The jungles of Africa were full of dangerous creatures, none more so than humanity. Tribesmen hunted for meat and scalps, and foreigners hunted for ivory, bragging rights, and slaves. One foreigner, however, did not care what she hunted, as the appeal of killing had long ago disappeared. Resting in a perch created by the twisting branches of a tree, she idly watched the area around her, fingers toying with the safety catch on the sniper rifle she held tightly to her chest.

The rifle had been fired twice in the last week, both times to deter instead of kill. Less than fifty metres away, hidden in the bushes, a deep rumbling growl emanated from the big tiger that had tried to kill the woman. It was nursing a sore flank, but otherwise it could have better invested its efforts in killing some less harmful creatures, such as Nile crocodiles. Unlike the crocodiles, she didn’t kill for food, or for pleasure. She only killed when she felt it necessary.

Sighing, she closed her eyes, listening to the muted chatter in her ear from the tiny radio receiver that, like a hearing aid, conducted sounds directly to the bones inside her ear. She remained silent for a few moments, listening as sentries were shuffled to different locations, then paused when something came over the channels to her. "Subject Alpha, return to base. New orders are pending."

The only response was a single word, acknowledging the change, which was taken to action as she quickly climbed down the tree, hands and feet finding ample purchase until she paused, seven feet from the ground. Unlimbering the large rifle, she aimed the big gun’s barrel at the nearly-invisible tiger, and, smiling tightly, she waited for a few minutes. The tiger, noticing the glinting of light off of the rifle’s scope, growled angrily, but slunk off, not willing to risk the accuracy and power of the big weapon. The woman nodded, letting the tiger leave in search of easier prey. After several minutes, she slung the rifle across her back, then finished her climb down the tree, dropping the last five feet to the ground with only a muffled grunt of exertion.

Her preferred choice of transportation, an armoured ATV, was waiting for her underneath a low-hanging branch, and she easily stowed her rifle across the handlebars before turning the small machine on. Before heading anywhere however, she activated a small GPS unit that quickly told her where she was in relation to where she had to be.

Twenty minutes of driving through dense jungle proved to be less harrowing than one would normally appreciate, though the ATV handled itself with ease, and, in just under half an hour she arrived at the armed camp that was being used as the headquarters of a ‘safari operation’. The woman’s lips curled into a sneer at the sight of the place, which quickly changed into an inscrutable expression as she neared the steel and concrete gate.

The four gate guards stopped her for a few minutes, two of them leering at her body as the most businesslike actually checked her ID card, confirming for himself that she was who she appeared to be. After a few seconds, and one of the two perverts suddenly finding himself with a broken hand for daring to try and grope her, the woman drove through the open gate, heading first for her own tent, a small one close to the motor pool.

Parking the ATV, she quickly entered the small canvas construction, smiling when she saw that nobody had dared to try and enter her home away from home. Chuckling to herself, she closed the flap that allowed air to enter the tent, then stripped off her combat armour. The articulated spectra and ceramic armour was strong enough to laugh off a burst of bullets from a machine gun, though a sustained volley would punch through, given enough time and force.

However, seeing that she was in the middle of an armed camp that could fight off nearly anything short of an air strike, she usually wore a light ballistic vest and drawstring pants, but always kept a gun within easy reach. In her current case, a Desert Eagle was riding tightly along her right thigh, the leather holster cut so that the modified hand cannon could be quickly drawn and aimed on the run. Most of the men in the camp paused upon seeing the woman, setting up choruses of wolf whistles and catcalls, most of which were completely ignored.

She walked purposefully towards a reinforced concrete structure, unremarkable except for the fact that it was the only permanent structure in the entire camp, and it was bristling with radio antennas. Walking into the building, the woman paused for a few seconds as her eyes adjusted to the dim blue lighting installed in the dark room, but in less than a minute she was already moving towards a steel door inset into the back wall of the room.

