I wiped ash off the leaflet and read the message as more embers mixed with the gentle snowfall:

Retrograde Plan, Situation Bloody Arrow.

It detailed the Navy's air campaign scheduled for last night. It warned that the bombs would create a firestorm that now raged ahead. The leaflet also detailed orders, in lieu of any available long-range comms from orbit, to evacuate all troops from the city—a retrograde operation. I turned to Lalonde and showed him the leaflet. He smirked and pulled tighter on his ruck, freshly packed with looted provisions.

The night before flickered over my eyes at the mention of the firebombing, like answers to a complex math problem. While perched on one of the parapets, a patrol was caught in a firefight with a clone unit. Both squads were between running and shooting, fleeing a whirlwind—a tornado that had formed from one of the napalm bombs, launching burning debris of wood, paper, chunks of drywall, and even smoldering metal, lit by an unnatural glow simmering over the four-to-six-story rooftops. The few Marines we pulled over the Hesco barriers told us stories of their comrades burning alive. They told us the men would catch fire and howl something fierce, yelling and crying at the same time, begging, stinking of scorched rubber and cloth and meat and cordite, while gold flames coated their armor and immolated them; until their nerves burned away and their lungs charred from the inside, leaving dark, glowing silhouettes to roam around silently, like ghosts, reaching for their weapons, digging through their bags, quietly dying in the street.

"They dropped leaflets in the wrong district," Lalonde said, swearing as casually as he undid his canteen and rattled the loose ice in it like a spray can.

"We have to get out of here," I whispered, stepping carefully over the other leaflets. The layers of ash had protected them from the snowfall, keeping them dry. I stuffed the leaflet in the gap between my armor and the soft vest.

I heard rumbling down the street. It sounded like it was coming from the left. My heart pounded in my chest, demanding I get a move on. Our squad leader held his arm up and signaled us to find cover as a Saber hovertank rolled around, flanked by a squad of troopers in white-and-gold armor.

"Go, go!" the squad leader yelled as a laser blew up the ground by him, launching him into a tumble in the ashy street. He landed by the corner of an alley. I grabbed him, dragging him into the alley as Lalonde returned fire. I checked the squad leader's pulse before his wounds. He was dead already. I swore and mustered a prayer between my words, ripping his magazines out of his vest and stuffing them in my empty pouches. Then I took his canteen.

Lalonde retreated into the alley with me. We turned and crossed into another passageway. Two clones chased after us.

I turned to Lalonde as blaster bolts zipped by, and he nodded. We spun and knelt, dropping them with quick bursts. As they crumbled, we heard more footfalls. "Where's the others?" I asked between huffs.

Lalonde shook his head. "They're gone, Grim," he said. "We got to keep moving."

"Back to the line," I whispered.

"Yeah," Lalonde said. "If there even is one."

We made it through the alley and back to the main road, waving to the machine gunner up the street. I saw blue dots appear over their helmets on my heads-up display. I opened a channel.

"Delta," the machine gunner called on the channel, "that you?"

"You bet it's us," I said back, nearly tripping over the concrete. "We've got company behind us!"

I saw the gunner gesture to the left. "Swing wide. Give us a shot."

"Come on, Montag!" I yelled. We bolted left and jumped the Hesco wall. The machine gunner opened fire as we landed on the parapet, two Marines pulling us up and over.

We retreated behind the wall and into the intersection-turned-firebase. I waved over the parapet at the outpost leader. "Captain!" I yelled. "Incoming, east side!" I gestured to the right. "One tank and a platoon!"

I heard gunfire to my right. They'd just made contact. Marines clambered around, calling for rockets. Someone from the opposite side sprinted with a pair of tubes under his arm. I climbed down and grabbed the north side's spare launcher.

The fireteam on the east side was blown apart by the heavy lasers on the Saber tank. The shockwave knocked the Marine over. He looked up in the confusion and fog of sand and sleet. I waved him over with the launcher. He scrambled to his feet, missing blasts and stray blaster shots, until he crashed into me. I braced against him, keeping him from toppling both of us over.

"Set me up, brother," I said. He assembled the weapon over my shoulder and patted my left side. "Set! Clear backblast!"

The Saber tank turned toward me. Lalonde fired on clones that had just noticed us. I fired at the hovertank. It exploded in a loud crash close enough that shrapnel hit the Marine to my left. I dropped the launcher and grabbed him before he could fall over, walking him out of the line of fire.

"I'll cover you," Lalonde said on the squad comms. "Fix him up mean, Grim."

"On it," I said, sitting him down on the north parapet, switching my gloves for surgical gloves, and unfastening the Marine's vest.

"Hang on, buddy," I said. "You're going to be all right. They just nicked you good—but this part's going to suck." I injected him with morphine, sanitized the wound on his lower abdomen, and prepped blood-stopping powder and a biofoam canister. Blood flowed quickly out of an artery. Within seconds, I ripped open the blood stopper and dumped the powder over it, sealing it with biofoam. He winced from the pain as I checked him for more wounds and bandaged him.

The blaster fire and gunfire stopped. The Marine's breathing slowed as he calmed himself. "Am I all right, doc?" he asked.

I smiled and patted his shoulder. "You're all right," I said. For the moment, at least. He needed to limit his movement to reduce the risk of reopening the wound and bleeding out again, or suffering an infection. He knew this much already. But none of us had that kind of luxury. Without the hospitals and bases, if we could walk, run, and fight, we did.

The Marines cleaned up the bodies—as much as they could—and attempted to refortify. I found the firebase commander.

"Where's the rest of Fireteam D?" he asked.

"My whole squad's gone, sir," I said. "Corporal Lalonde and I are all that's left."

"OK," the captain said and made a gesture imitating knighting me with his left hand. "You're leader of Second Platoon now. We just lost Sawyer. I'll put you on the command channel now. You'll take orders directly from me. Don't stray too far—the jamming is thick here."

I nodded in lieu of a salute, which would have likely revealed his rank to a sniper.

"Sir," I said. I showed him the leaflet.

"Where'd you find this?" he asked.

"Morning patrol, right on the street next over to the east," I said. "These were dropped everywhere in the street. Just missed us. The firebombing started last night. We need to move."

I watched his eyes widen as I spoke, as he read the whole thing. "No kidding," he said. "But where do we go? I haven't been able to get anyone on the horn. Not even other companies."

Blasts erupted a mile down the street. Fires started, exploding outward and burning more buildings. The captain dropped the leaflet and watched for only a second.

"Evacuate now," he whispered.

His batman turned. "But, sir—"

The captain came outside. "Everyone! Evacuate south! We're leaving!"

We cleared the path southbound and left. Some of the Marines tried packing up their medium machine guns or rocket tubes. Their platoon leaders ordered them to leave heavy weapons behind. We grabbed what we could—what was ready to go without stopping for—and pulled our wounded, which was a third of the fighting force, using sniper rifles as crutches if need be. Lalonde took an M319 grenade launcher from what remained of a First Platoon grenadier—and the poor bastard's bandolier.

We found another outpost on the perimeter of the city—only to discover it had already been abandoned. As the city was being bombed, it also seemed that the clones had cleared out. Where we had ceded ground to General Kenobi's forces, they were now giving up—at least, temporarily. It was our opportunity to leave in the chaos.

The last time I looked back at the city, black smoke had swirled into a storm system in itself from a conflagration glowing in the jagged shape of a broken skyline. A pyrocumulonimbus blossomed into the edges of the troposphere, as though gripping the sky and pulling it down to die with us.

So I stopped looking back.

"Keep moving," the captain said. "There's no telling when or where the bombing will start again. We don't stop until we're out of the city."

"What's the plan after we're clear?" one of the squad leaders asked on the command channel.

"We're a few klicks from Fort Ridgway," he said. "We can go around the town and through the mountains—see if we can link up with friendlies there."

"We won't be the only ones," the squad leader said. I assumed he meant we wouldn't be the only Marines attempting to regroup at Ridgway.

"No," the captain said. "We won't."

Leaving the city was easier than navigating the frozen hinterlands. The enemy had retreated during the bombings. Why not? As it would be uninhabitable, no one could claim any district—they would simply be incinerated. When the firestorm burned out, they could retake their positions—what little remained of the rubble—with ease.

I joined the Navy because of my sister.

I tumbled out of bed when I heard her screaming in the other room. It was a scream from another world—a shriek of terror so devastating that my ten-year-old heart pounded in its chest as if to resonate with the vibrations. She was in her bedroom, Auntie and Uncle already there, holding her tight. Sobs and babbles rushed from her—but nothing was wrong. There was nothing I could see wrong. No wounds, no lacerations, no blood, no crashed items on the floor.

She was older than me. Her friends would say she was too old to be crying in the middle of the night.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

Auntie shushed her, holding her tight, tears flowing. Uncle got up and carefully walked me out of the room until all I could hear was the low hum of the AC and the cicadas outside.

"I don't understand," I said.

"We'll explain it to you later," he said. "When you're old enough."

As I got older, the explanations never really came. Instead, she would lash out at me. At school, she ignored me and fed gossip about me. She toiled to distance herself from me and cast judgments like a wide net around the middle school campus so I couldn't escape. I made fewer friends each year until she graduated. She would tell people I did all those things: that I cried too much, that I spaced out too much, that I hyperventilated, that I was weak. I asked to attend a different high school, and Auntie and Uncle reluctantly agreed.

One day she hit me. I hit back. We yelled and fought.

Babushka came rushing in from the garden, separating us and berating me. No hitting, she said in dialect. No fighting. She was talking to me. She yelled at both of us, but her eyes intensely looked over me, while she held with a gingerly sort of firmness onto Layla.

It was in my sophomore year I came home to silence. I thought it was nice. But I looked over and Layla was there, sitting at the table, staring at her meal blankly.

"Nothing to say?" I asked.

