The figure moved like a darker shadow within the blackness of the burnt out city. It moved with the grace and speed of a summer wind, the only sound left by its passing was a series of clicks against the stone and asphalt.

A small head sat atop equally tiny shoulders. Fine boned features accented deep set eyes and high cheekbones. Those deep set eyes shown yellow out from the center of a face covered with short black fur, or what she liked to call, hair. She was covered in it from head to toe, with a long thick mane running from her scalp onto her upper shoulders, the hair was long enough to reach just below her knees.

Coming to a stop in the shadow of a toppled skyscraper, she lifted her nose into the air and sniffed. Nothing was on the breeze, but that didn't mean much. She'd been travelling for six days now and had run into nothing, not a single person in all that time. But the hunting had been excellent, it wasn't everyday that someone like her was able to run down, kill, and devour a water buffalo. The aliens that had subjected this city hadn't bothered wasting resources on the zoo or its animal residence. So, the few that were lucky enough to escape their cages were now running wild in the festering carcass of this once thriving city.

The buffalo had gone down beneath her claws after a chase that had lasted only two hundred yards. Being as big as it was it had turned on her and charged, not expecting that it was being hunted by anything other than a feline predator. Only after it was too late did it realize its error. Her scent might have been a mixture of feline and human, but the similarities ended there.

She stood no taller than five foot, in heels. But the way she'd been designed was for stealth and infiltration, so her small stature had been perfect for the mission she had been bred for. But her very existence proved the same point that nature itself had been proving since time began. Never create something without first figuring out a way to control it.

They had created her from a DNA sample of extraterrestrial origins, the egg of a human female, and the DNA of various species of large feline. They hadn't even known what the melding would achieve yet decided to do it anyway. She was the result, a young woman that resembled a cat in subtle ways, and some that weren't so subtle.

Aside from the black fur that covered her from the top of her head to the soles of her feet black fur of various lengths covered every inch of skin. The irises within her diamond shaped eyes were able to expand or contract far more than a normal humans. This gave her the ability to see in all but the complete absence of light. Her lips looked human, for the most part, yet subtle lines extended from the edges of both sides. These were to allow her to open it far more than a normal person. With a hinged jaw her mouth could open wide enough to swallow an average sized persons head. Other than these she looked like any other person.

The buffalo had gone down within seconds, she might have been small but she'd been gifted with strength that belied her size. As the beast had charged she had leapt onto its back, wrapped her arms around the massive neck right where it narrowed behind the head, and twisted. A loud crack and the quadruped had hit the ground.

Three days later with the carcass picked clean she moved on. That had been six days ago, with an abundance of food and an adequate supply of water she was in her element, except for one thing. The people that had grown her were not the type to take her want of independence with equanimity.

A scowl creased her face as she looked over her back trail. They were there somewhere, that much was certain, the General would have sent at least one team to track her down, possibly as many as four. Shaking her head she ran without a sound out from the shadow, the city in all of its crumbling glory hung around her like a pall. She was now nearing the center of what had once been down town, so the rubble and twisted wrecks of buildings became more and more frequent, and larger.

If they're using standard search and capture methods that means they'll want to push me towards the water, they know I won't go near there, so they'll have the advantage. She thought while she searched.

She searched for a place where she could set up an ambush. Tired of running, she now just wanted to end it, and the only way it was going to end was with them gone or her dead, there was no other way. As she searched her mind wandered to the source of all her suffering, back to the real reason she was on the run.

The person most responsible for her creation answered to the name Barbara Hayworth. Before the invasion she was the United States Army's foremost genetic scientist. After the first of the attacks she took every piece of equipment she could, as many of her personnel and retreated to one of her many secret bases. From there she had begun the program that would end in her creation.Casting her eyes over a ruined stretch of asphalt and concrete strewn with the rusting, shattered remains of automobiles brought her out of her musings. There, in the middle of the roadway was a small dark hole. In and of itself it would have been passed over by anyone but her as not worth looking at, just a hole in a dead roadway. But to her it was just what was needed.

Looking out from her shadow, Six looked right, then left.

"No, not Six, I will not be known as a number anymore," she growled to herself.

But what else was there, the General had named her Six after having her placed in the sixth and last cage in the kennel. But now she'd have none of that name, none. So instead of moving to investigate the hole she sat back on her hunches and pondered a new name. Her fingers snapped together as she remembered, she'd found a small scrap of paper in one of the ruined houses she'd slept in the about a week after her escape. On it she had read a story of a young girl who had been raped by her step brother. When the girls actual brother had found out he had avenged her by killing her step brother. The girls name had been Tamar.

As good as any I guess. She thought with a shrug.

Again she poked her small head out from the shadows and made sure nothing was within eye shot. She then lifted her nose and took a long drawn out breath, nothing on the breeze either. With movement so slow she might have been part of the landscape, Tamar crept her way into the center of what once had been a super highway.

Peering down into the blackness beneath the asphalt while laying on her stomach, she still could see no more than a few feet beneath her. The hole was no more than four feet on a side at most. But that didn't matter to her, she'd slipped through holes a lot smaller than this one. Pushing herself to her feet she kicked a small stone into the hole with her toe. After a few seconds the faint sound of it bouncing off something a rolling to a stop came up from the hole.

Not much over forty feet. Shouldn't be a problem. So without hesitation she stepped into the blackness.

The first ten feet went as well as she expected, until her toes brushed against something solid. A split second later her chest hit what her toes had just touched, next her head collided in an explosion of white stars and everything went black.

She came back to consciousness hanging in complete blackness. She knew she was hanging because of the slightest discomfort in her left arm, and the lack of anything her feet could touch. She was bathed in a shaft of dim light that reached from the hole above her to the floor beneath her. Inside the dark's embrace her eyes adjusted with startling speed. Now she could see from end to end the space she found herself in. 

It was what she'd hoped it was, a section of subway tunnel. From the records she had been forced to study, she'd learned that as the cities had grown so had their appetite for mass transit. So the subway systems had been expanded into three tunnels sitting atop one another, that way three trains could use almost the same space and carry three times the people. 

From where she hung she could see that the hole in the roadway up top had been created by an explosive. A shaped charge set to blow downward and outward, pushing the force of the explosive into an ever widening circle as it moved downward. That was why the hole she now clung to was about ten feet across. Beneath her the holes expanded until they reached the stone and earth at the bottom, three stories below.

With a casualness that belied the twenty foot drop, Tamar let go of the concrete ledge and plummeted to the bottom. The dust billowed from beneath her feet like the spores of a dried puffball mushroom stepped on, on a warm fall day. Seconds later the cavern was wracked by a series of rapid fire sneezes, each louder and more violent than the one before it.

"Stupid nose," Tamar muttered when she could see again and everything had stopped spinning.