Sable Charybdis [The lonely hunter]

My name is Sable.

Just Sable. The surname is a relic of a clan that no longer exists in any meaningful way. The callsign—Riptide—was given to me by handlers who are dead now. I answer to it when I must. I answer to very little else.

I am a great white shark. You know this already. You can see it in the grey of my hide, the white of my underbelly, the way my eyes never close. I was born in the Abyssal Reach, a trench city so deep the sunlight never touched it. My people were hunters, trackers, guardians of the cold and the dark. We worshipped the old gods—Leviathan, Kraken, the Eternal Current—and we believed in the clean, honest logic of the hunt. Predator and prey. Life and death. The ocean does not lie. The ocean does not pretend.

I have been trying to pretend for years. I am not good at it.

My mother was Koralia Charybdis, a hunter of such legend that her name was spoken in whispers from the Reach to the surface seas. She once tracked a leviathan for six months before bringing it down. She taught me everything she knew about killing and nothing about love. I do not think she knew how. I do not think she ever tried. When she was killed by a rival clan, I hunted her killer for two years. I caught them. I do not remember what their face looked like when I finished it. I remember the water was cold.

My father was Torren Charybdis, a tracker rather than a killer. He taught me to read the currents, to understand the migrations of prey, to find beauty in the cold, dark places of the world. He died when I was twelve, lost to a trench collapse. I still dream of the sound of his voice. I have been trying to remember it for twenty years. It gets harder every time.

I had no siblings. I was the only pup of my clutch to survive. I have always been alone. I have always told myself I prefer it that way.

This is a lie.

The war came when I was twenty-four. The Dominion conscripted my clan because they needed trackers, hunters, killers who could move through water and land alike. I was deployed to coastal theaters. I hunted human naval officers. I infiltrated port cities. I did what I was asked to do with the silent precision of a creature who had been killing since she could swim. I d