Silence again. I paced closer to her, but kept my distance—she might hit or throw something at me, or take notice again. But she didn't. She just stared at cold beef, dried-up potatoes, and dented peas, her fork still in hand. I saw something in her icy blue eyes I'd never noticed before: hollowness. I couldn't explain it or describe it properly at the time, but it was like she had been visited by demons, and they had rearranged all the things in her house, and suddenly left without a trace. Like she had witnessed something she couldn't prove or justify.

And because of this, I felt like I could let my guard down. I breathed for the first time in a long time. I relaxed. I climbed the stairs to my room, dropped my bag, and had the best nap of my life.

The next day was business as usual. The next day, Layla said, "Our parents would never be proud of you."

After that, I ran away from home and stayed with a friend for a night; Auntie came and talked to his parents and consoled me. She said Layla tried to drown herself in the bathtub that day. She held herself underwater for one minute, struggling, pushing, pressing against the walls—disciplined in ways I still wasn't—until she failed, and came back up, and vomited bath water, and cried so much that she passed out on the drying mat.

Maybe she hated me so much she couldn't stand to live with me. The feeling was mutual. Maybe she felt guilt for what she did to me—so much that she couldn't stand to continue. But I didn't agree that she was right to take her life. I didn't want to see her get off so easy. I wanted her to tell me she did wrong, to tell me just once that she loved me.

I thought so much that it was about me.

Auntie told me Layla was moving out soon. She had gotten into Damask College and would study behavioral psychology.

So I came home and tried to survive the year.

She's so smart, I heard one of her friends say visiting. We should all be so smart. I buried my head in my pillow and stifled a scream, and I decided then I would never go to college.

As I overheard Layla prescribe with Auntie and Uncle that year, I failed two of my classes. I graduated with a C average and a subpar GPA.

I enlisted the same week as my 18th birthday. I was ready to leave for the frigid mountain training on Reach.

A year later, she pretended to hug me, letting her arms flop around my body as though my skin was toxic at the Navy ceremony. She pretended to be proud that I was selected for the elite Hospital Corps and that I was finally making something of myself. She preferred to touch my dress blues than the part of my body that was me. I did nothing, hiding behind the excuse that I wasn't supposed to show personal affection while in uniform.

I smoked outside the reception hall, and she followed me. She told me, Good luck. Make them proud.

I would forget the bugles and graduation parades sooner than that; I would forget the cheers and speeches about our generation of warriors off to the new war; I would even forget reciting the Creed. But I would not forget the anger I felt when she said that to me, which swallowed me up and wore my skin like a cloak until I squeezed the cigarette around the end and burned it out on my finger, leaving it tender, gentle pinpricks sticking in me for weeks. I would not forget how the pain was the only thing in the universe that could relax me.

I would remember burying that pain—thinking I would have all the time in the world to get my revenge when I returned from the war—and smiling to her fakely, saying, "You too," wishing her nothing of the sort.

Fresh snow and fresher ash crunched under our boots as my platoon crossed into the hinterlands. We moved quietly, a quarter of a kilometer at a time, before stopping and listening. We were silent—any sound could give us away to our hunters, who could be klicks or meters away.

The captain kept on the short-range command channel, checking with us every fifteen minutes. He gave us updates on which direction to move as the global positioning systems were out.

They were just out of sight—but I could see some of his men occasionally past my platoon's line. They were visible only for seconds at a time, as if one could whisper with their body, black-and-white urban camouflage whipping through evergreen-adjacents, some breed of pine, and dead eucalypts.

Despite the shelling and bombings, it was quiet here. Quieter than quiet—the sound and stress of crushing violence, tremors of death and pressure and poison, had suppressed the wildlife as well. Until the battle rolled over or saw a reprieve, the predators would hide, unknowing what dangers awaited or or didn't. The prey practically vanished.

"Hang left here," the captain said. "Straight, thirty meters," at the next checkpoint.

"Ten degrees left," was his last transmission. Then his platoon went completely silent.

I stopped my squad five minutes after he failed to check in. We waited, listening again. The snow was gentle here. The ash landed on my glove as I shouldered my rifle. Cold air flowed through me, chilling me, almost soothing me. This was where I was most afraid, the seconds before adrenaline pumped through me, cautious and fearing the worst. Afterward, when the adrenaline wore off, I would be afraid again, too. During combat, though, those apprehensions were warded off by a laser-sharp focus. I was either going to win, or I was going to die.

I spent too much time thinking about dying for my own good.

My comrades sometimes told me, "Assume you're already dead;" but that never worked. I was a corpsman. I was here to protect the lives of my men equally as I was to die for Earth. If I dropped, the wounded became the dead.

This feeling was killing me more than the violence—the violence was always easy.

Blaster bolts zipped by us from the left, where the captain's platoon should have been. We couldn't hear where the shots were coming from. We turned weapons and fired blindly into the sticks and trees.

"Incoming!" Lalonde belted.

The blasts came so close to me that I felt first-degree burns, despite being "clean" misses.

I swore, diving into the dead brush. "Can't see anything," I whispered.

"Too bad their armor camouflages them in the snow," Lalonde said.

"Too bad," I grumbled.

I leaned up on one of the trees, thick and large like redwood as it was, and barely peeked. I pressed my left cheek and watched with my right eye, exposing very little of my profile. Movement rustled through the trees in short, man-covering-man formations. I referenced the compass bearings on my HUD.

"Check bearing 245," I said. "Fifty meters. Closing."

I shouldered my weapon, still using the tree as cover and concealment, and lined up a shot with one of the bushes. A bolt struck my weapon immediately, knocking it out of my hand. It landed on my sling and clacked against my rig, the muzzle smoldering red and deformed.

I unclipped my sling before the thing could burn through my uniform, burying it in the snow. "Jeez," I whispered. Vapors of steam and sublimated ice rose from the powders around my boots.

Squad status lights began to blink red on my HUD—vitals not losing signal but flatlining. I primed a smoke grenade and tossed it a few meters in front of me.

"Wake up, boys," I said. "Fall back to the right. They're overtaking us. Start throwing smokes left. They've got eyes on—"

I heard footsteps and crunching snow to my left, creeping toward me. I turned, grabbing my rifle and wielding it like a stick. When the footsteps were close enough to me, I swung hard around the tree. It struck something metallic and flew out of my hands. A clone, almost a foot taller than me, blaster at the ready, had thwacked it away effortlessly.

I slapped the blaster a few inches to the side. It went off, firing into the trees. I punched hard into the helmet. My glove struck with satisfying power—and yet, only barely tilted his head and cracked the carbon fiber knuckle plate. The helmet was thicker than that of any other clone I had seen. Its visor, a bright blue, T-shaped screen, dimmed slightly at the impact.

I hit him again with my elbow, trying to discombobulate him, and failing—only hurting my whole arm. I wrestled with him for his blaster. It was huge. Twice the height and weight of the blaster carbine, but the same overall length. He grabbed me with his left hand, lifting me by the neck effortlessly off the permafrost. I struggled to breathe. With one hand I grabbed his hand, toiling at his large fingers. With the other, I drew my Sidekick and emptied the magazine into his chest.

This… thing, with thick full-body armor plating, a dark monster in white armor and blue color accents, didn't even flinch. It raised its enormous blaster at me before several rifle rounds struck him from the side, stunning him until the repeated hits penetrated his armor and produced blood. I was dropped. He collapsed in the snow next to me. The blood soaked into it, rich, bright, thick, and sticky, like strawberry syrup in shaved ice.

My head throbbed and the dark circles around my vision disappeared. A thick, black glove beckoned above me. I grabbed Lalonde's hand and found myself on my feet as blood rushed back to my head, and the rest of my body burned with pins and needles, and I could smell the cordite and sterile death again.

Lalonde unpacked his grenade launcher and loaded a smoke shell into it, firing into the trees. A plume of white smoke, mixing with mists of snow and sleet that showered down from the tree branches, exploded outward. The multi-launch shell deployed in several more places, quickly producing a blanket of concealment.

"Come on!" Lalonde yelled quietly, distantly—like he was at the end of a tunnel. He handed me the clone's blaster. We sprinted into the crossfire as my hearing returned. Bullet cracks in the air and bolts whistled by inches over our heads. I couldn't hear my own yelling, but my throat and lungs felt it.

Then Lalonde fell. A thermal detonator exploded near enough that the shockwave launched us into the air. The pressure wave, as it hit me, felt like a hard slap on every surface of my body, forcibly knocking my breath out of my lungs. We landed next to a Marine, whose eyes gazed emptily at me, fixed on something far away—far, far away. I realized a second later, as my ears popped, that he was long dead. I wheezed and hyperventilated, my body catching up for the lapse in breathing.

I heard another Marine yell, "Frag out, frag out, frag—" and as he threw it, he was hit directly, and he dropped. The grenade didn't fly far enough and landed next to us.

Lalonde, barely recovered to a kneel, threw the grenade as hard as he could—and it exploded just meters away in the air.

There was hardly a shockwave, and the fireball was like a firecracker.

Shrapnel kicked up permafrost around us, peppering the ground. I was unscathed.

Lalonde's leg was hit. It tore through his calf.

I stood, slowly, feeling my body protest. I wasn't sure where we were anymore. My roster listed all my men in my platoon as dead, except Lalonde. And the enemy came from the direction of the captain—his unit was gone, too.

I moved quickly. I wrapped and knotted my sling around the blaster tightly enough to hold it without proper mounts, and I grabbed Lalonde. I rifled through my medkit, unhooked my biofoam container, and filled the wound in his leg. While the foam hardened I gave him morphine. It would set in soon, at least keep its effect after the adrenaline wore off.

"What are you doing?" Lalonde asked. He wasn't perplexed that I was helping him—he was disoriented. "What's… what's happening?"

"We're leaving," I said, as more fire and death screamed over us. I hoisted him over my shoulder and ran deeper into the woods, each step burning my legs, each step not turning back.

