Chapter 16
New Fronts
[DATA: 24. CYCLE 11. YEAR 40 INDUSTRIAL]
[LOCATION: NORTHERN BORDER — SRR TERRITORY]
[TIME: 06:15 LOCAL]
[STATUS: FROZEN SECTOR]
Unlike the West, which groaned beneath the mass of armor and war-cries, the silence in the SRR’s north was almost metaphysical. The infinite snow merged only with the wind, which whistled like a blade through the jagged needles of the pines. Three days had expired since the echelons initiated their mobilization, yet in this glacial wasteland, time appeared suspended in stasis. It was a deceptive tranquility; beneath the sterile, white shroud, something was maneuvering.
?Beneath a drift of snow, concealed with superhuman precision, lay a sniper unit. The solitary betrayal of its presence was the black, frigid bore—partially masked by the languid descent of snowflakes. The frail morning glare reflected weakly upon the optic’s lens, which had been tracking a family of white hares fifty meters distant. The sniper remained immobile, a lithic statue of ice, devoid of a detectable pulse.
[SUBJECT: SNIPER — ARMAMENT: M.NOGANT 2.1 — VELOCITY 5X STANDARD MAGNIFICATION]
[OBJECTIVE: HARES — DISTANCE 50m]
Abruptly, one of the hares twitched its ears. Its minute eyes pivoted toward the base of the ridge. A soldier was ascending with labored effort through the dense snow. The heavy resonance of his footfalls ruptured the stillness, scattering the hares into their burrows.
?Now, the optic’s lens no longer tracked the fauna. It was anchored upon the soldier, who had halted to ignite a cigarette, oblivious that his existence was being measured in millimeters. He was inhaling the fumes amidst that white solitude, while the black bore was calibrated with surgical precision toward his skull.
?In the succeeding second—Krr-ak—the projectile exited the chamber. Due to the suppressor, the discharge was merely a metallic sigh that vanished into the void. The bullet shredded the frozen atmosphere and impacted the target. The soldier collapsed to his knees instantly. The projectile had excised his ear, leaving him to writhe in the harrowing agony of blood staining the snow with a vivid, incandescent crimson.
[DISTANCE: 47m — ACCURACY 97%]
[OBJECTIVE: SRR SOLDIER — MUTILATED]
The pristine silence of the North dissolved into the soldier’s jagged shrieks as he desperately constricted the side of his head where his ear once resided. The thermal blood steamed upon contact with the sub-zero air, boring minute crimson pits into the snow. Suddenly, his screams were severed. A frigid steel bore touched the crown of his head with a lethal delicacy.
?“No… no… I implore you! I am an emissary from Bruskin!” the courier’s voice vibrated, stifled by the pain and the dread that was congealing his blood.
The sniper retracted the bore with a glacial deliberation and descended to one knee before him—a motion that elicited zero resonance upon the frost. The figure was entirely shrouded in a gargantuan mantle of ivory fur, synthesized perfectly into the landscape. Even the visage was entombed in cotton bindings, exposing only a solitary eye—an orb that scrutinized with an absolute absence of human luminescence.
?Devoid of speech, the entity extended a hand encased in a white glove. The soldier, momentarily eclipsing his agony with paralyzing dread, frantically extracted a blanched envelope from the interior recess of his uniform.
?“Here! This is a personal dispatch from Bruskin for you, White Dream,” the courier uttered, his pallor deepening toward the spectrum of the dead.
?The “White Dream” claimed the missive slowly, indifferent to the arterial stains saturating the parchment. With a mechanical fluidity, the sniper slung the rifle over a shoulder and ascended. With strides so ethereal they barely indented the dense snow, the figure maneuvered toward the umbra of the pines, where the midday glare struggled to penetrate the skeletal branches.
?The entity evaporated into the timber as if it had never occupied the physical plane, fusing into the absolute whiteness of the wild. Left behind was only the soldier, writhing in his solitary agony amidst the sub-zero void, beneath a sun that illuminated everything but nourished nothing.
