"I've heard it said a city can often represent an era.

Think back to the Roman metropolis of old, the smog-filled factories of Victorian London or the wispy streets of Belle Epoque Paris.

In that regard Strasbourg is a perfect representation of our era. Cold, cruel, inhumane, and above all else necessary."

-Wg.Cdr Johann Reinhard, 2042.

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A sea of bleak concrete spread out as far as the eye could see, brutally cruel buildings jutting into the sky like forlorn gravestones,such was Strasbourg, and such was the world it represented. It was enough to make Johann shiver.

Ahead of him, as usual, Annie seemed unperturbed by the city's appearance. For all that it looked like a graveyard it was at least not a ruin. Having seen only the hellish state in which the Chron left the cities they ravaged this was probably an improvement so far as she was concerned.

Noticing that he'd yet to move she turned around, looking at him with a slight tilt to her head, "Come on, Johann, is something wrong? You're going too slow, we'll be late!"

"Sorry, on my way." With those words he stepped out into the streets of Strasbourg, leaving the train station from which they'd come. Annie walked on, undeterred by the fact that neither of them had any idea where they were going.

After a few minutes Annie stopped next to an intersection, looked to the left and then pursed her lips, "Was it the right or the left? I can't remember the map now."

He didn't even remember a map. But now that he looked back on it there might have been something like that in the platform just as they left the train, he'd been too busy trying to make sure he wasn't trampled by the outpour of people to notice.

Annie didn't ponder on where to go for long, picking a path seemingly at random and setting down it. From the way she carried herself you'd almost be forgiven for thinking she'd visited the city a thousand times. But this was just the way she was.

Johann and Annie had been together for the vast majority of their lives. From their small village in Germany to the refugee camps that dotted the Rhine after the rotfront fell, he'd never truly known life without her. And in just a few hours they would be separated and thrown to the hounds of war. It was inevitable, but that knowledge didn't help make him less uneasy, something she certainly wasn't helping by setting down the streets of an unfamiliar city without a care in the world.

Annie halted in front of a bridge, and he was sure she'd gotten them lost for a moment, before noticing where her eyes were pointed. Peaking just above the stout form of a concrete building stood a humanoid form, some twenty meters tall. A machine of war any person in the modern era would recognize, a mobile hunter.

"That's the way!Quick now, we'll be late otherwise," She grabbed him by the hand and all but dragged him through the streets, which grew more and more crowded with people their age as they drew closer to where the machine was standing.

A plaza soon revealed itself, large and square, flanked on both sides by two windowless buildings and with a single statue of a soldier, rifle at his side, standing at its very center. Two mobile hunters stood at each side of the plaza, massive rifles held horizontally across their chests.

"Ah, seems like this is the place. Lucky us!"

"Is it really luck? You always seem to know what to do."

She nodded. "For sure it's luck! I was actually pretty sure the map was telling us to go the other way, but I just had a feeling you know?"

"That's exactly what I mean..."He muttered. Annie had always been in some way "special", even when they were children her intuition had bordered on the supernatural. If he was more superstitious he'd probably go so far as to think she had some kind of magic power or special gift.

"Anyway, chop-chop, we need to get through this quickly. Remember what miss Cecile told us could happen if we were too slow?" She asked, pushing on his back to drive him forward through the crowd.

"We get shot for draft dodging?" He was pretty sure that'd been an exaggeration, he certainly hoped it was.

"Yup! And I don't know about you, but that's not what I'd call a good afternoon."

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

"I don't think anyone would..."

She eventually managed to use him as a sort of spearhead to part the crowd, and they found their way to a large set of double doors leading directly into the building.

The moment they entered Johann was surprised by how...normal it all looked. A simple reception area marked by several long lines of people waiting to be served, while others sat in a corner where a set of colorful plastic chairs with faded colors were placed.

Annette dragged him to one particular line without saying a word. Even afterwards she didn't say anything, keeping her gaze firmly fixed ahead without a peep.

Johann brought shivering hands up to his mouth and exhaled. That hardly stopped them from shivering, given that it was more his nervous system rather than the cold that was to blame for said shivering. Actually, I guess my nervous system would be too blame in both situations, uh?

"Are you, you know, nervous?" He asked his companion. It seemed almost unimaginable that she would be, this was the same girl that had fought off several Chron with nothing but a pistol just a few hours ago. Sure, they'd eventually had to be saved by the military, but the fact so many of them had survived at all could only be attributed to Annie's actions, alone.

"Nope!" She declared, back turned to him as she looked ahead, trying to peek past the crowd and what awaited them at the end of the lines. And that was certainly bizarre, she always looked at him when they spoke.

"Not even a bit?"

"Not even a bit!"She declared, "What about you?"

He shrugged, "Maybe a little."

"Don't worry. Everything will be fine."

"How would you know?"

