Time: 01.01.17 — 9:21 a.m. UTC-5
Setting: Niajin enters the tunnel carved into the rock.
She was barely two hundred meters from the base, and three hundred more to the top.
After following her tracks through the canyon, the soldiers spotted her above their heads—climbing with astonishing agility along crumbling, treacherous walls. They raised their PX-7 photon-pulse rifles and opened fire again.
But Niajin was already high above them. The rocks formed ledges that split apart, offering cover from the shots. She slipped into a small crevice behind a boulder, then into a gully that shielded her—disappearing once again from sight. The rifles were useless now; they could no longer reach her. The soldiers had to climb as well, which made their weapons impractical; they were nowhere near Niajin’s agility. She climbed like a spider over the brittle slope, while the two men were already sliding back after the first few meters of vertical rock.
Their suits, once again, saved them. From the soles of the suits, blades extended and bit into the rock, creating secure holds, while their gloves turned adhesive as micro-scales unfolded. Despite their lack of skill, they managed to follow her—yet the first stretch was fully exposed.
The situation had turned around: now they were the easy targets for Niajin’s bow. An arrow hissed through the air and struck one soldier’s shoulder, but failed to penetrate the suit. It was thin and light, composed of synthetic fibroins and sericins engineered by AI-driven bio-fabrication systems and modeled after spider-silk proteins. A tenth of a millimeter of that weave equaled a full centimeter of an old ballistic vest. Another dart struck the rounded black helmet and bounced away without leaving a mark. Niajin had the skill to climb and shoot by instinct at the same time, but her carbon-fiber arrows with steel tips had no chance against bulletproof armor. No warrior, however skilled, could defeat a superior force with a bow and arrow. Niajin was not facing common criminals anymore, but the finest troops of the WO.
Only escape remained. She resumed climbing. She was faster than her pursuers: their weapons and armor weighed them down, while she carried nothing but her own speed. Like a snow leopard, she scaled the rocks and gained ground.
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At three hundred meters she reached a ledge—a narrow path jutting from the wall. She followed it, and after a few dozen meters found the entrance to a tunnel clearly artificial in origin. Inside, it was dark; she slipped into it, and her pursuers lost sight of her. Yet their visors kept showing precise thermal traces of her recent passage and the point where she had vanished.
The soldiers reached the entrance soon after. The helmets of their climate-controlled suits projected beams of light ahead to illuminate the path. Their augmented-reality visors used a thermal sensor inspired by rattlesnakes, capable of detecting temperature variations of only 0.003 °C—able to track the heat left even by a mouse in the desert. It was enough for Niajin to brush a rock for a red trail to flare in their displays, marking the prey’s route.
Niajin had gained a few seconds’ lead, but now she was trapped. The tunnel climbed steadily into the mountain. The feather in her hair glowed, lighting her way along the sinuous passage that coiled through the mountain’s heart. Narrow side channels opened here and there, but they were too short, and her traces would have been found anyway. The visors highlighted every contact point—a red spot for each footstep or touch of her hand.
Suddenly the cave changed: the passage was carved straight through the rock, with ancient statues standing as sentinels along the corridor. They resembled Egyptian, Sumerian, Incan, and Aztec forms combined. Inscriptions in an unknown script covered the walls, and a vast mural caught Niajin’s eye for a moment. It showed broad forests and clear blue rivers, yet in the distance, fires of war climbed toward the sky.
There was no time to linger. The feather guided her, projecting a narrow beam of light ahead, and Niajin followed it—avoiding dead ends and traps, pressing ever deeper into the mountain. By doing so, she also helped her pursuers, who followed the exact same path through the thermal traces left by that light on the stone.
The cave floor, now smooth as a roadway, amplified the footsteps of the soldiers closing in. Niajin could hear their echo growing behind her. Inside their helmets, the sounds were magnified and translated into distance.
No matter her agility, she knew the tunnel could not go on forever: sooner or later she would reach the end of the passage.