Bitch: Puncture (book 2)

I felt my sight return the moment that I climbed out the window. No longer the disorienting blindness from the bus. It was overwhelming at first to be able to see so much and so clearly, but it quickly felt normal as my brain acclimated to all the additional sensory information. I sensed the trail it had left, a thin one, but right there clear as day - steps outlined in yellow. I followed it in a clear grid search pattern. I saw where it had started the search miles away by the road and how it had used the road to access the grid around it.

When I caught up to it, I could see it with my eyes not as black, but as the absence of color. It did not reflect the light of the moon that trickled through the trees overhead, but swallowed it like a black hole. It looked like a human, but it’s silhouette was wrong somehow. And it’s gait was strange.

I saw it stop at a small structure. And then it scanned it. I could see it clear as day looking through the walls. And somehow I could see through the walls right along with it as if I was standing next to the structure. It was a small lift station for a local water system and the only live organic matter inside were mice. I felt it share that information. The pump house lit up in my vision labeled as cleared.

In terror, I turned and looked back and saw the minibus labeled as cleared with only a cat inside. Somehow the lead walls had prevented a through scan of anything below the window line. And for some reason the dark hunter did not search further. I let out my breath in slow measure and turned back to my prey. He was lit as if there were no predator that he could conceive of as a threat. I was going to change his mind.

I did not come too close over the next few hours, but recognized the pattern. I could see the boundaries of it’s scans and knew I was just beyond what it could see. It was working with seven others and their patterns intersected at the edges. They would pause and scan each structure and then it would light up for me as scanned and labeled. The sun was up and warming the mountain as it crept down towards the valley below.

Just then their world lit up with information, and they were on the move.