Persistence Hunting

An Apex Short Story

-by Ninmast Nunyabiz-

Speed. That's what it was all about. Other predators had raw strength, hulking physiques, armored plates, talons and fangs. They were built for prolonged combat, for overpowering their prey and beating it down.

But they were so slow. If their prey escaped, there was nothing they could hope to do but go hungry.

Morkin wasn't like those predators. He was a Jubatus, the fastest known sapient predator species in Union space. They could hit nearly eighty marks per decisol in bursts, and Morkin had never met his equal even among his kin.

And there was nothing he loved more than rubbing Defender noses in it. Nothing tickled him more than waving his wanted status in their faces and then taking off, leading them on futile chases until they finally were forced to give up and let him go. Nothing stated his superiority more than the look of exhausted surrender they developed just at the sight of him.

Nothing beat a good hock to celebrate another escape, either.

Yes, Morkin was something of an adrenaline junkie, except his body didn't produce such combat-grade stimulants, so the phrase was more in spirit than literal. The endorphins were real, though, and, oh, what a ride.

Everyone knew there was a new face in town, though. The Defenders managed to recruit an actual deathworld predator to their ranks, and it had been making waves tearing through whole packs of preds ever since.

But Morkin had never met his equal, and brute predators were ever so slow. He wasn't afraid of any deathworld predator! He'd leave it in the dust with all of the rest!

When he first laid eyes on the Defender's pet pred, he thought he had to be mistaken. It was just an Undpani! No matter, a chase with one of those dumb apes wasn't going to be as much fun as embarrassing a deathworlder, but it would still be enjoyable.

"Hey! Monkey! I'm Morkin, maybe you've heard of me! Wanted for eating the face of your mom! Check your records, you've got a warrant and everything!" He hopped from one foot to the other, already itching to go even as he rushed through his words. "Hey, hey, tell me if I'm going too fast for you! I mean, I won't slow down, but it'll be good for my ego!"

The female went through the same motions the Defenders always did, checking facial recognition data against the criminal database. It was a boring, tiresome process to have to sit through every single time, but even he recognized the necessity. If they went running after everyone that taunted them, they'd never get anything productive done.

His first realization that he'd made a mistake was when her eyes snapped back to him. It wasn't an expression an Undpani would have ever made. It was the expression of a predator locking onto its prey.

In the moment, however, it only thrilled him for the chase. The instant he saw it, he giddily spun around and took off.

He never bothered looking back when he pulled this stunt. There was no point; they'd be out of sight too fast, anyway. Instead, he ran. He ran as hard as he could, and he kept it going for all of the endurance he could muster, charting as difficult a course as possible down streets and across back alleys. He kept it up for a solid, impressive thirty seconds before he began to slow down, panting for breath.

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Even as his body sought to recoup precious oxygen, he flopped back against a crate with a laugh. "So much for the big, scary death worlder! Even their pet monster can't keep up with me!"

But then his blood ran cold when the primate came jogging around the corner without even the common decency to look winded.

"What's wrong," she had the gall to ask. "Your file said you were supposed to be hard to catch."

How did she--? How had she--?

His mind flailed against his exhaustion in a panic, but he rallied his pride and jumped to his feet.

"Aha, that was just the first test! You'd be amazed how many fail it!"

All of them. All of them were supposed to fail it.

But there would be no way she could do it twice.

"Away!" And he took off again.

This time, he pushed himself to sprint for a whole minute, until his lungs and heart were screaming at him. He only chanced one glance behind him.

The Defender wasn't running after him at all. She'd grabbed the back bar of a passing garbage transport. He was only just outrunning it, but not fast enough to escape that piercing gaze of hers, like he was the only thing in the entire world that she saw.

He immediately got off of the main roads at that, dedicating himself to alleyways and leaping over fences. When he finally came to a stop, it was to dive, sprawling, into one of his safehouses.

He gasped like a man dying, clawing his way over to the water supply and burying his face underneath the faucet.

He had to have lost her after that. Now that he knew she'd been cheating with vehicles, his route this time couldn't have possibly been followed.

He had thirty glorious seconds of restorative delusion as he gasped down air in between guzzling water.

Then there was a knock at the door, and he froze. No. There was no way. It wasn't possible.

His guest didn't knock a second time. A boot crashed against the latch and the door splintered inward, revealing the silhouette of the Defender against the light streaming through the doorway.

He didn't even think to bother with any sort of excuse or retort this time. He just bolted for the window and dove right through the glass.

This repeated time and again. He ran through alleys. He ran across busy highways. He ran through crowds. He tried to slow her down by putting a train between them. Each time, he'd have a little bit of rest, and then she'd show up again like a monster from the mists, straight out of a horror holo. A holo designed to mock him with her horrifically prey-like face. Like being hunted by a doll.

The moments of respite were the only reasons that he could keep running, but they weren't enough. Each blessed pause was too short to fully recover, and he grew more and more ragged with each increasingly desperate sprint.

Eventually, the inevitable happened, and he just couldn't run any further. He collapsed in the middle of the street, panting face half-buried in the concrete. His heart was pounding so hard that it hurt his ribs. He could barely breathe and his legs felt like they were on fire.

This was where he would die, he realized. His heart was going to fail, he was going to suffocate on his own froth, and he was going to stroke out right here in front of everyone.

A pain jabbed into his side as something stabbed him and all of his ills began to slow from their breakneck pace almost immediately. A tranquilizer, he realized after a moment. Then there was the click of cuffs and something heaved him up to his feet again.

The Defender's face came over his shoulder as she supported him, keeping him from collapsing again. "Thanks for the exercise, Morkin. Let's not do it again sometime."

He must have been a sight, half limp from exhaustion and tranquilizer, drenched in his own sweat with his fur matted to his face. But he had to ask.

"How? I'm the fastest ..."

"Where I'm from, we have hedgehogs that are faster than you," she replied, barely sounding winded after what must have been ten whole minutes of chase. "We evolved to hunt runners like you. With patience, one step at a time. Eventually, you all just stop running."

He no longer had the bodily self-control to restrict the shiver of horror, but she had one more terrifying thing to tell him.

"Honestly, yours was pretty short. We're accustomed to doing this little song and dance for days." She shifted him around toward the incoming sound of sirens, one of which sounded like an ambulance. "You didn't even cost me a lunch break."