The sky is thick with dark grey smog. Even though it is day, the only light comes from the far off explosions in the distance. Their rumble shakes the Earth and their destruction brings the only illumination into this dark world of shadows. I can’t help but think of how ironic it is that destruction, such as this, would help me find what it had taken from me all those years ago.

I am looking for a building. Simple, maybe, but I don’t know how long I have to search; how long I have at all. The remains of the old structure rise from the barren horizon. One wall stands in a mass of rubble that used to be my home. But it is no longer home. The people who made it so are long gone. I wasn’t even able to say goodbye…

The backpack weighs heavy on my shoulders, but that is expected since it holds what will be my only possessions for the coming months. I am waiting for the Atler, a military vehicle that comes through town every month to pick up volunteers for the Great Midnight War.

A gentle wind blows over the rows of golden wheat and across my cheek as I hear a creak from the front door opening. I turn back to see my wife standing there, still in her pajamas and the pink robe I had gotten her for her birthday. She has her mousey brown hair pulled into a long braid that makes its way down half of her back, and a smile on her lips that doesn’t quiet meet her eyes.

It pains me to see Alana this way, and it would be equally hard to tell who would miss each other most while I am gone. But with the Great Midnight War threatening our country, and a promise to be home by Christmas, how can I not leave?

As I send my wife an equally bittersweet smile, my mind drifts to my picture of all of us together in my front jacket pocket. Alana and I both have a copy and I can say with complete confidence that on lonely nights it will come as a small comfort to have it with me, as I know she will also.

This thought was interrupted as the Atler trudged over the horizon and cut down the dirt path between fields like an angry snake. My daughter, Elizabeth, ran out of the house with an excited “Daddy!!!” on her lips, but the Atler smothered her cry as it came to a stop in front of me. I gave one last wave at my family. With a heart already becoming acquainted with home-sickness, I reminded myself that I cannot turn back now. For if I do, I will surely loose the strength to carry on without them.

The Atler stands two stories above me and is curved back into a more aerodynamic shape.

“This great metal thing is transporting me to training camp,” I whisper to myself. “There is no reason to be scared.”But as I try to convince myself of this, I cannot help but notice that a wheel comes up to my stomach, and I suddenly feel small. A door opens from the side of the Atler and metal stairs fold out. Taking one last breath of courage, I board the Atler…

The ride to base was merry and full of life. I still remember it well. Drake kept declaring loudly how he couldn’t wait to “kick some foreign ass!” It’s weird, even now, to look back and think of how we signed up for what was to come. No one had known what the war would turn into.

Tex was the first friend I made and he became my best pal. We met in the barracks, which was strange since we were originally supposed to be in different platoons, but fate works in mysterious ways…

A knock sounds at the door. One of the guys calls out to come in as I continue to unpack.

“Hello guys! Is this barracks 322?” asks a chipper voice. I look up to find a small boy standing in the doorway. Well, not a boy. But he can’t be out of his teens, and he sure doesn’t look like army material, though I guess none of us do yet.

“Yeah, so?” said Ted, a strong-armed 26-year-old with huge built up muscles and a slightly disturbing over interest in guns that dates back to early middle school. The scrawny kid just smiled more.

“I’ve been assigned here,” he said while waving the papers around. “Looks like we’re all going to be roommates for the next six months!” James, our squadron leader, rips the paper form the kid’s hands and skims it. His brow creases over his squinting eyes as he hurriedly reads. Finally, he looks up and declares the boy part of our barracks with an attitude that clearly read: “of course we would end up with the only kid in the army.” The kid isn’t at all offended though. If anything, his smile grows bigger.

“Hi. My name is Tex!...”

After that, Tex seemed to attach himself to me. As time carried on, we got closer. He was a great listener and an even better friend. This didn’t stop everyone from calling him a kid and using him as the butt of their jokes. I looked out for him and he tried his best to do the same for me; but Tex was scrawny and later confessed to me that he had lied about his age to get into the army. He had lied to serve his country. The saddest thing is that even though Tex was my best friend, I don’t know what happened to him after we were separated. Maybe he was like the countless others who died in the experiments. I hope he died then and didn’t have to see what the world became.

We had all joined the war when it was in its infancy. But through the years, it matured into a cruel heartless monster- one that destroys everything in its path. The war doesn’t care what side you are on, or if you are innocent. But as the Great Midnight War grew crueler, so did we. Looking back, I don’t even remember why it started. I don’t think anyone does anymore.

The war turned malicious when the scientists stopped using all of their time and resources trying to improve weapons, instead turning their attention to the soldiers. Experiments were started that focused on genetic engineering and mutations, creating inhuman beasts in uniform. By then, we had become disillusioned with army life.

