The jungle landscape flashed by me, streaks of green and red, the humid atmosphere touching my armor, dew forming. I pulsed again, to no avail. The caster had figured me out. I tried a new strategy, and ‘flexed’ my brain. I felt my blast effect the two enemies, both in the same area, roughly 20 miles in diameter. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where they were, but the blast did get them, and I coud guess from there. I called down spread out artillery fire from my friends. Shells stormed through the air and spread out over the area where I had detected them. They weren’t hit, unfortunately.

I continued my search, and finally hit the area where they were. I don’t think they had left the general area, a sniper and a caster didn’t have much reason to. The same trick I used last time wouldn’t work again, I caught the psychic off guard, he likely was defending against it now. If I tried again, I could reveal MY location and letting a sniper know that was a horrible fucking idea.

I ejected 180 nanites from my armor, and spread them out. As they progressed through the forest faster than I ever could with their microscopic gravity drives, I felt a ping. Half my nanites were being hacked. They fell out of the air with an AI tearing apart streams of code, setting off their ‘bangs’. An even smaller area was protected by a magic shield. Only a half mile across.

All stealthing dropped, and I pinged their locations. A sniper sent out a scan pulse, registering me, and small drones, looking like crescents fired two merging beams on my location. I set up a shield to block them as well as possible, but my shields still broke, and my armor melted. The beams went right through me, dodging anything anything important, due to the reflection effects of a old, but still useful, technology called the scatter shield. The beams missed my beating heart, piercing my right bicep and my lungs. My armor thinned out some, partially covering the wounded spots, enough to apply some medicinal gel. It expanded quickly in my body, filling the gaps, letting blood run through, and providing a numbing sensation. It also sort of filled the purpose of helping my breath and flex my arm, but not very well. The air inside my suit got more oxygen-rich, letting me breath easier. My suit used more energy to help my damaged bicep work. When biology failed, technology was there.

The drones shot again, again hitting me, this time through the kidney and the left side of my collarbone. The gel worked again, and my suit sucked more power. The drones were finally shot down by my team, before the damned drones could fire again. I sweat and my chest heaved, Muscles rippling, and a single, solemn bead of sweat dripped down my chest. My eyes clouded with tears, the numbing solution needed to have come before I even felt it. Damn it hurt. I stood slowly, fighting the urge to cool into a fetal position as I stood up, and small runes on my arms flashed and glowed, my pain being numbed more. I magically increased my adrenaline and regeneration rates, and a felt a significant drop in my soul, and a sort of tingle released off of me. Now that the video game-like mana in Infinity’s atmosphere was now absent, I had not nearly as much magic. The sudden drop in skill I had had taken me by surprise, and I had just never picked it back up.

“I will learn magic,” I swore for not the first time, gritting my teeth, and standing at attention. My charred insides stung, but I would get over it. I had to. I would be a failure if I couldn’t. So I had to. My subconscious shuddered at these thoughts. And the grin returned. That FUCKING grin!

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“Come on Rade,” It taunted. “Where’s your bravado now, your happy go lucky grin? Piece of useless shit, next time you should be more ready, be more prepared, don’t let them down.” It took me by the shoulders, I could do nothing, I wasn’t strong enough. My hands clammy, sweat poured off me in droves.

“YOU PIECE OF SHIT, COULDN’T SAVE THEM THERE! WHY COULDN’T YOU!” I could only flinch as it yelled at me, tossing me around in my own head. My own realm.

“I did all I could…” I whimpered in soft protest, a single tear running down my cut and bruised cheek.

“Yeah, and all you could wasn’t enough, was it?” It whispered softly, the voice echoing as it floated away, dissipating into the darkness. I collapsed back to my knees. The syringe buried itself in my skin, the solution I had added to my custom suit, cooling my racing nerves, stopping the poison seeping into my body, as my psionic cells tried to kill themselves, and bring me down with them. As soon as I regained control over my body, the toxin stopped being released, as my cells remembered what they were doing was bad. I swept way the remainders of the attack, and slowly moved forward. By now the gel had done it’s work, and I could function as a soldier again.

I took off into the woods, looking for a fight. Hopefully not a fight lie that, but I couldn’t control what my enemy brought to the battlefield. As I stepped by the drones, there was a flash of white light. My retinas burned, just like the rest of my body, destroyed in the self-destruct mechanism.

I threw myself out of the virtual reality, and broke down on the floor, before dragging myself off the ground, heading to the Dragonfly, and getting taken back to my room, and put myself into the sleeping pod. I allowed myself to weep in blissful silence for a few hours before I had no more tears to cry with. Sabrina knew to shut the hell up when I came back like this. I stepped out again, checked the news, and found my team had won. My performance had shot me up the rankings, barely qualifying at rank 19,651. I head to the cafeteria, and got some grub. The cool water soothed the back of my throat, rehydrating me. This allowed more tears to spill out which I quickly dabbed away with my napkin. I slowly ate the cube of fruit in front of me, before I was notified I had made it. I would join the elite on the most advanced military planet in the soon-to-be formed Renewed Union.

The Renewed Union was an industrial and scientific empire, with a strong budget for the military. Everything was built to have maximum function, nothing out of place. It satisfied OCD with clean lines and sharp edges, perfect symmetry, and functional, yet beautiful building and constructs. I slowly bussed my plate, and someone must have sensed my depression, and offered to do my cleaning up job. I gave them a shay smile, remembering it was easier to smile than frown, and got on my way.

I wanted to leave this whole world behind, to stop the mental attacks, to be relieved of this mess of a world.

No matter how advanced technology got, no matter how many times genetic engineering breakthroughs were reached, you couldn’t delete misery. It was a fundamental part of the soul. I slowly reached up fighting the demons that told me I should just shoot myself and be done with it, and decided to actually sleep. And for the next 12 years, I did exactly that.

Slept.