[DATA: 24. CYCLE 11]
[LOCATION: ROYAL PALACE — LANDAN, BRATAN]
?[TIME: 08:30 LOCAL]
?[STATUS: NAX-BRATAN ALLIANCE ANALYSIS — SOVEREIGNTY CRISIS]
While the ivory snow entombed the SRR, a dense morning fog descended upon the island of Bratan like a leaden veil, erasing the horizon and isolating the realm from the world. Against the gargantuan palace windows, rain droplets slid over the glass, distorting the vista of gardens that were once the pride of the dynasty. Inside, the aroma of heated tea was stifled by the acrid stench of state ledgers, ink, and the wax of seals that bartered the destinies of nations.
?Beyond the walls, the rhythmic cadence of marching echelons dictated the island’s new pulse. Within the silent corridors, President Cici’s footfalls resonated with an authority that defied protocol. Clad in a black suit of surgical tailoring, he stood before the massive ebony valves, a cigar in hand, its smoke signaling his arrival.
?He breached the door slowly. Before him, at a titanic oak table, sat Queen Ela, submerged beneath a mountain of documentation. Cici sealed the door behind him without resonance, permitting the cigar smoke to “invade” the chamber ahead of him, like a second fog within the walls. He advanced toward her, allowing his polished boots to creak upon the ancient parquetry.
?“Majesty,” Cici stated, leaning slightly over the table with a calculated deficiency of respect. “There are hundreds of deputies who could mitigate this bureaucracy. Why do you torment yourself?”
?Ela lowered her pen with a forced tranquility. She elevated her gaze; though the crown appeared to weigh more than usual upon her golden hair, her posture remained unyielding.
?“If the deputies executed every task, then why would the world necessitate a Queen, Mr. President?”
?Cici recoiled slightly, pacing toward the window. He exhaled smoke toward the invisible horizon, appearing as if he were scavenging for something that no longer existed.
?“A Queen’s utility transcends the endorsement of inconsequential parchments,” he replied without regarding her.
?“If you are referencing the alliance I ratified with Chancellor Halter, it was an imperative, Mr. President,” Ela countered, thrusting the documents away with a jagged motion.
?Cici pivoted toward her with a smile that failed to reach his eyes. The cigar smoke was encircling him like a shadow.
?“And what dividend has this alliance yielded for the state, Majesty?” his voice was a low vibration. “Is it the Nax-Geot echelons marching outside your window? Or the industries Halter is erecting in Bratan to fuel his war machine? He is conquering us without discharging a single round, and we are holding the door ajar for him.”
?Ela constricted her fists beneath the table in impotent rage. Every word from Cici was a direct kinetic strike against the truth she struggled to ignore: Bratan was no longer an ally; it was a logistics hub.
?“President, do not overstep the perimeter!” Ela’s voice nearly detonated.
?“Why, do I fabricate, Majesty?” Cici did not flinch, impaling her with a stare of open defiance. “Halter is a monstrosity. Had you known the atrocities he inflicted upon our soldiers in past campaigns, you would never have signed that accursed treaty. You are too nascent to comprehend his endgame. You must fracture the alliance before it becomes too late for us all.”
Ela’s respiration accelerated. The volatile convergence of emotion and the crushing overhead of power sought to fracture her, yet she anchored herself with a desperate fortitude. Her visage mirrored a trajectory of pure, sub-zero indignation.
?“You presume I am oblivious to Halter’s monstrosity?” she erupted with a concentrated fury. “You suspect I am unaware that he decimated our echelons with mustard gas? I know! Yet I am devoid of alternatives! It is Halter who sustains Bratan’s pulse. Have you retracted the memory of our state before his intervention? The clans were lacerating us; Landan had mutated into a slave market where existence possessed zero dividends!”
?She paused, her voice decelerating into a rhythmic, yet corrosive bitterness.
?“Stripped of Nax-Geot’s military apparatus, the realm would descend into absolute anarchy. He engineered order where you achieved only failure.”
?Cici extended a hand toward her shoulder, his tone assuming a veneer of paternal softness.
?“Majesty, you must invest your conviction in your populace, rather than abandoning them to the fangs of a wolf.”
?Ela severed his contact from her golden royal mantle with a jagged motion and pivoted toward the casement. As she breached it, the frigid oceanic gale surged inside, dissipating the cigar smoke across the cavernous expanse of the chamber.
?“In reality, this wolf is our solitary life-support,” she countered with a renewed, clinical authority. “And it is certainly not the mandate of the ISS, which was theorized to shield us, yet remains an apparition. Now, Mr. President, I require your extraction. I have protocols to finalize.”
