In a far off forest in the middle of an alien world, the weather was wretched. It had been raining for almost three months straight. And it wasn't just a light sprinkle, no, it was a torrential downpour. The ground was being hammered down endlessly by raindrops. Somehow, the ground was covered by dense, slippery moss that had the ability to live through the never ending rain.
The forest was ancient; at least as old as the Earth. The trees that made up the forest were extremely tall. If someone could even see through the constant rainfall, that person would not even be able to see the lowest branches. It was a mystery how the rain even came through the unseen canopy, but it did.
There was no life other than the robust plants in the forest. No living thing could survive in such an intense environment, except for the alien moss. There were no bird calls, no ground rodents rustling on trails, not even the small buzzes of alien mosquitoes to annoy the hell out of a person. It was as if even nature itself had labeled this place as non-livable.
But the army disagreed with all the natural signs. In a war, nothing was more important than winning it. Except for the fact that it wasn't technically a real war. This war was just a simulation ran war program, just to test actual soldiers before they go into battle.
There were only two bases. Both were elevated to escape the flooding water. There were no windows that were visible on both bases. If there were any, they were covered in the same ground moss found everywhere. There was one door for each, both tightly shut to keep the water from flowing in. Impossibly thick, the doors and base walls were made to last through an atomic bombing.
Some vehicles were left outside, probably before the huge storm had started. One base had a tank that was now completely covered in green. If one could see through the rain, they could barely see the tank's outline. The other base was littered with demolished car parts that were also covered in green. Abandoned by their previous owners, the vehicles now belonged to the alien planet.
However, one vehicle had survived the storm. Though it wasn't outside in the harsh conditions. It was a badly beaten Mongoose, which rested inside one of the two bases. It was covered in scorch marks and bullet holes. The front glass was originally cracked, but the owner of the Mongoose had smashed the glass out to see through it. All in all, it looked like it had gone to hell and back, multiple times.
But the Mongoose didn't belong to these two bases. And neither did the soldier that was currently living in one of the two bases. It was a soldier, who faked their own death and was now AWOL. It had been several years since this soldier's feigned demise, so no one would have noticed her in the deserted bases.
The base that the soldier was squatting in had almost no power. She lived by the Mongoose's dim headlights. But she could see; she was known to see more than any other soldier in the war.
There was a radio on, but it contained mostly static and white noise. As the soldier's paranoia had grown, she modified the radio so it couldn't be traced to her coordinates. With a little bit of elbow grease, the two way radio became a one way. It probably wasn't a smart decision in the long run, but the soldier ignored that fact. Her actions had caused damage to the radio, and most information she got through the dumb thing was broken and made no sense.
But anything was better than the silence that picked apart the woman's already deteriorating sanity. Plus, through the broken radio, she was able to hear some of the names of fallen soldiers. Soldiers that were very much like her. Every day, Command would list the dead as if taunting her, like dangling a piece of meat over a starving dog. The list would never change, but each word was like a dagger to the soldier, causing internal pain that could not be treated. She listened to the radio in the Rec. Room of the base. She would lie down on the musty couch and would focus on each of the names listed, hurting inside and remembering.
"Ohio . . . Kansas . . . Carolina . . . Kentucky." The announcer would list every single day, "Idaho . . . New York . . . Delaware . . ."
It was never in any particular order. It was different every day. The suspense was horrible, but the soldier couldn't bear turn the crappy radio off.
"New Jersey . . . North Dakota . . . South Dakota . . . California . . . New Mexico . . ." It would continue, no emotion showing in the man's voice. "Maine . . . Wyoming . . . Vermont . . . Arkansas . . . Colorado . . . Oklahoma . . . Hawaii . . . Oregon . . . West Virginia,"
The names of her friends ran through her partially insane head. Each name would echo, but in their own voices. She could hear Delaware's half-stuffed mouthed muffle, New Mexico's immature tone, and even Ohio's never ending jokes. She could hear York's encouraging laugh, North's serious nature, and South's insulting remarks. It sickened her so much that sometimes she would just throw up.
Some of these soldier's were not just colleagues. They were her friends, her teachers, and some were even her own family, since she never really had one. They meant more to her than her own Father had.
