Page 12 - gAIa — Advance excerpt
P. 12
A minute before settling into her sensory loss, she let her
chemosensors scan the thin air—without any tactical objective,
simply out of habit, like a person pausing on their own doorstep
before going in—and she picked up exactly what she expected:
the freshness of meltwater running under the snowpack, the
mineral tang of exposed rock, the mint-sharp scent of muña
bushes crushed underfoot where the Marksmen had filed back
down the slope. Spring, arriving late and unnoticed at four
thousand meters, indifferent to the war fought over the blos-
som.
The drone settled onto its charging pad.
Her sensory feed began to fade.
The Silence was descending.
She offered no resistance.
She was ready. © Danis Dedes — Advance excerpt, not for redistribution!
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