Cordite and rain stung the air. Muzzle flashes tore through the smoke, furious, fleeting—each a life snuffed out. Jace Mercer didn't flinch. He pressed his back against a shattered wall, lungs burning, ears whining from a mortar that had landed too close. His rifle was slick with blood—some his, most not. The barrel's heat seared through his gloves; a dull reminder of the chaos he'd long stopped feeling.
"Mercer, we're pulling back! Move!" Ramirez, his squad leader, shouted from across the street, dragging a wounded man toward cover.
Jace nodded, a sharp jolt of pain ripping through his side with the motion. Shrapnel. Something warm and wet soaked his plate carrier—rain, blood, didn't matter. His body was just a tool breaking down. He'd fix it later. Or not. "Covering fire!" he barked, voice steadier than the void inside. "Go!"
He rose, sighted down his rifle, and fired. Controlled bursts, three rounds, mechanical and cold. Shadows fell in the smoke—one, then two. Threats neutralized. Just numbers on a tally he'd never see. Years of training narrowed the world to front sight post and target. Human lives ended by his hand. Didn't matter. Why should it?
A round slammed into his chest, hot and personal. His armor caught it, but the impact cracked something deep. Ribs screamed as he stumbled back, sliding to a knee. Pain was just noise. Ignore it. "Mercer!" Ramirez's yell cut through the haze. Across the street, almost safe.
Then a shell screamed overhead, the air folding around its path. It hit their escape, erupting in a thunderclap of brick and dust. The world went gray. When sound trickled back, it was just a high whine and muffled death. Ramirez was down.
Jace forced himself upright, fire in his side a background hum. One step. Another. Rifle raised. "RAMIREZ! CAN YOU MOVE?" The words tore out, wet with something he couldn't name. Silence answered. Rounds stitched the wall above him. Dust choked his throat. Retreat. That's what training said. Pull back.
But what about them? What about his team? And there it was—the question gnawing since his first deployment, through every shattered street, every empty dawn. 'Why am I here? Why was I ever?' No answer. Just the weight of Mara in his hands, heavier than the blood seeping down his leg. His rifle. His only constant.
Two figures loomed from the smoke; enemy rifles aimed at the downed men. No hesitation. Mara spat death, bursts precise. They crumpled. Two more gone. Always more. He advanced, methodical, pain a dull roar beneath the symphony of destruction. Why here? Why now? Didn't matter. Never had. Maybe dying for something was enough. His team had families waiting. He didn't. Choice made.
Almost there. He reached Ramirez, grabbed the harness. "I got you, Sarge." Something punched through his back, below the shoulder blade. Force sent him staggering, nearly dropping Mara. But he held on. Had to. Tightened his grip on Ramirez and dragged.
"3-6, this is 3-2A! Two unresponsive casualties, requesting immediate backup and medevac between buildings twenty-six and twenty-seven, over!" His voice crackled through the radio, strained, fading—one last gasp into the void.
A few more feet. He shoved Ramirez and the other man toward the alley before collapsing against the wall. Gray crept inward at the edges of his vision, a slow, silent tide. Breath came ragged, wet. The warmth on his back turned cold. Mara lay beside him, caked in dust and blood. His squad had laughed at the name, but it fit—a tool like him, built to serve, used until empty. Tools without purpose. Yet, in the flickering dark, Mara felt… warm. A trick of his dying nerves, surely. Still, he clung to it.
His reflection in her dust-smeared ejection port stared back—streaked with dirt, blood, eyes not afraid, not brave, just… finished. For once, he'd done his job. Bought them time. But for what? Ramirez's laugh echoed, unbidden talking of his daughter's first steps. A life Jace never touched. 'Why not me? Why nothing? ' He let his head fall back. Gunfire melted into a distant hum, then a whisper, then nothing. Pain dulled to memory. His reflection faded, those empty eyes no longer his. Just a shell, spent at last. "Mara. Keep fighting… someone has to." A murmur, or a thought, lost in the void.
---
This was the quiet between.
And in that quiet, a voice pierced—not in his ears, but deeper, clawing through the haze. Neither male nor female, yet it echoed with something raw, something lost—Ramirez's shout, or a ghost of it. "You've wielded war, Jace Mercer, but never shaped your own fire. A tool, that bled for others. Will you remain so, or dare to strike at the anvil?" Images flickered—Ramirez's daughter, a faceless family at a table he'd never known, a fence built by hands unscarred by blood. "If I had another shot…" he rasped, fading, "…I'd make it mean something. For us."
"Then let your will be the forge. The universe demands no reason—merely the flame of choice."
And then, nothing...