Alone and save my tense mind relaxed. Suddenly I felt something wet run down my cheek, a tear. Frowning, I tried to regain control over my body, but my eyes didn’t listen. No, I was in charge. I would not-. Accompanied by a clanking sound, my vision burst in thousand pieces.

Ah, finally back! My emotion rolled through me, fear, anger, hate, disgust, worry, hope and happiness, filling me to the brim. With practiced ease I worked my way through them, not fighting, but embracing them. It was imperative to clean my mind after an intense session. Cutting off parts of my emotions had the benefit of letting me function much more efficient in dangerous situations, yet a price had to be paid afterwards, always.

It took me the better part of an hour to pacify the regained feelings. Luckily, I had time. Lying on the hospital bed, I couldn’t move as the meds did their job, slowly mending my broken body.

Still, one question remained. What had that been at the end of the last session? I had felt the reluctance, no the refusal to let go control over my body. That shouldn’t be possible. We were the same person. He was me, I was him. We were… Damn… it had gotten worse. I had to acknowledge that. Going in me again, I tried to untangle this total mess.

Two hours later I hadn’t made much headway. The emotions I had used during my fight had clumped together. A divide had started. No, not a simple divide. The emotions somehow enlarged and split, forming two new systems. One composed of the emotions, feelings and strategies which I had used during the fight. Completely target-oriented, callous and pragmatic. Its efficiency ratings went through the roof.

The one I was using now was my usual cynical and snarky self. Not as efficient, but better rated in the communication and empathy department. Not that it meant much. I never had been great with social interactions. Sure, I had learned how to read people and use them, but I didn’t truly connected with people.

In the past, it had been even worse. I had the same tendencies, but rough and unrefined, even one-sided one could say. Growing up, I believed that the world was painted purely in black and white. To my misery, I felt it was mostly black. Granted, I had a special gift to support that point of view, but even with it, I shouldn’t have been that radical.

Then the military came. That was a whole different kind of mess. Clusterfuck would be an understatement. The memories alone aggravated me. No. I didn’t want to spend another thought on that shit. Let’s simply say I hated everything and everybody afterwards.

The war had changed that. It had enlarged my definition of good and bad to a whole new level. I realized that the state which I had perceived as bad or “bottom” was only a piece of “debris” that had hidden an even deeper chasm below. After adjusting my scope, I had begun to understand that my view had been naïve and twisted. That didn’t mean that I had been able to change my thought process completely, but it let me look at my memories from another angle and see some of my shortcomings. The war had also taken my already deformed mind and had put it under even more stress, slowly forming the me of today. The half schizophrenic callous warrior…

Pain lanced suddenly through my body. I must have dozed off. My body reacted on autopilot. I came to myself, standing next to the sick-bed. My right hand grabbing a doctor around the neck, pushing him against the wall of the hospital room. My other hand held a scalpel, pressing it against his carotid artery.

“Please, d-don’t hurt me!” He was shaking in my hands. I literally could smell his fear. I checked the surroundings, no threat detected. Great Andrew, it looked like I had scarred an Innocent doctor senseless. As helpful as my automated reflexes were during dangerous situations, they could really complicate things with other people…

I saw it in his eyes, that look I knew only too well. He thought me a monster. It was nothing new to me. Most of my squat-mates had the same look in their eyes. They loved me for my strength and ability to keep them alive, yet they feared me. For in their eyes, I could kill all of them without hesitation if the need arose. That fear lead to hateful talks behind my back when they thought I couldn’t hear them. Only Mat had shown better judgment. he became my first real friend since long.

Opening my hand, I let the doctor go. He immediately scrambled out of the room. Damn, that was going to bite me in the ass in the future. Checking myself I was happy to find that my body had mostly recovered. The medicine had done a superb job. The doctor must have been prodding my back rather roughly to induce that much pain.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I didn’t see a reason to further stay in the med unit and wait for the shitstorm to arrive which was for sure on its way.

Walking out of the med bay I came face to face with chief.

“Ah, Andrew! Already recovered? Very good! Lets go, I got new orders. The rest of the unit is already waiting at the barracks.”

I filled in diagonally behind him. We walked down the slummy path between the buildings and made our way towards our destination.