"Grim, wait," Lalonde said.

"No time for that," I answered, continuing. It looked like there might have been a hill to crest a few meters away. A hill meant cover. It meant concealment, too. We could slide down and slip away, somehow. The best thing to do now was to avoid the enemy.

We would either escape or die.

Freezing air burned my lungs. Three hundred extra pounds of man and kit burned my muscles. Grazing shots burned my skin. Desperation burned my mind. One more step, I thought. Each time. One more step. We're almost there.

"Oh, gods," Lalonde whispered. "My leg!"

"We'll get you a new one," I said. "Better than ever."

He seethed, chuckling. "I'm not going to die, am I?"

"Not on my watch, buddy," I said. "You're going home." I made it my mission. Each step was for him—it was easier than for me.

I reached the crest of the hill. It was a cliff. Fifty meters—a hundred and fifty feet—a sheer drop with jet-black rock and snow at the bottom. Who knew how deep the snow was, and how much ice or permafrost awaited at the bottom? Who knew what kinds of dangers and hells awaited?

But I knew what awaited if I stopped to think this over.

"Grim," Lalonde whispered, catching on. "Grim, what are you—" he yelled as I threw him over, prayed, and jumped after him.

My sister picks me up from the airport. We sit in silence for minutes on the freeway. New-car scent hits me like a cool breeze, although it's the harvest season anyway—the weather is pleasantly chilly. Unusually soothing is the return to home life from an eternity of not living.

"How was your flight?" she asks softly.

"Fine," I whisper, empty of all emotion. Her voice is tense, but I slip in and out of it. I think back, always trapped in the past.

In the window's reflection, I see a broken boy—the same boy that left this way, returned no better, no stronger, no more a self-made man. The only thing missing is hope.

In her, I see a beautiful adult woman, a stranger to the girl I left here with false thanks.

What she sees in me, I do not yet know—she looks at me and I see thought, fear, concern. I see tension. Perhaps she has not forgiven me. Perhaps she knows I have not forgiven her.

"You excited to see Grandma?" she asks. "I know you two were close." I do not notice her welcoming demeanor—only that she has dropped the use of Babushka. We still speak our mother tongue occasionally. We still feel connected. Yet one more link to our youth is gone; perhaps that is a good thing.

"I think so," I say, I lie, I wish.

We two broken children, grown up into broken adults, see the world differently.

The heartland of Jericho VII rolls by—cattle fences, rusty old mills, factories, grass and grain. The sky is a deep blue that I haven't seen in so long, I never knew I missed. It's quiet here. It's quiet here.

I nap in the passenger seat. I fear what comes afterward; I fear what happens when my sister becomes used to me, and things return to normal.

When I wake up again, she tells me a story about defending her master's thesis. It is charming; it is the first time I am charmed by her. She tells me everything is different now. She has explored herself, worked on herself. She has healed.

I taste gloating in her tone. A deep anger revives in me—jealousy. I choose to call it jealousy. But I look in her eyes and I think something is wrong. When she looks at me, she reciprocates: the emptiness I saw once comes back. The haunting spills into our laps, soaks our pants, and we pick up the pieces quietly on the F4 route.

"Let's stop by my place first," she says, as the first signs for Damask swing over us. "I've got a bottle of Alt Burgundy I've been saving for this."

I turn to her. "What kind?"

"High-house, 22," she says. "I like it fine, but I know it's your favorite."

I woke to darkness. My arms and legs were silent of pain other than hot soreness. I flexed my fingers and toes. Warmth came back. Wherever they were, assuming the adrenaline had fully worn off, and perhaps the night had taken over, they were intact—not bleeding massively, not transfigured or bruised, sprained, or massively damaged. That would change soon, if I didn't do anything. I was in the snow—under the snow. My orientation was not clear. I tried moving up.

I struggled to move. It was like a mountain had buried me alive—but I could breathe, so there was that. I tried to focus my eyes forward, through the air gap, and see if there was something at the end. Hardly any light bled through from what would be the end.

"Lalonde," I whispered into my comms. I couldn't reach my push-to-talk, so I used optical commands on my HUD to change it to voice activation—an option that isn't standardly used for obvious reasons. "You hear me?"

"You're alive," Lalonde said with a modicum of shock coloring his tone. "Gods alive, it's good to hear your voice."

"Where am I?"

"Just ten feet away from me and twenty feet down. I guess the snow saved you, but you landed in a crevasse or something. I couldn't reach you, but my climbing gear might."

"Send it," I said. A few seconds later, a rope curled down to me from above, landing on my chest. I struggled carefully, pulling my arms up—through the gaps they left in a cartoonish, man-shaped imprint in the snow, until I found the rope and pulled. I used the mounds of packed snow as leverage, making a wider space for myself until I was upright, and then I climbed out.

"It's secure, right?" I asked, as I was halfway up.

"Wedged in the ice," Lalonde said. "You coming?"

"Almost there now."

"Good," Lalonde said. "Listen, Ilya. I got to be honest with you. I can't hold out like this. I'm not walking—I'll slow us down, and then we'll both be dead."

"Can it," I said. "It's never good when you're honest with me."

I heard him laugh over the comms for the last time.

"I hit ice," he said. "Just a foot or two over, it was hard ice. My ankles are broken. My legs are messed up bad. I'm paralyzed. It's one of us, or both of us.

"If you want the truth," he whispered faintly as I picked up the pace, "I don't want to go home with what I've seen here."

"Montag," I whispered. "I'll carry you all the way to Ridgway. I'll—"

"This isn't on you, Ilya."

I reached the top, struggling harder than ever before—even when I was fighting for my own life, wrestling away the fingers around my neck, running in the trees and death, jumping—until I heard a gunshot. The report startled me. I lost my grip and fell, grabbing the rope again and nearly burning my gloves, catching myself six feet down. I dug my boots into the side of the snow until I could pull myself up again.

Agonizing in the silence, I reached the top and found him in a ray of dying sunlight, his eyes hollow, his helmet shattered on the snow beside him, slumped against a dead tree, blood trailing from his final resting place, his gear, and the place where he landed. His legs were twisted and his uniform was stained in blood. If he hadn't shot himself, he might have bled out very soon.

He had that same empty look—not something that comes with death—no, the experience of death. I had seen a lot of men and women die, trapped in their worst fears. This was not that. This was emptiness, not peace nor despair. Lalonde had dissociated from those and left behind only a shell. Then he killed himself.

I stood over him, then knelt down again, and wrapped my arms around his shell. I pulled his helmet off and cradled what remained of his head. I kissed his forehead and took his dog tags, holding them in his hand joined with mine, praying, screaming silently at the Lord, begging for deliverance: a deliverance that would come far too quiet, far too late.

I picked up his grenade launcher and bandolier.

I buried him in a stretch of ice and permafrost under the mess of dead tree canopies, pitching his helmet on the butt of his MA5B. Then I got moving again. I hoped to make at least a kilometer before sundown. Then I could hunker down, bivouac with the little gear I had left, and try to find Fort Ridgway early in the morning.

My march was slow without anyone to live for. Almost lazy. I knew the danger of slowing down while being hunted by those clones. But I stopped caring. There might not even be a fort waiting for us.

Half a kilometer through, I caved to my hunger pangs and found a suitable place to sit, switch up my layers, and eat. I suffered an intense hunger with no will to satiate it. And the very thought of doing so, with Lalonde still on my mind, made me sick. Taking care of myself in the slightest in the wake of his death was the last thing worth doing, at least to me. But the pain didn't subside. I needed what I needed, not what I wanted.

I took five minutes to undo all of my gear—the plate rig, aramid webbing, and utility belts and webbing—to change and reassemble it all. With the temperature plummeting to -30°F, I expected I would still be mobile—and sweating. The colder the weather, the more one sweats, the higher the risk of suffering hypothermia when he stops. I dug through my ruck for a few sweat-wicking garments to replace with a thicker layer I'd chosen for short-range patrols within Myga City limits. I would feel a little colder; but so long as I stayed mobile, I would keep just warm enough. I could also sprint to evade the enemy if need be.

At every stage, of course, I kept my weapon within arm's reach.

I dug out an arctic MRE, heated it with the flameless ration heater, and leaned up against a couple of trees that hid me quite well. I realized as I was sitting here, and a wave of exhaustion came over me, that I hadn't eaten—or slept—in a few days. The attacks since the fall of Myga Bridge were so frequent, there were no opportunities. I could have taken a nap and died of hypothermia right here if I even closed my eyes. I instead kept my blaster close and wrapped my hands around the heater as it warmed up my food.

Two spoonfuls into my rehydrated bacon and eggs, I heard something vicious. Rustling around me, so slight it was more like a twitch. I dropped my food and drew my blaster toward it. Nothing.

I stood and rounded the tree, paranoid, and—to my surprise—found a clone staring me down. He was tall, like the others, with thick black-and-white camouflaged armor. But he was holding a suppressed XBR55 with some extra attachments—a laser sight, an IR illuminator, a 900-lumen weapon light, and a spare magazine duct-taped to the body.

"Hold your fire," the clone whispered.

I raised my weapon, firing while adjusting my aim. Two bolts missed him before a heavy hand grabbed my plate carrier from behind and thrust me onto my back.

Another one climbed on top of me, wrestling the blaster out of my hand, it firing until it was finally free of my grip. He chucked it into the trees and held my arms down. I kicked viciously, like a wild animal. My shin slammed into his armor. It was harder than the previous clones'. It was titanium. The same titanium you would find on the bulkhead of a UNSC warship. It hurt. Really hurt. I yelled and he covered my mouth.

"Quiet, Marine," he whispered. "You'll give away our position."

He pulled his hand off my mouth.

"Bastards," I hissed. "Just get it over with!"

