“Muhammad…breathe.”

I saw Medusa’s hand on my shoulder, but I couldn’t feel her warmth. Was it the clothes or the fear that had distanced me from my own body? My heart thumped to the beat of the rapid, rattling of the engine. Sweltering heat inside the rusting truck overwhelmed my feverish heat reducing me to my current state of sweat and confusion.

I try breathing, but it doesn’t help. My chest just squeezed tighter. Fear silvered, knitting through my muscles and bound until it encompassed me wholly. Have you ever seen a snake strangle its prey? I could no more escape it than I could the pull of gravity. But fear isn’t gravity, and the more I draw closer and breathe, the more I induce calm.

Calm is not total. Anxiety continues, but in wrestling with it I make myself. I push and clear myself some space to exist.

Medusa’s hand raised my chin, so we looked eye-to-eye. Medusa’s eyes. One eye neon blue of electronic light, the other beautifully, humanly brown. Both are arresting. One can stun electronics, the other can stun me.

I glance away, I don’t have time to feel what she makes me feel. Even the scarring around her blue eyes is beautiful to my mind. They suggest the crystallising of feelings I shan’t name. If I say the word, then maybe it is true.

There is only one truth a man heading to death needs… and certainty it is himself.

Looking outside, I am blinded by the glaring light of the sun reflected off the endless expanse of desert that stretches to every corner of the continent. Justice demands we act. Humanity is at stake. I don’t pretend to understand why.

I know we tried the alternatives. I believe that this is our last resort. The ghosts won’t allow our freedom. They demand, coreice and persuade us that our service to them is the only alternative. They take everything. If they won’t allow us joy, then we will take their false life.

I look to the three other trucks blasting through the sand towards our destination. A convoy named death, famine, war and conquest. I only recognise the meaning of the first word. We pass the husk and debris of the vanguard. “The way is clear!” I shouted.

I see the missile zooming through the clear sky.

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“So, it begins.” Medusa declared.

“To floor 100!” We called back, my voice the loudest. Perhaps destiny, one of my own creation, raised my echo higher.

The drivers follow the prearranged pattern, None of our debris is accidently. Every death was planned exactly. No structure has ever been so finely outlined to the smallest detail than this attack. If this effort had gone into a person they would be sublime personified, if it had been spent on a work of art it would have been transcendent, instead we will have a genocide of ghosts.

The missiles come and their explosions fail. Mines are skipped over. Incoming fire shielded against by the metallic carsess of our vanguard. Our way is clear.

We crashed through the facility. A sleek underground structure of cement, steel and electronics. Fierce resistance met us. I jumped out of our truck: death. Crack! Crack! The heavy gun kicked into my shoulder. I contort, inhumanly, to avoid incoming fire.

Humans cannot beat machines without the tools we used to create them. Augmented reality allowed for precise aiming. Ours is more advanced than theirs, they decayed and rested. We humans endured and adapted. I saw what they were going to do before they acted and the phantoms in my brain reacts before they can.

Sprinting a hundred metres in a second, booting down a four metre cement, steel reinforced wall I breached the first inner barriers of the facility. I look to my comrades taking my place. Horsemen War. They don’t look human, but they act humanly.

We experimented making our flesh monstrous and machine-like. Some had the strength of bears, the speed of cheetahs through genetic enhancement along with automated powers of processing. How human we are, I don’t know. This is our sacrifice.

We tore through their defences. The sea must be drained. Final revolution against the dead.

“Scot is down in corridor 2b.”

We were under the fire of automated turrets, robotic special forces and Titan class mechs the size of skyscrapers. Only our genetically enchanted bodies and reliance on technology punched us through. We were dead, but we had one last task to finish before we could enjoy peace and experience eternal sleep.

Every step of relentless fighting drew us closer to the floor 100; each death a planned tragedy.

“Horseman unit Faminie is down. They successfully destroyed backup power. Conquest has disabled security system. War has fallen, but resistance won’t be able to stop Death.” Medusa confirmed.

Bang!

“Medusa is down hall 99t.” I acknowledged. “According to the plan. I am the last one left.”

A single weakness that could take down all the storage banks on earth and in space. We the point spear of the rebellion. Humanity's only hope. I collapsed onto the final console at floor 100. My blood soaks through my clothing and the cold takes out the last of my warmth. I pulled the electronic screwdriver from my pocket.

“I am Muhammod. I bear the Virus. Evolved, you are who ghost, I am your doom.”

I inserted the virus.

Too tired to feel, I sleep into death.