The back room was the TOR, or Tactical Operations Room. The small, smoke-filled and cramped space was where all the ‘safaris’ were planned, and most of them had gone off perfectly, excepting some overly... exuberant displays of bloodshed and pillage courtesy of the less sane members of the hunting expeditions. Four men, all looking like they had just killed a bear for breakfast, were crowded around the only table in the room, muttering to each other as the woman simply smiled to herself and pulled a short knife out of her pocket, cleaning her nails with the balanced throwing blade.

One of the men leaning against the table looked up, noticing the silent form standing next to the door, and smiled nervously. Even though the door was normally noisy beyond belief, it had, once again, admitted the woman silently. Frankly, the usually silent woman creeped out most of the men in the place, though a few brave souls had tried to approach her for one reason or another. The last such person had left the infirmary almost a week after he had tried to talk to her from less than three feet from her. Apparently she had no liking for the people who had her under contract, and she let it show repeatedly, with expressions of contempt and occasional non-crippling violence.

He gestured for the woman to take a look at the next plan, so she calmly walked over to the table where an array of satellite photos resided, most of them with arrows scribbled on them as rough plans of attack. She looked at each one of the differing plans, then smiled as she pointed at one. "Who did this one?"

The biggest man in the room, a hulk of a person who looked like his mother was a bison, smiled, then nodded. "That was me. Just about convinced the others that it’s our best shot."

She looked at the map again, mentally tracing the paths the men would have to take, and then started laughing. "Yeah, if you want to kill half of the people in this place, and wound the other half. Look, you have the largest movement going right through a viper’s nest of wildlife, and you’d be lucky if they managed to get even close to halfway through before getting killed off. Last I checked, tigers are still territorial, and they don’t appreciate soft and squishy people walking less than ten feet away from their home."

The big man blanched, then regained his bluster as he stared down at the much smaller woman. That stopped when she tapped the tip of his nose with her left index finger. "Stop staring at me like I’m a piece of meat. Now, gimme a pen so I can show you goons the right way to go about this. By the way, after this mission, the contract will have been fulfilled. Have my payment ready for me, otherwise you’ll have an unpleasant visit from one of my associates."

The third man in the room, a thin man who looked like a minor princeling, passed over his pen without argument, then leaned against the wall farthest away from the woman. though he looked like a ponce, he had the best strategic mind in the group, and was a solid killer with his hands and knives. He let the woman scribble a quick commentary on an unmarked picture, followed up by a few arrows showing projected plans of attack. "So, would that be the one in the A-10, or the Abrams?"

She shot a glare at the third man, who prudently shut up. "Neither. Just twenty more, all like me. And they’d have orders to shoot on sight. Now shut up and let me finish this."

The room fell silent, excepting the faint squeaking of the pen on paper as she finished her comments on how to successfully attack the last area. Straightening, she looked at the much simpler and more effective map she had sketched out, though it would involve nearly half of the assault force in a short little climb up a fifty-foot high slope of rubble. The four men looked at the map, pointing out what they thought were flaws, considering the sinuous routes used. Each of the ‘flaws’ were solidly and clearly explained away, including the avoidance of several vicious traps. Finally, the plan was accepted by the four men, who each left the command centre in turn, leaving the woman alone.

Sinking into one of the chairs in the dim room, she closed her eyes and gently whispered a mantra to herself, calming her mind, if only for a few moments. Whispering to herself, she seemed to recount everything she had done, but finally fell silent, as if she had completed all that she had wanted to say. Slowly standing up, she left the command centre, heading for her tent.

–Two Hours Later–

The column of men moved quietly through the forest, led by a wisp of a figure that seemed to disappear if someone focussed directly on it. The winding path seemed to have no rhyme or reason appended to it, though there was a direct motive to the long and difficult pathway. It effectively, though inefficiently, prevented any of the local wildlife from getting a clear angle of attack on the column, though the stragglers were more than slightly jumpy. However, the group managed to reach their objective without suffering any attacks on them, so there was no grumbling.

The leader of the column, having completed her objective, simply sat down on a low hillock, and watched as the well-trained specialists set about their work. Every person was outfitted with stun grenades, tranquillizer-firing sub-machine guns, and, if necessary, shock batons for close combat. Three men, all skilled with demolitions work, set about opening up a passage into the target village, which would be implemented with a small explosive device known as a ‘doorknocker’.

