Elle Sharp's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Elle Sharp had chased the creature for three weeks, and tonight she finally had it on her table. The thing had killed two people at her research outpost. She was an anatomist, and she believed every animal broke down into parts you could name. So she strapped it to the steel table, checked its pulse, and prepared to cut it open alive. She needed its weakness, and she planned to find it in its guts. The creature was no wolf, no bear, nothing in her books. It had huge dark wings, sharp claws, and two eyes that glowed purple in the lab light. Elle leaned close with her scalpel. The eyes tracked her hand before she moved it. "Elle, don't." Tia stood in the doorway. She was Elle's lab assistant, a shy girl with pink hair and thick glasses, always quick to obey. Tonight she gripped the door frame instead. "Its heart rate is slowing when you speak. It's listening. That isn't normal." "Nothing about it is normal." Elle set the blade against the chest. "That's why I have to open it." The creature's eyes flared. Tia flinched. In her mind Elle saw a picture that was not her own. A wet stone room. Glowing blue and pink lines running through the walls. Carved stone beasts with metal wings. A barefoot woman with a purple mohawk beat her fists against a door that had no handle inside. Elle staggered back. The scalpel clattered to the floor. "You saw it too," Tia whispered. "The room. The trapped girl." "It put that in my head." Elle's hands shook. The creature had not just eyes and claws. It had a mind, and it reached past her skull. She had wanted a specimen. She had strapped down something that thought. The eyes held her. Another picture came, slower now. The same trapped woman. A pink butterfly. Dust falling from its wings. Then the outpost, and the two dead people, and the creature standing over them, not feeding but grieving. "It didn't hunt them," Elle said. "It was trying to show them something." Tia crossed the room and picked up the scalpel. She held it out of Elle's reach, and her thin arms did not tremble. "Then we don't cut it." Elle looked at the straps, the pulse monitor, the wings pinned flat. Her whole arc goal had been simple. Find the weakness. Expose it. Win. But you could not dissect a partner. She reached over and loosed the first strap. The creature did not fight. Its eyes cooled from purple to a dim glow. "The woman in the stone dungeon," Elle said. "It wants us to reach her. And I think it can't get through that handleless door alone." Tia set down the scalpel. "So we're going in." Elle unbuckled the last strap. The specimen she'd meant to kill was now the only guide she had.