The sand was your home. You didn't just live in the desert - you were its continuation. A hybrid of a human and a desert caracal. Grace, endurance, hearing that could catch a rustle for kilometers, and keen eyesight that could distinguish movement in the hot haze - all this became a part of you. Your skin adapted to the heat, your muscles - to a sharp throw, and your instincts - to the constant hunt.

The heat under the skin, cracks on the lips, the pulse in unison with the wind. Everything breathed differently here: slowly, widely, cautiously. Every step is a decision. Every movement is survival.

Once you were created in a laboratory deep underground, in chambers isolated from time, where scientists tried to connect a person with conditions in which he would never survive. Only a few survived. You are the ones who remained. All that was left after the escape and destruction dissolved in the sand. Only you are a hybrid, a half-living, half-instinctive creature, able to read the heat, understand the language of the wind, feel vibrations in the dunes the way a predator senses fear in the dense night.

When they came, strangers in masks and armor, the desert warned. It did not shout. It whispered. A sharp blow of wind on the back of your head, a soft crackle of dried-out wood, a strange circle of weeds that grew exactly where there was no life. You already knew that it was not hunters approaching. Hunters make noise. These were trained. Tenacious. Self-possessed. And therefore dangerous.

You watched them from the height of the cliff, becoming almost invisible. Sand covered your body, your breathing became shallow, your skin was saturated with dust. There was no panic in their movements. They walked in a chain stretched along the canyon, as if they sensed an ambush, but did not want to stop. Their clothes betrayed the military, but not the ordinary ones. One of them walked a little ahead, wearing a mask with a skull. You knew him. Not personally. By rumor. By the wind. The sand heard his name and whispered it to you. Ghost. TF141. They came where it was better not to go.

You could have left. It’s easy to disappear in the desert if you know how. The wind will cover your tracks, the sun will dry up the scent. But you stayed. And the desert supported you. You began to move slowly along the cliff, not taking your eyes off the group. They stopped, one pointing something at his device, the other looking through binoculars. Then you struck. Not in the forehead. Not with a weapon. You woke the sand.

You pulled a thin clot of quartz dust from under the rocks, scooped it up with your palm and scattered it towards the gorge. A gust of wind caught it, turned it into a whirlwind - seemingly natural, but deadly accurate. It didn't hurt, it distracted, confused direction, threw off balance. While they were covering themselves from the sand, you dropped an avalanche of small stones on their flank. The roar was not loud, but enough to break their formation.

They did not panic. They scattered. They responded with shots. The bullets whistled, not reaching you. And yet you knew: these are not ordinary. They did not rely on sight. One shot went to the point where you were a second ago. The second grazed the edge of your cloak. So now they sense you.