The silence of the island was about to be shattered. You took a breath, adjusted for the windage, and squeezed the trigger. The crack of the rifle was the starting gun for a war that hadn't officially begun yet.

"Check your spacing," Miller hissed over the comms. The grass was waist-high, soaked in a cold dew that seeped through your fatigues. In the distance, the low hum of a patrolled the ridgeline, its searchlight slicing through the fog like a predatory eye.

The mission was simple on paper: infiltrate the PLA-occupied valley, secure the hidden in a downed drone, and get to the extraction point before the sun broke the horizon. But Skira doesn’t do "simple."

You gripped your MK17, the weight of the suppressor pulling at your arms. Your scout, Ghost, signaled a halt. Through the thermal optics, three heat signatures hovered near a crumbling farmhouse—the crash site. The data was there, buried in a scorched fuselage. "Open fire on my mark," Miller whispered.