Without pain, one will never learn true pleasure.
It wasn't always like this, this existence. I have to call it that 'cause it's not anything like a real life. In fact, I don't remember ever having a real life, although I would have to have had one, right? How else would I know that things aren't exactly as they should be?
Regardless of my memories, I'm living the only life I've ever known, the only life I can handle right now anyway.
The scene seemed normal enough, a squad of Nod infantry lined up at attention on the parade grounds, an officer screaming his lecture on unit morale-something or other at the top of his lungs, the sun beating down on the barren earth, sharp and graceless.
It couldn't be normal at all, however or else there wouldn't be a lone form lying prone in the scrub half a klick off taking it all in through bi-pod mounted field glasses.
Under his watchful and informed gaze, the scene looked very different. The Nod infantry became Nod's newest highly trained weapon, the officer; Unkil Dragov, Nod's premeire advanced infantry instructor.
The lecture remained the same, as far as the field glasses' long-range microphone was concerned, but the man behind the mike knew better. Even if GDI's intelligence gathering
hadn't told him, many years of experience did tell him something fishy was going on here.
The intel was good for something at least, informing the spy that while the troops standing at attention did look like normal Nod infantry, their very extensive cybernetic surgeries had made them anything but. Up to now, the Global Defense Initiative had barely any hard evidence that this new breed of cyborg even existed, and no "eyes-on" data at all. Through the satelite link-up rigged to his 'glasses data recorder, the single spy was changing that fact, although he had no idea that it would make little difference in a moment or two.
High above the spy lying in the dirt, a Venom patrol craft slowed to a hover while the pilot radioed the nearby base.
In response, the spy's comlink crackled, the beginning of a warning. By that time, however, it was to late. In a blaze of red death, the Venom's laser capacitor put an end to that day's spying.