The sniper smiled in triumph as the enemy collapsed backward, his rifle rolling out of his hands and clattering to the concrete. He fell and lay on the ground, shuddering in agony.
The sniper looked at him with cold disdain and the happiness of killing a colonel. This would surely get him a promotion. Now, all he had to do was get the mask.
He looked in disgust first at the blue camo the enemy was wearing – for that was all he was, an enemy. The sniper felt no remorse for slaying an agent of the Eagle, the government group that spread war.
Through the two years they had been active, he had become familiar with their blue camouflage. He hated them bitterly; they had been the cause of his tearing apart of his entire life.
Gazing around carefully, in case the fallen had any friends waiting to ambush him, he stepped carefully toward the agent, his rifle loaded and ready, his pistol on his belt, stocked with bullets.
Glancing at the fallen man, he noticed at the grey head covering all the agents war had come undone, leaving the face bare. The agent had noticed it and had tucked most of his face into the thick woolen shawl around his neck, his gloved hands obscuring the rest of his face. The sniper smirked coldly. Soon it wouldn’t matter what face he had.
He was shuddering even more forcefully now, gripping his left arm in obvious pain. He would be put out of his misery soon anyhow.
The sniper kneeled at his head. Automatically, the victim recoiled away from him, as if his very touch would mean his death. Well, the sniper reflected, it probably did.
“Pro eternus pacis,” he murmured. For the eternal peace. The slogan of the army.
He gently lifted up the thick, harshly woven covering. Thick black hair spilled out of it. He felt a shock and jerked back, sitting on his haunches.
He supposed that he was old fashioned, recovering quickly. Women had been allowed in the army since the 1960s, nearly seventy years ago. He’d seen girls in the army during training, though from afar.
Reflexively, he grabbed her as she rolled away from him, carefully hiding her face. A hiss escaped her lips as he twisted her right arm. He carefully pulled her around to face him and knocked her hands from her face.
He gasped.
She was just as shocked.
“You,” he breathed.
The sniper stared in frozen horror at the matured face of the girl he had once loved.