"Alaska . . . Virginia . . . Rhode Island . . . Georgia . . . Illinois . . . Connecticut . . . Mississippi . . . Indiana: Imprisonment for insubordination . . ."
Of course, some of them were lucky. Some were able to escape, like herself, but were never able to cover up their trails well enough, fast enough, and smart enough. But only three others were still alive, all were captured at the collapse of the project.
"Pennsylvania . . . Michigan: Imprisonment for destruction of military property . . . Texas . . . Wisconsin . . . Tennessee . . . Alabama . . . Montana . . . Louisiana . . . Arizona . . . Iowa . . . Nebraska . . . Minnesota . . ."
It crawled along at snail's pace. It was pure torture. But the soldier continued to listen, just to see if one more name was added to the list.
"New Hampshire . . . Massachusetts . . . . Maryland: Imprisonment for the Murder of a Superior Officer . . . Missouri . . . Nevada . . . and Utah."
The soldier let out a deep breath. Nothing had change since she had inhabited this drenched climate, which was about four months ago. Her own name was called in that list, but she had survived. She imagined that some other Freelancers had survived, but she had a sort of a gift for disappearing, and the others didn't. She knew deep down that all listed soldiers had died or have been killed. Best not to get her hopes up, just for them to be shot down again. But one thing kept her alive and sane. The one name that she clung onto for stability, for hope even, had not been mentioned.
She sighed as the report seemed to end. The soldier headed for the kitchen and crazily hummed a tune she didn't know. Through the light of the Mongoose's headlights, she rummaged around the musty, old cabinets, searching for a can of beans. She found one and headed back into the Rec. Room. She sat down on the old couch and took off her helmet and the rest of her armor. She wasn't heading outside for a long time, so why would she continue to wear her sweaty old armor.
Once she was out of her armor, the soldier stretched out. It felt so good to her to let her skin breath. She also took in a deep breath as she picked up the can of beans again. She popped the lid open and dug her fingers into the beans. She was never a big bean fan, but when that's the only thing left in a frickin' deserted base, you didn't have much of a choice.
Once she was done with her beans, the soldier grabbed all of her armor and stored it in one of the base's deserted closets. It smelled terrible in there, but she thought her armor couldn't stink more than it already did. When she was sure her armor wouldn't fall out of the closet, she headed back for the old couch. The young soldier fell onto the couch, and a cloud of dust pillowed around her. The light of the Mongoose lit the dust up like disgusting snowflakes.
The radio buzzed with life again, and the soldier snapped to attention. Usually, it went dead for hours before reading the list again. She stopped chewing as the man's voice came through the static.
"One more name for the list I just read . . ." the man said.
"Please, no . . ." the soldier said allowed in a child like voice.
" . . . Washington: Killed in Action . . ."
The soldier dropped the remains of the can of beans on herself and held her head with her hands. If she could remember how to cry, she would have. But she lost that ability as her friends had been killed.
She had held onto Wash's name for the longest time, knowing that there was at least another Freelancer that had escaped, had survived. But now she was truthfully alone, and she had no AI to be alone with.
The soldier must have fallen asleep through her mourning, because she woke up at what she assumed to be the next day. She got up and checked the clock on her beaten up Mongoose. She sighed as she saw that it had only been four hours since the radio list.
The young soldier headed to the bathroom. She was thankful that for some reason the plumbing was still working. If it hadn't, she would have left this base manly due to the smell. Quickly, she turned on the sink's faucets. Water poured out of it, colder than anything the soldier had felt. The young soldier cupped her hands and allowed a small pool of water to rest there. She sighed as she let the cold water sit there until she felt her hands go numb from the cold. She then splashed the water on her dried sweaty face.
It felt so good to her, finally awake and alert again after her nap. She took a quick look in the gunk covered mirror. Her ugly reddish brown hair was a disaster, partly because she had always cut her own hair. And she was never good with scissors, so her hair was a mixture of badly cut short strands and the occasional long, natural strands. The soldier had bangs, but they were cut way too short to be nice looking.
Her eyes were a deep blue that clashed with her ugly hair color. They were the type of blue that pierced into a person's hearts and intimidates them. But usually too many people were laughing at her bad hair to be scared. The young soldier had dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn't slept in weeks. They've been there forever, and they showed no signs of disappearing any time soon. She also had some freckles, but they were turning paler as she spent more time in the base.