He removed his helmet. It hissed gently before sliding off. I froze, staring up in disbelief. He had dark, military-cut hair and dark brown eyes, but the man lacked the facial structure and age of a Fett clone. GAR clones, we uncovered after battles by clearing bodies and scavenging supplies and gear, were very much identical, despite their many ways of expressing themselves. But they were all essentially accelerated to the same age, at least ten years older than us.

Three others stood behind him, looking down at me. He turned to them. "He thinks we're clones. Take your helmets off."

Two removed their helmets. The furthest one stood watch.

"It's all right," the man pinning me down said.

"I'm Fred. Petty Officer First Class." He helped me to my feet.

"Petty Officer Third Class Grim," I said, looking him over.

He looked younger than me. The others, too—two girls, who did not look very feminine with their helmets on. In fact, they looked almost identical owing to the bulk and lack of permutation between their powered armor.

"What? How old are you?" I asked.

"That's classified," Fred said.

"What unit are you in?"

"That's classified," Fred said.

"You don't even—"

"Classified," Fred said.

I opened my mouth to speak again, but I couldn't convince myself that it would yield results.

"We aren't supposed to be here," Fred said. "But we are, and the situation has deteriorated."

"No kidding," I whispered. "How long have you been on this rock?"

Fred looked at me directly, raising an eyebrow.

"We haven't heard anything from Keats in a week," I said. "We're completely cut off."

"Keats was removed from his post," Fred said. "Hood was promoted to Vice Admiral and given the position of deputy field marshal."

"I thought he was a captain," I said. "The Everest?" I later learned that Hood was, at this time, the youngest admiral in the fleet, and the fastest climbing one at that—on account of his tactical victories and "connective" personality among his superiors, junior officers, and missions.

"The Mygeeto fleet is at about thirty-percent strength. It was reconfigured into Battle Group India, with the Everest as its flagship."

"Thirty percent? How are they still holding?" I asked.

"I hear it has a lot to do with Hood and Cutter," Fred said.

I told Fred my story, updating them on the situation in Myga—or lack thereof, now.

The one in the back, still wearing his helmet, called him over.

"Losing time," he said.

"Understood, Chief," Fred said. He turned back. "Boss says we've got to get moving again. Let's sync our comms." He patched into my augmented reality IFF using the UNSC command channel and a few overrides I couldn't replicate, and friendly blue dots appeared over their thick, sealed, powered armor.

"Where are you headed?" I asked. I noticed a foreign object—not UNSC, at least, although it took the appearance of an old-world floppy disk, but hardened and labeled with Aurebesh markings and stamps—clipped to the squad leader's belt.

The master chief petty officer, an operator that connected to my comms only as his callsign "Sierra 117," turned his gold visor slightly toward me.

"Is that classified, too?" I asked.

"No," the non-commissioned officer said.

"OK," I said.

Fred turned to the chief as they slipped their helmets back on. "Our first priority is helping this guy. Marines are scattered. They're our men. We need to help them. They're our best bet for getting this intel off-world."

117 nodded. "Agreed."

While in transit aboard the Spirit of Fire, Lalonde told me why he enlisted. It was very simple. Many of us had complex reasons for joining up. I joined because in my mind, I had nowhere else to go. I had nothing to fight for; I came looking for a cause, running from my hell.

"Why not the Canadian military?" I asked. Being from Quebec—from Earth—the last place one would expect him to serve would be the military arm of the CAA.

"I would have become an officer," he said. "Just like my father."

"You two aren't close?"

"On the contrary," he said. "I always wanted to join up and serve right alongside him. I still might. But he wants me to become my own man first." Then he looked out the porthole, a starless night of spaces between space.

"And, honestly, I could want to see the stars," he said.

I turned to him. "Well, where are they?" I asked.

He laughed and punched my shoulder. "Shut up," he said.

I just smiled and watched the featureless night, an emptiness that was a marvel in itself. It was depth without depth. The bend of distant stars, curled around a thin veneer that wrapped space into a crumpled slice of paper, folded like steel. We were a germ floating through the pinprick.

"What about you?" he asked, like a free spirit that wanted to share it.

My reason sounded, comparatively, pathetic. I looked at him and felt shackles around my hands, dragging them to my sides. I felt a cold weight, like icy water filling my boots, and a stifling darkness take hold. And then I shunted it.

"To help people," I said. "That's why I joined the Hospital Corps."

He nodded. He seemed to pick up immediately that I was lying, but he couldn't divine any purpose as to why. "Well, Marine," he said, "you're probably going to be helping a whole lot of us if we get into combat."

That's how I remember Montag Lalonde: kind and uplifting. Maybe he saw I was hiding something and said nothing. Maybe I misrepresent him. But I suspected he knew, and he yearned to help somehow, but he knew I wasn't open to it.

He was open to me. He trusted me enough to tell me how he felt. From time to time, he would tell me how much he missed his father—even though they called every other weekend, busy as they both were. He spoke of the work that was to come as something like retirement. Something he looked forward to, every day, and often wondered what he was doing in the here and now. He was "allowing" himself to branch out and explore, become a more worldly man, even though he probably didn't want to, because everyone like us does these things. Because it wouldn't be normal to stay with his father all his life, living in his shadow.

What did he sacrifice for me, for a chance for me to survive? His life—his future living with and loving his father? Or his father's, a future without burying his son?

I wonder, still, what he saw in me that was worthy of it.

"How did you mistake us for clones?" Kelly asked over the short-range comms. Beyond her sealed helmet, no one could hear her. I had to whisper back as we moved slowly and quietly through the trees and snow.

"You don't look like normal clones, I know," I said, my voice almost under my breath. "But the ones that ambushed our squad are different. Never seen them before—never been briefed on them before. They weren't ARC troopers. They cut through First Platoon without even revealing themselves.

"I got a good look at one of them. One. I think he was the only one we managed to kill."

"Let me guess," Kelly said. "Thick, heavy armor. T-shaped LED visor?"

I nodded.

Sierra 117, who had taken point, was eavesdropping—perhaps the whole fireteam was. But he kept silent. His stoic demeanor struck me as aloof.

"That means our unwanted guests have followed us," Fred said. "They're commandos."

"They're a Goddamn force of nature," I snapped.

117 stopped, the other three following in almost robotic synchronicity. He held up a fist, knelt, and waited. I halted last, tightening my grip on my blaster.

Total silence. Darkness took hold, feeling a little too dark. I pulled down my NODs and switched them on. The woods erupted in blue and gray from the white phosphor lens. Silhouette outlines drawn from the sensors detecting temperature differences—such as body heat and engines—illuminated myself, faint starlight glows over the canopy, and nothing else. My new teammates did not light up on the sensors, although I still had no trouble seeing them. They must have had gear that suppressed their thermal signature.

Right side, the master chief signed. Then he gave other signals I couldn't keep up with. Each unit develops their own hand signals.

I turned blaster to the right. My heart pounded for a few seconds, throbbing, and I felt my neck grow tighter. The air tasted colder.

The chief opened fire into the woods. I ducked instinctively. My blood felt lighter and adrenaline surged through my body, momentarily soothing my fears.

Blaster bolts chopped through the trees and grazed us. I saw movement through some of the trees—silhouettes of motion, undetectable by the outlines. I squeezed the trigger and repeatedly fired shots down range toward him.

"Don't stay still!" Fred called.

I rose and shuffled left, firing suppressive single shots into the woods.

Blaster bolts hit the trees near me, blowing chunks of bark out, atomized bits of burnt wood sucking into my lungs, as I moved and coughed. I pulled my blaster close in a panic and ducked into a small ditch. I took sharp, shallow breaths. The armored sailors jumped over the ditch and, as the clones had come in close, started firing more rapidly until Fred was in close combat with a commando.

I raised my blaster, trying to get a shot on him. I feared the worst—I feared that the commando would overpower my new allies and execute them. I feared Lalonde's fate. Then I would be next.

Then Fred grabbed the commando's arm mid-punch, twisting it, and crushing the armor between his fingers. The commando screamed. Fred doubled back and quickly drew his M6/SOCOM, emptying half of its magazine into the commando until I saw blood spray out and the clone collapsed into the ditch next to me.

The clone, in his death throes, armed a thermal detonator. When he passed—or at least passed out—it rolled out of his hand between us.

"Grenade!" I yelled. I lunged onto it, to sacrifice myself and shield Fred from it, but Fred pushed me aside mid-lunge, causing me to land on the ice behind him. He took my place. The detonator was now underneath him and the commando's body, completely shielding me.

"Fred!" I shouted.

117 and Kelly turned to us momentarily, their body language portraying surprise.

The detonator exploded under Fred, launching him a few inches off the ground. When he landed, he stood up again, unharmed. A black scorch mark blossomed around his armor, and some segments had been dented—but neither shrapnel nor concussive force had punctured or deformed it enough to incapacitate him. It was miraculous.

I watched him in disbelief. "You good?" was all I could ask.

"Gel layer held," he said, reloading his sidearm and battle rifle. "I think I cracked a rib."

I chuckled somewhere between relief and terror.

I fired into the trees and happened to nail a commando. The commando tripped, picking himself up before I shot him two more times, dropping him for good.

"Good shot, Grim," Fred said.

"Losing options. Exit strategy?" Linda asked. I saw her prop her 99-AM against a thick tree and take a shot. The barrel flashed like a lightning strike. The saboted .50 caliber round ripped through the trees and whipped air around, shaking my chest even from far away.

"Through them," 117 said.

"Not so sure," Fred said. "We can take 'em. Can Grim?"

"I can handle myself," I said. "Trust me. You drive down the middle, I'll cover our right flank."

"I like this guy," Kelly said.

"Do it," 117 said.

Fred nodded. "Grim, watch the right flank. Go cover-to-cover, hang back about ten meters from us and watch for hostiles. Shoot what you see. Call out what you don't."

"Copy," I whispered. I felt rejuvenated. My momentum returned to me.