After three minutes of silent preparation, the signal was sent, and the doorknocker charges exploded, splintering the village’s wooden palisade and knocking out a section of the wall over ten feet in size. less than a minute after the explosion rocked the village, the veteran acquisition ‘specialists’ were already inside, firing tranquillizer darts at anything that moved. Overall, the entire operation took just under seven minutes from the explosion to the final scream of futile anger.

Silently, the woman walked through the village, noting the minimal damage wrought to the buildings. Entering one, she looked around at the carved furnishings, then paused. Stepping heavily on the multi-coloured rug, she paused at the odd noise, then reached down and pulled the rug away, revealing a tiny trapdoor. She looked at the small door, mentally measuring if a child could fit inside, but discarded the notion when she pulled the door open, revealing a hole not much more than a foot deep, and about as wide as the trapdoor.

Inside the tiny hideaway space, a sheathed knife rested, looking relatively innocent, despite the fact that it was over a foot long. The scabbard was unadorned, being simple black leather, and was the knife’s hilt seemed to fit perfectly in the woman’s hand. Silently, she removed her Spectra helmet, shaking her hair loose, and unsheathed the knife. The blade was a dull blue shade, almost grey, and was razor-sharp. The hilt was wrapped in thin leather, crosshatching over itself, and apparently holding a wicked-looking curved spike in place at the base of the pommel. A set of knuckle guards, also viciously spiked, rounded out the knife, and rendered it dangerous at any angle.

She paused for a moment, looking at her reflection in the curved blade of the knife, and smiled. Finally she spoke, just barely above a whisper. "I remember what I was. I want to be normal, but that’s not likely. I’m not cut out for this line of livelihood anyhow. I don’t like killing, I don’t like slavery, and I especially don’t like who I’m working for. Time to end it."

She replaced her helmet, letting her hair fall freely down her back as she sheathed the knife, which was then strapped to her leg. Walking out into the open air of the village, she watched, impassively, as the villagers were rounded up, chained together, and prodded out of their homes, usually with a round of cursing or generous applications of shock sticks to galvanize the poor people. Motion from the corner of her eye caught the woman’s notice, and she turned towards the unexpected movement.

One of the men, a despicable beast of a human by the name of Matthews, was methodically beating one of the villagers over the head and shoulders with his shock stick. The villager, a frail man to begin with, was quite dead. Blood was spattered over his bony frame, and his skull had obviously been crushed by the repeated blows that were still raining down on the corpse.

The woman’s first thought was to stop, but not kill Matthews. Her second thought was to simply kill the bloody murderer and get it over with. She moved before anyone could even think on what she was going to do, and the gunshot echoed through the area as Matthews’ head exploded into a rain of gore, bone splinters, and tiny bits of brain matter. The headless corpse, still holding the bloodied stun baton, collapsed like a marionette with cut strings, spurting fluids from the exposed arteries in the ragged stump of the neck.

The woman turned slightly, pointing the muzzle of her hand cannon at the nearest trooper, who stopped in his tracks. She then spoke, cooly and calmly. "He violated his contract. As an independent observer, I was completely in my rights to terminate him."

The men who were close enough to actually respond turned away, muttering apologies and the rare curse as the woman holstered her pistol. She quietly strode away, heading towards the middle of the ruined village as everyone else was finishing preparations to leave, captured subjects in tow. Alone again, she sat on a carved log, thinking about something as nearly silent footsteps approached her. Faster than could be registered, her handgun was once again pointing at a person, though this time it was not fired immediately afterwards.

The handgun was pointed squarely at the centre of one of the four commanders, who took a step back and raised his hands defensively. "Hey, I come in peace, and I hope not to leave in pieces."

The woman smiled slightly, holstering the pistol, but otherwise not speaking. The commander, the big man who usually had the sharpest mind of the four men, seemed to relax, but kept a prudent distance between them. Almost sheepishly, he spoke again. "I saw what you did to Matthews. Not that I’m displeased or anything. I was about to shoot him myself, but did you have to make enemies out of half the force?"