"Time to get back to work." The soldier muttered to herself.
The soldier headed to the unused dining table that she rigged to be her work bench. On it, were tools and technological parts that she rummaged around both of the bases. Her own life depended on this work, and she knew it. She had slaved the last four months away on this thing, and she wasn't going to give up. She knew she didn't have much longer, and that only made her work faster.
She sat down on a musty smelling chair and bent over on one of the several pieces of hardware she stole from her last raid on Command. The soldier still couldn't believe her luck at finding these things, but it had come at a great personal cost. And now she was trying to repay her debt.
She worked cautiously, as she was slowly losing control of her own body. Through the months, her brain had been shutting off unneeded functions to keep itself alive. What she lacked now was her ability to think clearly, and her ability to walk had been severely damaged. She now walked like a drunk and spent most of her time sitting. Her arms had been feeling heavier each day as she was beginning to lose strength. Most of the time, her head hung low because she didn't have the strength to hold it upright.
But the soldier continued to work away, and she even continued to hum, and sometimes, even sing. Even if she didn't know the words to the right song. If anyone could hear the soldier, they would have thought she was insane. But to her, this was fighting to keep her sanity.
"Someone's in the kitchen with Dina." The soldier would partially sing and partially mutter. "Someone's in the kitchen I know. Someone's in the kitchen with Dina, da da da da da da da. . ."
The soldier continued to sing through her work as a last ditch effort to keep her brain running. It was barely working, but her brain held on.
"Ouch!" She exclaimed as she shook her left hand frantically. She had burned herself when she was welding her project together. In fact, she hadn't noticed the pain for a long moment, and in that time, she had severely burnt herself. It was a stupid mistake, as she hadn't seen her own hand in the way. "I need to hurry. At this rate, I'll be a human vegetable by next week."
But she knew she was so close to finishing her small project. Maybe within the next hour, she would be done?
The thought of being done sped up her progress. Through the light of the Mongoose, she bent over the dining table and fixed her attention at the device, half functioning like a real human. Even with one mistake, the project would be ruined and she would have to start all over. Which was something she didn't have time for.
As the hour drew to an end, so did her project. A wide smile spread across the soldier's face. Well, it was a smile for her, but to anyone else, it would look like a creepy smirk. She didn't have enough facial strength for a real smile, and even if she did, she still wouldn't have known how to smile correctly.
In front of her, the mechanical life that she slaved away for four months began to give off its own light. It was a bright green light that she was very familiar with. This surprised the soldier, as she expected an orange light instead of the green one that was in front of her. But it was faint, as if it was clinging for life itself. Very much like her. Before it had to time to die on its own, the soldier shoved the device into her storage compartment in the back of her upper neck.
As both technology and flesh met, a burst of energy surged through the soldier. Her eyes opened wide with shock from the electrical currents running through her fatigued body. It surprised the soldier and she fell out of her chair and hit the ground, gasping for air. The surge of energy knocked the wind out of her, and she felt like she was truly dying. She focused all of her strength on controlling the foreign device's presence before it could take control of her.
It was a fight for her body, but only she knew it. Slowly, she battled against the presence, knowing that she couldn't give in after coming so far. The soldier's body shook as if she was going through a stroke or seizure of some kind. Against her own judgment, she let out an ear piercing scream that would have rendered others, even herself, deaf for at least a couple hours.
But as the seconds ticked by, feeling like hours, the soldier was claiming back her own body. Mentally, she shoved the device back into its share of her head. The device's aura stayed where it was shoved, as if knowing its place.
Together, the soldier and the device balanced each other out and began to automatically repair themselves. The soldier crawled across the floor towards the couch, gasping like a fish out of water. Through a lot of effort, she made it onto the couch and she lay on her back. The soldier knew exactly what to do and focused on controlling her breathing rate. If she didn't, she would have to go through that painful process all over again.
The devices' presence made itself noticeable again, but it wasn't as aggressive as before. It was now friendly and actually helping her rebuild her sanity.
"West Virginia?" The AI asked the soldier. It looked as confused as it could get and sounded dreadfully shocked.
"Hey . . . Delta." The soldier muttered with the last breath of strength before passing out.