–10. Aranea

arānea ~ae, f.

1. a spider

Fourteen years ago, on the same space Station, a fourth child turns five years old.

He is a forgotten child, left on a doorstep in his early hours. His hair is spun gold. His eyes are the color of ice, and they focus on the burlap dummy in front of him, the heat of a projection dagger clutched in his small fist. The hard orange light gouts and sputters from the handle, ready to strike. His instructor—the only father-mother-family the boy has ever known—jerks his head at the dummy.

“Kill.”

Kill he does. Over and over again. Each time, he receives a “well done.” Each time, a smile.

The boy dreams of family, and though he has one, in fourteen years he will kill a woman with black hair and kind eyes in front of her daughter, and it will be the end of this dream.

And the beginning of a new one.