The woman nodded once, head bowed slightly. The commander nodded to himself, frowned, and forged onwards. "Anyhow, your contract is up in a few hours, and I was sent to renew it, if your company is interested."

The woman frowned slightly, then looked right at the big man. Quietly, she cracked the knuckles on each hand, then shrugged. "The company’s interested in renewal. I’m not. The contract expires in ten minutes, and I’ll be gone in the next ten hours."

The big man also shrugged, then looked quietly at the young woman. "There is one thing. You’ve been working with us for three months, and you alone tripled our profit margins during this time. There’s one thing I’d like to know."

The woman smiled slightly, guessing what the statement would be. "Hmm... You’d like to know my name, instead of the code, right?"

The commander paused, startled, then nodded. "Uh... yeah. Care to share?"

She laughed, a throaty chuckle that rolled out of her like a flute’s trill. "Fine. It’s Selina. Friends call me Sel, though. Before you ask, no, you aren’t allowed to call me that. Now, care to leave me alone? I want to think for a while. I’ll be back by nightfall though."

The commander nodded, turning to leave. He paused for a second, as if he wanted to say more, but thought better of it and walked off, following the tail end of the column of slavers and slaves. Behind him, Selina sat, looking at the knife she had collected. The column moved off, the noises disappearing quickly in the jungles. Sel continued to stare at the gleaming surface of the knife, running her fingertips along the edge of the blade, silently watching the hair-thin wounds fill with blood, congeal, and seal almost instantly.

Running her fingers along the side of the knife, she found a strange little bulge in the side near the hilt, which, when tapped, sounded hollow. Carefully examining the blade, she found a tiny seam, which upon the application of a solid blow from a convenient rock, opened to reveal a tiny compartment in the knife. A paper wad was the only thing in the small aperture, and it was quickly retrieved and decompressed into something resembling flat.

The paper was torn up, and somewhere along the line had lost over half of its previous size, but its remainders were still legible, though in a language completely foreign to her. It looked like a tribal language of some sort, but it was totally incomprehensible.

Sel tried to read the message, then shrugged and sheathed the knife, strapping the weapon to her belt. She thought for a moment, then carefully folded the message up, placing it into her pocket. She then started walking towards the camp, leaving the deserted village behind her.

–Three Hours Later–

The camp, uniquely, had quieted for the most part, excepting the holding pens. Steel mesh cages, ten feet high, ten feet wide, and twenty feet long, packed completely with captured people. Sel, once again silent and moving like a ghost, ignored the wails of anger and fear coming from the cages, though she did clasp the hand of a child for a few seconds, though it was noticed only by herself and the child. She walked past the cages silently, lost in thought, but was pulled out of her silence by a harsh voice that called out to her. "Skin Walker. You have sacred blade. Why?"

Sel paused, looking at the speaker. The tall man stared at her, unknowing or uncaring of the fact that he had been wedged into a cage along with another thirty people. The fact that he was a hair under seven feet tall was unusual, as was the fact that he was actually leaning against the cage wall, looking as calm and as collected as if he had been expecting such a thing. Standing in front of the man, Sel looked at him, then nodded. "I carry the blade in trust. I think that it might be of use to me in the future."

The man nodded, then turned away from Sel. "You different from all others. I sense good, but darkened by things of past. Find your path, walk it. Takes you away from this." The man gestured at the cage’s wall, as if it surrounded Sel, instead of him. Sel, unnerved by the insight into her own questions, turned and walked away briskly, chased by the tall man’s unnerving gaze.

Night was beginning to fall, and, inside her tent, Sel sat crosslegged on her military-surplus cot. Her eyes were closed, and she was nearly naked, wearing only a tank top and boxer shorts. Her hands were resting on her knees, palms facing upwards, and with two objects held loosely. Her left hand held the hilt of the knife, while her right held a small wad of dark purple material, about the size and thickness of a dessert saucer.

