Location: mountain slopes of the Nazca Desert
Time: 01.01.17 – 08:47:00 UTC-4
Setting: WO military units establish visual contact with Niajin.Suddenly, the rough sound of stones rolling down the slope alerted her. The noise was providential. She had learned to lower herself instantly in case of falling rocks, flattening herself against the wall. Her instinctive movement made her bow her head by an inch or two, just moments before the amphora—unbalanced by her sudden gesture—was struck squarely by a projectile. The shot was precise, aimed directly at the center of her forehead. Just in time. The amphora, which had been exactly where her forehead was a moment earlier, exploded in a shower of fragments, and the shards scattered in every direction.
She was under fire. At a distance of a few hundred meters, two men appeared suddenly—one, then another. They rode black motorbikes, wearing white suits and spherical helmets, completely black, covering their heads entirely. They were descending from the ridge that overlooked the narrow valley where she had believed she could find water, about three hundred meters away.
Fear made her move too quickly; without watching her step she tripped on a rocky outcrop, lost her balance, and fell backward, hitting the nape of her neck against a sharp stone.
One of the soldiers had missed the target. The second adjusted his aim calmly, aligning the weapon’s crosshairs until Niajin’s body filled the frame. In their visors, her position was magnified into a perfect target, even in the shapes that filled the soldiers’ visual field. The vital-sign readings showed accelerated breathing: her rib cage rose and fell irregularly, affected by fear, fatigue, and the pain of the impact.
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The targeting algorithm locked onto the center of her chest, partly exposed. Kinetic data indicated a slight state of disorientation and partial incapacity for autonomous movement; in practice, she could not get up. The fabric of her dress had loosened; the straps had slipped down her arms, leaving the upper part of her body almost bare. Her dark, tense skin lifted and fell in a constant rhythm. On it appeared droplets of spiced water and scented oils released by the pores.
A breath of wind wrapped around her, whirling and gathering the vapors that had formed an almost misty halo around her body, then reached the soldiers, tracing a thin line of smoke through the air.
The suits’ filters registered a sudden olfactory overload: an intense, heady fragrance composed of blended spices and narcotic molecules. It reached the inside of their helmets accompanied by a sigh, a faint whisper in their ears.
The soldier hesitated as the penetrating scent and the vision of such an extreme beauty overwhelmed sight, hearing, and smell. For 5.79 seconds, the firing sequence recorded a delay before execution. The system remained active, but the operators did not react. That interval proved fatal.
A sudden roar filled the air. A puma emerged from the overhanging rocks—a tawny shape that leapt upon the soldier stunned by Niajin’s beauty, which filled the arc of his visor, and by the intense fragrance carried by the wind. The impact of the leap caught him completely by surprise; he slipped and rolled down a couple of meters. The companion, who was just getting back to his feet, turned sharply and fired almost at random; the projectile shattered against the stones. Another bound—and the puma vanished unharmed among the rocks.
For several seconds, the two men were unable to understand what had happened and lost sight of their prey. Then they moved, struggling to their feet, retrieved their rifles, and scanned the terrain with visors now returning images of the surrounding area. Augmented reality showed only faint thermal traces—patches of residual heat scattered along the rock, heading toward a fissure at the base of the wall.