My uncle’s last words weren’t a comfort. They were a challenge. A dare. It’s not the power that makes you a monster, Nikki. It’s what you choose to do with it. Remember that.

  Easy for him to say. He didn’t have claws itching to tear through his fingertips every time he got angry. He didn’t dream of the hunt.

  But his faith, his stubborn, dying belief in me, had been a spark. My uncle's words echoed in the silence. The despair was a cold stone in my gut, but his faith was a spark. Fine. I would use the cold to temper the fire. I wasn’t just going to fight. I was going to win.

  No more tricks. No more psychological warfare. No more trying to outsmart a monster that was a twisted reflection of myself. This time, I would meet him on his own terms. Brute force against brute force. Rage against rage. Monster against monster.

  But it wouldn’t be my rage. It would be my weapon.

  “So, the new grand strategy is… what?” Handy asked. We were in the center of the lab, the holographic schematics of the collapsed subway tunnel glowing in the dusty air between us. “To punch him really hard, but this time, with feeling?”

  “Something like that,” I said. My voice was quiet, focused. The frantic, panicked energy from before was gone, replaced by a cold, hard calm. “I’ve been fighting it, Handy. The wolf. The monster inside me. Every time I feel it surface, I push it down, I try to stay in control. I try to be Nikki Nova, cheerleader with a nasty, fur-related problem.”

  I looked down at my hands, at the faint scars that were the only visible reminder of the claws that lay just beneath the skin. “And every time, I fail. Because I’m not just Nikki Nova anymore. I’m something else. Something more.”

  “A stunning revelation,” Handy quipped. “I’ll alert the media. ‘Local Teen Discovers She is, In Fact, a Terrifying Wolf-Monster.’ More at eleven.”

  “I’m not going to fight it anymore,” I continued, ignoring him. “I’m going to embrace it. I’m going to let the wolf out. But this time, I’m not going to let it drive. I’m going to be right there in the passenger seat, with my hand on the wheel.”

  “You’re going to merge your consciousness with the primal instincts of a genetically engineered predator,” Handy said, his voice losing a bit of its snark. “A bold and psychologically… fascinating choice. The potential for you to permanently scramble your own personality into a puddle of feral goo is, let's say, not zero.”

  “I don’t have another choice,” I said. It was the truth. Ravage was stronger than me. Faster. More brutal. As Nikki Nova, I stood no chance. But as something else? Something new? A hybrid, not of flesh and steel, but of human will and primal instinct?

  Maybe, just maybe, I can finally fight him in his own weight class.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  *****

  The next few days were the hardest of my life. My training was no longer physical. It was a deep, painful dive into myself. I would sit for hours in the dusty silence of the lab, cross-legged on the cold concrete floor, and meditate. Not for peace. For war.

  Leaning in was like jumping off a cliff. The storm hit me instantly—not thoughts, just a roar of pure instinct. HuntFeedKill. The lab vanished, replaced by a world of scent and sound, a brutal map of predator and prey. My own thoughts were a tiny, flickering light in the hurricane.

  The first few times, the storm swallowed me whole. I'd snap out of it hours later, the lab a mess, with no memory of how it happened.

  “You seem to have a recurring, subconscious desire to disembowel that workbench,” Handy noted after one particularly rough session. “Did it say something to offend your mother?”

  But I kept trying. I stopped fighting the roar. I let it wash over me, a wave of pure instinct. And deep inside, I held onto a single thought, a single anchor in the chaos: I am still here. I am in control. It was a tiny, stubborn pinprick of light, but it held.

  It was a delicate, terrifying dance. A synergy. I would let the wolf’s instincts sharpen my senses, fuel my strength, guide my movements. But I would remain in control. My mind, my choice, my purpose, would be the hand that guided the weapon.

  I was no longer fighting the beast within. I was becoming it.

  While I was at war with myself, Handy was at war with the city. He had analyzed every piece of data from our previous fights, every schematic of the collapsed subway tunnel.

  “He’ll be back there,” Handy said, pointing a holographic finger at the epicenter of the collapse on the map. “His programming has been shattered. He’s operating on pure, primal instinct now. And a predator, when wounded, always returns to its den. That tunnel is his territory now. His lair.”

  “And it’s a death trap,” I said, looking at the structural analysis Handy had overlaid on the map. The collapse had weakened the surrounding area. The remaining support pillars were fractured, the ceiling unstable. It was a tomb waiting for a corpse.

  “A tomb of your own making,” Handy said with a hint of digital glee. “We can use it. Turn his new home into his grave. I’ve identified the key load-bearing pillars. A few well-placed strikes, and the whole thing will come down.”

  I would go back to the tunnel. Use my scent as bait, a direct challenge. And when he came for me, I would bring the whole damn place down on his head.

  I spent the last hours in a state of focused, painful calm. I wasn't Nikki Nova, the scared cheerleader. I wasn't the white wolf, the mindless monster. I was something in between. Something new. Something dangerous.

  I was ready.

  As I stood at the entrance to the derelict lab, ready to leave, Handy’s voice, for once, was serious. “Nikki. Your uncle… he would be proud.”

  A lump formed in my throat. “Let’s just hope I can make it to the finish line,” I said, my voice rough.

  “He’s your creation, too, Handy,” I added, looking down at the wristband. “Let’s go show him what we’re made of.”

  I stepped out into the neon-drenched night. The city was a different place now. It wasn’t a cage. It wasn’t a jungle. It was a hunting ground.

  And I was the predator.