North.
The deserts. The air was filled with sand as pure as dust, blown at incredible speeds. These sands could shape monumental statues of stone or simply erase mountains. There was no sun, no moon or stars, yet an earie light lit the moving dunes. The sky was furious, intens electromagnetic activity criss crossed the clouds of sands that formed a blanket over the desert. Every second mighty pillars of blinding lights dimmed by sand carried upon the winds cut the air all around, crashing into the ground shaking it. Yet one could not hear the crashing thunders from the heavens, as the howling winds silenced all else.
Agnes reached out in front of her, clenching her fist in the air. Drawing her hand in front of her and turning her back into the wind. Her long sand colored cape sorounding her while its two longer ends fluttered in the winds next to her.
She slowly opened her fist...looking down upon the sand she just cought in the wind. As she flattened her palm the sand was blown away once more, rejoining the mad race in the air.
Hell...she tought. Why would the clans care so much for this miserable place. Straping her rifle once more, she continued her walk on the dunes, every step sinking in the sand all the way to her ankle. She adjusted her helmet and breathing apparatus. It molested her. Her vision was restricted and the air she got through the filters tasted like iron, thanks to the ionized atmosphere.
She was doing something called special reconnaissance. This far north sattelite imagery and even arial reconnaissance was notoriously unreliable. The thick sand storm clouds covered the sky more often then not, and the electromagnetic activity in the air made most sensory equipment useless. So some brass in Omni-1 decided that she will have to go...and take a look herself personnaly. It was suspected that the Sentinels could be moving gear and men during the storms, while the eyes in the sky where blind. She was air lifted to a few dozen kilometers from a known Sentinel outpost. She was to walk there take a peak and walk back to her extraction spot in a few hours. She did not get why the Omni AF sargeant in charge of providing her gear insisted that she carry an enviormental suit and a couple of days worth of rations. The sargeant, a rugged muscular man with short cropped gray hair and a dark tan, just raised an eyebrow and shook his head when she informed him of her mission.
Now she understood it all. She was asked to walk into hell on her own.
Suddenly the side of the dune she was descending slid out from under her feet, and she rolled down the dune in an avalanche of sand. When she finaly reached the bottom and slowly managed to stand up again, she atempted to localize herself again via her global positioning system. But the damn gizmo decided to stop working, flashing a No Signal sign. With a sigh she turned around. The she noticed. Blinking blue and red lights in distance. She could not distinguish anything but the lights. Shouldering her rifle she looked through the termal scope. Nothing besides the heat emanated by the lights. She slowly began walking towards the lights with her rifle shouldered.
Slowly she could distinguish the shape of small sandstone buildings and communication equipment. She found her objective. Diving into the sand, she began slowly scaning the camp through her scope. No activity. After nearly half an hour of observation she decided to approach the camp. She was about to begin crawling towards it when she suddenly noticed under the flash of a lightning a figure exiting one of the buildings. The figure was clad in dark brown cape with a hood. He was carrying something in its arms. She have taken aim. She was prepared to open fire if the figure noticed her...
...a sharp pain and burning sensation set her back on fire. She let go of her rifle letting lose the loudest scream she could...yet even she could only hear the howling of the winds. Suddenly losing strenght and feeling her body go cold she sank her face in the sand. Unable to move.
Moments have passed. Each moment an eternity. Questions, doubts, pain. Then she felt as a gentle arm rolled her over. A man was kneeling over her... an assault rifle strapped to his chest and wearing a deep brown enviormental suit. The man took off his helmet... and looked down upon her. He was young... his face marked by tattoes and scars she often seen on the faces of clanners in grid feeds. The man slowly taken her mask off...istantly her nose and mouth where filled with sand, mixing with blood...the sand even got into her eyes making her almost unable to see...the man pulled a glove off one of his hands, she could feel the dry rough hand caressing her cheeck...darkness fell. In the last moment she understood... the man was following her probably for a while now. She understood, that she did not belong in that desert...she understood...
Moments... moments of sharp pain, cold and dampness. As she opened her eyes she was blinded by the brightness. She felt like she never used her eyes before. After a while of blinking and slowly trying to move her arms and legs she could finaly begin to make out figures around her... she was in a white room...on one side there was an OT medic making adjustments to some medical equipment apparently ignoring her...then an old rugged, muscular man, with short cropped white hair and tanned skin stepped into her field of vision...she recognised the sargeant who equiped her for her trip north...
The man had a wide smile on his face. Then he asked in a playful tone.
-Well girl? What have you found in the north?