Boundless

Prologue: Restless

Have you ever felt as if your memories belong to someone else?

Another person. Another life.

When you look back and can't recognize yourself? Or rather, the you who lived all those things is not you anymore.

So who are you? Who are you if not your memories?

***

Ah'kaedh took inventory of his hunting equipment. Inspecting each piece carefully, one by one. In a ritual that every single Yautja knew by heart.

While armoring  himself, he strapped his wrist gauntlet to his right. Once, Ah'kaedh had been ambidextrous, preferring to wear it on his left (being an enforcer made him use every single bit of advantage he could gather when facing one of his own species, and a good amount of people would assume a fighting stance to face a right-handed opponent once they spotted the gauntlet on his left), now allowing any rational-minded prey to assume he had lost his dominant hand seemed a better strategy.

Not that he actually needed said gauntlet - his prosthetic of choice had the functions of the gauntlet built in.

This was his 3rd incursion on the satellite.

Location to an ooman company named Seegson, this was the place the Girl mentioned as her last home before...

Before meeting me.

Seegson was, per his Prey's words, a competitor of Seizei.

And sure enough, every bit of information she relayed had been true. But what she described was not quite what he found.

The humans named Solomons the satellite system around the planet named Alpha Caeli V, a massive gas giant. There were some minings colonies, well established by now, some cities, offices and other ooman structures.

A space bridge served as a connection point between the rocks and as docking for traveling vessels.

Alpha Caeli Vb was the moon with the largest city, which would receive more visitors - home to almost 2,000,000 oomans, Seegson offices, trade points, the largest hospital and health research in the region. Decent nightlife. A tolerable climate and had its terra-formation process concluded more than a century ago.

Some descriptions matched what he found, but again, not quite. Some places had closed, others had probably gone under renovations.

Oomans, as a short-lived species, were quite fond of building structures without having eyes on the future. Cities would change, structures would be torn apart. Changes to the environment made without much consideration. Oomans were mostly like termites. Taking and taking.

Ah'kaedh had not been a fan of the species before, but the range of feeling they would evoke now was way beyond despise.

And yet, here he was.

One year into his efforts to find his Girl, his Prey, the key to his peace (whatever that meant).

He had visited other places before. But her trail was cold...

Cold as a corpse. It was as if Ah'kaedh was the only one who was still aware of the ghost of her existence.

***

Failure has a bitter, bitter taste.

No amount of learning about oomans society (and how to take advantage of their systems, the ancient paraphernalia they called technology), customs, and their disgusting cities were enough to find Her.