“So, about high school,” she began. “I’ve had a lot of time to think since I enlisted, and…” she hesitated, and I watched her intently, unmoving from my seat.

She took a deep breath and continued. “The stuff that happened was my fault, and I’m sorry.”

…What.

“I always wanted the best for Fang, but I never wanted to admit I didn’t know what that was. And then you came along, and… I watched her fall in love with you. I saw you as a threat, but you were really just helping her figure out what she wanted. I shouldn’t have doxxed you or treated you like I did. I really regret it, and I’m sorry.”

The room went silent. My brain short-circuited. Catastrophic malfunction: Anon.exe is not responding… A microwave timer sounded in my brain: Synapses had fired, and a thought had been formed.

“That sounded scripted as fuck.”

“Holy shit, you’re an asshole,” she responded immediately.

I shrugged. “Just calling it like it is. I mean, I’m down to not hate you n’ stuff, it isn’t like we’re making it out of this hellhole anyways, but you don’t need to butter me up for it.”

Her jaw hung open in stunned silence, her eyes darting between both of mine, trying to find some double meaning behind what I said. There wasn’t any. She sighed and dropped her head down, rubbing her temples.

“That’s it, huh? Living in a world of regret, losing all of my friends, wondering if I’d ever get the chance to make it right… And instead of being struck by lightning a few dozen times, I ended up in the same shithole as you across the world to tell you exactly what I’ve been dying to tell you for months— and you’re down to not hate me!?”

“What do you want me to say? I don’t know you anymore, Trish! That life is over!”

“Yeah, I thought so too, but NOW LOOK AT US!” She raised her voice and jabbed a finger in my direction. This time, her finger cut me because she was right.

Her face twisted, and she closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, then let it out slowly. She lowered her head and opened her eyes, her gaze cast downward. “Sorry.”

That was new. What have you done, Trish…?

I decided to entertain her more seriously: “What changed?”

The life visibly drained from her face as she sorted through more painful memories.

“Me, I think.” Her voice was soft and deflated. “Whenever I remember the stuff back in high school, my stomach turns. The stuff I used to say— the stuff I used to believe. I’m disgusted by it. And whenever I think of you, or Fang… everybody… I just want to cry. I do, sometimes. You guys saw the worst version of me. And now it’s too late.”

Fuck it. For what it was worth, she seemed different. Maybe Lucy wasn’t the only one who was doing some growing up.

“We were kids, Trish, don’t sweat it.”

She inhaled shakily, then sighed through her mouth. “Thank you, Anon, but I can’t accept that. We weren’t kids, and I should’ve known better. I understand if you can’t forgive me, or if you’re not ready to, but I want you to know I won’t give you any trouble here. I’ll be different. I have to be.”

She must’ve been holding that in for a while, I thought. I took a long sip of my coffee and examined her body language. Her eyes went low and right, and she took a deep breath and let it out. She was nervous. This hulking triceratops, who could lift a truck or tear me in half with two fingers, was nervous.

I sighed. “All I wanted to do was be friends with Lucy.” She cringed at the use of Lucy’s real name, the remnants of an old reflex. “Hell, I didn’t even want to be that at first. You were possessive over her, a bitch to me, and the doxxing thing was a stupid play, but you were never a monster. You may not have had good intentions, but you also didn’t have a good effect, and you’ve clearly changed. I forgive you, Trish.”

Her lips along her snout broke into a smile that highlighted the shimmer in her bulbous purple eyes. She stood and extended her hand. I took it and shook firmly, trying to mirror her force.

“Thank you, Anon.”

The walk back to my barrack was… strange. The thought echoed in my mind: Trish. THE Trish. Here. And… just like that? Has she really changed? I didn’t know. She certainly seemed different, but that could be a play. It’d be a damn impossible play for someone like her, though. I sat down on a crate outside my barrack tent, fished a cigarette out of my pocket, and sparked a lighter frantically. My adrenaline was almost worsening with how much my mind was racing because of the encounter.