?Cici retreated with a heavy inertia, devoid of further speech. The door impacted behind him with a concussive resonance that echoed through the corridor. He discarded the cigar remnant upon the floor, crushing it with the heel of his boot in a gesture of suppressed rage, while rubbing his depleted eyes.
?Inside the sanctum, Ela did not return to the oak. She remained at the aperture, listening to the feral surges of the tide impacting the harbor ramparts. The saline gale lashed her face.
?“I am not yet prepared, brother... why did you necessitate leaving me in this solitude so prematurely?” she murmured to the void, her knuckles whitening as she constricted the frozen railing.
[DATA: 24. CYCLE 11]
[LOCATION: NAX-GEOT COMMAND — BRUS, CAPITAL OF BYG]
?[TIME: 09:30 LOCAL]
?[STATUS: CHANCELLERY DEPLOYMENT]
In Brus, the morning did not commence with the resonance of cathedral bells, but with the guttural roar of heavy combustion engines that vibrated the very foundations of the capital. A frail sun struggled to penetrate the obsidian plumes exhaled by the incinerated husks of railcars at the station, casting the city in a sickly, jaundiced hue. The cobblestones, once pristine, were now submerged beneath a slurry of military mire and spent heavy artillery casings. The banners of Nax-Geot—the inverted red triangle and the sable eagle—hung sodden and weighted with humidity against the facades of derelict storefronts.
?In the urban epicenter, the administrative monoliths had been transmuted into the Central Command of the occupation. Before the headquarters, a cluster of echelons had congregated around Ette, who, as per his custom, was fracturing disciplinary protocols with his predatory charisma.
?“General, you are truly a master of levity! I fail to grasp how you ascended to this rank,” one of the soldiers remarked, erupting in laughter and momentarily eclipsing the horror of the front.
?“Ah, a lapse in fortune, boys. I am a victim of circumstance,” Ette countered with a mocking resonance, miming a hollow authority. “My progenitor was a man of coarse beard and calcified principles. He would perpetually dictate: ‘Ette, study! Ette, if you fail, I shall deliver retribution! Ette, cease the jests, for our lineage possesses honor!’”
?As the soldiers detonated into laughter, a luxury “Geot-Imperial” sedan began to concuss the cobblestones, cleaving through the fog. The vehicle anchored with surgical precision before the rank of soldiers. Every smile froze in stasis. Discipline returned like a high-voltage surge.
?The moment the valves opened, the echelons snapped into a rigid salute. Blais and Halter disembarked. Clad in elongated black greatcoats, their general’s caps obscuring their sub-zero stares, they marched toward the command threshold without deigning to cast a lateral glance.
?The rhythmic thud of their boots upon the stone drowned every other frequency. Ette felt a vice-like grip anchor upon his shoulder. He recoiled by instinct, but upon encountering Alfo’s glacial stare, his respiration stabilized, though the tension remained coiled.
?“Where in the abyss did you manifest from?” Ette whispered, pivoting.
?Alfo did not offer a smile. He merely gestured toward the entrance of the monolith, where the two black silhouettes were evaporating into the interior.
?“Discard the fables of your father, Ette,” Alfo stated in a low vibration. “The Leader is expectant. The epoch of jests has expired.”
?As they navigated toward the town hall, Ette queried Alfo with that infantile curiosity that masked a veteran’s soul:
?“What is your projection? Now that the Chancellor has arrived, shall we be hurled into the vanguard, or sustained as a guard of honor?”
“If you truly desire infiltration of the vanguard, I shall deploy you myself this instant; there is no necessity to await his mandate,” Alfo replied without deigning to look at him.
?“I suspect I would be deficient without your presence in that inferno,” Ette countered with a faint, jagged laugh. “Regardless, if the Chancellor mandates us into the conflagration, that is where we shall manifest.”
[LOCATION: ADVANCED HEADQUARTERS — BRUS, OPERATIONS CHAMBER]
?[TIME: 09:55 LOCAL]
?[STATUS: DRAFTING OPERATION “CLANDESTINE BLADE” — TACTICAL PLANNING]
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Alfo exhaled sharply, rubbing his visage with a gloved hand—a rare symptom of depletion. The moment they breached the interior, the massive oak valves sealed behind them, severing the resonance of the besieged city like a blade. Inside, the atmosphere was frigid, saturated with the metallic scent of ozone emanating from short-wave radio arrays. The illumination was anaemic—a convergence of jaundiced bulbs and sterile light bleeding from the corridor’s high apertures.
