Ruban dodged the energy shell and charged forward, skipping over fallen branches and chunks of concrete. As he ran, he threw a sifkren at his airborne opponent. It nicked the Aeriel’s wing before being deflected.

He smiled. Distracted by the sifkren, the Aeriel had taken its pearly eyes off him.

Ruban leapt and grabbed the trailing end of the Aeriel’s feather cloak. He leveraged his grip to haul himself upwards until he’d wrapped his legs around its waist in a scissor-hold. The creature struggled, trying to throw him off, but years of training allowed him to hold on just long enough to bury his sifblade between its shoulder blades.

Blinded by the light spilling out of the wound, Ruban let go of the dying Aeriel. It spiraled downwards and crashed into an abandoned grocery store.

Ruban landed on his side a few feet away, and was immediately set upon by a couple of lanky young thugs.

Simani rushed to his aid, pulling one of the men off him. Together, they made short work of the remaining gangsters. Without an Aeriel to supplement their limited ammunition, they posed no real challenge for the Hunters.

With the Qawirsin temporarily out of commission, many of the smaller gangs had become quite active in the outskirts. They were disorderly, untrained, and uncoordinated – easy prey for the Hunter Corps and a boon for the IAW’s overworked PR team, but barely any use when it came to extracting information.

Ruban punched a particularly fidgety young thug in the mouth before shoving him into the SUV. As he slammed the vehicle door shut, he noticed the blood on his knuckles. He frowned, gripping the door handle harder. He hadn’t meant to hit hard enough to draw blood.

His vision blurred, bloodstained knuckles turning white as Simani called his name from the other side of the SUV. He closed his eyes, leaning heavily against the car. Behind his eyelids, bloodied mouths and broken jaws morphed into torn wings and dying Aeriels. All the faces blurred together until there was only one – pale, alien, and bloodstained. Unrecognizable.

He shook his head. Goddammit! Aeriels didn’t bleed. If anyone on earth should know that beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was Ruban.

A hand seized his shoulder, the slim fingers digging into his flesh through layers of clothing. Ruban whirled, trying to pull away.

Clutching his collar, Simani glared at him, her nose inches from his.

“Get a grip, Ruban. You’ll end up killing yourself, or someone else–” she glanced at the young man sitting hunched inside the car with his hands over his mouth. “I’ll have to report you to the IAW, if this goes on much longer.”

Ruban looked away, shoving his hands into his pockets. She was right, he knew she was. This was ridiculous, unacceptable. Every time they were on a Hunt – every time there was even the slightest possibility – he could feel himself slipping. He exhaled sharply.

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“I thought we would’ve found him by now.”

Who? Janak? Ashwin? Who were they looking for and why? Ruban wasn’t sure anymore, too afraid to ask himself the questions to which he might not like the answers.

“We will,” Simani insisted, pulling him out of his sleep-deprived trance. “We’ve been tracking the movements of all his associates, raiding all of the Qawirsin’s known safe houses. It’s only a matter of time before we–”

“Time. That’s it.” He pushed himself off the SUV, which he had been leaning against. He needed sleep. “That’s what I’ve been thinking about, Simani. How much of it do we really have? Janak’s gone underground and none of the other gangs seem to know where he is. And he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to come out and show himself. If half of what we’ve heard about him is true,” he shook his head, jumping into the driver’s seat. “It might already be too late.”

Ruban drove carefully through the wreckage of what had been – not so long ago – a quiet suburban neighborhood. Thankfully, the mafia’s Hunt had begun late in the afternoon, when most of the residents were either at work or picking up their kids from school. An elderly couple had been injured by the falling debris, but for once, there were no casualties.

There was a silver lining in there somewhere. He was just having a terribly hard time seeing it.

“I know you’re worried, Ruban. I am too. We all are. But you can’t very well take it out on the detainees. It’ll cause a hell of a scandal if the media gets wind of it. And these people are small fish. They’re not with the Qawirsin and never have been. Most of them have probably never even seen Janak Nath in person.”

Ruban kept his eyes on the road, knuckles turning white on the steering wheel. The feelings of desperation, fury, and helplessness had settled in the pit of his stomach, no longer pummeling his ribcage to be let out.

He was being more aggressive than necessary, he knew that. These young men were not dangerous, not to someone like him. They were out to make a few extra bucks and had gotten themselves embroiled in things they didn’t understand.

At any other time, he’d have thrown them into the nearest detention center and forgotten all about it – let the law take its course. There wasn’t much useful information to be had from run-of-the-mill hoodlums like these.

But it wasn’t information he wanted, was it? Ruban breathed slowly, forcing himself to focus on the cratered road ahead. No, what he wanted was a fight. A way to release all that pent up fury and desperation that had nowhere else to go. A way to smother the feelings of impotent rage and guilt with tangible, physical pain.

He’d had another row with Hiya earlier that morning. She was getting antsier with every day that passed without a visit from Ashwin.

“Did you stab him again?” She’d asked him tearfully over breakfast, tiny nostrils flaring over her bowl of cornflakes.

Vikram, who’d been at the table with them, had glanced curiously at Ruban.

Again? He’d mouthed silently, as Hiya rubbed her eyes red, sniffling.

And for some reason, Ruban couldn’t bring himself to lie to her. No more than he already had.

She loved Ashwin. She’d loved her father too, and had lost him less than a year ago. Somehow, it was crueler to give her false hope, treat her like a sheltered child who’d never known the pain of losing a loved one. Because she had. And then, as now, it’d been his fault.

He wondered, not for the first time, if there was a way for him to contact Safaa. She’d probably kill him when she learnt he’d traded her brother off to the mafia. But if she could find Janak Nath (and decimate the Qawirsin in the process), Ruban couldn’t help thinking it’d be a good enough bargain, all things considered.

The problem was, he didn’t know how to reach Vaan without an Aeriel. And with Ashwin gone, he didn’t know any Aeriels who’d take him there.

He pulled up in front of the South Ragah Detention Center and hopped out of the SUV, followed moments later by Simani. If he couldn’t seek help from the Aeriel government, the human one would have to do the job.