The Last Hunter: Collected Edition (Antarktos Saga #1-5)

Instead of scaling down the wall, I find a tree full of twisting branches and easily make my way down. Using the wall as a guideline, I turn in the direction the man flew, and begin my search.

The job is easier than I thought it would be. My health is returning, the ground beneath my feet is even for the most part and nothing tries to eat me. A hole in the canopy reveals where the man’s body re-entered the jungle. His body lies in a twisted heap, thirty feet beyond. His limbs are all broken, as are, I suspect, his spine and nearly every other bone in his body. But somehow, his face escaped without much more than a few scrapes.

Crouching next to him, I look at his closed eyes. He has Asian features, but I’m not sure what country he’s from until I see the red flag. Chinese. The man’s uniform looks like any average soldier’s, designed for trekking through the jungle, but the single star on his shoulder identify him as a low ranking general.

What is a Chinese general doing on Antarktos?

Avoiding the blood soaked into his uniform, I search his pockets for clues. The first thing I find is his identification. It looks official, but most of it is in Chinese. The only English lettering I see is his name. I read it aloud. “Zhou Kuan-Yin. What are you doing here, General?”

His other pockets reveal nothing, but I find a package of dried meat, a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. I toss the smokes, but keep the lighter and the food. The only pocket I haven’t checked is over his chest, and it’s covered in blood. But the boxy lump beneath the fabric hints at something worth finding.

Using a stick, I pry the pocket open and try to see what’s inside. All I can see is something shiny. Like plastic. I try to fish it out with the stick, but it’s not happening. Using the stick to hold the pocket open, I reach my other hand toward the pocket. I feel like I’m playing a game of Operation, trying to remove the funny bone without hitting the metal sides and setting off an unsettling buzzer. But the buzzer here is my nerves. I have dealt with a lot of dead creatures over the past few years, and even held Riodan’s dead body, but human blood is something I’m still not used to. My own, sure—there’s been an abundance of it spilled—but not someone else’s. No thanks. The smell alone is bad enough, but the sick angles of this man’s broken limbs and the knowledge that he was killed by a Nephilim, have me unsettled enough. Getting his blood on me would just be the last straw.

I find the hard plastic object with my thumb and index finger. I pull it out slowly until my finger scrapes across something sticky wet. “Gah!” I shout. I flinch and yank my hand out, flinging the thing onto the jungle floor.

After wiping my hand off on a leaf, I find the object freed from Zhou’s pocket. It’s hard white plastic with a rubber-sealed seam around the middle. Waterproof, I think. I flip the thing over, looking for blood, and finding none, I pick it up. It fits nicely in the palm of my hand. There are four small snap locks on each side of the rectangular case. I pop the locks and slowly open it.

There’s a device inside. It’s rectangular and has a shiny surface. I take it out of the case and flip it over. The back is smooth and black, but there are a few buttons on the thing’s shiny metal edges. I have no idea what it is, but I recognize the power symbol on one of the buttons.

I push it.

The device nearly falls from my hand as I jump in surprise when a swirling, blue logo appears on what I now know is a small screen. The color is more vivid than any TV I’ve ever seen and the image is far clearer.

It’s been more than twenty years, I remind myself. This is the future.

I smile at my caveman response to technology for a moment, and put my encyclopedic knowledge of computers to the task of figuring this thing out. Granted, my computer was an Apple II C and took up an entire desktop, but I knew how to use it better than my parents. Unfortunately for me, the menu that pops up is labeled in Chinese, so even if there was a keyboard on this thing, I don’t think typing in LIST or RUN is going to do any good. I try to look through the menu with the buttons on the side, but nothing happens. I’m about to give up on the thing when I decide to access a different knowledge-base: science fiction. This is the future after all. I’ve seen more than a few TV episodes and movies where computers are nothing more than hand held tablets…with touchable screens.

Could we really be that far? I wonder, and touch the screen with my finger. The icon blinks beneath my touch and a new menu opens. This one makes even less sense than the first. I click on a left facing arrow at the top of the screen, and I’m delighted by the device’s intuitive design. I look at the small icons and go through the list, hoping to find something that makes sense. I strike jackpot with the fourth icon.