Kharvek
THREE
She lied.
The Attendants release my restraints. Blood-wards fade from the metal with a hiss. I flex my wrists, roll my shoulders, let the power flow settle back into its usual channels. The examination chair groans as I rise—cheap reinforcement, built for bulk but not for what I’ve become.
She lied for me.
I don’t understand it. Understanding things has never been my purpose—that’s what the ritualists are for, the strategists, the Matron herself. But the harvester’s words echo through my skull, and I can’t make them fit into any pattern I recognize.
His blood shows normal patterns. Power flow is optimal.
Lies. All of it. She felt my modifications—I saw the moment her fingers went still against my arm, the slight widening of those gray-green eyes. She knows what I’ve been doing. And she told the Matron nothing.
Why?
The question irritates me. I don’t like questions without answers. Don’t like puzzles that won’t yield to force. When I don’t understand something, my instinct is to break it apart until I can see how the pieces fit.
Maybe I need to break her.
The Attendants gesture toward the exit. I ignore them. They won’t touch me—won’t even come within arm’s reach unless they’re suicidal. The Matron’s weapon walks where it wants.
I move through the Womb Chamber, past the preservation alcoves with their floating horrors, past the Matron herself. She doesn’t look at me. Already dismissed from her attention, filed away as a problem temporarily solved. Her mistake.
The spiral stairs await. I take them three at a time, my enhanced muscles eating the distance without strain. The blood-wards press against my skin as I climb, that constant buzzing awareness that the Sanctum sees everything, knows everything.
Almost everything.
At the top of the stairs, I pause. Scent the air.
There. Antiseptic. The particular blend of sweat and exhaustion that clings to harvesters after their shifts.
Her trail.
I follow.
The Sanctum’s corridors twist and branch, but her scent cuts through the maze. She moves quickly—I can tell from the spacing of her steps, the way her trail concentrates in a straight line rather than lingering at intersections. Not running. That would draw attention. But close to it.
She’s afraid.
Good. She should be.
I keep my distance. Predators don’t rush—that’s the first thing they taught me, back when I was still small enough to fit in a training pen. Rushing alerts prey. Patience is what separates a successful kill from a wasted effort.
The harvester quarters occupy a mid-level section of the Sanctum, better than the stock pens but nothing compared to the ritualists’ chambers. Narrow corridors. Low ceilings. Everything sized for humans, which means I have to duck through doorways and angle my shoulders to avoid scraping the walls.
I hate these passages. They make me feel contained. Controlled.
Her door. Third from the end of a dead-end corridor. No lock—harvesters aren’t trusted with privacy. I could break through it in a heartbeat, snap the hinges and confront her in her own space.
Instead, I wait.
The wall beside her door has a service alcove—a recessed space where maintenance supplies gather dust. I fold myself into the shadows, a seven-foot monster somehow invisible in plain sight.
Another skill they taught me. Stillness.
Silence. The art of becoming nothing until it’s time to become violence.
Through the thin walls, I hear her.
Water splashing. Harsh breathing. The sound of hands scrubbing against skin with frantic force.
I tilt my head. Listen closer.
She’s washing. Not bathing—washing. Scrubbing at her hands with the kind of force that leaves raw skin behind. I’ve heard that sound before, from fresh stock who haven’t yet learned that the blood never comes off. The ones who still think they can be clean.
She’s been here ten years. She should know better by now.
But she doesn’t. And recognition in that futile gesture—the desperate attempt to remove stains that have soaked too deep to ever wash away—makes me pause.
I know that gesture.
Not the washing itself. I don’t bother trying to clean off blood; it’s part of me now.
But the futility—the need to take action, anything, even when you know it won’t help.
I’ve felt that. In the hours after a hunt, when the killing fury fades and I’m left with nothing but silence and the echo of screams I can’t unhear.
The scrubbing stops. Her breathing steadies. I hear fabric rustling—changing clothes, probably. Then footsteps, light and careful, moving toward her door.
She’s coming out.
