The True Nature of a Hunter

The Industry, Ana later explained, was a place filled with humans and experimentations. It was called The Industry because Hunters that became part of it were simply machines to be used by the government. The Industry always asked humans to be shipped to further develop Hunters.

Humans develop resistances rapidly, and are extremely expendable compared to Hunters. Most of the time, the government does not produce enough food for the population, so instead, they select random humans to be sent towards the Industry.

They torture humans until they gained resistance towards that sort of pain. Some of them were constantly suffering different "experiments" until they developed a certain resistance towards it. Once they did, they were killed by Hunters.

Ana asked if the torture was something that I wanted to listen to. I was going to omit all of the details for the sake of the readers, but I could not stop thinking of what they might be doing. Ana went into excruciating detail.

A man that had lived all of his life in the Industry was being burned. He was there for forty years. Forty years of constantly being burned until his skin became charcoal. At the beginning they used cigarette butts, then torches, until just straight up just covering him in alcohol and throwing a match.

It must have been terrible. His flesh had turned coarse, without any of it remaining a constant color. It was either black or pink, some parts you could see the bone, and some other parts you could see the muscle.

Ana had barely been introduced to the Industry through a video. She had to wait until one of the men selected became resistant to whatever she wanted. Hunters could either choose someone to cultivate or someone already there. I asked her how did they fix all of the injuries there. She said she saw a woman get close to the man that was being burned, apparently, she just touched his arm and it slowly started healing it.

"That's amazing," I told Ana.

"Most Hunters that live here do not have any actual powers. They just have what was cultivated by using humans. That gift has been passed through many generations, and she is the only one that has that power." Ana said.

"What's so amazing?" Marcus asked.

"I think I know how to destroy the Industry" I responded.

I wasn't going to tell him about the girl, I wanted that power for myself. I told them that I needed time for a plan, and after a day I went up to them and told them that I was ready.

Finally, the day came when we were going to raid the Industry. It was going to be only us five. It was going to be impossible for humans to enter, and the only Hunters that actually gave a shit about them was us.

What I knew about the Industry, from what Ana said, was that it was constantly working, it barely had any guards, so it should be pretty easy. Nobody expected humans to lead a revolution against them.

"Why is Ana so willing to help us?" asked Marcus.

"She hates those at the Industry," I told him.

Ana seemed to be pouting. She told me she was doing it because she loved me. I wasn't going to tell them that, but I still smiled at her, and she seemed to relax. I still didn't understand what it means that she had become a second ego, but to me, at the moment, it seemed amazing to have her with me.

The Industry had these huge doors that just slid open. The doors just slide open. I had never seen such wizardry before. It must have been running using some sort of power gained from a Hunter. Ana said that it wasn't like that and that we should just keep moving forward.

The magical door seemed to shine a ray on us, and suddenly it turned green. We proceeded after the second set of doors. Nobody came to pick us up. Ana had told us that the government had so little resources and people, that they could not give this institution more manpower. The only ones here today was a single girl with the healing powers, a few doctors, and some nurses.

But the number of prisoners was what was truly amazing. Strange, metallic objects were the ones that were torturing the poor humans trapped in the Industry. Ana had already told us that these things were called robotics, but they still scared me. I did not understand how the government could not use these things to help the population. Ana didn't know.

We saw many different men at the Industry being tortured, and some seemed quite interesting. One of them was constantly being shocked by lightning. You could see his eyes begin to boil every time he started crying. Once the thing stopped, he started to unintelligently mumble something about an app that people write stories or fanfictions in, whatever that means. Then, a red light started flashing in his chamber. He started crying happily. He was smiling, shouting with extreme amounts of delight.

I instinctively knew that the woman that we had to capture was going to go into the chamber. I told the men to be ready, to shoot her in the leg or in the arm, but to make sure that they did not kill her. I also told them to fire whenever I gave the signal. She saw us from a distance and continued to get close. She was an extremely beautiful lady. She seemed younger than from how Ana had described her, but there was no doubt that this was her.