"On your mark, Chief."

"Now!" 117 called. We broke our cover and advanced into the treeline, darting from tree to tree, covering each other's advances under fire.

At the first position, I undid my grenade launcher and launched two smoke shells ahead.

"Grim, is that smoke yours?" Fred called.

"Affirm," I said.

Fred responded with a green acknowledgment light over the HUD roster.

They pushed through the smoke, further spreading their forces. Suppressed gunfire squeaked in the distance. Bullets cracked against bark and dirt and durasteel. Blaster fire returned, decreasingly accurate but faster—more desperate.

I heard a low hum somewhere, faintly under the gunfire. I checked around, seeing no movement, until I looked up. A Viper droid hovered above and surveilled Blue Team's incursion. I wasn't sure I would be able to take it out immediately with a blaster, so I switched to the grenade launcher. I ripped open the weapon and loaded an EMP shell into its breech, calibrating its airburst altitude—eyeballing it, Let's say 35 meters.

I raised the launcher up, tracked the drift of the target, and squeezed the trigger with considerable lead.

The shell rocketed into the sky with a loud pop. It detonated next to the probe droid with minimal force, but the EMP burst disabled it. It came soaring down into the snow twenty meters from me.

I yanked the launcher on its sling behind me and drew the blaster again. I bolted out from behind the tree, sprinting toward the thing as stray bolts screamed by me. I climbed on top of the probe droid chassis and sprayed blaster bolts into it at point-blank, the bolts burning a smoldering hole through its circuitry and armor plating.

"Just took down a probe droid," I said. "That might have been how they were tracking you."

"Then we clear them out," 117 said. "Then get scarce."

After a few more minutes, the fighting slowed down. I crept closer to my compatriots and waited.

"Clear," Fred said.

"All clear," 117 called.

"Great job, Grim," Fred said. "Color me impressed."

We regrouped further away to plan the next move, further west and about four hundred meters through the dense trees. I pulled out a paper map of the region and presented it to the team.

"Where are we?" I asked. The hinterlands lacked major landmarks, although time would have brought a better perspective. I betted that these sailors had been here long enough to learn the lay of the land.

Fred pointed to one place immediately. We were between a large clearing and the end of the forest—a kilometer short of Fort Ridgway. I showed them a route to it based on the map's topography.

The master chief shook his head. "We can't breach OPSEC," he said, referring to "operations security"—secrecy.

"Our mission was to retrieve critical intel. That comes first. Revealing ourselves is too risky."

"The mission's changed," Fred said. "They always do."

117 turned to him.

Linda turned, speaking while watching the east: "Maybe Chief's right. If we stick with Grim and go to Fort Ridgway, we'll draw more heat toward them. More commandos will show up."

"Don't forget," I cut in, "you likely won't have a chance to get that floppy disk off-world."

They all looked at me suddenly, their expressions unreadable behind their helmets, but I suspected incredulity. I gestured toward the hard drive mounted on 117's belt.

"I'm assuming that's what you're talking about, right? Fireteam of UNSC troops hauling a piece marked with Aurebesh isn't exactly inconspicuous."

They stared in silence.

"Classified?" I asked.

Fred nodded and put two fingers to the helmet's chin. I ignored the gesture, unaware of what it was—but I later found out it was their way of expressing a smile when wearing their helmets.

"Doesn't matter what's in them. We don't have air access, except I'm guessing from high altitude—bombing altitude. There should be over five thousand Marines at Fort Ridgway needing evacuation. Unless… how did you insert here?"

"Parachute," 117 said.

I nodded. "Yeah, no; you're going to need to call an extraction to a safe zone. There aren't many of those left on Mygeeto these days."

Fred turned to 117. "Come on, Chief," he said. "Marines need our help. Grim, too. And they're our ticket out of here—extraction is part of this mission."

117 paused only for a moment, watching the pregnant and anticipant gazes of his teammates—and myself—before speaking again.

"Agreed."

She pours me my glass and rolls the ice around in it before setting it down. I hobble over to the table in her studio apartment, prop my cane against it, sit in the chair she offers, and stare at the little rocks until she gestures for me to drink.

"Are you OK?" she asks.

I look at her again and answer far too late.

"I'm fine," I tell her. I take a slow sip and taste a spiced burn, almost like cinnamon. It soothes me slightly.

She tells a story about our youth—a story I do not remember. She says I wore a doctor's hat and ran around the house, saying, I want to be just like you, Dad! to a formless, faceless silhouette of a man who I only see in pictures and the voices of memory.

"You were so cute," she says. Her words roll around my glass, shimmering in the little rocks.

Her voice sobers when she remembers Dad.

"Do you remember him?"

I shake my head.

"You would have loved him. He was the sweetest. He wanted you to be a doctor, too. Uncle asked me to give you something. When I figured you were ready for them."

She walks over to her bed, fishing through a storage box. In it are her most sensitive things: her social security, birth certificate, New Nambu, and stack of 100cR notes. She reaches behind them, twisting her wrist, until she finds purchase and removes the item.

She gingerly hands me the bright blue box. I ask her if she knows what's in it.

"I never opened it," she says. "He gave me one. I figured this was the same thing."

I open it and remove a watch—a Seiko with a brown leather band. It is old, the leather clearly worn, but the glass unharmed. Clean and shiny.

She covers her mouth and shudders with joy. "It's Dad's watch," she whispers. "He gave me fountain-tip pens because I wanted to be a calligrapher when I was a kid.

"And he gave you his watch because you loved it so much," she says. Her voice sounded choked, but I was fixated on the watch, stoking an old candle in my heart—one that I never knew was lit. "Oh, my gosh, he just came home one day with a completely different watch. I thought he'd lost it or something. Don't you remember?"

Imprints of a memory—shadows on the wall—come back to me. I used to steal it from him and walk around the house, gesturing to it. I feel almost embarrassed remembering it, but she places her hand on mine, squeezing my fingers. It feels serene. It is the first time she actually touches me without eliciting repulsion. It is the first time I am comforted.

I look at her and whisper meekly, "Thank you."

We broke the treeline early in the morning to a hill after alerting on the short-range E-Band that we were headed from their southeast.

"What's your team composition?" the Fort Ridgway controller asked.

"Four Spartans," Fred, the RTO, answered. "One Marine."

There was a long silence. "Copy," the controller answered. "Sierra Blue Team, you are cleared to cross through the south gate. Be advised: we mined the perimeter past the first trench line. Updating their locations and marking for you. I'll let the checkpoint know you're coming."

"How many mines are there?" I asked.

"All of them," the controller said. He did not explain any further.

We caused a stir inside the base's walls. Marines gawked and commented among one another, their eyes trained on these "Spartans." They nodded to me. Despite starting in the Hospital Corps, attachment to a Marine unit meant I was every bit Marine to them as their own. Beyond that, we had been christened by the war. Everyone here was a veteran. Everyone here was a survivor.

During my time at Fort Ridgway, I saw Marines who were initially deployed all over the Mygeeto theater; but not a single Marine from the 14th MEB—my brigade.

The base itself was overcrowded. They were between attacks. Some platoons had burned through their ammunition reserves and were rotated off, giving the Marines much-loathed downtime. I saw half a squad of men seated outside one of the polycrete barracks, bundled up in their parkas but not shivering, staring but not watching, eyes fixed forward.

I came down to one of them. He didn't react to me. I waved my hand in front of his eyes. "You in there, Marine?" I asked.

He didn't respond.

I put my hand on his shoulder, tapping my fingers until he responded. He looked at me slowly, his eyes wide and deeply haunted.

I looked around. The other men were in the same shape as him.

"Grim," Fred said, his voice drenched in worry. I looked up to see him. I felt alarmed again by how young he looked.

"I'll catch up," I said.

"You won't be able to help them all," Fred said. He awkwardly landed a heavy gauntlet on my shoulder.

My voice broke as I relived Lalonde's ruptured head. I tried to shove his arm away with mine, hurting my wrist. Fred gently moved his arm for me.

"I'll help as many as it takes," I said, my eyes wet, my voice hot in the back of my throat.

He watched me for a few more seconds and nodded. The Spartans withdrew and moved through the base.

I felt a creeping desperation roll over me, trapping me in place, clinging to my voice. I stayed with the Marines for a while, until I could at least get them to talk.

The silence in between was familiar. I stayed with them for almost an hour, offering them what I never had for Layla.

But after a while, I hit a wall. The squad had returned to a cogent facsimile of human beings, and the men occasionally conversed. That was going to have to do. I went to the command center, where Blue Team was headed last I saw. Fred came out of the polycrete structure in the center of a comms mess spanning several structures and a mast. I imagined the conversations inside the command center. I envisioned a base commander asking, to whom was he speaking? What was the nature of their mission? Force capabilities? Why were they called Spartans? And how much of it was classified?

Fred looked down at me as though I were his younger brother. "Hey there," he said. "The others are still being debriefed individually."

"Situation?" I asked.

"It's not good," Fred said. We walked around the building from the main entrance. I dug out a cigarette—or something like a cigarette, sold to us by the locals—and lit it, my blaster hanging on its improvised sling.

"Comms blackout is still in effect on Keats' orders," Fred said. "But we let them know that he's out of the picture. They're still debriefing the Chief, so we'll see."

"Is part of the blackout from this base?" I asked. "That can't be right."

"The last of it is," Fred said. "The blackout in orbital space was ordered to be lifted so troops could communicate with the fleet. Before, it was to maximize confusion among the enemy and buy time—but they've pretty much negated that, even with air supremacy."

"No kidding," I whispered. "They kicked our teeth in. So Ridgway has been flooding all the channels with slush this whole time?"

Fred nodded. I took another drag from my cigarette, letting the warm smoke soothe what came with the news.

"I imagine it also hindered your mission," I said.

Fred nodded again, a pained knowing crossing his eyes. "We were dispatched from the Iroquois. We haven't been in contact with them in a week, and we've been unable to extract with our data."