I could let her pass. Watch her longer. Learn her patterns, her routines, her weaknesses. That would be the smart approach—the tactical approach.
I’ve never been smart.
The door opens. She steps into the corridor.
I move.
One hand closes around her arm. The other covers her mouth before she can scream. I lift her off her feet and carry her backward, into the storage alcove, into the darkness where no one will see.
She doesn’t struggle.
That surprises me. Most people struggle—instinct, even when they know it’s pointless. But the harvester goes limp in my grip, not in surrender but in calculation. I can feel her pulse racing against my palm, can smell the spike of adrenaline flooding her system. She’s terrified.
And she’s not fighting.
I press her against the alcove’s back wall. My body blocks the entrance, fills the space until there’s nowhere for her to go. The top of her head barely reaches my chest. Her dark red hair has come loose from its braids, falling around her pale face in tangles.
“I’m going to remove my hand.” My voice comes out rough. Rusty from disuse. “If you scream, I’ll kill you. Understand?”
She nods.
I lower my hand from her mouth. Keep the other one on her arm—not squeezing, just holding. Reminding her that I could crush her bones without effort.
I lean closer, letting her feel my breath on her skin, letting her understand exactly how close to death she’s standing. “You lied to the Matron. For me. I want to know why. The real reason.”
Her pulse hasn’t slowed. Her breathing hasn’t steadied. But her gaze—direct, unwavering, seeing too much—doesn’t drop from mine.
She holds my gaze.
Why doesn’t she flinch?
“Because you’re going to kill her.”
The words hang between us.
“The Matron,” she continues. Calm. Too calm. “That’s what you’re preparing for. The modifications, the increased power output—you’re building toward a confrontation. A fight you think you can win.”
“And if I am?”
“Then I want to help.”
I go still.
Every muscle locks. Every thought stops. She just offered to help me kill the Blood Matron, and the words don’t compute.
“Help.” The word tastes foreign in my mouth. “You want to help me kill the Blood Matron.”
“I’ve been trying to destroy this place for ten years.” No hesitation. No fear. Just cold, hard truth. “Alone, I can manage sabotage. I can save a few lives here and there, corrupt some rituals, slow the machine. But I can’t stop it. I don’t have the power.”
“And you think I do.”
“I think you’re the most dangerous thing in this Sanctum.” Her chin lifts. Defiant. “I think you’ve spent your whole life being pointed at targets and told to kill. And I think you’re sick of it.”
She’s not wrong.
I hate that she’s not wrong.
“You don’t know anything about me.” My grip tightens on her arm. Not enough to bruise—not yet. “You read my blood. That doesn’t mean you know who I am.”
“No.” She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t yield. “But I know what you could be. A weapon that chooses its own targets. A monster with a cause.”
The phrase settles into me. Finds purchase in places I didn’t know existed.
“Why do you care?” I lean closer still. Our faces are inches apart now. I can smell her skin beneath the herbal compounds—warmth, life, a presence that doesn’t belong in this place of death and blood. “Why does it matter to you what happens to this clan?”
Vulnerability flickers behind her eyes. A crack in the mask she wears.
“I was born here.” She lowers her voice to a raw whisper. “In the Breeding Pens. My mother was stock. My father was stock. I never knew either of them—they were separated after I was conceived, disposed of when their bloodlines were no longer useful.”
“That’s common enough.”
“Yes.” She doesn’t blink. “It’s common. It’s normal.
And I’ve spent ten years watching it happen to others, conducting rituals that make it happen, being part of the machine that grinds people into resources.
” A breath. Sharp. Controlled. “I’ve marked children, Kharvek.
I’ve carved the conduits of power into their small limbs, knowing the magic would eventually burn them out from the inside.
I didn’t just take their blood; I designed their cages. ”
“And you regret it.”
“No.” The word surprises me. “I don’t have that luxury. Regret doesn’t change anything—it’s just self-indulgence. What I have is rage. Cold, patient, focused rage that I’ve been feeding for a decade while I wait for the right weapon to point it at.”
Her eyes hold mine.
“You’re that weapon.”