The jungle was never silent. Even in the dead of night, it whispered - leaves rustling like secrets, insects humming like warnings. Malik Haruna stood in the clearing, sharpening a jagged shard of obsidian against a rusted pipe. Around him, the runners prepared.
This Hunt would be different.
They weren't just running. They were fighting.
Aria Venn twisted a length of wire into a snare trap, her fingers moving with practiced precision. "We hit them hard. Fast. No more hiding."
Theo Marr hefted a makeshift spear - a broken drone wing lashed to a steel rod. "If they bleed, they remember and they hate."
Sera Nyx looked up from her tablet, her voice low. "They hold grudges. Deep ones. Every time we kill one of them, they mark us. Track us. Hunt us harder."
Malik nodded. "Then we give them something to remember."
Flashback: The First Kill
Kira Thorne sat apart from the others, staring at the blade in her lap. It was curved, serrated, and stained with a faint green shimmer - Vexari blood.
She had killed one. Two Hunts ago. A drone had cornered her near the ravine. She had waited, hidden in the mud, and when it passed, she struck. The kill was clean. Efficient.
But the aftermath wasn't.
The next Hunt, three drones had targeted her exclusively. She barely survived.
"They don't forget," she said quietly. "They don't forgive."
Vexari Response
High above, in the obsidian dome, Korr'Vex reviewed the footage. He watched Kira's kill in slow motion - the precision, the fury, the defiance. He marked her.
She would not die quickly.
He deployed a new hunter-class drone, equipped with adaptive camouflage and neural disruptors. It would not chase. It would stalk, and he would descend with it.
Improvised Arsenal
The runners gathered their weapons:
Malik: Obsidian blades laced with neurotoxin from jungle frogs.
Aria: Wire snares and trip mines made from salvaged drone cores.
Theo: Spear with a magnetic tip designed to disable Vexari armor.
Sera: Hacked drone interface to scramble surveillance feeds.
Kira: Dual blades carved from alien bone - trophies from her kill.
Zion: Smoke bombs made from fermented jungle sap and crushed minerals.
They trained in silence, each movement deliberate. Every runner knew the cost of failure. But now, they also knew the cost of resistance.
Emotional Fallout
Later that night, Malik sat with Elen Raye beneath the canopy. She held a small pouch of seeds — native to the Amazon biome, genetically modified by the Vexari to bloom only under stress.
"They bloom when they sense fear," she said. "Even plants know what's coming."
Malik looked at her. "Do you regret fighting back?"
Elen shook her head. "I regret waiting so long."
Final Message from Kael Idris
As the runners prepared to sleep, Sera decrypted the final fragment of Kael's message. It flickered on the tablet screen:
"They will hate you for surviving. They will fear you for resisting. But they will fall — if you stand together."
Malik read it aloud. The runners listened.
And in the silence that followed, the jungle seemed to hold its breath.