"And here I thought you stayed for the hospitality," I said.

He smiled weakly. It was the most human mannerism I'd seen from these Spartans, young as they were. They had grown up as quickly as I had. Fred was more talkative, friendly, and seemingly well-adjusted than the others—but there was a tension in everything he said. Like he was uncomfortable talking to Marines.

Or adults.

But he saw something in me that helped him loosen up. Maybe it was someone he could protect. Maybe it was just an older kid who could crack jokes and hold a rifle. Maybe I'd left an impression in combat or as a corpsman.

The sirens erupted just as quickly as I contemplated this, followed by distant pops—anti-personnel and vehicle mines at the outermost perimeter, claiming their intruders. He slipped on his helmet, and I checked the battery of my blaster. It had a meter that seemed to display it was at half capacity—all that firing earlier must have meant that the battery life was considerably economical. I imagined how much more powerful these things were, and higher capacity, out of a subzero environment. The frigid climate shortened the battery life of everything from our radios and smart-link scopes to our flashlights.

Gunfire broke out from the perimeter along the wall. Machine guns glowed in the rising sunlight from the guard towers. Bursts cut through the chaos of Marines scrambling in the base to their stations.

I followed Fred to the line as the other Spartans grouped up. Hundreds of Marines rushed toward the front.

Then the artillery hit. Blue-white blasts flashed around the base, upending permafrost, steel, and bodies. Twisted metal blew out from machine gun nests, pill boxes, and vehicle emplacements. Scorpions, immobilized by previous battles, were spared by using hard-kill active protection systems against the shells, but the shockwaves concussed or killed crews inside of open hatches and maimed Marines around the hulls.

We sprinted out the gate and slid across the ice into the trenches under fire. The air turned strobe with high-caliber, ruby-red tracer rounds and blue laser bolts. Fred disappeared in the chaos, climbing over the top and joining another line. I linked to one of the squads in the rear trench with the help of their specialist.

The squad radio was flooded with chatter. I peeked up to the edge of the trench, joining the men engaged. "Get those mortars set up," the squad leader called.

"Only one works," another responded. Two men left the line for the mortar pit.

A pair of Y-wings roared over the evergreens and dead brush, starting an attack run on the base. They flew low to be precise, as the enemy was fewer than 500 yards out of the base's perimeter. Without Rigdway's M71 Scythes, the base was vulnerable save for MANPADS and a few self-propelled air defense tanks.

Hover tanks made their way across, as well, occupying the attention of several SPNKRs. They crept up with clones on their flanks to reinforce them, drifting over Czech Hedgehogs and even nullifying the hills dug out to create firing lanes for our GPMGs They provided hard, mobile cover for the clones. Massive bolts vaporized the snow around the trenches and scorched the ground, blowing permafrost and shards of ice into the air above us. The shockwaves rocked our bodies.

Our mortar opened fire, launching rounds close, only hitting the enemy's rear line within the trees.

I heard 117 on the Spartan channel. "Blue Team," he said. "Prioritize enemy armor."

"Gives the Marines a chance to shoot down those strike fighters," Fred said. "Agreed."

"How will you get close?" I whispered to myself, my push-to-talk cold.

I saw the tanks creep over the first trench line. As they did, I opened fire on the clones—more confident I could make hits. From this dense cover, it was hard for them to hit any of us. But lasers splashed against the snow and dugouts and craters, superheating frozen mud and raining hot, dirty water over me that stung my body. Sublime vapors stung my face and lungs as the wind whipped them at me.

I could still see the markers of Blue Team members on my HUD. They crossed one another, fighting along the front trench line as it became overrun—as Marines climbed out and were buried alive by the hover tanks caving them in, or were gunned down by ARC troopers. Sierra 117 climbed to the top of the trench, using a smaller hill as cover, and quickly mowed through clones with his XBR55, switching to his pistol, and even punching clones out with his immensely powerful exoskeleton.

I saw Fred clamber over the second trench. He had lifted a machine gun from its nest, the belt still hanging out of its left-hand side, and began firing over the master chief's head, gunning down jump troopers and clones that might get a bead on them by flanking. Their armor cracked and split with each high-caliber round or punch, just as their advancing line did.

It was almost like how the Jedi chewed up our lines and everything we threw at them.

Kelly and Linda crossed underneath the front trench, planting C7 charges on the bottoms of the tanks as they crossed. Kelly climbed up on the far right tank, the last one in the line, and ripped open its hatch, dropping a frag grenade in. Clones opened fire on her, blaster bolts missing and grazing her armor in a few places, before I turned my blaster and fired on them. Linda covered Kelly with her sidearm, prioritizing clones in Kelly's closest proximity.

The grenade exploded with a vicious popping sound, killing the crew inside and igniting its magazine. I don't know if the tank had blow-out panels, but the fragments might have struck an open breech or a loaded shell. I flinched from the flash of light and shockwave.

Then she detonated the explosive charges on the tanks, blasting them apart—just as the Y-wings made their final approach on us.

Missiles from SPNKrs soared over my head, whistling and screeching. One connected with a Y-wing, blowing off its right-side engine and causing it to spin out. It collided with the radio mast over the command center, slicing through the supporting cables and the tower, bringing it down on top of the base and crumpling over the polycrete structures.

The other Y-wing broke off after firing a bomb at the GHQ. The bomb missed, instead striking another structure, a motor pool.

"Get in there!" the Marine squad leader cried. "Peralta, cover them!"

Our machine gunner fired quick bursts again, suppressing one section of the faltering clone advance. They'd hit a wall in the form of those Spartans—but if they regained their momentum, Blue Team was toast.

I got up, joining the squad as they climbed over the trench and darted from crater to crater, wreck to wreck, reinforcing the middle trench. Two dozen reserve units—hundreds of Marines—reinforced us, taking advantage of the reduced incoming fire.

Marines strafed and shot, covering one another, as we swept the front line, relieving the Spartans of some pressure.

Inside the trench were almost a dozen injured men, surrounded by dead. "We've got wounded!" I called. I let my blaster fall on its sling, dropping inside and pulling them out.

"Get them off the front," the squad leader barked. "James, Mott. Help him."

Two Marines helped me lift the wounded men up by their arms out of the trench. We carried them over our shoulders and made three trips between the gate and the frontline. My muscles burned as I balanced over the wooden boards atop the rear trench and loaded the last of them in the back of a Mastodon, requisitioned to act as a combat ambulance.

"Stay on alert," I heard from the command channel. "Enemy is retreating, but there might be a second wave."

As Blue Team retreated past the gate, Fred and I bumped fists.

"Nice work out there," he said. "Again."

"Are you kidding me?" I said with an adrenaline-laugh. "You kicked ass."

"Just doing what we can," Fred said. "We saw it needed to be done, and we saw we could handle it. But you really stuck your neck out there for the Marines."

"I saw it needed to be done, and I knew I could do it," I said. "I can't fight like you, but I can carry green, and I can fix 'em mean."

"That's why we like you," Fred said. "You'd have made one hell of a Spartan."

The second wave never came. Days passed on high alert, but without any incursions, I chose to pick up a few shifts in the field hospital. It was similar to previous jobs I'd taken on bases in Mygeeto, except this time we had to keep our weapons on us at all times in case of an attack.

The base commander, Brigadier General Zika, addressed the men on the horn. The special message, presented sitting at a desk inside his command center, flanked by Fred and 117 in their heavy armor, was broadcast on every screen in the base. I watched from the hospital while tending to a frontline burn victim. Brigadier Zika had a tight jaw and strong, green eyes. His hair was immaculately cut and curled under his beret. He managed to fit a trench coat under his battle rattle—the same body armor the rest of the Marines wore—with an officer's M6 in its holster on his chest plate, as though he were a Scorpion tank crewman.

I stood next to my patient, scrubbing my hands with sanitizer, and watched.

"As you know," Zika began, "we have been surrounded and outnumbered for the past week, with chances and hope dwindling. The planet-wide comms blackout has been lifted, and we've been in communication with Admiral Hood. Of all the UNSC holdouts on Mygeeto, we are the last. Our allies in orbit have been largely routed from their defense sectors, and cannot break into the air corridor surrounding Myga. That means we will continue to have no air support and little chances for evacuation.

"However, because we have re-established communications with naval assets, they're going to be able to provide limited fire support and close air support. Blackswords—the Navy's new stealth fighters—will be able to slip into our airspace and provide close support, as well as prowlers that have been converted to medical ships to quietly evacuate our wounded.

"We'll coordinate fire missions with several UNSC frigates and destroyers. Preliminary reconnaissance has shown that multiple Arquitens-type ships have been patrolling in low-altitude, but not seeking air targets. They're likely going to converge on this base within two days' time to attack us. We're trying to draw out the Acclamators that are supporting the long-term siege of our base and preventing air support from reaching us. To mark targets, we'll be using laser designators.

"However, this means this fight is going to become more intense. The boys fought greatly during the last assault, but we might not have held the line were it not for these Spartans. Their indomitable strength and courage saved the day. But in the coming days, we're going to need everyone. Every Marine with two legs and a shooting hand is going to have to fight. Only then will we survive.

"Hold fast, Marines," Brigadier Zika said in his closing statement. "There's another storm yet to brave. I have faith that you and God will grant our due deliverance and remind us of the strength to survive. You already possess it."

I stretched and got back to work.

Later that shift, the first two transports made it. Jet-black ships in irregular, curved silhouettes—Razor-class prowlers—descended through the thick clouds from the blood-red sky, poisoned by conflagrations consuming Myga, escorted by C718 Longswords—or, as they were called now, Blackswords. Fort Ridgway not being an airbase, the Blackswords circled around at a high cruising altitude. The prowlers were too large to land at any one helipad, belonging to Pelicans that could no longer be serviced anyway. UNSC Ghost Song set down over one of the courtyards between buildings. Another hovered at the roof access to the field hospital, connecting her loading bay to the helipad. We carted wounded Marines for several hours up while the engines of Ghost Wind screamed against the firestorm torrents, which reached us miles beyond the perimeter of Myga.