“By the way, great job this morning! Thanks to you two binding most of the surviving Darkons at the ammunition depot, we were able to recover and rally enough people to counterattack them. I don’t know what you did but they were completely incensed and mostly focused on breaking through the depot entrance.”

Thinking back to the fight, I realized the reason for that.

“The first Darkon I killed wore a slightly different armor. It looked mostly the same, but of higher grade. Presumably he had been a group-leader or person of higher standing.”

“Still, that couldn’t be all. We have killed many of them during the years, but never had they reacted this extreme.”

“Well, maybe it had something to do with how I killed him.”

Chief looked at me questioningly.

“What did you do?”

“I obliterated his crotch and used him as a doormat for the rest of his group.”

Chief looked at me surprised before he began to laugh boisterously.

“Okay that would explain that”, he replied. Smiling he clapped me on the shoulder. “Anyway, that helped a lot, thanks to that we didn’t loose any additional people.”

Reminded of the hefty losses of our team, we both got somber. We were used to it. People died all the time now, but it was still not something nice.

When we arrived at the main room of the barrack, the rest of the squad had already formed up, waiting for chief.

Actually, his real name was Peter, but as he was our squad-leader and as hard-boiled as they got, we only called him chief.

“At ease!”

Following his command, we relaxed.

“So, listen up, folks. I got new intel! You will have eight hours of sleep to wake up fresh and bushy tailed tomorrow morning! Our friends of the bravo company are taking over the shifts for the meantime. You can thank them as you will sleep through the entire night! So get something to eat and tuck yourself in. The next days will be harsh! We were informed that another legion is marching in our direction! On another topic, we will get another ten men to fill up our ranks.”

Some of the newer ones looked very uncomfortable at that. They still were not used to the high body count and the indifferent way we handled things. But this was the reality since two years, a lot of deaths. Humanity had to adapt. We didn’t have the time and resources to make a big drama out of it.

“Yes, Chief!”

We finished the briefing and trotted towards the canteen. Thinking about food, my stomach notified me it was strongly in favor of the idea. I had spent the morning fighting and the afternoon lying in bed, so my body really needed food.

Luckily, we were one of the first teams from our shift that had arrived at the building. We swiftly grabbed us something to eat and gulped it down. It was extreme how much energy our body uses up during fighting and healing.

I leaned back against my chair and enjoyed the satiated feeling my stomach reported. Some of my group wanted to play some card games, but I was spent. Although my body worked properly again, I needed sleep to recover the lost energy.

I stood up and moved towards my sleeping place. Leaving the canteen, I took some time to observe the surroundings. They built our camp as a stronghold directly in a bottleneck between two steep mountains that one couldn’t cross. It protected the whole flatlands behind us, where a major city was located. At the moment, we were the only protection against a potential invasion of the Darkons from this side. In the past we had many more troops and also tanks in place, but because of attacks further south a big part of our forces had been moved. The decision had been a calculated risk to stabilize the line. New enforcement would arrive soon.

The commanders had separated the camp in three parts. First were the defensive structures. They consisted of Bunkers with mg nests and trenches where the soldiers stood in. The bunkers connected the trenches, and we used them as chock points if the enemy successfully invaded a trench. The tanks had been moved south, leaving us a bit short in the big guns department.

They built the entire structure like a grit of rectangles so that the soldiers could fall back into the next line if needed. The connection between the different lines were made with tunnels. The relocating troops needed to be protected from enemy fire. Only the tranches that were built crosswise to the path that lead through the bottleneck were open. The soldiers had to be able to fire at the incoming enemy.

This grid of trenches were especially effective due to the gently rising ground below us. That made it possible for the people in the second and third burrow line to shoot slightly over the heads of the people in front of them.

Behind the defense structures came the main camp with the barracks and as last the support units like artillery and snipers. Our big cannons were located on the back side of the small hill behind the camp. The snipers and the spotters on the front-side would provide them with target-locations while the artillery would remain hidden from enemy view, pelting them with death from above.

If one gazed at our defenses from an attacker’s view, he would first see the wide passage in between the two mountain ranges, then came our camp that was set up in the bottleneck. Behind us, the hill with the hidden artillery divided the passage and “closed off” the entrance.

Having ended my observation cycle, I stretched myself and made my way towards my sleeping spot. I dozed off immediately.