COLD BREATH
S-2879 • L11 Irraluna • D16 Tramili
(Gregorian calendar equivalent: March 2, 2135)
“Irraluna radiates light, already full on high. Tramili weaves the return with a soft thread. The tide traces silver in a living curve. The story continues whole, in a deep glow.”
Trix held the cigarette between her lips and took a deep drag. Then she adjusted the sniper rifle against the ground. A snowstorm concealed her on the hill. Flakes settled on her pale skin, but she did not even feel the ice.
In the Maiden, seven days after the blood, Trix breathed in the horizon. Slender, sharp, a promise of new growth. Her body still held the memory of drawing inward, but already shone beneath the light rising from the blizzard.
The crosshairs stayed fixed on him. Direct. Inescapable.
The man’s forehead filled the center of the scope as he spoke to that guy, his right-hand man.
Obviously.
Because he was smiling. And he only smiled like that with that fucker.
Only with him. No one else.
Trix took too deep a drag. Coughed. Took her hands off the rifle to hold the cigarette.
Fuck.
She sent a command to the nanites implanted in her eyes. In an instant, the view through the scope appeared in the hologram before her.
Trix began pacing back and forth, watching the man’s every move. The rifle responded instantly, keeping him centered in the crosshairs with every tilt of his head, every gesture, as though the weapon itself could see.
They had made sure she would never miss a target.
Her eyes were supposed to see everything and everyone. Her bullets were supposed to pierce every one of them.
Trix and the rifle were one. The weapon that would always meet her expectations. The one that would always make the shot.
I See You. That was its name.
Would that shit ever end?
The question returned from time to time, insistent. And Trix always pushed it away.
She hated that life.
Still, there was a certain pleasure in hunting her millionaire targets in Zenith, men whose public lives were built on her back, far from the eyes of those who admired them.
Sometimes, though, she wondered what it would be like to be in their place.
What would it be like not to have to live in the shadows?
It was exhausting. Fuck, it was exhausting.
Did their papa fuck them up too?
Trix zoomed in on the figure seated at the table.
Her father.
Papers lay scattered around him. In his hands, a balance sheet for the Vorovskoy mir. Numbers worth more than lives.
Trix zoomed in on the documents. She barely gave a shit about any of it.
In fact, she never had.
Only blood paid for scars.
What enraged her was hearing him repeat, relentlessly, that one day she would be next to shoulder the Vorovskoy mir.
That she had to obey.
She obeyed. He lied. They hurt her.
Trix brought the cigarette to her lips again and took a drag, closing her eyes as she let the memories flow.
She felt every scar etched inside her.
She wanted to be certain that the last drop of that blood would spill.
And with it, all the pain he had inflicted on her.
And she would.