?Within the assembly hall, the tables were submerged beneath topographical charts. Before the primary map stood Stancer, nervously inhaling a cigarette that was incinerating toward its filter.
?The valves ruptured open. Halter and Blais entered first, trailed by Alfo and Ette. Stancer discarded the cigarette immediately, crushing it with the heel of his boot to dissipate the haze hovering over the cartography. Halter ignored the fumes until he stood diametrically opposed to Stancer. He removed his general’s cap and deposited it with a calculated motion upon the corner of the Frenca map—precisely over Pisa, the enemy capital.
?“Stancer,” Halter’s voice was a low vibration, yet it possessed a mass that occupied every crevice of the chamber. “Report.”
?Stancer constricted the Chancellor’s hand, inclining his head in a formal, frozen salutation.
?“Chancellor, we possess approximately 100,000 echelons at our disposal for this sector. However, according to intelligence diagnostics, the BAA forces are double our magnitude. I suggest extracting divisions from the Eastern Front and soliciting emergency reinforcements from Blin.”
?Halter scrutinized the map and offered a faint smile—an expression that induced an unpalatable chill among those present.
?“Stancer, have you ever engaged in high-stakes gambling?”
?“I have, sir. Once in the casinos of Milos. Yet I fail to perceive the correlation,” Stancer replied, bewildered.
?Halter’s smile sharpened into a blade. He leaned over the mahogany, his stare impaling the frontline coordinates.
?“Then the execution becomes elementary. We shall bifurcate the host into two asymmetrical echelons. Division I: ‘The Barricade’. 40,000 troops. Their mandate is a decelerated retreat—acting as a sacrificial lure to entice the Allies into a sterile pursuit. Division II: ‘The Spear’. 60,000 elite echelons. They shall puncture the Frenca perimeter through the necrotic sectors and march directly upon Pisa.”
?A tomb-like silence saturated the hall. Zeta stepped forward, rupturing the protocol of reticence.
?“Forgive me, Chancellor, but this design relies entirely upon the volatility of fortune. The probability of catastrophic failure exceeds 60%. You are abandoning our ranks to total encirclemet.”
?“If we collapse, Zeta, Nax-Geot will cease to exist even within the annals of history,” Halter countered, his composure unshakeable. “Yet, I have calculated every variable. Our fleet shall simulate a littoral disembarkation to divert the BAA’s attention. While ‘The Spear’ advances, we shall not await our lethargic logistics. Our internal asset has compromised their clandestine routes and localized their primary supply depots.”
?The three youths remained petrified, checkmated by the manic audacity of the plan. Only upon Stancer’s visage did a faint, jagged smile manifest.
?“Exquisite. I, along with my three subordinates, shall anchor Division I. While Blais spearheads Division II, we shall secure a swift, surgical victory,” Stancer declared with a resolve bordering on fanaticism.
?“I shall also be stationed with Blais at the vanguard of ‘The Spear’,” Halter interjected, adjusting his cap with a definitive motion. “As for Ette, he is to be extracted to Blin immediately.”
?Ette remained stagnant, blindsided by the unanticipated mandate.
?“What? Am I being relieved of my commission, sir?” he queried, his mask of levity fracturing for a heartbeat.
?Halter emitted a frail cough—almost a stifled laugh at Ette’s disorientation. He approached and anchored a hand upon his shoulder.
?“No, lad. You must prepare for a mission of a different taxonomy. Consider this the stasis before the tempest; today, you may remain with your compatriots. Indulge in it while you can.”
?As Halter and Blais prepared to egress the operations chamber, Stancer spoke again, his tone laced with apprehension for the Leader’s safety.
?“Chancellor, I suspect your physical exposure here is redundant. You could return to the sanctuary of Blin.”
?“You possess a point, Stancer,” the voice of Blais resonated, emerging from the shadows where he had remained anchored. “Perhaps we should extract the Chancellor and summon Avasha to manage the terminal dissolution of this sector.”
Stancer frozen in stasis. His visage contorted into an expression as if he had just ingested a lethal toxin. He pivoted away, intercepting any potential eye contact.
?“What? No!” he reacted with a preternatural velocity. “I suspect we are far superior under your direct mandate, sir. Discard my previous proposition.”
