"Maybe they do."
She trained with the veth'kai until it felt like an extension of her hand. She ran combat drills in the bio-armor until she forgot she was wearing it. She studied Hyrakki tactics, their movement patterns, their weaknesses—what few they had.
She learned about the Kha'Ruun.
Vel showed her footage one evening, projected onto the wall of the briefing room. Combat recordings from conflicts she'd never heard of, on worlds she couldn't pronounce.
The first image froze her in place.
She had seen the Hyrakki species chart. Had memorized the castes—Sael administrators with their silver eyes, Sa'keth negotiators, Kel'voran engineers. She had thought she understood what she was dealing with.
She hadn't understood anything.
The Kha'Ruun on screen stood eight feet tall, maybe more. His armor was dark, almost black, with plates that shifted and interlocked like the scales of some prehistoric predator. Where other Hyrakki seemed sleek, almost elegant, this warrior was built for brutality. Massive shoulders. Arms thick with corded muscle beneath the bio-armor. Claws that extended from gauntleted fingers, curved and wicked, designed to tear through flesh and metal alike.
And the helm. Smooth, featureless, revealing nothing. No eyes she could read, no expression she could gauge. Just thatdark, impassive surface that reflected the chaos around him like a mirror.
He moved.
Serafina's breath caught.
Fast. Faster than anything that size had a right to move. The footage showed him crossing twenty meters in the space of a heartbeat, closing on a squad of armed soldiers before they could bring their weapons to bear. He didn't fight like a soldier. He fought like a force of nature—like a hurricane given flesh, like violence distilled into its purest form.
The first soldier died before he could scream. The Kha'Ruun's claws opened him from shoulder to hip in a single motion, and he was already moving to the next target before the body hit the ground. The second soldier fired—point blank, center mass—and the warrior didn't even slow. The blast scorched his armor, and he tore the shooter's arm off at the elbow and used it to bludgeon the third man to the ground.
It was over in seconds. Five soldiers. Trained. Armed. Dead.
The Kha'Ruun stood among the bodies, chest heaving, and even through the grainy footage Serafina could feel the rage rolling off him. The controlled fury. This wasn't mindless violence. This was precision. This was skill honed over decades, maybe centuries, channeled through a body designed for war.
"Another," Vel said quietly, and the footage changed.
This recording was clearer. A different Kha'Ruun—or maybe the same one, she couldn't tell—taking fire from an elevated position. Energy beams struck his armor, one after another, hits that should have dropped him, should have killed him. He absorbed them. Kept moving. Scaled the wall like it was nothing, claws finding purchase in sheer stone, and when he reached the top?—
Serafina looked away.
The sounds were enough. The wet, tearing sounds. The screams that cut off too quickly.
"This is what you will be hunting," Vel said. "This is what will be hunting you."
Serafina forced herself to look back at the screen. The footage had paused on a single frame—a Kha'Ruun warrior standing in the aftermath of battle, surrounded by destruction, his armor slick with blood that wasn't his.
He was terrifying. Monstrous. A predator made perfect.
And a part of her—one she didn't want to examine too closely—responded to the sight with more than just fear.
That's what's waiting for me on that island.
The thought should have sent her running. Should have made her pack her bags and take the next transport back to Los Angeles, back to her safe, small, suffocating life.
Instead, she leaned forward.
"Show me more," she said.
Vel's black eyes studied her for a long moment. Whatever the Saelori saw, it seemed to satisfy her.
She showed her more.
Serafina watched for hours. Footage of Kha'Ruun in combat, in training, in the aftermath of battles that had shaped the fate of worlds. She watched them move, fought to understand their patterns, their tells, the microsecond hesitations that might—might—give her an edge.
