had just happened, she could not rid herself of their faces - of those eyes locking with hers as the life drained out of each of the hunters... hunted? She'd been so afraid at the start, but had some small part of her enjoyed the kill as the night wore on, enjoyed the adrenaline rush of the terror and the success of survival?

She heaved, again, the alarms still roaring, and as the last contents of her stomach emptied, she finally looked up.

Mixed with the alarms, a grinding noise could be heard, and suddenly Abby realized that a large swath of ceiling was folding back, as if automated on some sort of roller. Even patches of walls were retracting down into the floor, and others rolling back, until a great open space opened up with vaulted ceilings looming high above her.

She appeared to be in a station of sorts, with wide open spaces, as if some once great lobby. She could even just make out the stairs down which commuters must have descended in days past. Yet through the gaps between the few remaining permanent walls and fencing, she could also see the horrors of the hunt: carcasses beheaded and dismembered, others gutted, and even one hanging off a barbed stretch of fencing that appeared to have been split from groin to sternum - the whole gruesome scene filtered through that same crimson pall, apparently cast by the flaring, red emergency lights.

And as she stared out over those victims, she found one man standing. A great black jacket billowed behind him, obscuring his features, but very little stood out about him physically; the large scythe he held, however, was another matter. Its curved blade sliced through the abdomen of a prone victim crawling back on the floor before him, eviscerating the man as it did. The blade never stopped, however, rather rising in a great continuous arc, blood misting from its slick surface in a light rain, and a tangle of intestine rising with the momentum of its wake before descending once more to the gore-covered tile.

Abby tried to avert her gaze, but she found herself mesmerized in both the horror of the moment and the beauty of it - the crisp silhouette of this monster almost motionless, save for the subtle movement of his blade's arc, standing out against the livelihood of the dying at his feet, crawling, twitching, and finally subsiding before him. Then at last, his head turned towards her, and even from this great distance Abby could see the emptiness behind his eyes, a gaze befitting of the bringer of death.

And was that a smile he cast her.

Before Abby could tell for certain, another noise pierced through the din of the alarms. Doors burst open from the four corners of the great room and squads of men garbed in black and wearing masks exploded onto the scene. At first, she hoped that she had been rescued, but as the closest squad charged her she began to suspect that rescue was not their intent.

The exhaustion tore at her will. She needed to lay down. She needed to simply close her eyes and let the embrace of death consume her.

Instead, she drew her blade.

The men slowed, ever so little, guns drawn, and the nearest of the men yelled out at her.

"Shows over for the night, honeypie."

A second voice called out from behind her.

"Yeah, sweetie. Why don't you lower that, will you?"

Abby whirled around. Another squad had been fanning out behind her. They were closing in. No, this wasn't a rescue. This was a salvage operation. Grab whatever you can and run.

No one was going to grab her.

Abby didn't know if she had survived her hunt, if she had any shred of a soul left, but she did know that she'd kill every last bastard that got within arm's reach of her.

All the men began shouting and she could no longer pinpoint the individual speakers.

"Just shoot her!"

"And kill the new star?"

"I don't get paid for this."

"Bitch, please. I can take her."

"Great. You do that then."

"Anyone got a shot?"

She scanned from face to face with each shout, their visages blurring into a painful visual cacophony: jeering and laughing, spittle flying, tongues wagging, and, no matter the joy or jest in the voice, venom always in the eyes.

In the distance, she could just make out a larger squad circling the man with the scythe. Tasers arced blue through the crimson light, and gunshots rang.

No, they would never touch her.

Abby charged.

And the world exploded.

She heard the gun fire. The impact was instant. A cold brick to the stomach. No, not a brick. A hard sack, like a beanbag.

They were using riot control weapons. She knew it and she looked up to confirm it, but another blast sounded before she could, the impact smashing into her ear. The world rang out, then popped as her ear drum busted and the entirety of her understanding became pain.

Another dim pop sounded, now softened, and the impact caught in the back of her shoulder, dislocating it with a sickening jerk.

Her blade clattered to the floor as she fell and the world spun around her, until at last she settled against the damp, blood-soaked tile, the great arched vaults filling the entirety of her vision.

They really are beautiful, she thought, and she laughed, wondering who had designed them, and how many lives had ceased beneath them.

Slowly her vision dimmed, a great shadow arising in as if from an old black-and-white movie, and as it did, she heard a light whirring sound as if a tiny motor, and a small aircraft flew into her vision: a drone, with four little blades, like a helicopter's, spinning, one in each corner. A small bubble on the bottom pivoted, and Abby could swear the happy little machine was staring at her.

"Hi there," she chuckled, her grip on reality diminishing with each second of fading sight.

The little bubble pivoted then, the cutest, tiny panel sliding back and a mechanical arm telescoping out to wave at her.

Well, that's sweet, she thought, as the little arm pivoted and little bursts of flame exploded from its barrel with a soft repetitive pop as that arm swept out in a circle and tile, and blood, and bone all popped up in great bursts, like popcorn.

"Pop. Pop, pop," she said. "Pop, pop, pop.'

And she laughed, other little flying buddies coming to join her friend and add their little sweeping arms waving out to the crowd in gentle spraying arcs, the popping reaching that ecstatic crescendo that it does when the bag of popcorn is almost done, and Abby could smell it, and she smiled in anticipation as the world turned to black and her first hunt came to an end.