That night, I gathered my supplies to prepare for my assault on the warehouse of the Half Moon. I had my new knife and sword, plus the handgun from my grandfather’s safe, though its usefulness against a lycan might be moot. I brought it anyway, as they may have more Othersiders in their employ, or even humans, where this gun may save my life. In the Vanta, I saw at least a dozen figures working in this warehouse; if all of them were lycans, the chances of my victory were slim to none. I would have to be extraordinarily careful if I were to stand a chance of making it out alive. I knew I had gotten my revenge, and that I could now leave, but after the horror my other self had wrought, and knowing that this pack was still going to lay waste to the city, I knew I had to do something: I might be the only one who could. The Coalition of Othersider Enforcement often took months to intervene on something once they found out it was in their ballpark; in that time, dozens could die at the hands of the Half Moon.

  I used the shadows to my advantage as I crept closer to the seemingly abandoned warehouse by the water, taking the time to stake out my surroundings. To the untrained eye, there was nothing remarkable to behold, but I could smell through the salt and industry the telltale scent of animals. It seemed that even in their human form they couldn’t mask their scent. I snuck a bit closer, and found an easy path to an elevated window I could peer into the warehouse through. As I made my way to the vantage point, I wondered why they didn’t have a single guard posted outside, but reckoned that having someone loitering at the docks was probably more suspicious than anything. When I peered in, I saw a group of three cloaked figures moving about the warehouse in dim fluorescent light bulbs. They seemed to be taking inventory of the items they had, oblivious to my arrival and location.

  I double checked to make sure no one else was around using my sense of hearing; I couldn’t even hear a heartbeat besides these three. Perhaps they only kept their main crew here on certain days? Feeling a bit defeated, I figured I could interrogate these three at least, and figure out the locations of other buildings of importance to the lycans. Slowly, I opened the window and crept inside, landing softly on a stack of boxes below. I watched as they continued their business, unaware of my landing, and so I snuck down closer. I unsheathed my dagger as I ghosted towards the closest figure, before coiling around them like a snake, taking them into the shadows, hand to their mouth and knife to their throat.

  Before I could even begin interrogating this person, the lights in the rest of the warehouse came on, and suddenly the shadows I hid in were no more. I looked down at the person I was holding, and they were looking up at me with fear in their eyes, tape around their mouths. The sound of beating hearts began flooding the warehouse like a symphony of beating drums, and six more figures walked out of their own respective hiding places, wielding weapons or transformed into bestial figures.

  Fuck. I walked straight into a trap.

  “I take it you’re the one who killed Violet,” said the largest looking wolf, a menacing low growl audible to each vowel he spoke.

  I released the person I was holding, and they ran to a corner, trembling. They used innocent people as bait to get me into a hole, so they could bury me here. I stepped into the center of the room, previously lit by a single fluorescent bulb. “Yeah, I am. An eye for an eye. She took someone from me. I take it you set this all up to do the same?” I said, trying to mask the fear in my heart. I’d never fought multiple Outsiders at once before. I had no idea if I could prevail, but I would have to try.

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  “You’d be right, little lamb. Now, will you lay down your weapons and make this a clean kill, or are we going to have to get… Violent?” he said, a fanged grin forming on his snout.

  “Well, it seems obvious which one you want, and I’d hate to deprive you of that, so… Let’s get started, shall we?” I said, assuming a lower stance, sheathing my dagger and drawing my blade with one hand.

  There was a moment of silence. A thin, frail moment, where I questioned the life I had led till this moment. Violence seemed to be in my blood, I couldn’t seem to channel it for good. My father wasn’t a violent man, but he became a police officer because he wanted to help people. What was I doing any of this for? Why was I in this warehouse? Did I come here to help people? Or did I come here because I needed to finish what I started? Because I was so hungry for blood that I couldn’t stop, just because I got a shiny new sword? I thought over what my other self said in this quiet second, and realized that it wasn’t really another self. It was an unfiltered self, one completely unrestricted by the limits placed on it by others. I’ve always had that potential. It wasn’t someone else: it was me.

  In a blink of an eye, the alpha werewolf was upon me, and I could only barely dodge his strike, though in doing so I lost my footing. He saw this, and followed up with a rising knee to my abdomen, sending me flying into the wooden boxes I had snuck down on, breaking them. I sputtered and coughed, opening my eyes just in time to see him standing over me, arm raised, ready to strike clean through my head. I just managed to roll out of the way, and got back to my feet, but was hit in the side by a bat held by one of his lackeys. In one fluid motion, I severed the head of this intruder, but left myself wide open to another attack from the alpha, who kicked me in the back with full force, sending me all the way past his other men to the other side of the warehouse.

  I stood up and assessed the situation; I had taken significant damage, and probably wouldn’t survive a few more blows like that. The other four rushed at me in this moment of weakness: from their scent, I could tell that they were all Othersiders, but only two of them were lycans. I whipped out my revolver and fired at the heads of the two who weren’t, and was relieved as they fell to the ground, their heads now blooming in a bloody flower pattern. One of the lycans bit down hard on my revolver arm, and I felt the tooth touch bone, while the other drove their claws into my chest, creating a massive gash. I could feel one of my lungs slice open and begin to fill with blood, and I sputtered and coughed, before I raised my sword arm and decapitated the lycan biting my arm. His head still clung to me, making that arm useless, so I kicked at the other one, snapping her femur, before driving my sword directly through her heart.

  Broken and beaten, I dripped pints of my own blood as I faced down the alpha, my back to the wall, the sound of the tide through the window behind me. I couldn’t win this battle; there was no universe in which I walked away from this. He knew this, as he walked closer, coming in for the kill, and I was beginning to come to peace with this fact as well; I had done the best I could, but I was a failed test subject and Silaqui–

  Silaqui.

  I couldn’t die here. Silaqui had lost her last champion, and cloistered herself for over a decade. What would happen to her if she lost me too? As the alpha drew closer, like a hound cornered a fox, I knew that there was a 0% chance of survival here, but there was a > 0% chance of surviving the sea. I quickly cut the wall behind me with my sword, and dashed through it, sheathing my sword as I hurled myself into the salty brine of the Yellow Sea, entrusting myself to the cruel mistress that was the water.