WOLFPACK — OPERATOR UNIT // FILE PARTIALLY CLASSIFIED

GHOST LEOPARD

Patient arctic long-gun who speaks in range estimates and wind calls and can outwait anything except her own curiosity about Steel Cobra losing

FIELD HISTORY

She was born to herders in a contested highland border country, where her grandfather taught her to read wind off snow before she could read letters: which drift meant a storm, which shimmer meant a lie. When the wars came down the passes and took the highlands, the only inheritance left was the reading. She carried it into a rifle and became a for-hire long gun with a reputation built on a single trait no employer could train into anyone else — she waits. Days, without complaint. She has said that a hide is just a tent with better manners, and her people lived in tents for a thousand years. The right eye went at the Sarn Pass, to a counter-sniper's ricochet off a frozen bolt-plate. She traded the ruin for a slim scoped ocular implant with ballistic overlay and mil-dot ranging, and insists she got the better half of the trade. The rosettes came later, from a gray-market gene clinic: a snow-leopard chromatophore graft — "winter-thread" — that keeps her capillaries open at forty below and dapples her outline against broken snow. [REDACTED — CLEARANCE INSUFFICIENT] She keeps her hides cold on purpose — warm air ripples above a barrel and bends the shot — so the frost on her collar and the breath-fog are professional standards, not hardships. The ghillie scarf she rewraps for every theater with local ground cover, by hand, the way her grandfather rewove snare-nets each season. Steel Cobra is the only duel she ever lost, and no shot was fired: three days in a snowfield, two rifles, one hour's difference in patience. He stood up first — into her scope, hands empty — and offered her a contract instead of a bullet. She took it, she says, to be present on the day somebody finally outwaits him. Inside the Collection Agency she is the overwatch and the de facto second, and she issues psychological readings as windage: drift two mils left of sane, correct before firing.

INTERCEPTED COMMS

“Target at eight-forty meters. Wind's a lazy three-quarter from the left. He has four minutes to live and he's spending them on a cigarette.”
“Day three. Snow stopped an hour ago. Good. I was starting to enjoy myself.”
“You're breathing into the mic, operative. Half a breath, then hold. Same as a trigger.”
“Range to your objective, six hundred. Range to your excuses, zero. Move.”
“The boss priced your rescue mid-firefight, yes. Be flattered. He rounds down for people he likes.”

PSYCH PROFILE

Drives: To be present, scope up, on the day someone finally outwaits Steel Cobra — and to make sure nothing kills him before then

Frictions: Jinx's luck insults her craft — she computes a shot for an hour and he strolls through the beaten zone whistling; she has started logging his misses as wind anomalies

gives emotional assessments as wind calls ('you're drifting two mils left of sane, boss')
keeps her hides and her quarters cold enough to fog breath — warm air bends the shot
rewraps her ghillie scarf by hand for every theater, and mourns each old one briefly
narrates a target's remaining minutes in the flat tone of a weather report

KNOWN ASSOCIATES

STEEL COBRA — The only duel she ever lost and the contract she took because of it; his patience is the one benchmark she respects
FANDROID — Built the ranging software in her ocular implant and storyboards 'sniper duel chapters' about her; Leopard pretends not to be flattered
EXO-RONIN — Her favorite overwatch package — it never rushes, never crowds the lane, and its crimson slit reads clean at any range
JINX — A standing insult to ballistics; she logs his survived misses as wind anomalies and is quietly building a very unsettling spreadsheet
NIGHTSHADE — The only Agency member she cannot range — no pulse tell, no drift; she calls him 'dead calm' and means it as high praise
KOSCHEI — Professional regard at extreme range; she had him in the scope before the Reef, and swears what sits in the glass now reads different