The Primal Hunter

Jake looked on as the life of the other Jake progressed at a steady pace, far more detailed than before, and it even included sound now. In fact, it was as if Jake himself was present and standing in the room and could even move around.

Many of the first memories after simulation-Jake - or sim-Jake for short – went into the foster system were of him being thrown into new environments surrounded by other children in equally unfortunate situations.

Such children tended to not be the best. They were emotionally underdeveloped and immature and often had no way of handling their situation besides acting out. So when a new kid entered a foster home of twelve kids – one younger than many of them – it was natural to make him a target.

A scene like this was one of the first major things that the simulation deemed an impactful event.

Sim-Jake, no more than seven years old, stood surrounded by children between the age of seven and ten. There were six of them in total. Jake was smaller than all but one of the other kids.

”Give!” one of the larger kids screamed as he reached towards sim-Jake’s toy. It was a foam dagger that Jake remembered his grandmother getting him before passing away. It appeared that it was a gift he would receive in both the simulation and real life.

Sim-Jake pulled away but didn’t say anything. But Jake saw the eyes of the other version of himself. He was ready. The larger kid moved in closer and pushed the far smaller child, sim-Jake stumbling backward. The other kids just laughed at the bullying as sim-Jake fell to the floor. Another kid came over to try and take the foam dagger while the large kid walked to Jake and prepared to kick him.

Now, even children have some kind of natural limiter on them. Grevious injuries when children were in scuffles rarely happened, as even when so young, they understood not to do it. Be it out of a fear of getting in trouble or inborn empathy, or perhaps a limiter imposed by society and early nurture.

Something sim-Jake clearly did not care about.

Out of nowhere, a dinner fork appeared. The kid trying to take the foam dagger didn’t even have time to react as he was stabbed in the arm, making him scream out in pain. Rolling up, the far smaller child-version of Jake caught the leg of the bully and stood up, making him fall backward. Most would end there, but the small Jake ran over and stomped the larger kid in the head repeatedly as the ten-year-old started crying.

It only took a few seconds before a disheveled woman came yelling into the room and dragged Jake off the kid. Still holding the foam dagger tight as he stared daggers at the kid nearly twice his age on the ground.

As the scene was about to end, Jake noticed that the small version of himself seemed to almost look in his direction. Hm? Jake questioned, but the scene had already been completed.

A few more scenes appeared after that of Jake growing up. Each scene was of a different foster home, and all of them were of others trying to make trouble for Jake, and Jake using what could only be described as the use of excessive force in self-defense.

Where usually a kid would shove someone, Jake tackled them to the ground and began punching. Where one would punch someone, Jake broke an arm or a leg. His violence landed him in repeated trouble… but it was also effective. One instance was all it took, and no other child dared cause trouble for him.

Jake – the real one – had to admit he related to a few of these things. He didn’t remember exactly when he began to truly suppress his Bloodline, but he still had it in some parts of his childhood. Even after it was suppressed, some of the effects were also still retained but far weaker. However, rather than slowly suppressing it more and more, this version of Jake embraced it. He grew into it.

Scenes continued, and the next most noticeable scene was of a fifteen-year-old sim-Jake. Rather than be in a foster home this time, he lived in an old abandoned warehouse. Homeless, most likely. Maybe the authorities had given up on him, or he had run off himself, but either way, he was clearly out of the system.

Jake first noticed the body of this version of himself wasn’t what one would expect of a homeless fifteen-year-old. He had more muscles than kids of that age and looked more like an athlete in training. In the scene shown, he was also doing push-ups as two men walked over. Both looked to be in their thirties and were not happy.

”Hey kid, get the fuck up,” one of the men sneered.

Sim-Jake barely reacted and kept training as he just turned his head. ”What do you want?”

”I heard you made trouble for our boys,” the other man said a bit more calmly.

”Funny, I remember it being the other way around. Them trying to rob me,” sim-Jake said as he finally stopped training and stood up. He was smaller than the two men by quite a bit, but not a trace of fear was on his face.

A teenager before two large men would usually be viewed as a foregone conclusion. Facing little more than a child, the adults naturally didn’t take sim-Jake very seriously as one of them reached towards him.

”Listen here ki-”

His wrist was grasped as sim-Jake looked him in the eye. ”I am listening, am I not?”