Some people at our camp had gotten scared and tried to run away- to abandon the group. They were shot on sight- but not where it could kill them. Future test subjects were too valuable to kill. They would be loaded into cars, still screaming in pain, and driven away somewhere, never to be seen again. Looking back, they were taken for experimentation- the first of a long line of guinea pigs.

But people stopped trying to escape as they realized that whatever was happening to the others must be worse. I didn’t believe that was possible, but I wouldn’t leave Tex. He needed me. No one else would take care of the small blond boy, not even of age, who had lied to serve his country. No one else would keep him down as wave after wave of hot metal was shot over us, ripping through flesh, blood, and uniform. But most importantly, no one would wake him up from the nightmares that terrorized us all…

My fingertips play with the worn edges of the photo. It is night as I lay in my bunk doing this. I do not need light to know what the picture is of. I can imagine the fading smiles of my family looking back at me and I can feel the white rises in the paper where the photo has been folded to many times. There is no moon tonight but the soft glow of filtered observation lights outside create enough grey in the darkness to see the outline of soldiers in the bunks beside me. Most are too still to really be sleeping. I guess I am not the only one that couldn’t find a safe passage to the realm of dreams tonight.

But next to me, Tex’s outline is constantly shifting. A few terrified noises escape him as his movements become more and more panicked. The other still figures pretend not to notice him. I fold my photo along the same lines as always and place it blindly in my pocket before pealing back my covers and climbing out of bed. Carefully, I sit on the side of his cot. A few gentle shakes is enough to wake him, while it takes longer to convince him that the flashbacks were a dream.

“Everything is going to be fine,” I promise him, even though I don’t believe it anymore than he does.

“Really?” Tex asks. His face is pale and he has many bags under his eyes. His hair has become thinner, as well as lighter, and he’s lost weight. This man is a scared ghost of the Tex I knew before. Even knowing that, as well as the fact that my white lies can be crueler than any enemy, I nod and give him a hug.

“Everything will be fine. I promise. Do you really think I would let anything happen to you?” He shakes his head a silent, “no” into my shoulder and starts to cry. Silent sobs rack his figure and I can feel my shirt becoming wet. After a nice long cry, I get Tex to lie back down to try to go to sleep. Before I can get up, however, he grabs my arm to stop me. Understanding his silent plea, I continue to sit next to him.

“Jack?” Tex asks.

“Yeah?” I answer.

“What keeps you going on nights like tonight?” I understand what he means: the nightmares. I smile sadly down in the darkness.

“…I have a family I have to get back to- can’t just leave them alone out there.” A silence almost as tangible as the darkness settles in for a few moments before Tex’s hand slips away.

“The letter I got today- it told me I don’t anymore…” I want to say I’m sorry or that he would always have me, but this is one of the few times in life that even though silence would not be the best answer, anything that could be said would be worse. So I sit there until Tex’s breathing gets softer, and he falls into the dreamless sleep we all wish for, before going back to my bed.

“It’s better that he got the letter now and didn’t find out when he got home,” whispered James above me. “The letter always comes. It’s better this way.”

I pull out my photo again and run my thumb over the edges.

“I won’t get that letter,” I think aloud. “I can’t…”

There was no doubt in my mind that if Tex were to disappear, no one but I would give a damn. But if I were to leave, to escape, he wouldn’t last a week.

But nothing made a difference. The fewer people brought to the scientists, the more were needed. They were close. They could almost reach it- the perfect soldier. The ultimate weapon. The cure for war. They didn’t realize it would only add to the flame. The scientists started to take the sick, then the injured, and finally at random. Like any other platoon, rumors of this came true for us one day…

“Line up!” General Stark commands one early grey morning in November more than a year after first enlisting. It is cold and wet and the General is stern and angry as always. “Today is special, boys! We have a guest! Now be on your best behavior or I’ll personally make the rest of your tour a living HELL! Do you understand me!?!”

“Sir, yes sir!” we all yell together.

“Stand attention!” We stand shoulder to shoulder in line by rank. Tex was standing five spots down the line from me, his hat half crooked when a sleek black car rode up. It seemed too neat to fit into the dirt and grime of army life.

The door opened, carefully reveling a tall figure. At around six feet, his tall lanky figure is almost completely covered by his white lab coat. His thinning blond hair is sleeked back. It is so pale that it seems to fade into his pasty complexion. He smiles cruelly at us, thin lips curling into an almost wolfish smirk. Carefully, he inspects us- every time stopping for a few minutes before shaking his head and moving on. The General starts to sweat a little. When he stops in front of me, he pauses for a little longer than the rest, as if to consider, then shakes his head. Relief floods me. Now I can stay with Tex. Five more down the line, Tex is shakinginI his boots as the stranger stops in front of him. A cruel smile spreads across his face.

