“There was a white organ in the pile. What happened to it?”

“I didn’t see anything like that, but I guess it was destroyed.” Peter lied through his open teeth. It was clear he’s hiding something, but more than that he wasn’t thinking at all.

“What happens if our present situation is related in some way to the necrosis bomb?” Alex finished the thought for her.

“Won’t we be infected with the organ-rotting disease or whatever you called it?”

“Organ sickness.” Peter answered, having not given the term before.

“And you burned the first body you found?” Alex continued.

“...”

“So you’ve damned us if there’s a connection?”

He brandished his small autorepeater, augmented with magic to possess a smaller form factor.

“So you’ve killed us all already before we’ve even had a chance to fight back?!”

“And we’re just supposed to—”

“That’s enough, Peter.” Raethor interrupted.

“If you want to see the ninth circle of hell you could’ve asked me this entire time. I’ll gladly show it to you. This isn’t anything special or different. You’re a soldier. Get a grip.”

Raethor had spoken in a firm voice, but as if to lighten the mood he finished his thought and gave clarification on what exactly he meant by the ninth circle of hell.

“By which, of course, I’m referring to my asshole.”

He smacked himself with one hand as if to emphasize the point. Anya groaned, but he had been successful. Alex let his weapon down, and Raethor didn’t press the issue any further.

There was a long moment of silence as the group gathered their collective thoughts.

“So what happens now?” Yuna asked in a half-broken Asiatic accent.

“We all die!” Alissa chimed in helpfully.

“If you want to die I can help with that, but the rest of us have a fight to win.” Will said, resolutely standing against her defeatist notions.

“We’ll make our enemies weep tears of blood.” Henry added, broken record that he was. You could slit a wrist on all that edge. But his feelings seemed to echo all of theirs. They didn’t want to lose this fight and die like dogs sent out behind the shed for the long trip to the farm. They were soldiers, not dogs, not cattle. This wasn’t a fight they had to lose, and though they had lost one of their own it didn’t seem to phase them. This wasn’t the first casualty any of them had faced, and Melissa was a relative newcomer to the unit anyway. Her loss would be felt, certainly, but none of them were particularly attached to each other, with few exceptions. There was a bond of camaraderie, but ultimately when the time came, each one of them would pull the trigger alone. Whether or not a fellow member of their unit stood by their side was inconsequential. Only they would feel the flex of the trigger and the recoil of a departing round. Only they would watch a hole form in the human called an enemy and know it had been their hand that had made it.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

In some units barrage fire made this direct acknowledgement of responsibility impossible, but in their unit it was the norm. All of them had confirmed kills, and all of them knew the pain of losing a comrade. But after a point it became routine. You get up and put on your boots and go to mess. You train and drill and eat and train and drill and watch each other die, pick up the bodies and move on. Only one thing was certain for their profession: there would be more bodies. Friend or foe, there would be more.

But from a tactical perspective it was quite a shame to lose a healer. It would mean their injuries were no longer going to restore themselves as if by magic at Melissa’s hands. They would build and fester until the maggots came to clean out the rotting flesh. There would be flies not long after, and there would be no healer to strike them down. They would have to resort to barbarism— shooting them with bullets and fire instead.

On the other hand, it wasn’t a death sentence any more to go into combat without one. Augmentation made them heartier than average and the base’s cutting edge research facilities allowed them basic access to new flesh for procedures. As such, even if losing a limb was a tactical disadvantage, if they were allowed to hold those facilities it would be possible, if costly and time consuming, to repair the injury, and the same was true for any other wound. The only wounds they would not be able to heal were internal and mental, but even then…

“We need to inform the Most High.” Dio said coldly, and Raethor knew he was right.

“What we need is to control our weapons caches and supply lines.” Anya countered.

“Why don’t we split into subunits—” Peter began, but Raethor swiftly cut him off.

“No.”

Peter’s confusion was plain on his face, but Raethor offered no further explanation. Instead he began to examine the corpse, which is to say to collect Melissa’s ashes into a small jar he had prepared from… his rear meat pocket? Anya had no idea where he was possibly supposed to store things in that uniform, but the gray metal jar was clean, undemonic, and unmolested by rust or any other signs of decay. It was plain and fitting as a soldier’s last resting place. He began scooping the ashes from the ground to the jar, and little black plumes of dust wafted up into the air as he worked.

“Then we should at least contact our superiors. They need to know what’s going on, and we might need their support.” Peter continued, but if this really was happening everywhere then it would do them no good.

“If we waste time on reinforcements, the enemy will secure our basic supplies and we’ll be dead on arrival. The reinforcements will entomb us here without even bothering to check for signs of life if we lose contact. You know this place is like a labyrinth. They won’t come inside without a foothold already established.” Anya countered.

“But if we don’t and the enemy is as strong as we fear then we can’t delay the call. We’ll be dead even if we can secure the supplies.” Dio added in support of Peter’s point, but Peter himself was already thinking a step ahead in a framework no one else possessed.

“There are weapons here you can’t imagine.” He began. “But we’ll need authorization from on high. They won’t start until the Most High issues the iron decree necessary for their start sequence to go through.”

Lululu then explained where Peter’s answer left gaps, “The weapons he’s referring to are powered by the Most High directly by proxy of their conduit. That is to say, me. The iron decree they issue is a global parameter set in the fabric of our country whose power flows through my veins. Until that parameter is set, none of the heavy machinery on this base will amount to anything more than waste scraps of flesh, and you’d be hard-pressed to cut your toenails with the hardware, even if it looks like it’ll kill you by looking at it.”

“Even so,” Anya objected, “we can’t use it if we starve.”

“Even so,” Dio countered, “we need more firepower.”

“Our enemies will eat lead, and we will eat our enemies.” Henry said in a rare moment of sense. But could they eat an enemy made of each others’ distorted flesh? Well, yes, but would it poison them? That was the more pertinent question with no good answer. Perhaps someone could try a taste of Melissa’s ashes? But that would be… an unpalatable suggestion and Anya almost recoiled at her own detached callousness for thinking it. Though again, they were soldiers and this was effectively wartime…

But Peter beat her words to the punch. “We need to get moving.” “Raethor, what are your orders?”

“My lieutenants are in agreement, so we should go back to the comms room.”

“What a waste of time.” Anya almost muttered under her breath, but again caught herself. Did she want to leave Melissa to die? It was her fault Melissa ended up here in the first place… It was her fault Melissa ended up dead.