Time: 2:42 pm
<<<<>>>>
BOOOMMM
A supersonic boom exploded 250 meters behind them.
A woman of European descent, black hair with light red eyes, standing at 1.79 meters, came to an abrupt halt. The dust she had gathered along her journey through this land formed a small storm, with winds reaching 300 km/h…
She raised her hand to her abdomen and lowered it by 20 centimeters, then…
Nothing.
Storm? Winds? Dust?
Everything was flattened without a trace. The only evidence of her movement was the perfect circle with a 200-meter radius and 30 cm deep, acting as a crater.
She looked around, and continued walking to the rendezvous point, which was located a few dozen meters from the edge of the crater.
10 steps
That's the number of steps taken by the leader of the MGNE, the Merc Guild of NeoEurope, one of the most powerful guilds in NeoEurope, with hundreds of large and small corporations at their feet.
10 steps
That's the number of steps taken by the demigoddess of speed and ice…
Snow.
Adored by hundreds of millions of people across the solar system, the most fanatical of these believers would be willing to go beyond the Black Wall for just 0.001 seconds of her attention.
10 steps, and that's 2863 km covered in less than ten seconds.
From the New York spaceport to the rendezvous point in Colorado, or what's left of it, since that former state, like the others around it, is nothing more than barren lands, deserts, or radiation zones caused by various corpo wars…
10
That's also the number of Mercs in her guild: the best netrunners, fixers, and assassins. Quality over quantity, these are the teachings she received from her father, a bad father who, after being afflicted with cyber-psychosis, committed a massacre in his town before blowing his brains out in front of her mother's grave.
But it's not as if she hasn't done worse. She might even be on par with the Rocker.
"Hmm…" She reflects and thinks that maybe she should take a few decades of vacation. She'll see at the end of this "mission."
She stops her fleeting thoughts and looks at the two other demigods in front of her:
Johnny Silverhand and Adam Smasher. And herself… Snow.
Okay, now it looks like the beginning of a joke told by a choom in the middle of a bar. You know the kind of joke you make when you're half-drunk, with some chrome sniffed that the dealer kindly gave you? The one the dealer shoves up his ass to pass the controls…
"Is she dreaming again or making up stories in her head?" asked Johnny, eyes still closed, his breathing regulated to the nanosecond. Well, that's how he's supposed to breathe. In fact, he doesn't remember the last time he breathed like a "normal human."
[…]
"Hmm lalala…"
No one answered him, but he said nothing, appreciating the refrain Snow was singing. The wind on his face, he could see himself by the sea, listening to the sound of the waves.
"Haaaa" he also thought about taking some vacation once the Martian civil war was over. Having fun, getting drunk every day, and maybe picking up the guitar again, even though he hadn't touched it since the incident with his "son" 11 years ago…
Thud
Dust and small stones were thrown several meters by the simple act of placing this… briefcase? suitcase? Christmas present? Hmmm, yep, let's say this briefcase that seems to weigh several tons.
But the most disturbing would be Silverhand. After all, through her actions, Snow had managed to perfectly move the parasol by 5 cm so that he got the sun in his left eye, the one specifically used for night vision and X-rays, and annoying against the sun…
"Grrrrr" he growled in discontent but did nothing to remedy this blatant provocation.
"La la lala" and Snow continued her refrain, legs crossed on the ground, unlocking her briefcase that the two men had avoided mentioning, even though one was more curious than the other.
"Hmm hmm la" continued Snow as her ring finger elongated to become a connection port that she inserted into the slot with 0.08 mm of play.
"LA"
Click
"LA"
Click, click
"LA LA LA" her tempo sped up with the sounds of clicks becoming faster!
Click Click
Click Click Click Click
.....click....
And the last click was heard. "Hehehehe" with a laugh rivaling that of a fifty-year-old man, binoculars in hand, looking at the different women on the beach.
"Hehe, come to mommy," said Snow as the mystery box revealed itself to be…
?!
Pieces of a dismantled bolt-action rifle?
"All that for this… sigh" Johnny sighed, his voice for the first time sounding truly tired.
"Shut up, old man," she said, glaring at him from behind, but Johnny said nothing, still lying with his legs crossed, pulling out his legendary aviator sunglasses.
"You know, calling me old when you're over 70 y-"
Crack crack
"I. Said. Shut. Up."
Snow clenched her teeth so hard that if there had been windows around, they would have shattered from the ultrasound produced by her teeth colliding.
Snow refocused on the pieces scattered in front of her, meticulously assembling each component with surgical precision. Every gesture was calculated, every movement perfectly synchronized. After all, this could be her last mission… but she lightly shook her head to the song she was humming. The pieces fit into each other, slowly forming a complex weapon, a masterpiece of technology and death.
Yes, her baby, her boy, capable of being functional even with a savestian activated.
Johnny, still lying on his rock, slightly dropped his hand, so a micro-camera activated on his palm, pointing towards Snow. He knew that beneath the childlike and carefree appearance lay a formidable war machine. His mind wandered to simpler days before everyone became heartless monsters, casting a sidelong glance to his right, or turned into cyber-psychos driven by their madness. He reactivated the micro-camera to see behind the little angel of death…