She hummed for a moment, before shaking her head, "I just know."

He sighed. He was used to this kind of answer form her, sure, but not being gifted by the same kind of nigh-unnatural intuition made it difficult to understand how she could always just know these things. Still, he had to trust her.

The crowd ahead of them kept thinning out while the one behind them only grew. It seemed they'd been lucky, by the time they were nearly at the receptionists desk there was basically an entire army standing in wait behind them. Those poor people would probably have to wait hours before knowing their fate, Johann couldn't imagine how nervous they'd be.

Just as they were about to reach the end of the line themselves Annie spoke up without turning around to face him, "Hey, Johann."

"Yeah?"

"Try not die out there, okay?" It wasn't the first time she asked this of him in the last few days. He nodded, even if she couldn't see it.

"I won't."

It wasn't a promise he could keep, they knew that equally well. Even then, the fact he'd made it counted for something. It had to.

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Recruitment analysis had been a cushy job when Holeman first got it. All he had to do was interview people, see if they had any psychiatric defects of note, and then send them on their merry way to die in the trenches regardless, that it kept him away from the front lines was a nice bonus too. But as of late? It was much more mentally taxing having to look children in the eye and send them to war, to say the least.

Today was no different. This time the kid was fourteen years old. Just fourteen. Holeman could never imagine joining the military that young, and he was just in his mid-twenties. How would he have felt if he'd been born in an era when 18 was the age at which it was "normal" to send people to war?

He sighed, opening the door. The boy was frightfully small, black hair and brown eyes and as if joining this young wasn't bad enough the kid's name told him he was from out East. How many family members had he lost in just the last six years alone? All of them, only half?

He suppressed any show of emotion and stepped into the room. The boy's eyes, cold and hard as steel, followed him all the way into his seat. He almost seemed like a soldier already, with that cold gaze that followed every movement. Maybe that would make things easier.

"Johann Reinhard, correct?" He asked. The boy nodded. Holeman passed him a set of documents. "Please sign here. It's a form recognizing the fact that you've been called up for military service for the union. Among other things you're also declaring that you will not join the military of any other state without first consulting us or before your obligatory service comes to an end."

The boy nodded and signed after briefly skimming its contents. It was more than most people did, some already arrived so broken by the world they couldn't care less if they were signing away their souls.

"Now as for your options, there's several-"

"I want to join the Venture corps."

There was a pause, it took a moment for Holeman to realize what he'd just heard.

"Excuse me?" There was probably not a single person who didn't know about the Venture corps. They were the most elite force in the entire European military, but for all that that was the case, they were also the most dangerous. Where you might survive for five years in any other armored battalion, you'd be lucky to make it five months in the venture corps. People didn't ask to join the Venture corps, they were granted that 'honor' by proving themselves in combat or forced into it when they were deemed old or expendable enough to send to their deaths in high profile missions.

"I know it's unusual, but that's what I am hoping for," The boy didn't miss a beat. He seemed almost naive in the way he looked directly at Holeman and asked him to sign his death warrant. Hell, if the boy's location of birth wasn't written down as the former North German Democratic Republic Holeman really would have thought the boy was naive, but no one who'd survived so long coming from there could possibly be so naive.

"I must ask you to reconsider," He said. "I am sure you've heard quite a lot about the exploits of the Venture corps throughout the years, but even among the divisions that use mobile hunters their casualty rate is excessive, joining them isn't a good decision."

"I know-"

"So there's no reason to join them. If you want to join a tactical armored battalion the assault or scout corps are-"

"Please let me finish," He said. "I know that it's dangerous and I know the risks, but that's still the place I want to join it it's at all possible. If I'm not accepted I won't have any problem with fighting anywhere else either, even in the infantry, but I want to at least try to join the Venture corps before anything else."

The boy's gaze didn't falter for a moment, even as Holeman stared him down. No...it was more like he wasn't even looking at him at all, but beyond. Johann Reinhard's eyes were fixed on something that didn't exist, and while that told Holeman all he needed to know about his chances of changing his mind, he still had to try.

"If I may ask...why?"

"The Chron came to Earth and took everything from humanity. I've seen it myself, people losing family, friends. Cities devastated both by the war and their attacks. My father was killed by them, my friend's mother was the same. No matter where you go across the Rhine there's a thousand stories like ours. I want...no, I need to put and end to that. The Venture corps are the tip of the spear, if there's anywhere I can be where I might have a chance to change the course of the war, it's the Venture corps."

Holeman heaved a heavy sigh. The kid's reason really was naive, thinking he could change the course of this war by his lonesome, but that didn't really matter, he wouldn't accept anything Holeman had to tell him to the contrary if he'd already entrenched this idea into his head.

"Fine. Have it your way," He conceded. "Good luck out there, kid. You'll need it."

He prayed to be wrong, even knowing he wasn't.