A lone mercenary sits in the arid desert of East Africa, diligently maintaining her weapon. Remove the magazine, pull the bolt to the rear, remove the take-down pin, remove the charging handle, carefully disassemble the bolt carrier group, and finally, remove the recoil spring. Now, she grabs a rag and a bottle of lubricant, carefully applying it to the moving parts of her firearm. After a hard and hot day of work, sitting back and cleaning a gun can be therapeutic. Her friend and teammate, Leo, walks in and places a folder on her bed, silently walking back out. Jade absentmindedly flips through them.

“Shit, I gotta go shower…”

She sets the papers back down and leaves her tent. At this point, it’s dark out, so the only light is from the moon, the occasional lamp, and any campfires set up by other mercs.

Jade enters the building and finds an empty shower, stepping in and closing the curtain behind her. She starts to undress, hanging her clothes on a rack nearby.

Without her clothes on, one can finally see her body beneath. Her left leg is a prosthetic from the knee down. She has dozens of tattoos across her back, neck, arms, and legs.

Standing in the shower, she tries her hardest to wash all the sand off her skin and out of her hair. Especially trying to get it out of her prosthetic.

“Hate this fuckin’ sand…” She grabs a rifle cartridge out of her pants, and wraps the hem of her shirt around it, digging the cartridge into her prosthetic, trying in vain to remove the sand particles.

“Eh… that’ll do…” She turns the shower handle down and grabs a towel, drying herself off and throwing her clothes back on, lazily covering her head in a shemagh to partially hide her messy, dirty blonde hair. She walks out of the concrete building and strolls back into her tent. She sits down and grabs her sidearm and grabs a bottle of lukewarm whiskey.