?Halter exchanged a significant, knowing glance with Blais. Both erupted into a stifled, cynical resonance, while their heavy footfalls began to echo along the frigid corridor. Ette, Alfo, and Zeta remained anchored, scrutinizing each other with a convergence of bewilderment and instability.
?“Why did the General calcify at the mere citation of Avasha?” Ette whispered, his stare oscillating toward Alfo.
?“Seal your mouth and move,” Alfo countered, propelling him toward the exit with kinetic force. “Some depths of intelligence are better left unexcavated.”
[DATA: 24. CYCLE 11]
[LOCATION: OCCUPATION COMMAND — VARNA, CAPITAL OF PO]
?[TIME: 16:45 LOCAL]
?[STATUS: SECTOR STABILIZATION POST-SIEGE — S-A-A GRADE AUDIT]
The firmament over Po was more crystalline than in Byg, yet this clarity only rendered the occupation more conspicuous. Pale clouds anchored to the horizon while minute snowflakes descended languidly over the capital, Varna, where the heavy banners of Nax-Geot now dominated the governmental monoliths. Echelons marched through the thoroughfares with a chilling discipline; they did not molest the civilians, they merely scrutinized them from a distance. Obsidian armor-plated tanks lacerated the cobblestones with a metallic resonance that vibrated through the marrow, under the petrified stares of those behind glass who dared not even respire with autonomy.
?Inside the central command structure, a sterile silence reigned. Within a chamber illuminated by the amber glow of archaic lamps, Goto was synthesizing logistic reports for Central Hall. He sat at the nexus of a mountain of documentation, while Avasha leaned against the table’s edge with a chalice of heated cocoa, observing the void with an irritating indifference. Shortly after, Aista breached the room, bearing two infusions of heated tea.
?“What is the meaning of this?” Goto queried without elevating his gaze, noting the cup Aista deposited adjacent to his paramount reports.
?“Tea. If your optics are functional, you can perceive it,” Aista countered with frost, seating herself diametrically opposite to Avasha.
?“I am aware it is tea, but why is it necessitated now while I am submerged in these audits?” Goto’s voice sharpened with accumulated tension.
?Aista did not accelerate. She drew a draught of the infusion, the steam dampening her brow.
?“It serves to calibrate your composure. I suspected it might assist you in retreating momentarily from that chaos of integers,” she stated, depositing the cup with elegance.
?Goto fell silent. He relaxed his frame, discarded his pen, and claimed the cup. Yet even as he drank, sanctuary evaded him; his stare remained anchored upon Avasha, who was leaking droplets of cocoa upon his ledgers with every negligent movement.
?“Colonel, could you manifest a modicum of caution?” Goto stated, his teeth constricted.
?“Regarding what?” Avasha queried, regarding him with a hollow stare, as if his words emanated from an alien dimension.
?“You are defiling the entire workspace! Do you grasp the labor I invested in those reports?” Goto erupted. ?“I’ve been forced to calculate the exact fuel consumption for every single tank, down to the last liter per kilometer traversed.”
?Avasha not only disregarded him but offered a faint smile—the species of smile that prophesied either lethality or lunacy.
?“How monotonous you are... these are merely archaic papers. We shall manufacture more,” she stated, draining the remainder of her cocoa.
?Goto constricted his cup. He inhaled deeply to prevent a total hemorrhage of control.
?“Colonel, I do not observe you attending to your own reports. Where are they?”
?“That is the aesthetic of Grade S, General,” Avasha stated, ascending slowly. “I am not required to negotiate with parchment. You perform that labor. Now, if you will excuse me, I have an appointment with ‘the hunt’.”
?Aista and Goto tracked her with their stares as she egressed, leaving behind a void chalice amidst the wreckage she had instigated. Goto’s visage was frozen by her insolence.
?“She possesses a fragment of truth... these reports are truly suffocating,” Aista spoke, continuing to consume her tea with tranquility.
?“And you? Have you finalized your own audits?” Goto addressed her with a lacerating irony.
?Aista pivoted toward the window, offering no rebuttal, and feigned as if there were still tea within her already depleted cup.
??“It would be significantly easier if Avasha didn’t squander our rocket reserves on total annihilation,” Aista murmured, struggling to suppress her own sense of guilt.