She opened her eyes, which seemed to glimmer with purpose. Closing her hand around the material, she whispered two words into the still air. The material rippled, closing itself over Sel’s hand, then sliding upwards, covering her arm to the shoulder before rippling outwards, across her chest, and down her left side. In less than three seconds, the material had covered Sel’s body from neck to knees, and it was still moving, covering her calves and feet in only a few moments. The material stopped moving a few seconds later, only darkening in shade to a dull purple-black.

Sel stood up, calmly stretching the muscles in her shoulders and back. Kneeling on the dirt floor, she calmly unzipped the lone duffel bag, which held all of her belongings. Corporate ID, three changes of clothes, and an array of weapons that would make survivalists jealous. A pair of Desert Eagles, modified for better accuracy and more power, and looking sinister as the light reflected off of the black finish. A .38 Special revolver, also known as a purse pistol. A small flat case held the components for both a PSG-9 sniper rifle and a Remington M-1100 12-Gauge shotgun, though neither long arm had any ammunition.

She rummaged in the duffel for a moment or so, then collected what she wanted to. The twin Eagles, big brutes that had no right to exist except for outright murder, swayed slightly in the air as Sel strapped the gun’s holsters to a leather belt, which was then neatly wrapped around her waist. The knife, placed back in its own sheath, rested at the small of her back, hiding innocuously in the shadows there. Sel then left her tent, carrying the duffel to her selected vehicle. Tossing the bag into the back of the jeep, she then headed for the command centre, ready to pay her last respects to the people she had worked with for the last few months.

The command centre was unusually quiet, heightened only by the sight of the Corporate ‘handler’ that was sitting in one of the four chairs. The four commanders were also in the room, still hunched over the same old table. Sel looked at the five men in the room, leaned against the wall, and laughed, a malicious chuckle that sent a shiver through the air. She let the men realize that not only was she in the room, but she was not in the best of moods.

The ‘handler’, arguably the most knowledgeable about Sel’s more dangerous moods, instantly tried to talk to her, though he didn’t get very far. Before the handler could say more than five words, Sel had stepped within arm’s reach and snapped her left hand outwards, sending the razor-tipped knife hilt-deep into the man’s stomach. Silently, Sel hauled upwards on the hilt of the knife, opening up the handler like a fish being filleted. Finally stopping when the knife fetched up against the dying man’s breastbone, Sel angled the knife upwards, then jammed it in just far enough to sever the descending aorta, as well as the superior vena cava.

The handler, mortally wounded, did not die for almost a minute. He collapsed against Sel, covering her arms with blood, but she didn’t react as he vainly tried to speak. The handler finally crumpled to the ground, twitched a few times, and stopped having any semblance of life, right after the knife was yanked out of his chest, producing a spray of liquid that spattered over the wall and door.

The four men all looked at the corpse, looked at Sel, and saw the purpose glinting in her eyes. Instantly, they scrambled for their guns, pointing the array of weapons a the spot where Sel had just been standing. She was no longer there, however. A few moments later, the entire room erupted into chaos as two gunshots took out the lights, plunging the room into spark-infested darkness.

The room lit up in strobe-like flashes for twenty seconds, then went silent. A faint click was the next noise, as a small penlight turned on, revealing a scene of horrible carnage inside the room. Every person in the room, except for one, had been carved up, sporting gruesome wounds that opened up their bodies directly to the bones. The one body that had not been brutalized to a vicious extent sported a ragged hole in the middle of his forehead, though it was more than likely that the back half of his head was completely missing.

The penlight turned off a moment later, as the door to the command centre was opened. Light flooded the room, revealing the carnage, but no sign of the person who had done so much damage in only a few seconds. Two guards entered the room, sweeping their guns in every normal direction, but forgetting about what might be above them. A gesture seemed to whisper through the air like a faint breeze, and one of the guards collapsed, gargling on blood pouring out of his slashed throat. The second guard, hearing the strangled noise, turned, and gaped at the blood-covered form that was crouched over his companion, stabbing the collapsed guard wickedly with a knife as long as the form’s forearm.