“This one,” sneers the scientist before turning away. The General comes over and leads Tex to the car. I want to shout, to yell, to get him back but my voice seems to be caught in my throat.

So instead I watch in horror as Tex gives me one last pleading look before being shoved roughly into the car and driven away…

It took less than six weeks before my entire bunker had been taken. Then they came for me. I do not know why I was last. I did not ask. In those few precious seconds before the car pulled up, I did not ask why I was special. Instead, I leaned in toward the General, fully enjoying the look of horror on his face when I whispered, “What do you think they’ll do to you after I’m gone.”

I admit I cooperated, having seen too many things in the few years since I left home. Now everyone was gone too. I felt hollow. Numb. A soulless phantom alone in a never-ending hell that is my eternal prison. They didn’t have to break me like the others. I was already broken. They took my picture. There was nothing left to fight for. Constantly, I’d remind myself, trying to keep sane, that I was just biding my time until the right moment, then, then I’d be gone. This thought alone seemed to fight off the overpowering night terrors and feelings of doubt that washed over me like the ocean does the shore of a beach, slowly eroding it to nothingness. I was completely lying to myself of course, but denial is the mind’s most formidable defense against an all too horrible truth.

Most of what I remember form that time was the hot, searing pain- like a thousand needles doused in fire penetrating me all at once. Even now, I don’t know how long I was there. Seconds felt like hours, even weeks, and sometimes a month would go by in a numb nothingness that haunts your very existence. These moments of pain and slow mental torture seemed to be driving me away from the few slips of sanity I was holding onto. But they were just brief interruptions from weeks of drugged slumber on the operating table. Mirrors became useless- portals to alternate dimensions filled with monsters and horrors unfit for even the darkest nightmares, for I never recognized myself from the image of what I had become…

One day, while I sit in the white nothingness, a voice snaps me back to reality.

“Soldier 429,” a voice says. There is a woman by the door. Her lips seem to be moving.

“Soldier 429,” the voice says again. Oh, it must be her. My eyes move back to the wall opposite me, inviting its white nothingness to take me back to the numb, where I feel no pain. But there’s the voice again.

“Soldier 429, we regret to inform you that a Mrs. Alana Hamleton and Miss Elizabeth Hamleton are no longer in existence. Their bodies have been cremated by The Burners with the rest of the village’s. Carry on.” She turns away on her heal and starts to walk to the door, her long white lab coat gliding with her. Rage boils up within me- along with the almost foreign feelings of guilt and confused curiosity.

I let out a growl. She turns around, eyes wide with fear at what she sees. Suddenly, I hear a dangerous roar. It takes me a moment to realize it is me. She tries to run away- to get to the safety of the door. But she is much too slow. Her eyes are wide with terror. After that, all I remember is red. Red everywhere.

They couldn’t control me anymore, so I was drugged and kept unconscious until they could think of a way to. I was to valuable now, after so much time and money thrown into my unwilling transformation, to just thrown away or kill. So I was just kept barely alive until the BCC was invented.
The BCC, Biological Control Chip, is like a computer chip- but it isn’t used for computers. It is surgically implanted into your brain. There, it ticks away orders for you using electrical shocks along your nerves and creating the artificial release of hormones to make you comply. Most of the time I’m a “good” little mutant and do all of my orders. But sometimes, just sometimes, there is a break in the chain of orders and I’m overcome with a brief moment of clarity. In these brief moments out of battle mode, I remember. I remember everything- Tex, my family, all the things I have done. Sometimes I get angry, others sad, but now I must hurry. There is something I must do, and I don’t have enough time.
I shift through the rubble, looking desperately for something from before all of this- something of theirs. I remove a large rock and see what I am looking for. A rectangle is sticking out at an odd angle. I shimmy it loose and wipe the dust and grime off of the frame. The most stunning green eyes stare back at me. The picture is the twin of mine. It is of my wife and me standing together in front of our house when we had first moved in. Our daughter is smooshed in-between us by hugs; grins wide and dimples deep. She looks so happy. We all do.
I smile sadly at the photo and a tear runs down my cheek before I slip it out of its frame. I fold it onto itself once, twice, three times before slipping it into my jacket’s chest pocket. If only they were back. If only…
A beeping noise fills my ears. It’s not from a real sound, but one from my head.
REPORT BACK TO BASE
No. Not now.
RETREAT
No… Please…
REPORT BACK TO BASE AND REGROUP
No…
BEFORE NEXT ATTACK
And with that I am gone once more- pushed into the white nothingness of the back of my mind. But before I’m completely gone, I see the fading vision of my body turning north, toward base, knocking over the last standing wall of our home on its way back.