[INTERNAL STRATA: THE SOLDIER’S KILN — MILITARY CANTEEN]
?[TIME: 19:15 LOCAL]
While the command monolith was suffocated by the stress and particulate of bureaucracy, outside—within one of the solitary structures still emitting a jaundice glare—the Nax-Geot echelons had converged to consume their rations and numb their neural pathways. Amidst them sat Erten, a plate of flesh before him, while the brutal resonance of soldierly laughter impacted his ears like distant artillery.
?“You are becoming increasingly proficient, lad,” one of the infantrymen stated, anchoring an arm around Erten with a cynical smirk. “But abstain from vanity. This occupation is not even a fraction of the horror awaiting us.”
?“Regarding what do you speak?” Erten queried, attempting to extract himself from the constriction.
?Another soldier approached, bearing a corrosive smile that prophesied zero sanctuary.
?“Wait until the SRR deploys the S-1A,” he stated. “That is when the terminal expiration begins.”
?Erten elevated his head, petrified. His stare ignited with the frigid luminescence of the scientist.
?“S-1A? The atmospheric oxygen-incinerator? That is a mere urban legend... physically unfeasible under these parameters.”
?The soldiers exchanged glances and erupted into a derisive roar. One approached with a flagon of beer, bellowing:
?“Observe, the whelp recognizes it! Here, we designate it ‘The Old Lady.’ The SRR preserves it like a dynastic relic, lest its radiance dissipate. But when those bores emerge... the firmament saturates with human ash.”
?While the others laughed, Erten remained frozen by the absence of dread these men possessed toward a weapon of mass extinction. He attempted a trajectory shift to evade the technological nightmare.
?“And regarding that girl with the red eyes... is she truly so proficient that you yield in blind obedience?”
“Are you referencing Halter?” the soldier adjacent to him queried.
?“If he were female, yes!” Erten countered, irritated. “I am referencing the Colonel, you imbeciles!”
?The hall detonated again, leaving Erten isolated in his ignorance. A soldier loomed over him with a gargantuan flagon.
?“That is our designation for her: ‘Little Halter.’ She is the Chancellor’s progeny; in fact, she possesses ten times the fortitude of any man here!”
?“She is ten times the ‘man’ of this entire assembly combined!” another added, impacting the table.
Erten’s smile evaporated. Before he could articulate a response, the valves of the structure ruptured open. The rhythmic impact of boots upon the floor induced a lethal silence. The mere reflection of the Grade S insignia upon the sternum was sufficient to snap the entire canteen into a rigid salute.
?“Do not perturb yourselves, boys,” Avasha’s velvet, yet dominant resonance colonized the chamber. “I have arrived to extract the scientist, if you permit.”
?Erten scavenged for sanctuary behind the ranks, but a solitary glare from her was enough for two echelons to seize him by the rotors and drag him before her.
?“Apologies, lad, there is no alternate route,” one whispered into his ear.
?Avasha awaited him with that smirk which promised nothing but trauma. She pivoted toward the exit without detaching her gaze from the horizon.
?“Advance, scientist. We depart for the hunt. The officers trailing me shall provide the optics and the munitions. Do not linger; the night is hemorrhaging heat rapidly.”
?One of the escorting officers leaned toward Erten’s ear as he surrendered the heavy armament.
?“And exercise caution... do not lacerate the finish of this rifle, for it would be the ultimate transgression of your existence, lad.”
[LOCATION: FOREST PERIMETER — OUTSKIRTS OF VARNA]
?[TIME: 20:30 LOCAL]
Erten exited the canteen in a state of cognitive dissonance, unable to process the officer’s terminal admonition. Before he could react, he felt the frigid mass of the rifle anchor upon his shoulder and the weighted metallic resonance of the munition crate in his grip. He trailed Avasha in silence through the dense timber, where the lunar glare struggled to penetrate the skeletal canopy, until she halted at a vantage point overlooking a shallow basin.
?“Position the ‘Cherry Blossom Sakuna’ here,” Avasha mandated, gesturing toward a lithic plateau.
?“You have even designated a nomenclature for the rifle... I am entirely unsurprised,” Erten murmured as he calibrated the weapon into position. Yet, the moment he breached the munition seal, he petrified. “These are...”