The form seemed to pause when the second guard raised his assault rifle, then vaulted forwards, easily clearing the rising muzzle of the gun. The person slammed into the guard with all the force of a cannonball, and the guard died a few seconds later, the vicious-looking knife having carved through his sternum and opened up both of his lungs, causing the delicate organs to collapse.

Two minutes later, a communications technician entered the room to give a report to one of the commanders, and was rewarded with a sight from hell. The first thing he did was punch a button that raised the base alarm, and the second thing he did was pull a handgun out from an underarm holster, sweeping through the room to see if there was anything dangerous. Nothing jumped out at him, so he took a small breath, only to find that he couldn’t breathe for some reason.

Behind him, the door closed right before the technician realized that his throat had been cut. Sel stood in front of the door for a second, cleaning the blood off of her knife. She paused as she looked at the mirror-like finish of the blade, hefting the knife for a second or two, just to check the balance of the wicked-looking implement of death. Flipping the knife around with an expert spin, Sel sheathed the knife, impressed with the quality of materials and skill of construction.

Having done what she needed to do in the command centre, Sel then walked into the rest of the camp, calmly freeing one of her twin guns from its holster. Two of the slavers, thinking that the alarm was just a test, continued walking towards the darkness-clad Sel, who, innocently enough, didn’t move until the two men noticed the blood spattered all over her. Two more gunshots rang through the darkening camp, and two more people died.

Sel calmly walked through the camp, picking off people singly or in small groups, and much of the camp quickly emptied out as people were informed that somebody had gone berserk and was killing everything in sight. Sel walked over to the holding cages, and almost negligently, she shot or smashed every lock on the cages, which opened up almost instantly. Sel spent some time reloading her guns as the now-freed people ran away in every direction, then she headed for the jeep she had chosen to leave the camp in.

The jeep was ready for her, as it was undamaged by the raging firefights that had erupted after her assassinations of the commanders, though there was a line of bullet holes through the windshield. Sel hopped into the driver’s seat, turned on the jeep, and simply drove about fifty feet away from the motor pool. Turning in her seat, she aimed at the nearest explosive object, and opened fire with her last magazine of ammunition. The eight bullets all hit their marks, and the fuel barrel exploded, vaulting skywards as the top and bottom of the barrel blew off.

The fireball, large enough to begin with, was quickly enlarged by sympathetic detonations, as more fuel barrels exploded, sending the metal containers flying skyward, often with trails of flame following closely behind. Sel didn’t watch the lightshow, as she was already out of the camp, and heading North along an oft-used trail.

The trail ended after twenty miles, but that was enough. After all, it ended less than two hundred metres from an airstrip, which had a few planes ready to go. Sel snagged her duffel bag, and, walking to the pilot’s hut, she knocked on the door, loudly. A muffled curse was the response, followed by a shouted ‘Go away!’

Sel’s response was the exact opposite. Unbeknownst to even the developers of her personal armour, Sel wore the unique material not for its formidable protective capabilities, nor even for its mutable qualities. Instead, she wore it because it boosted her strength into the super-human range, and a perfect example was exhibited as she slammed her foot into the door, which was knocked off of its hinges.

The pilot, a scruffy-looking man who was a good head shorter than Sel, stood up instantly, about to yell at the intruder, until he suddenly found his nose being picked by the barrel of the ugliest gun he had ever seen. The person who had jammed the gun into the pilot’s sinuses, however, wasn’t too concerned about the comfort of her new associate. "You a flyer?"

The pilot swallowed, then nodded fractionally. "Anything with wings, boss."

Sel nodded to herself, then pulled the gun away from the pilot. "Good. Let’s go."

The pilot, not willing to argue with someone who looked like she had just been bathed in blood, just nodded and headed towards his plane, a beat-up bush hopper that had a decent flight range, if one could stand the discomfort. "Where to?"

Sel chuckled, feeling uplifted by the simple question. "For now, anywhere but here. Later, well, who knows? I have my whole life ahead of me now."

A few minutes later, the plane took off, leaving Africa behind. Sel looked out of the passenger’s window for a few minutes, then seemed to smile at her reflection in the dirty glass. "I’m free, and I can do what I want. What could be better?"