The man did not take kindly to this. He wrested his arm free and took a swing. Sim-Jake effortless dodged it as he took a step back to avoid a follow-up. The man looked like he had some minor boxing experience, but it was far from good enough.

Sim-Jake caught his arm as the man made a wide swing and twisted it. The attacker yelled in pain as sim-Jake just pushed him away, making him fall to the ground.

“Just fuck off already, man,” sim-Jake said, annoyed.

The other man who had yet to attack looked at his fallen comrade.

”Kid, you stole thousands from us. We aren’t leaving,” he said.

Sim-Jake raised an eyebrow and frowned as the other party pulled out a switchblade. The man raised it threateningly and spoke again. ”Stop being an idiot.”

The real Jake saw his simulated version take a clearly defensive stance. The man with the switchblade looked like he had hoped to just intimidate. No one wanted to kill someone and potentially land themselves in legal trouble over what could not be that much money. Yet when the man saw Jake clearly wanted to fight, he sneered and jumped. Sim-Jake dodged the blade, but one thing quickly became clear:

Sim-Jake was fighting someone with actual experience.

A cut landed on sim-Jake’s arm, and he was forced to back away. He began retreating more and more as he took several wounds. When he made it behind a pillar, the man with the blade followed… only to have a rod of rebar smash towards him.

The man leaned back and dodged, once more showing he was no push-over. The first man had also gotten up again and pulled out a knife of his own.

”We really doing this?” sim-Jake asked as he stood there with his rebar rod.

None of the men answered but had clearly decided to kill him. It was answer enough. The simulated version of Jake dove forward, taking the men by surprise as he managed to hit the guy he had injured earlier on the arm.

He dropped his blade as sim-Jake tried to swing again but had to stop and jump back to avoid getting stabbed in the gut. The second man came at him again, and sim-Jake managed to keep him away with his metal rod.

Jake – the real one – who looked on noted how mundane the battle was. It was almost weird seeing three people who were just average humans go at each other. His simulated version was in many ways at a disadvantage but held his own, despite being younger and smaller.

The situation changed when sim-Jake managed to tackle the second man, and they rolled to the ground. Sim-Jake got up but was bleeding from his thigh, while the other man… didn’t get up. He was lying there with the knife stuck in his own chest, straight in the heart, with a look of disbelief on his face.

This took both of the two remaining survivors by surprise. It was clear sim-Jake had not done it on purpose. The real Jake also saw how it was just ”luck,” if one can call it that. Sim-Jake had tried to block while the man tried to stab and had hit Jake on the thigh, but it didn’t cut properly, and he ended up falling on his own knife.

”You! Fucking cunt!” the first man said but did not engage. Instead, he began retreating. The man was not the fastest, but neither was sim-Jake. He just stood there for a moment and stared at the corpse… before something clicked.

He looked at the fleeing man and picked up the metal rod from before. With an impressive toss, he hit the man on the knee as he tried to flee and stormed over, his bleeding thigh leaving a trail of blood after him. Sim-Jake picked up the fallen rebar rod again as he went to the fallen man.

The man stared back as sim-Jake lifted up the rebar rod, and the man yelled another curse as sim-Jake swung down, hitting him in the head. A few more blows sealed the deal as sim-Jake dropped the weapon and wheezed. He looked at his hands and started shaking a bit as he cursed.

”Fucking fuck. Shit… just… fuck…”

The real Jake noted how they both had the habit of cursing a lot. He also understood the frustration… this was his first time killing anyone. The simulacrum, that is. But… it was a necessary kill. If he hadn’t done it, things would have no-doubt ended worse. They would have been back with reinforcements. Taken revenge.

Jake saw his simulation version limp away as he kept cursing and looked incredibly panicked. For some unknown reason, he also kept looking nervously around, primarily in the direction of where the real Jake was standing within the simulated space. The scene ended there as everything changed once more.

The next scene was of sim-Jake sitting in a room, clearly older now. An older-looking gentleman in a suit handed him a picture that the other Jake looked at, nodded, and handed back. He then got up and left.

It switched again, now showing Jake standing over a dead body with a knife in his hand. He cleaned the weapon a bit with a cloth before sheathing it beneath his clothes and prepared to walk out of the decrepit apartment building like nothing had happened.

At least he tried to, as there was movement in adjacent rooms.

