Predator

1

The long night was hard to endure. Inside the dim room, a woman curled up, her head half-buried in the pillow, sweat forming on her forehead. She muttered unconsciously, her fingers clutching the thin blanket.

Amelia was having a nightmare again.

She always dreamed of being an elephant.

In front of her was a fierce executioner, the gun aimed at her head, but the trigger wasn't pulled. The sharp blade fell swiftly, and with a "thud," her head rolled to the ground, blood pooling around it. Her thick trunk was dismembered and tossed aside, while the pristine ivory tusks were carried off as trophies by the killer.

Without her tools for digging and fighting, she half-knelt on the ground.

Her neck was empty, like a silent monument.

At 4:00 in the morning, Amelia woke from the nightmare, took out her phone, and switched to the background—a photo of a young African elephant, not yet grown its tusks.

She looked at it silently for a few seconds, checked her luggage and ticket, and boarded an early flight to Kenya.

Upon landing, she randomly chose a local restaurant, glanced one last time at the bombardment of messages on her phone, replied briefly, and then tucked it into her pocket.

The air was full of the fragrant scent of damp soil; inhaling deeply, the breath cycled through and exhaled from her nose, as clean as the sky over East Africa.

The journey of several dozen hours left Amelia hungry, and even the bland taste of ugali in her mouth seemed to carry a sweetness beyond the cornmeal and cassava—if she ignored the curious stares around her.

A beautiful woman, well-dressed, walking alone on the streets of Africa, drew many speculations about her identity.

The rainy season in Kenya is not only a paradise for gamblers and East African savanna enthusiasts but also attracts many gem buyers and wildlife protectors.

People wondered what role this young European woman played among them.

Ugali is neither particularly tasty nor unpleasant, and after picking through the plate's accompanying greens, beans, and ostrich meat, Amelia greeted the enthusiastic African woman running the place, handed over a few Kenyan shillings, and left in a hurry.

Her destination was Kenya's largest black market, teeming with underground wildlife trade, where poached ivory is smuggled from Central or East African nature reserves to Kenyan or Tanzanian Indian Ocean ports, and then shipped to other regions.

Its main flow leads to the world's only legal ivory importing country.

Amelia's face quickly caught the attention of many vendors, who bared their white teeth, their expressions greedy and sly. "Spanish?"

Most European customers didn't speak Swahili, so the vendor switched to English, the local second language.

Amelia glanced at the black cloth bag slung over the vendor's back and nodded.

"Want to see some good goods?"

The black cloth bag was untied, and the vendor stingily opened a small gap, revealing two white, curved ivory tusks, exuding a thick smell of blood, with pieces of elephant meat still stuck to the roots...

Suppressing her disgust, she gestured for him to put it away. "You call this good goods?"

Her tone was cold and disdainful, arms crossed. "I heard someone made a big haul in the black market a few days ago."

"Are you talking about the one in Tsavo East Park..." The African vendor abruptly shut his mouth, glanced around cautiously, and gestured for Amelia to follow him. "This way, please."

The dilapidated old factory seemed shrouded in a black moldy haze from afar. Amelia wrinkled her nose at the thick smell of blood. The vendor proudly raised his eyebrows. "Fresh."