Finals

3: night

Kalista braced herself as Bruce kicked at the door: once, twice, then three times. She could feel its metal surface giving way. Adrenaline rising again, she grabbed the console and its power cord, then stopped. If she wanted a chance at getting past Bruce, she would need to outrun him or outfight him. Which one would be easier? It was hard to tell. Bruce was not as strong as Peter, but he was stronger than her. Her only advantage was her agility and speed -- but he was fast too, and she had no idea if there were others who would be chasing her too once she got out there.

Would he find her hiding spot? She winced as she realized that he probably would. He had been in the lab when she had first gone in to this crawl space to fix the console. Maybe he would forget... but no, Academy students remembered everything, filing even inconsequential pieces of information into their mental database. No, he would know, and maybe he was trying to hide here himself.

The image of that leaderboard flashed in her mind's eye, and she acted.

Shoving the console and her phone aside, she grabbed a random hard drive and smashed it against the wall. She heard Bruce pause, then return to destroying the door with more vigor. Satisfied, Kalista clutched the sharp shard of broken metal in her right hand and kicked the panel open.

When the door finally gave, she was ready.

As Bruce burst inside, she jumped on top of him and slit his throat.

He didn't even have time to scream.

She let him fall to the ground and stepped aside. In her pocket, her phone buzzed, but she didn't stop to look. She climbed back onto a desk and was about to swing herself up when a hand clamped around her ankle.

Kalista held back a shout as she looked down to see Harper Edwards, one of the quiet, intelligent ones. In her hand was a kitchen knife.

"Harper," Kalista whispered, watching that knife shake in the girl's small hand. "Harper, we could be allies. Can you imagine? Your brains and my skills. We would be unstoppable. Harper--"

She dodged as the knife was swung at her chest. "Hey! Come on, Harper, that's not what you do to your--"

Harper growled and the knife went toward her head again; it barely sliced her ear as she backflipped away. "Hey, hey," Kalista said, her hands going up. "I'm just trying to--"

This time Harper launched the knife at her heart, but Kalista curved her spine backwards and the knife glided over her, embedding itself into the wall.

Harper froze, weaponless.

"I don't want to do this," Kalista said. All she saw was the Inner Collective's intricate seal as she plunged the hard drive into the girl's chest.

Her phone buzzed again, but she ignored it as she grabbed Harper's knife from the wall and climbed back into the crawl space, waiting to pounce on the next victim.

Safe again in the cabinet, she wiped her blood-covered hands on the wall, shuddering. It was so much harder to be heartless when she was alone in the dark, and she couldn't help but picture Harper's pleading gaze. Giving herself a not-so-light knock on the head, she grabbed her phone from her pocket and stared at the leaderboard, hoping it would make her feel better.

And it did.

4. Kalista Chu - 2 kills.

She grinned joylessly and waited as the night came.

***

A couple of hours later, a faint whirring sound came from the hallway. Kalista stilled. Reaching for her phone, she saw that it was one of the cleaning robots, here to take Harper and Bruce's bodies away. Curious, she jumped down to take a look.