He was still alive, could still feel his chest expand with each lungful of painfully, frigid air. New soldiers were coming into the encampment looking for safety. That’s when he met you. He’d asked you, your name. But like him, you only remembered a number. You were one of the few women in the ranks. He wondered if you had been important. The rank on your sleeves had been damaged but alluded to someone in the higher levels.

“Hey El,” you said, sitting beside him as he tried to convince his confused body to eat. “How ya doing?”

El… short for Eleven, the two of you went by nicknames for parts of your numbers. He called you Hun, your number 133.

“I’m… here, still,” he murmured, looking up through the softly mussed curls of his hair. “How are you?”

He knew so little about himself except the here and now. Except his reason for existing in the moment. His job was to survive so he could keep fighting for… what was he fighting for? He knew it was something important. His hand clenched tightly on the fork in his hand and the shoddy metal creaked under his grip.

“El, careful,” you whispered and before he knew it, your soft hands were smoothing over his calloused ones.

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

How did you still have such soft hands? They acted like a balm on his angry and baffled soul, letting him sigh out his agony and release the grip he had on the silverware.

“Ok, now?” you asked quietly, as if speaking too loudly would break the safety he’d found within himself.

“’Course,” he flashed you a lopsided grin, something far too cocky for what had just transpired.

Something that seemed to be shining both in purity and also in a dark arrogance of lies he wanted you to swallow without question.

“Why’d you come looking for me?” he asked, finally taking a bite of his food.

“There are new arrivals, and they are conscious, the bomb hasn’t affected their memory. So, the medics want us to talk to them,” you said.

“Right,” he mumbled, there was once a time when he knew more than he did now.

The medics assumed it had to do with PTSD or brain damage. But something niggled in the back of his mind, telling him he was forgetting something that would help explain this. He shook his head as he ate more.

“I’ll be there soon.”

You sat down beside him, “I’ll keep you company.”

-End Report