All in all, we had evacuated about five percent of the base's wounded—about a hundred and fifty men and women. We started with the crowds of men and women outside the full hospitals, who had been freezing under their blankets—or succumbing to their wounds. We didn't make a dent in them.

There was some tension between us and the Office of Naval Intelligence operatives. Perhaps as seasoned and experienced as they were in asymmetric combat, field agents and prowler crews alike had never seen carnage on this scale before. There was almost no serious medical staff nor proper facilities aboard the prowlers, but that didn't matter, as they were simply transferring the wounded to specially-requisitioned CAA hospital ships positioned in the heart of the orbital fleet. As I heard it, the GAR never fired on hospital ships—but after the battle of Myga's first turns, Admiral Keats and his successor refused to take any risks, often prioritizing the survival of hospital ships even over tactical victories for the air corridor.

I heard many whispers during the secret evacuation complaining about the ONI agents. Their eyes washed pity over us. If they're so uncomfortable, why did they volunteer to help?

Within an hour of the prowlers' departure, at the end of my day shift, the sirens sounded again, signaling the proximity alerts. It was as if the prowlers were detected—that their mere presence triggered the next incursion—but there was no indication that they were.

I grabbed my blaster and unclipped my helmet from my belt, sliding it on, and joined the mess of Marines rushing to the gate. Marines made slicing motions with their hands, ushering one another to the front.

The gunfire started again, pounding my heart in its cage—exciting me, as I had a reprieve from combat a day too long—and pumping adrenaline through me. Artillery struck the base, but the motor pool had scavenged multiple vehicles and repaired a few Kodiaks. The Kodiaks, using the callsign "Rock Dancer," answered with counter-battery shots. Still, the word of the day was that the M71 Scythes were fried, and there was no replacing their targeting systems.

Marines cheered as Blackswords descended from high orbit, overtaking Y-Wings and ARC-170s in a bid to attack the Arquitens that bore down on us. Two delta-winged frigates converged from the north and the south. A third hanged back, providing long-range fire support for the clones. Its turbolasers lobbed shots at the gate and walls, melting steel fortifications and blasting apart mounted crews.

I heard whirling from above. Republic gunships soared over the trees, firing green-hot beams into the trenches from above.

"Contact front, low," one of the commanders called on the company-wide channel. "All squads, stay alert." By now I had been folded back into their command structure as a corpsman attached to a frontline unit, but I secretly kept my authentication for listening to the command channel—and Blue Team's comms, sparse as they were. I had worn so many hats, accepted by every group as an honorary whatever: an honorary Marine, a bona fide hospital staffer, an honorary officer, and now an honorary Spartan.

Silhouettes broke out of the trees to form what looked like ARF troopers, AT-RTs, and commandos: troopers with momentum and motivation. Behind them, suddenly, I saw bursts of ignition. ARC troopers with jump jets had climbed the trees and boosted out above to stir the confusion. The last of the anti-vehicle SLAM mines rigged with trip-wires, as well as carbon fiber cables strung between trees roughly 5 meters' height—a new retrograde tactic designed to counter "walkers"—took down at least a dozen AT-RTs alone, but it wasn't enough. Just as many got through, carefully avoiding the wire traps as the mines had been expended.

I heard one of the squad leaders requesting close air support, at least to get the gunships out of our base. Blaster fire spilled over us, consuming the gate's choke point again. Machine guns and automatic grenade launchers belted fire in arcs over, mixing with the tracers and blaster exchange. Despite being at a fixed position, I felt disoriented and confused.

A pair of Blackswords descended and shot down the gunships. SPNKr rockets direct-fired at the AT-RTs, some hitting, some missing. The AT-RTs rushed onto the trenches, blasting into them and killing Marines by the half-dozen. Most were cut down shortly after by overlapping machine gun fire, their operators too exposed. But they were aggressive enough to break the first line in seconds.

Then they thrashed through the second line. We were too suppressed—even the Spartans couldn't leave the rear trench past us with the turbolaser fire.

"Are those frigates in range?" I asked.

"Affirm!" one of the gunners said. He calibrated his laser designator, an SRS99 weapon platform sans the barrel and upper receiver, and lined it up on the permafrost at the foot of the trench. He squeezed the trigger and held it for a few seconds.

"Target locked," one of the commanders said on the battlenet. "Fire for effect."

"UNSC Grafton, target confirmed. Shot. Five seconds, out."

I couldn't count the seconds. I lost count of my heartbeats as I waited, the surface shaking and burning before my eyes. One of the turbolasers struck very near us, killing the gunner and exploding the lithium battery on the designator. The designator blossomed molten-red steel like a flower, spewing hot acid onto the trench floor and burning through the man's blood.

"Splash, out."

A high-hypersonic slug, fired from the magnetic accelerator cannon aboard a Paris-class heavy frigate in high orbit, sliced the clouds from above in the blink of an eye, punching through the Arquitens firing upon us with a massive explosion that plunged its nose down and took it into an uncontrolled descent, magazine exploding, hull smoldering, smoke trailing and joining the brush and city fires.

"It worked," I whispered.

The sound from the explosion caught up with us, overpowering everything else and shaking the surface like tremors.

"Good effect on target!" the squad leader yelled. "Prep for next target!"

Another squad on the north side marked their target.

"UNSC Dieppe, target confirmed. Shot. Out."

The ground shook again with the next impact, distantly out of sight.

"One more," I whispered, "and then—maybe the big one will show up."

ARC troopers landed in the second trench, clearing it out. ARF troopers leaped over the trench, charging us directly, focusing their fire on the machine guns. They threw thermal detonators into mortar pits and smoke grenades along the line, blinding us. The reserve Marines maneuvered and fired from the gate to meet them, closing a hundred-meter gap with overlapping fire that became a close-quarters brawl, rifles firing at point-blank, fists throwing, E-tools and knives swinging.

"Grim," Fred called. "Engage the troopers. Leave the commandos to us."

"Understood," I said.

The Spartans climbed over the top and disappeared into the sprays of snow and smoke.

"Fall back," my squad leader called, panic seeping through his voice.

Blaster fire lit up pockets of the smoke around me. I stood up, pulling down my NODs over my eyes and switching to thermals. A silhouette was only a few feet from me, strafing directly toward me. I fired two blaster shots into him, dropping the clone. I shot other silhouettes as they surrounded me, recognizing them as ARF troopers or regular clones. I realized after a moment that I was alone on the line.

I could see the vital signs of Marines on the second line, still injured, some critically. The ones who were critically injured faded quickly. This was the fate waiting for the thousand-odd Marines lying and sitting in the snow outside the field hospital and barracks, without enough rifles or ammo to go around—buildings which would become garrisons, fought to the last Marine, just like in the outskirts, in Norton's base, and on Myga Bridge. I was there, retreating and ceding ground and lives each step of the way to Fort Ridgway, and the Marines here were forfeiting the line again.

Not this time. The enemy would not take one step into Fort Ridgway's perimeter as long as I breathed and fought. I would give it all. I would trade the days Lalonde gave me for precious seconds—seconds that my squad, the Spartans, the Marines, the fleet could use to take out those frigates and turn this around.

I checked the battery to my blaster again—then charged out of the smoke toward the second line, sliding to wrecked APCs and Scorpions, my boots sloshing in mud—ice melted from vehicle fires producing nearly freezing puddles.

As I crossed, from behind one piece of cover to another, I fired on clones rushing by, most of whom were caught up either flanking the line or engaged directly with Spartans.

"They've taken the second line," the controller called. "Start final protective fire, danger close." He called out the grid coordinates.

"All stations, Rock Dancer; final protective fire, shot. Thirty seconds, out."

I grabbed my M319 and fired another smoke grenade into the trench, offering concealment for the last stretch. I sprinted hard, sliding through the smoke along the ice and landing squarely in the trench as the 152mm artillery shells burst the ice and ground, blowing apart dozens of clones and killing more with shrapnel. The blasts shook the trench, shockwaves licking each other over my head. Glowing embers and white-hot, jagged steel rained down, plinking off my helmet. One of the Marines on the floor of the trench had lost his arm—he was unable to lift his laser designator.

I began to treat his arm before he pushed me off with his free hand.

"Take the lase," he said, shoving the designator in my arms. "Use it!"

"Don't worry about me, Marine," I whispered. "I'm going to get you—"

Explosions shook the ground again—turbolaser fire. The south-side frigate began to unload its batteries on us. I could see it, too.

"Go!" the Marine shouted, pressing it on me. I took the laser designator and propped it up against the trench diagonally, pointing directly at the Arquitens. I took a deep breath and held reeking huffs of cordite and scorched mud, squeezing the trigger. I held the laser on the bow of the frigate for as long as the weapon's magnified screen instructed me to.

"Target acquired," I whispered to the command channel. "Range sixteen hundred. Bearing 186. Heading 012. Forty knots."

"Iroquois, target received. Shot. Out."

The first shot missed. It looked as if the ship accelerated just then. The slug struck the snow and ice half a kilometer out of the base. The pressure wave shook the ground like an earthquake. I stumbled as the shockwave blasted over the trench and sharp gusts of wind ripped around my body. What I didn't know was that shortly after the first shot, the Iroquois, a destroyer possessing two MACs, adjusted, fired again, and struck the ship based on my first lase.

"Negative effect on target," I whispered. "Reacquiring—"

A blaster bolt struck my weapon, melting it down. I dropped it and grabbed my blaster. A commando came over the top and fired two bolts at me. One hit my left thigh. The other hit my chest piece, penetrating the tungsten carbide plates and burning the aramid soft armor underneath. I felt the scorching heat immediately and collapsed, choking.

