Chapter 1
The blood of her friends were on the walls.
Today was meant to be Pandora's initiation. Instead she fidgeted against chains, jangling as she cursed through cracked teeth and a chewed, bloody tongue. A steel-toe boot crunched into her ribs in reply. She refused to squirm. But yelped as another kick hammered into her chest. Her developing breasts burned even before the blow.
She promised herself never to show the Hunter her pain. As if hearing her challenge, he approached her, gazed down like whimpering prey at the jaws of a predator.
All the Hunters of Cerberus wore the same, blatant colours of darkness and death; dark purple armoured suits with a red stripe chasing the length of their hulking frames. And their helmet, the three-headed Cerberus dog, each with a ravenous snarl across their frozen faces. Except for the face in the middle. These faces moved, twisted with the pleasure the Hunters gained from wiping out commons born without consent. Children like Pandora.
She smiled. The hounded face darkened. He had calming blue eyes, and a face decorated with beautiful scars. Her favourite scar ran down from his right eyebrow, splitting his nose and to the left side of his lip. It was like if he spoke, his lips would move in several harmonies, out of sync with a mind of their own.
He was not smiling. She could tell now he kneeled and secured his thick palms across her throat. He lifted her, head lolling from the piercing pain in her chest; Of her ribs puncturing her lungs. Pulling her face closer to the scared predator. A face which held an unspoken gaze of the void. She could smell the blood and leather across his gloved hand, and the tangy stench of the rusty metal suit he wore. The ceiling which the Hunters intruded from above revealed a night sky.
He tightened his palm. The leather glove rustled and squeaked. So did her neck. The blood rushing to her head squirmed through her ear. Time slowed as her eyes narrowed.
Raindrops trickled across her forehead, reminding her of moments before she was properly iinducted into the Children of Nyx. Of chandeliers and the sour wine perfuming the air. The memory was immense. Every hair on her body flared. She gathered sensations in her fingers. She never got to graduate. Then the world faded.
***
Loud whispers. Echoing tiptoes. Gurling taps and murmuring screams. Every sound Pandora heard made little sense. Her eyes pinched, and a wave of fiery pain spread through her. She had her eyes shut - but for how long, she wondered?
The weight of her eyelids refused to loosen. Why were they not opening when she wanted them to?
She tried to flex her fingers. She knew she still had them. They were present but like a ghost, unfeeling, a separate part of her. She moved her focus to her nose, to pick up all the smells. A gust of air rushed through her lungs. She'd forgotten to breathe the entire time.
She returned to her eyes, truly paying attention to the multicoloured stars and swirls forming and disappearing when she tried to focus on one. Each image was lost all the same. Robbed in an eternity in the abyss.
She flicked her tongue. Felt her cheeks contract and twitch, an itch of life returning to her. She tasted liquid iron. Thick, goopy and impossible to swallow. She feared if she did, she would choke and continue to stare at her eyelids. Why couldn't she sleep?
Voices returned. Mumbling. She shut her eyes, daring to concentrate. She recognised the voice... something familiar, warm, like a cabin fire's glow after a long day's training.
A man. Young. The swirly stars formed his face. A glitter shone in each area of his face she focused on. His confident grin, missing eye and blading grey hair.
She heard Sandal. He survived too.
***
Two days passed before Pandora left her coma. Sandal brought her up to speed. He laid at her bedside, speasking in his usual gruff tone. He and a small team rescued her and three others from Cerberus. Pandora suffered the worst of their brutality. She was the only one living.
He detailed her injuries in unflinching logic. Her lungs were punctured by her ribs, as she guessed. Her neck had been snapped. Arms trampled on. And face permanently scarred with acid.
She never considered herself beautiful. All children of Nyx were lowborn, given to the order who raised them in the shadows, away from Cerberus. She was nothing special. Abandoned by her parents to protect her. She may never know them. She only knew they were ugly. And they saved her.
Like all children of Nyx, they were the scum of the earth; Out of the wombs of lowborns who indulged in a lustful exchange, and were forced to surrender their child.
She wished they killed her in the womb. How selfish, to raise her in a world where her existence was an insult to breathe itself.
Sandal's cool and collected face, of grey stubble and a cybernetic red pupil narrowed as he sneered.
"Stop snivelling and get!" The Hunters had found them, he explained moments earlier. "Come on! No time. Move." He finished.
It's the reason she was thrust out of her coma. She showed potential, unlike the other survivor who died earlier in the morning. So she pressuned; her time and place were unfamiliar, she was unsure where she was or what was happening.
All she knew was to escape. She should be dead, but she kept coming back. Lowborns were survivors. And she swore to make the Hunters pay.
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