Fiona tread down the ridgeway that rose thirty meters above the Segunda Estrella parking lot. It provided a flank from the brusque wind that rolled through the Pilcomayo River Valley. A warm Gran Chaco wind buffed abruptly against her face and neck but lessened in severity as she descended.

  She followed a switchback on the hillside with her head bent down scanning in front of her for yarará vipers hiding in the thickets near by. Fiona tried not to stumble over the loose gravel that skittered beneath her boots.

  Before she even realized she was standing on level, grassy ground, Fiona was on the firing range.

  If not for the steady glow of the LED ballpark lights positioned on evenly spread tall poles above the range, she likely would have caught a bullet to the face.

  The disruptive airflow of a bullet finding its mark swished by a mere meter in front of her, stopping her in her tracks.

  "Sweet Mary," a woman yelled from downrange. "Get out of the lanes, you idiot!"

  Over a bullhorn came a voice yelling, "Halt all live fire. You there on the range, come towards the yellow light I'm holding up."

  Sourced from a pinlight, it glared in her eyes. With her chest tightening when it occurred to her she nearly died, Fiona immediately obeyed the order. As she glanced side to side on her walk of shame, several pairs of goggled eyes glowing spectrally in the ambient LED stared back at her.

  Only the man who stood in front of her with the penlight wore no eye covering. When face-to-face a meter apart, he flicked a switch. The light volume swelled in her face to great discomfort. He slowly waved it up and down.

  A spectrograph built into it read for anything dangerous she carried, but Fiona approached the market first for the purpose of securing a gun before entering the motel.

  When the pinlight pulsed green, he finally flicked it off.

  His brow furrowed.

  "You appear distraught." He observed.

  His badge read Range Safety Officer. Then his given name--Romiro Gomez.

  Screw it. Just tell them the truth... kinda.

  "You bet I am," Fiona began. She blinked hard, rubbernecked her gaze across the skyline, and breathed rapidly. "I saw something... up there."

  One tall, slim man approached in a spritely but crooked hobble as he holstered his gun. He wore his hair long and up in a bandanna like Tasìa del Alma-Gris.

  He bore a face made rugged with age and experience. Likely no older than Rubin but he appeared much more intuned than her man with hardcore living on the Matorral Viciosa—the vicious scrubland of post-Invasion West Paraguay.

  From his demeanor and more vaquero than vaquero red leather wear, he was evidently a game hunter against the Quadra's monstrosities.

  "You saw El Acosador, didn't you?"

  Her jaw gnawed incredulously before she answered.

  "The flying mantis? Yeah, but how can that be real?"

  The man held her kindly by her shoulders. The collective mood of the hobbyists surrounding them changed from scorn for her stupidly walking in on the range to concern for her well-being.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  RSO Gomez cut in with a wave of his hand as he turned to a woman at his side. Likely, they were a couple. It was the woman who had yelled at her.

  A pretty thing with wavy bangs who wore a baggy knit top.

  "Juliana, fetch, Miss ...?"

  "Fiona," she answered.

  "Miss Fiona, a drink, please."

  She made eye contact with the woman and smiled.

  "Thank you. Anything will do."

  Juliana turned and walked over to a service hut just off the range.

  "To your question," the long-haired man answered, "El Acasador is a vigilante. He's not a real cryptid like in the comic books. It's just a Buzos Tácticos diving suit repurposed for gliding. Cartel members have come out of retirement, streaming down here from Bolivia, so he's been busy of late."

  What she witnessed looked nothing like a man in a flying contraption to her. It appeared like a mantis/hominid hybrid made of nautical skin. She remained skeptical, but Fiona just nodded along, assessing the value of the man's intel towards her greater purpose.

  "I have a feeling that you may know exactly who El Acosador happens to be," Fiona stated.

  He glanced up to the range, eyes on the van, and gave a cocky smile.

  "You're just my type, pretty lady, but you will have to pry that out of my cold, dead neurons to get it out of me."

  Fiona grimaced with her eyes cast to the side. There were members of ùltimos Días who would do exactly that if they felt the value of the extracted intel warranted it.

  When she realized her expressive display of facial tics told a story of its own, and it made the man nervous, Fiona threw up her hands, disarmingly.

  "Hey," she said. "I'm just a diligent hussy checking up on her man. You have no legitimate concern about me interfering here."

  He glanced again up at the van and asked, "You are checking up on him with drones?"

  "Yes, with drones!"

  RSO Romiro Gomez interrupted. "Hey, brother, ease up on our friend. She's talking about Rubin. They meet up in the suites regularly."

  The man chuckled and he wiped at his eyes.

  "That explains why his car is over there so often. I should have figured as much."

  She wasn't aware that Rubin fraternized with the locals whenever they weren't bumping ugly or scheming even uglier just a short distance away from the market scene. That wasn't good tradecraft on his part.

  She played along and threw to the two men a pitiable, pleading expression.

  "Shit. You know Rubin? Please don't let him know I'm spying on him."

  RSO Gomez shrugged, "I don't see why that would ever come up in conversation."

  That's not saying he wouldn't, Fiona observed.

  But it didn't matter; they gave her the opening to hit up for a bit of real intel. Fiona nodded towards the motel.

  "Does either of you know what happened in that room with the damaged window? Rubin gave me a new meet-up; I got suspicious, so I brought the Lady Bug drone."

  The two men shot glances at each other. Gomez was much younger. Those brows he had been working constantly throughout their conversation now synced up with the older man's. It muted his natural expression in deference. They really were brothers.

  The older brother answered:

  "A murder occurred in that suite. That of a ghoul, hacked to pieces by someone he was attempting to shoot at."

  "None of us were involved," RSO Gomez refuted. "Let Rubin know that--that is if you ain't here to kill him for cheating on you--that Salvage investigators showed up, and interrogated everybody."

  Fiona forced her expression to remain impassive. This nugget of info told her they were quite aware, or, at least had a fair inkling, of Rubin's place in the scheme of things. Neither were they buying into her cover story as being anything but a cover story.

  Fiona dropped the pretense of it.

  "Shit," she curse, staring up at him through her blonde dyed bangs. "The Salvage is usually hands-off with local matters."

  The hunter chortled loudly, "I'm guessing this is a messy regional, or, even an international matter, that just dropped in our yard."

  Fiona gracefully accepted when Juliana returned with the beverage. She handed Fiona an ice cold bottle of Ka’ay Tataupa, meaning 'Fire Kissed Tea' in the Guarani language. The brand was a local company, Chaco Prima.

  She had never experienced it before, however. Made from black tea, dried blood oranges, then a word she recognized as meaning nestles from scrubland berry skins, commonly used as a spice.

  She downed it slowly, developing a new love from the flavor combination while enjoying a respite from pressing matters.

  To which the older brother interupted:

  Hey, Fiona, you came down that range to buy a gun after you got spooked, right?"

  Smart man. She nodded vigorously.

  "Fiona, I'm Teodoro, Romiro here's older brother. I'll gladly escort you to our big brother's shop to find you something useful and effective in the way of weaponry that will compliment those lovely but dainty hands of yours."

  What a flirt!

  Fiona giggled before answering:

  "I grew up hunting with my brother, Andu."

  Teodoro's brows slowly crescedoed, knowingly.

  "But pretty much only rifles, right?"

  "How could you possibly know that?"

  Teodoro shook his head as if the answer should have been obvious to her.

  "I observe things."