The world seemed to swirl around me as I slowly blacked out. The sounds of war slowed, stalling for the first time—leaving me a moment of quiet, behind the bells of tinnitus.

There are some moments in life that last hours, as if one was waiting for death to come. My sister experienced it in the car when she was a child—as the thing was torn wide open by a drunk driver, her parents gone in a flash that was not a flash to her. For me, it was this point as I was lying on the trench deck, unable to breathe, bleeding, burning, and overrun. I had hours compressed into a second to make peace with myself, with my sister, with Montag. I had all the time to remember, of all things, the scents of apple pie and manure; the cold embrace of my sister at an empty, rundown mall, the most pathetic of goodbyes sullying my dress blues; and her vacant, long stare. Montag's long stare.

Hours between seconds is not enough time.

Distantly—like the senses of the world, the sound and vision, the smell and taste of boiled blood, were so far away through a wash of static on an analog television—I felt another tremor. A thump next to me. A heavily armored clone? No—it was a Spartan. Sierra 117 lifted me and the other Marine, hoisting us over his shoulders, and carried us back to the gate. Fred, Linda, and Kelly covered him, retreating in a tight "diamond" through the smoke.

Then I was either upright or upside down, my vision a pinprick, my world swirling.

Then the biofoam filled my chest cavity, and a shot of epinephrine revived me. I came back to Fred jabbing me with polypsuedomorphine. Our positions were overrun—with even the Spartans retreating. Above us, I could feel the ground whirring. A gray delta-winged ship larger than any UNSC ship smaller than a cruiser, an Acclamator, rolled over the base, its guns silent.

The majority of the guns had fallen silent, actually—and I could just barely make out a droning, repeating voice, like a neighbor's dog barking:

"Cease fire! Cease fire! Cease fire!"

I woke to a sterile cloth scent and Erik Satie's "Trois Gymnopédies" on a stereo a few hours later. I was in a hospital bed in the critical care unit. My wounds were still being treated, and I wasn't going to walk unassisted for a while. I interrupted the corpsman halfway through her assessment.

"What happened?" I asked.

"You were shot," she said. "You'll be OK."

"No," I said. "The battle? We were overrun. We were toast."

"Brigadier Zika and Admiral Hood signed a ceasefire with the enemy commander. A four-hour armistice to parley, but most importantly, evacuate our wounded."

"How many of our wounded?" I asked.

She smiled oddly. "All of them. Yourself included."

I was given crutches and released with instructions to board one of the merchantmen landed on the perimeter of the base. Bathed in the last glows of cold twilight, I saw clones, commandos, and a Jedi commander bundled up in a thick winter parka—General Kenobi—standing around the perimeter of the base, watching in silence. Kenobi conferred with his clone commander and General Zika, his eyes heavy and sympathetic, to my surprise. I had never met or seen him before, but I was shocked by his empathetic demeanor, even from a distance. Perhaps they watched in shock, mortified at the state we were in. Marines in crutches, on gurneys, missing limbs, burnt, and coated in soot and blood ambled by in double file.

Blue Team caught up with me, stopping me and pulling me aside.

"We're staying," Fred declared. "Once the wounded are out of here, the rest of the Marines are going to need our help."

"What about the intel?" I asked. "Your mission?"

117 marched over to me. "You are our mission now," he said.

Fred told me what happened when the prowlers landed. They had an ulterior purpose: to extract the Spartans as quietly as possible. Instead, they discovered Blue Team fighting openly alongside Marines, the existence of the Spartans soon to be widely known. They hounded the master chief and demanded he return for "debriefing": a grilling, an NJP, or a court-martial in disguise.

The Master Chief refused. With over a hundred wounded Marines aboard awaiting evacuation, and strict orders from Admiral Hood, the prowler crew couldn't leverage anything against the Spartans to make them return—at least, not without serious repercussions. So 117 handed over the data drive, and they left.

"So, this is it," I said.

"It's been an honor," Fred said. "You're a tough soul, Marine."

I nodded. "Likewise," I said. "I, uh…" I paused, fishing out my inhaler and taking a sharp, frigid drag. "Thanks for saving me."

"Thank him," Fred said, gesturing to the Chief.

I turned to 117, unable to see past his visor as usual. Reserved as he was, he nodded—and signed me a Spartan smile.

"Chief," I said with a nod and offered a hand. He hesitantly took it and squeezed gently, his massive armored palm nearly twice the size of mine.

They wouldn't be staying long. Despite the expectation that hostilities would resume, Vice Admiral Hood and Brigadier General Zika signed a conditional surrender later that night—and the UNSC left Mygeeto for good, permitted to retreat in formation with all honors, the few prisoners of war that were taken repatriated. As part of the agreement, a neutral Irish peacekeeping force brought firefighting and demining groups focused on Myga and the surrounding tundra, all divorced from the CIS; the droids continued their onslaught for the capital.

The change came with incredible whiplash. Marines, especially, couldn't factor together what had changed. A few fistfights broke out between the Marines and clones, who had mingled poorly in the peaceful grounds outside Fort Ridgway. The clones were instructed not to enter, but we had to leave to evacuate, and we crossed paths. There was a missing piece that brought both armies to stop slaughtering each other and, at the tip of the hat, show decorum and mercy—despite the war having no end in sight.

But I was tired. There was no more fight left in me. By the time we were face-to-face with the clones, our helmets off and even able to speak, I said nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing. I was ready to go home.

As Mygeeto grew smaller and smaller into a speck and disappeared behind the swirling slipspace portal, I only saw Lalonde's eyes in the glass where my reflection should be. He smiled in that easy, casual way he did—sometimes as though he had just heard me tell a joke, sometimes as though he were proud of me—but I felt not an ounce of comfort from it. Instead, I was haunted. Seeing him everywhere, in the mirrors; in the glass; in the cracks between my life and my death, wherever it may be, whenever it may come—it breaks me in half and spills out all I believed I buried on Mygeeto.

"I know how this sounds," I say, finally raising my voice barely an octave, speaking up to my sister. "But come out with it."

She looks at me, not even playing dumb. She has a knowing look, a sad glare.

"Why are you talking to me like this?" I ask. I struggle to find the words, slowing my pace. I try to divorce my grudges, my fears, my uncertainty from my voice. "Why are you being nice? Did you need something?"

She closes the door behind her and joins me on the porch, her steps creaking the old wood of our house. Dinner will have to wait.

I stepped away because I felt overwhelmed, all of a sudden. Everything is normal. Everything is all right—except, it has never been normal. It has never been all right. We have never been peaceful at Orthodox events or family dinners. We have never been idyllic. So when it comes today, I am on the backfoot; I'm back on Mygeeto, wrapped up in fear.

Can't I just be happy?

I stepped away because I had no good reason to.

"Because you're my brother," she says. "And I failed you." Her words shock me, leaving me on the backfoot again. I don't know what to say. I think about all the times she hurt me, and I think about the times I said things bitterly—always thinking it was retaliatory. There will be a time to tell her I regret them, too. There will be time to admit responsibility for myself as well, but tonight, my sister takes the first step across a gulf, a leap of faith braver than my own.

She gestures to the rocking chairs. We sit.

"When I went to college, I was a wreck," she says. "I had grades, I had drive, I had everything everyone said I had—and the expectations behind them. But I wasn't stable. You must have picked up on that. I almost failed my freshman year. My whole world was different. I had to be more responsible—emotionally responsible. I was mean to my peers like I was to you.

"I felt increasingly lonely and empty. I went to therapy shortly after, and the therapist helped me work through a lot of it. It took years. I've been traumatized since I was very young, and I never healed. Since the accident. I always thought that you hadn't gone through what I did because you weren't in the car when they died, and you weren't old enough to remember. But it affected us differently. I had so much anger for everything, and I carried it everywhere. It turned me into a different person; it—"

"Wore your skin like a cloak," I whisper.

She stops cold, watching me. Her lip quivers and something like recognition flickers across her whole face. Something like kinship glows in her eyes, partly relieved, partly devastated.

"Exactly," she says. "That's beautifully put, Ilya.

"Complex PTSD is what my therapist said. She told me the sources could vary, but most of the time it's from violence, dramatic near-death experiences, and war. When they told us where you were, and we saw the updates about Mygeeto on the news, I knew… I knew something."

I look at her distant eyes. I see again that hollowness from the men on Mygeeto—the ones who didn't make it—as she relives her own hell. I wonder if I have her eyes, too. I wonder if I have that same dimness that screams quietly, which only a precious few can identify.

She blinks, turning to me, and I see tears.

"You're not OK, are you?" she says. Her voice is gentle, like I've never heard it before. It is unlike any voice I've heard before.

I look away, into the night, the cicadas, the wheat fields, the clouds draped over the night sky like a black curtain. "No," I whisper, failing to use my voice. She doesn't hear it, but she sees the word crawl out and die on the spoiling wood.

"Come here, Ilya," she whispers in perfect dialect, wrapping my name so perfectly in our mother tongue it surprises me, and we stand. She wraps her thin arms around me with surprising tension, hugging me like no one's hugged me before. Soft merino wool brushes gently against my neck, soothing me as much as her gesture. Layla heaves.

"Do you know what my biggest regret was?" she asks. "I didn't tell you that I love you, that we all do. And when the first reports of Mygeeto came back, I thought I wouldn't have the chance. That almost killed me. Destroyed me. I didn't get to say it.

"You're safe now," she says, between huffs into my shirt. "I'm here for you, and I talked to everyone. We're all here for you. You don't have to talk about it; you don't ever have to. But we're going to protect you, and we're going to support you, and I'm going to do everything I should have years ago. That's my vow."

Hearing this unlocks something in me, forcing tears up my body from somewhere that was sealed away—a prison of silence. I grab her tightly, tighter than she holds me, and sob into her sweater.