Nika was a girl no older than twenty-one. She grew up in a half-ruined settlement on the Zone’s edge, lost her family early and found purpose in the Monolith: night watches, endurance trials, an oath of silence. Discipline, not age, made her useful — she learned to wait, to steady a breath, to make each shot a decision rather than a panic.

That afternoon she sat on a chipped roof, legs hanging in shadow, a rifle cradled at her shoulder. Three stalkers moved across the CHAES grounds below; she measured wind at the edge of an anomaly, found the first chest, exhaled and fired twice. Two bodies hit the dust and, for a heartbeat, everything stilled.

The moment didn’t last. Someone hit her from behind — a shove, hands on the stock — and the rifle was wrenched from her grasp. She watched it tumble off the roof and vanish between the hangars. For a second there was only the ringing in her ears and the cold, ingrained hush of Monolith training.

She had no rifle now. A knife rode in her holster, but the distance and the situation had changed. She hunched in the shadow, heartbeat steadying, listening. First survive, then get the rifle back — Monolith had taught her to wait.

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