The real Jake felt everything. Even in the simulation, his Sphere was fully functional and showed him the world as genuine. He could see an actual world for hundreds of meters in every direction, and from the looks of it, his simulacrum also had this ability.

He stopped at the door and waited, clearly sensing someone walking through the hallway. The person stopped at the door as he knocked. ”Hey boss, one of the corner girls was caught trying to stiff us again. Want us to handle it as usual?”

Yep, this entire joint was clearly a hidden brothel of sorts, and it appeared like simulacrum-Jake had just killed the boss of the establishment. Real-Jake honestly felt a bit relieved that if sim-Jake was a killer, then at least he killed assholes.

The guy outside the door knocked again before finally opening the door a bit nervously. ”Boss?”

He barely had time to step inside before sim-Jake snuck up from behind and slit his throat while he covered the guy’s mouth. He fell limp to the floor as sim-Jake shook his head and went out the door casually, wearing a black hoodie.

This version of him was probably eighteen or nineteen tops.

Similar scenes repeated, and Jake quickly became clear what kind of person he was. He was not necessarily a contract killer but just a mercenary for hire. There was even a brief stint overseas where he worked for an arms dealer but left soon after.

Throughout these scenes, Jake came to realize there was a lack of guns. Not used by the other side, but by sim-Jake. He used it overseas but quickly discarded it. Instead, he tended to use knives, wires, improvised weapons found at the location, or just his body.

He would sneak past police with his supernatural Bloodline abilities every time. Like a ghost, he would enter, kill, and leave again. Gradually he moved up the food chain and went from killing low-life pimps to high-rollers in the criminal world. He even took out a corrupt judge at one point.

Real-Jake observed and went along for all these scenes. Weeks had passed for him, but time moved differently within the simulation room. Some of the scenes were incredibly impactful, while others were just more of the same. What they all had in common was an ever-growing Jake both in skill, physique, knowledge, and just overall ability. Compared to other humans, he seemed borderline unstoppable. He was the type of person to bring a knife to a gunfight and utterly annihilate the other side.

The most impressive scene was one of the times sim-Jake was in legitimate trouble. He had been in a motel room but was clearly restless. He was on the run from the goons of a recent target and had chosen to lay low. Yet he felt like they had found him.

It turned out that the one who hired him decided to try and get rid of sim-Jake and had informed the goons of his location. Knowing showing up in force would not work, they had simply placed two snipers focusing on the room’s exits.

Sim-Jake exited one day to move to the next safe house. He looked semi-aware of what was happening.

For a bit of trivia… sniper bullets before the system traveled faster than the speed of sound. Many modern firearms did. This meant that one would not hear the gunshot before the bullet had already hit the target. Realistically there should be no way to react or know it was coming.

Which is why the sniper was sure bamboozled when sim-Jake swayed to the side and avoided the bullet before taking cover and eventually making another miraculous escape.

Jake had to admit… this version of himself was so different from who he had been. From a university-educated financial worker to a top-tier assassin and killer. Comparing the two was like night and day.

Yet it did not feel foreign. To the current Jake, this made sense. This version of himself just embraced what made him, well, him. He became a hunter, and Jake was certain sim-Jake did not only choose targets based on money or prestige… he did it for the challenge.

He was a Primal Hunter, after all.

It was odd, knowing this could have been a version of him. Assuming the simulation was truly as accurate as it seemed to claim – and it did seem like it was so far – wasn’t this version of Jake just… superior?

There was a lot to think about. He would just have to see what happened as the simulation progressed.

A new scene soon appeared, one Jake could not see the significance of right away. It was just within a hotel room with his simulacrum, sitting on a chair in a bathrobe, drinking some water. He had a tablet at the side, and the entire place looked expensive as hell.

What skin was showing made the life of this version of Jake clear. Even with his abilities, injuries were unavoidable. Sometimes one had to take a hit to avoid a lethal blow, and this had resulted in dozens of scars covering his body - from knife wounds to bullet holes.

From the looks of it, this was happening not long before the initiation would begin. Real Jake peeked at the tablet and saw the date was displayed and nodded when he saw it was around two months off. It would be exciting to truly see how he would handle that.

But…. Then something weird happened.

Something very weird.

Sim-Jake looked deep in thought. He stared at the ceiling before finally sighing, steeling himself, and then looking straight at where Jake was.

”I do wonder who or what you are, oh silent observer.”