?“Glass projectiles,” Avasha interjected, a smile illuminating her optics in the obsidian dark. “They pulverize upon impact within the target’s anatomy, generating hundreds of shards that render expiration both inevitable and excruciating. They are the perfect complement for a hand-crafted oak chassis, finished with twenty-two layers of lacquer. How does it register to your senses, scientist?”
?Erten attempted to evade her red stare, but her eyes reflected ominously upon the rifle’s high-gloss finish.
“I must concede... it possesses a beautifully aesthetic,” he whispered.
?“Cease the artistic appraisals. Prepare yourself,” Avasha commanded.
?“No. I cannot. I am no executioner,” Erten reacted, attempting to ascend. “Do not implicate me in your depravities!”
?In that heartbeat, the silence was ruptured by the kinetic slide of metal. Avasha extracted her sidearm and anchored the bore against the base of his skull. Her resonance held no vestige of tenderness; it was as acute as a razor’s edge.
?“If you do not liquidate the target, then I shall liquidate you here. The election is yours.”
?Erten calcified. He recognized that stare; he understood that to Avasha, his existence possessed as little dividend as any other casualty on this front. Stripped of alternatives, he reclined behind the optics once more. His hands vibrated as he calibrated the scope toward a solitary cabin at the basin’s floor.
[SUBJECT: ERTEN — ARMAMENT: SNIPER RIFLE — CHERRY BLOSSOM SAKUNA: UTILIZES FRAGMENTING GLASS MUNITIONS]
[DISTANCE: 36m]
“What is my objective?” he queried, his voice a frail vibration.
?“Within that structure hides a dissident. Inconsequential for the moment, yet an irritant to our projections,” she replied with a sub-zero finality, looming behind him like a predatory shadow. “The moment he breaches the threshold... terminate him.”
It was not long before, through the minute snowflakes dancing in the obsidian dark, the cabin’s threshold was breached. A youth emerged, appearing almost synchronous in age to Erten. Erten hesitated; he felt his digit calcify upon the frigid trigger. He could not liquidate someone who mirrored his own image, yet there was no sanctuary—Avasha was there, a shadow that suffocated his very respiration.
?His hands began to vibrate, and his cardiac rhythm resonated in his ears like the impact of a sledgehammer. Avasha, sensing his fluctuation, approached so closely that Erten felt the warmth of her breath against his ear.
?“Focus,” she whispered, her resonance a lethal amalgam of tenderness and absolute authority. It was a sensation so human, so saccharine amidst that glacial void, that for a heartbeat, he eclipsed the horror of his trajectory. “I possess conviction in you, Erten. You can achieve this.”
[SUBJECT: ERTEN — MENTAL STATUS: 96% DISSOCIATED]
Krr-ak!
[TARGET: REBEL — 1/1 ELIMINATED — ACCURACY 89%]
?[BALLISTIC DATA: GLASS FRAGMENTATION — ZERO EXIT WOUND — 100% INTERNAL LACERATION]
The discharge’s resonance eclipsed every other frequency in the timber. Erten’s finger drowned into the trigger. The eruption of the “Sakuna” felt like a violent laceration upon his soul. When his optics returned to the scope, the rebel was grounded, immobile upon the snow that was darkening with arterial flow. Erten’s heart hammered with manic intensity, while his stare remained frozen upon the fallen objective.
?Avasha ascended with a clinical cruelty to observe the scene with her optics, then pivoted toward him.
?“Had you calibrated slightly higher, you would have secured a cranial impact,” she stated, exhaling upon her hands to sustain their warmth. “Sufficient. Let us egress. The frost is deepening.”
?“Why did you necessitate this of me?” Erten queried, his eyes anchored to the frame saturating the earth with thermal blood. His voice was hollow, deceased.
?“The Chancellor abandoned you to my custody,” Avasha replied with her characteristic sub-zero finality. “And for the duration of your presence with me, you must master the art of liquidation, scientist. It is insufficient to merely project the armaments.”
?Then, she addressed him again, but this time with that disturbing tenderness that induced amnesia regarding her Grade S lethality.
?“Come now. I had prepared some cocoa before our departure. It must have cooled, but we shall reheat it.”
?Erten remained upon his knees for several seconds, struggling to regulate his labored respiration. Then he ascended, slung the rifle over his shoulder, constricted the munition crate, and initiated his pursuit of her through the timber.
?I hate the day I stood against Halter on that podium, he thought with a profound sense of despair as he walked away in the thick snow.
