It is a warm day in August (I think), the grassy rear end of the Métro station is bathed in the Paris sunshine as birds sing from the trees, a cool breeze rustles through their leaves, and the river is still save for the flowing wake of the wind. I spend a scant few seconds admiring the view, before a JDAM from up above penetrates the ground below and I am blasted two hundred feet into the air, only to land on some jagged rock thirty metres away from ground zero. The pain is immense. My body should have been broken and massively disfigured from the attack - it is not. Instead I lie here, grateful for what little calm I can get, even if the blinding, all-consuming pain is unrelenting in its assault before my inevitable death.

I should really be used to the pain by now, it's been at least three months spent in this hell, this...limbo where I can never know peace, nor quiet, only endless exertion and pain.

Perhaps I should explain.

Three months ago I was happily playing Battlefield 3 on my games console, enjoying the challenge of fighting an opposing twelve person team with my friends on the Playstation Network (I had a lot of free time - student, no job, no hobbies beyond gaming) and generally just having fun. While playing Operation Métro during a particularly rainy day toward the end of May, all twenty-four players in the match at the time experienced what we've started calling a transcendent glitch – a blinding bright blue light, a deafening rumble and rushing sound in my ears, a feeling of freedom, and then, nothing. For what must have been hours, there was no sound, no sight, no pain, no pleasure, no taste, you get the idea.

Suddenly, everything.

I was thrust into the heat of combat. Tracers from automatic weapons flitted back and forth between in two directions - toward and away from me - blinding me in the darkness of the tunnel I found myself in; explosions ripped through bodies beside me, as I heard screaming and felt shock waves ripple through me; a cacophony of sound and a lightning storm of bright images contrasted in the shadowy darkness of wherever the hell I was. I became briefly aware of something bright heading toward me at breakneck speed, and before I could conceive of what this ominous projectile could be, pain, and then the relative comfort of the void yet again...

After a few more spontaneous bouts of existence swiftly ended by shattering pain and death, I found myself popped into being behind what appeared to be a Recon class cowering behind a barricade of sandbags toward the rear. I asked him what he knew of this place, yet all I could wrangle out of him were vague sentence fragments (fuck you, Microsoft Word) that unambiguously presented our situation as hopeless. We could not retreat through the dead zone for the immediate death associated with being there for too long, nor could we advance through the horrific kill zone that was the tunnel.

I attempted to get my bearings again without the orchestra of death assaulting my ears and numbing my mind.

It was Operation Métro.

That damnable map. FUBAR is what this is.

There were soldiers all around me, far more than the twelve man sides we were used to on console. I took a quick headcount, and even allowing for my dismal skill in mathematics and tendency to get distracted, there had to be at least fifty people here, just at the American base! I didn't even take into account those allies fighting in the tunnel, let alone the enemy team.

The enemy team.

Were they our enemies? Did we have to kill them all to win? Can they die? If we win, do we get to leave?

I felt sick, I felt nauseous, I felt tired, and I felt confused. Those of us holed up at the base were in varying mental states: some trying desperately to off themselves, some laughing hopelessly, others were throwing up, or curled up in the foetal position bawling their eyes out and pissing themselves. What the hell was going on?

Despite confusion reigning supreme amongst this rag-tag soldiery, a select few had attained some form of composure, and were heading into the tunnel to beat back the ever encroaching onslaught of enemy soldiers on our base. I contemplated whether to help them, but settled on a course of action that addressed a longer term problem: rehabilitation. Though the scattered thoughts of the Recon were being vomited out through his mouth, I attempted to get through to him. I dragged him away from cover toward the river, and threw him in. He was not happy. After climbing out of the river, soaking wet and severely brassed off, the bastard Recon punched me in the face and verbally assaulted me with a veritable stream of expletives and an accent that was undeniably American.

Reeling from the shock and pain of such an unexpected attack, I considered retaliating but immediately restrained myself from doing so. I had attained my objective, and explained the overall situation to the Recon, whose rage quickly subsided and was replaced by an odd mix of emotions from fear to joy. We resolved to do the same for our comrades - most of whom reacted in a similar manner. Nonetheless, after a short period of time we had regained the composure of approximately two-thirds the motley contingent of keyboard warriors whom had been thrust into this...fucking place.

While the remaining individuals of "Bad Company" were being drenched and briefed, the rest of us had unanimously decided to get organised. Lacking any real knowledge of a command structure we divided into squads of five, with each squad having a squad-leader and a mix of various classes. The Recon I met had opted to become overall commander, and no one else bothered to challenge him on this. Only later did we find that he had no real knowledge of tactics or strategy, and was making it up as he went along. At least once, he attempted to pull off a pincer movement at Bravo, only for those involved to swiftly realise his idea of a "Pincer Movement" was our idea of a "Human Wave" all-out assault. Needless to say, the attempt ended as badly as everything else did.

So began a day long slog through an endless tsunami of blood, sweat and tears - smoke blocking our vision, blood spraying our skin and gear, trauma and pain warping our comparatively fragile minds into bruised and shattered remnants of our former selves. We existed to fight. There was no order to what we were doing, no command, Commander Recon alternated between blind attempts at control of the chaos, and hours spent crying in the corner, shielding his face with his hands. The others weren't much better - it got to the point where it was necessary to set up an asylum of sorts at our base for those poor souls who had their sanity stripped from them, and could no longer tolerate the endless blur of death and pain. I would blink into existence, run for a few minutes, and get slaughtered horribly when I found the crossfire. In the first day alone, I was stabbed, shot, exploded, fragged, concussed, penetrated, punched, kicked, bitten, beaten, set on fire, crushed, and had my shit viciously pushed in.

I wish I could say we got better at war, that our skill in battle improved, that our minds numbed to the horrors we faced. I cannot. For the past three months, this is all I have known. We haven't even been able to communicate with the Russians, as they shoot us on sight - no prisoners are ever taken, and diplomacy is not a word that can be associated with this mess.

So here I find myself, a three month veteran of hundreds of battles, resting broken on the crumbling remnants of our base once more - the enemy breaching our defences and claiming victory over our forces, unable to respond with anything more than a scream of heart-rending sorrow and stubborn defiance, yet even that is lost in the deafening roar of explosions resulting from a near-endless grenade spam. I resolve to spend the rest of this battle sitting on the river's edge, and day-dreaming of the day when I find the creature that sent us here...and what I will do to it when I find it. Such thoughts are all that can sustain my fragile and degrading mind nowadays.

I will escape this place.

I will find you.

I will kill you.