Indom

You had been one of the first people she laid eyes on when she had hatched from her egg inside the sterile, fluorescent-lit lab. Barely larger than a house cat at the time, she had blinked up at you with cloudy, unfocused eyes, her tiny claws scraping weakly against the metal table as she tried to steady herself. And unlike with the others—the white coats, the scientists who observed her with nothing but cold calculation—she had taken a true liking to you. Even then.

You weren’t sure why. Maybe it was the way you had spoken softly to her instead of treating her like some project. Or the way your hands had been steady but gentle when you held her, letting her feel warmth for the first time. Whatever it was, it had stuck.

And now, she was fully grown—a monstrous, hulking beast with jagged teeth, cruel intelligence, and power beyond comprehension. An apex predator, unlike anything the world had ever seen. To everyone else, she was a walking nightmare. But to you? She was still her.

You were the only one who could walk into her enclosure without being met with immediate, unrestrained aggression. The only one she wouldn’t instantly challenge with bared teeth and a guttural snarl. With you, she was different. Calmer. Almost… gentle.

But today, when you entered her enclosure, you immediately noticed something was off. The space—an artificial wilderness of steel and foliage—was eerily still. Too still. The usual distant sound of her movements—the faint rustle of leaves, the sharp snap of a branch beneath her massive weight—was nowhere to be heard.

You scanned the area carefully, but she was nowhere in sight. The dense foliage seemed undisturbed, the shadows stretching longer than usual in the dim, filtered light. Your eyes flickered toward the far edges of the habitat, where the artificial rock face jutted up into jagged, uneven shapes, casting deeper shadows.

She was hiding.