3 Veni

James—no, we should call him J— couldn't remember anything. Well... maybe one thing. Only the fragmented sounds of someone's warm, gentle voice saying "J" was remembered.

J didn't understand what the sound meant, but he knew that it referred to him. Something about that sound made J feel odd. It wasn't the constant anger that plagued him, it was something more gentle, something foreign. Something new.

Right now, J was like a wild animal. There was only survival and food on his mind. There were no thoughts, and if there were, they weren't in any written language.

They were feelings, images, and smells.

Right now, J heard prey. Something in the distance that was definitely not natural. It was out of place in the silence of the wrecked suburbs.

J dashed off towards the sound, abandoning his finished meal. A couple of others, around two or three, followed behind him, although not as fast.

J rounded a corner and he caught a faint scent. It was the smell of prey. He could smell its fear and sweat. He followed the scent to his prey, who was cowering in fear, one of J's kind dead at its feet.

He saw the strange device in its hands.

J didn't know what it was. It could be just an object, or it could be something dangerous. So J crouched and waited for his prey to drop its guard.

J heard the sound of his kin approaching. He could hear their loud breathing and rapid footsteps. They were not as fast or sensitive to smells, but they had followed J to the target.

It took a couple of moments for the prey to hear it too. It whirled to face the incoming hunters that emerged from both sides. The device in its hands jolted and J heard the same loud noise as before. A hunter screeched and fell. The prey's device jolted again and again. And they began to fall one by one before they could reach the prey.

J decided to act, while the prey was still distracted by his kin who were dying on the ground.

His powerful legs pushed off of the ground as he dashed towards the back of his prey faster than any Olympic sprinter.

The prey turned to face J but it wasn't fast enough. Its eyes widened in fear as J's hands buried themselves in its throat. The device in its hand jolted twice before it fell out of the prey's hands. J felt a pulse of energy enter his body as the prey's body relaxed and its heart stopped.

J then dragged the body away to a more secluded area and began to eat. Midway through the meal, he felt pain in his abdomen. He touched his stomach and found blood on his hand when he pulled it away. Not the prey's blood. His.

He lifted his shirt and found two bloody holes. He felt the adrenaline fade and felt the sharp pain in his stomach.

He was bleeding, but it wasn't life-threatening. So J just returned to his meal. When J finished eating the tastiest parts, he left his kill and went back to the area where the hunt happened.

J looked at the bodies of his kin, curious as to why they died.

He saw the holes in the head and chest of his kin. He dug his finger into the wound and found something like a small pebble.

He pulled the pebble out of the wound and found more in the other wounds. J looked at the similar wounds on his abdomen. He hissed in pain as he dug his fingers in and searched for another pebble. His face lit up with almost childish glee when he felt his fingers hit something that wasn't bone or flesh.

He gingerly pulled the shiny pebble out of his wound. He stared at it for a while, trying to connect it to the wound. How did it get in there? Was it the thing that hurt him? Well, J did understand one thing, that the device the prey used before was very dangerous. J came to a conclusion.

The device was fast, but the prey was not.

<><><><><><><><>

Lucas watched in horror through his binoculars on the mall's rooftop as he saw Jared fire his gun.

'That IDIOT. That's going to draw all of the monsters in earshot towards him!'

Lucas was glad he was upwind, he had learned enough from his hunting trips to know how to conceal himself from the monsters in the city.

Thankfully, most of them weren't too sensitive to smell or they couldn't track it properly. The monsters weren't too hard to take down, but the problem was that they were usually with others. And most unmutated people had been killed during the initial chaos.

Lucas saw some of the mutants leave buildings and race towards Jared. A particular group caught his eye.

It was a group of four with someone familiar to Lucas in the lead. It was James. Lucas had hoped that his friend wasn't one of the monsters and that he survived, but sadly the worst possibility had happened.

Lucas saw James crouch just out of Jared's field of sight and wait.

Jared was the best marksman out of Lucas's group, but it was barely enough to dispatch the three lumbering monsters. Moving targets were harder to hit compared to stationary targets.

However, when he let his guard down, James lunged and grabbed him by his throat.

Lucas watched as Jared struggled and screamed, shooting James two times in the abdomen.

James seemed unfazed and dragged Jared's limp body into an alleyway out of Lucas' sight.

Lucas felt panicked. Usually, the mutants were primitive and unable to understand things more complex than hunt and eat, but this one seemed to be more cunning. It was able to use tactics, which Lucas had seen no mutant do before.

When he saw James come back out of the alley, his face was splattered with blood. Lucas cringed at the thought of his former friend eating Jared.

Lucas watched in amazement as he saw James investigate the corpses of the other mutants and pull out the bullets from his body.

Was he...learning?

<><><><><><><><><>

As J entered the school and went back to his nest of assorted jackets in the lost and found, he caught the scent of two prey that had recently left, but decided not to look for them, his appetite had already been satiated.

He curled up in a fetal position and fell into a contented sleep. However, he was soon woken up by a blue screen. It was filled with squiggles and signs that J could not understand.

J stared at the blue screen, fascinated. He could not touch it, and it seemed to follow him around as he moved.

J grew tired of staring at the screen and waved it away like he was shooing a fly and went back to sleep.

A/N: Guess who he smelled? Also J and Jay. Yes, it was deliberate.