Chapter Text
Caitlyn Kiramman presses her prone body into the frozen ground. The ridge is a fortress of ice and rock, chiseled by eons of bitter winds shrieking across the landscape. She fits her rifle snugly against her shoulder, careful not to disturb the bipod’s balance. The moon is nothing but a thin arc of silver behind slow-crawling clouds. Snowflakes drift across her scope. She breathes in, slow and measured.
Through her night-optic display the distant world appears in tinted greens and grays, flickering with ghostly clarity. She follows a figure in the snow, close to a kilometer and a half away.
The air is too cold for comfort, but at least the wind has quieted down. Earlier today it erased footprints in seconds. Now it is barely a whisper, telling tales of cold emptiness.
She checks the data from the range finder again. The numbers barely move. Good. She shifts her elbows in the snow. On her right hand her glove is thin at the fingertips. The heavier glove attached to her wrist, kept between the arm and the rifle. It’s cold, very cold, but she needs to feel the metal of the trigger. The pressure that is to be applied is exact, and very familiar.
She goes through the last round of calculations. The temperature is negative twenty three degrees Celsius, or roughly minus ten degrees Fahrenheit, lowering the density altitude to effectively six hundred and seventy meters, as well as affecting the powder burn and the very flight of the bullet. Wind speeds are low across the valley at altitude, but down along the valley floor the wind is channeled, moving at four to six knots, shifting south-southwest. Bullet drop at this range is substantial, so the scope’s elevation is dialed up. Then there’s the Coriolis effect, slight but real at these distances. She nudges the scope two more clicks. High ground, plus half a click for drift.
Her breath clouds the air. She steadies herself and the rifle, counting in her head. In—hold—out—pause. She sets her jaw. The shape below is a faint silhouette, occasionally fading in and out as moonlight disappears behind thin clouds and another snowflake drifts in front of her scope.
A hiss of static echoes in her memory, a phantom radio squawk from another life. She hears her name whispered in a voice she once knew. She sees a flash of different white mountains, jagged harsh peaks, lit up by moonlight. She remembers a partner’s frantic shout that cut off too soon. She exhales, pushing the memory aside.
Now is not the time.
The distance is immense, but the numbers fail to intimidate her. She’s shot farther, in conditions just as hostile. High-altitude wind-blasts, near-total darkness, deep sub-zero temperatures. She might have thought at some point that these experiences would fade. That she could reacclimatize into something resembling normality.
But there is no way to “reacclimatize” oneself out of the world that made her this way.
It has burrowed deep into her.
Beyond muscle.
Beyond bone.
It is not a part of her.
It is her.
She takes one last breath, resting her cheek against the rifle stock, and lines up her reticle center-mass. Her gloved finger strokes the trigger’s curve. The night is as deep as it is total. In the empty vastness of the northern Rockies it offers nothing but silence and it gives no quarter.
The body in her reticule moves forward, struggling in the deep snow. Making out facial details in this light, at this range, is impossible. But even as jagged as the motions are, she would recognize the gait, and the body that drives it, anywhere.
Vi.
Her mind is ice.
She feels no fear, no pity.
One last adjustment and she eases the trigger back until she feels the break. The shot cracks, muffled by the suppressor. Recoil jars her shoulder, but the muzzle flash barely winks in the darkness. A heartbeat passes. She keeps her eyes on the scope.
The bullet traverses that impossible stretch of frozen air.
One point six-three seconds of travel time.
A faint spark flickers near the silhouette in her scope. Then the figure collapses. Like a marionette doll with its strings cut. She cycles the bolt, ready for a second round, but there’s no sign of movement.
The trees, the snow, and the mountains swallow any echo of the shot.
She lowers her head for a very brief moment, letting the wind buffet her hood. The tension in her shoulders recedes, replaced by a calm emptiness. She returns to her scope, scanning the lower slope through the faint green glow of her optics.
Nothing stirs.
It is time to move on.
She took the shot.