We knew because she simply wasn't dressed as either a doctor or a soldier. Men are the only ones that can be nurses, so that left being a nurse out of the question. She completely ignored us and kept going towards the chamber. Before she went into the chamber, I stopped her.

"What?" She asked with a puzzled look.

"I'm sorry, but we were a little bit lost," I said.

She instantly became suspicious, and asked, deductively, "Have you forgotten how this place works?"

Ana was about to tell me something, but it was too late. I told her out of instinct that I had, and she instantly punched me in the face so hard I almost lost consciousness. I laid sprawled on the floor, watching how another one of my comrades went down with one of her fists.

Marcus pointed his gun at her, but she was not interested in stopping and ran towards him. He shot her left arm, blowing it entirely, but she just hit him with a right hook so hard it instantly knocked him cold.

The last one of our men was watching her in terror. She had lost an arm, yet she kept slowly walking towards him. He raised his gun, violently shaking and exasperated. "Don't move or I will shoot!" He screeched. She just smiled. Her arm started to heal. It was extremely inhumane how fast the arm healed.

It began with her bones. It suddenly grew back from where it was blown off. Then, the cells in her body started to grow at an even faster pace than the bones, forming tissue. Finally came her muscles, which shortly after were already covered with skin.

The last man just dropped the gun. He suddenly saw what made Hunters truly so different than humans. He understood why there was such a divide between us, humans, and them, monsters. I knew that he was understanding this for the first time.

I had seen Ana's memories for a brief period, and she was also doctrined into the idea that Hunters were a more advanced sort of human. They were the next step towards reaching the overman (a reference to Nietzsche). Now, I really wanted the lady's power.

I started to stand up. At that moment I stopped thinking and was just propelled to kill this woman. She had already taken out the last one of our men, and as she was about to relax she spotted me.

"Oh, what do we have here? You actually took one of my punches and are still standing up, quite impressive. I'm not sure if you could see what just happened, but I can't be killed" She said.

I was slowly losing my head. My vision was getting red. "If that were true, you wouldn't have exchanged powers with others of the same generation, they'd have to die for that to happen. And someone that cannot die wouldn't even bother attacking" I barely managed to tell her.

She laughed and claimed that I must have somewhat of a brain. She asked if I had any special relationship with the person that I killed, but I couldn't answer. My vision had turned completely red, and I couldn't stop myself from wanting to hurt her.

The problem was, it was so red that I couldn't even shoot my rifle. The moment I decided to drop it, it became better. I realized what had happened. The new-born Hunter inside of me wanted to hunt his prey as equals.

No rifle or anything because this woman was not using a rifle. My body was screaming at me, wanting to fight. After watching the woman, I knew that she wasn't a martial artist or anything. She barely had any combat experience. She was just relying on her Hunter instincts and her insane healing powers. I was at the very least trained in the army some hand to hand combat.

She saw me drop the rifle and she got excited. She immediately ran towards me and tried to go for a kick in my temple. I blocked and jabbed her directly in the ribcage. I felt her body tremble, and instead of shouting in pain, she just moaned. She chewed her lips, which ended up distracting me, and using that to her advantage she managed to punch my gut.

I understood why she moaned. It felt ecstatic to be hit. I wanted to punch and be punched. I got up and socked her right in the nose. She was briefly staggered and started bleeding right through her nostrils. For a second it was in a constant stream, but it stopped because of her healing abilities. She blew her nose and wiped the blood, and she seemed the same as she was in the beginning.

I didn't know how attractive she truly was until she kicked me in the balls so hard it felt like I was about to vomit. But I was smiling, enjoying this as much as anything that I have ever been a part of in this world. She was also enjoying it so much she didn't even bother telling me why we were enjoying it. Every moment I felt more and more like I wanted to have sex with the person that I was fighting with.

Her hair became soaked in blood after I landed a huge uppercut that instantly knocked her out. Her body dropped limp unto the floor, and I got on top of her and kept hitting her. It just felt so good to hit someone. I continued to punch her face, every time I raised my fist she let out a little moan, and I just kept going.

I kept going even after her skull was smashed into pieces. I kept going until Marcus groaned next to me, and I was finally able to leave the gaze that I was thrown into.