The comforting smoke filled my lungs, and I pondered further. I’m sure not holding grudges is good for the soul or whatever. It’d be kinda nice to be chill with her.

The sun was beginning to creep around the curvature of the Earth and dimly light the sky; a barely noticeable blue hue started to make the terrain visible farther away. I heard people stirring in their barracks— the first among them just beginning to wake.

We met for chow, the sun fully rose, and the day continued. I hoped I wouldn’t run into Trish often since she was the medic, and most of the time, we only saw the medics when things went wrong. Besides, Holliday was more acquainted with our squads.

Work continued and became worse and more grueling. The few engineers from second squad led preparations for an expansion to one wall of the base. This meant going outside the wire, unfolding empty HESCO barrier shells, and filling them with dirt. Literal trench-digging. The second squad held a defensive posture around us, with their vehicles and personnel spread around us in an arc. Lucky bastards.

“What was that?” said the man beside me. Damn muttering. I looked up to the source of the voice, and it was just my luck: The platoon sergeant, SSG Farcy, was digging next to me. Damn, fuckin muttering.

“Nothing, sir.” I replied robotically, dumping another shovelful of dirt at shoulder height into the barrier.

“It wasn’t nothing, and I’ll let that go, but if you call me sir again, you will dig until you bleed. Tracking?”

Fuck. I should’ve known better. “Sorry, Staff Sergeant.”

“As long as we understand. I can’t have you confusing me for shiny shoes.” He heaved another shovelload of sand from the dry Earth and tossed it into the square shell above him.

“Who are you?” He asked, striking his shovel into the sand again and tweaking it. The dust clouded up as he removed the contents of his shovel from the ground.

“They call me Mouse.” His was a strange question, but I wouldn’t refuse rapport from a leader. Maybe it’d come in handy.

“Do you like that name?” He posed, punctuating his question with a grunt as he tossed another shovel-load of dirt into the shell. I sped up to match his pace, despite my human inferiority showing as it always did.

I managed an answer between exertions. “It’s been growing on me. It is what my friends call me, after all.”

Farcy chuckled. “Good. They call me Cherokee, but I’m not as optimistic as you.” I detected a hint of— is that an accent I’m hearing? His words had a certain flair that I couldn’t quite place. “You’ll call me Farcy or Staff Sergeant. Yes?”

“Yes, Staff Sergeant,” I replied.

“So why are you here, Mouse?”

What the hell is this, twenty questions? I defaulted to the boot camp answer: “Because I was told to be, Staff Sergeant.”

“Hah,” he chuckled halfheartedly, disappointed by my formality. “Will you be coming back?”

He meant if I’d renew my contract when it was complete. I wondered if this was a trick question; in boot camp, the drill sergeants weren’t allowed to punish us for answering no, but we were on deployment. There were no rules out here. I decided hastily to trust the raptor.
“Probably not.”

“Hmm,” he said, returning his shovel to the sand. “A good choice, as long as you have a plan afterward. Do you?”

I hesitated before responding. “Yes.”

“I can smell you lying.”

The air instantly grew twenty degrees colder. “Sorry.”

“What’s your plan, Mouse?”

“I… don’t know, really. I didn’t have much of a plan when I joined, either.”

“Hmm,” he responded, letting the tip of his shovel rest in the dirt for a moment while he pondered my answer. He turned his amber eyes to look at me. “That’s how I was, too.”

“...So what did you do about it?”

“I let the recruiter talk me into a 20-year contract.”

“Fuck.”

“I know. After I realized what I had done, I sank into depression like a lot of guys do, but after a while, I learned I could take control of it. I could make it mine. So I did, and things got better once I steered the ship. I’m stuck doing this, but I do it as well as I can.” Another spade of sand powdered as it was flung from his shovel. Few of the other infantry worked with the same enthusiasm that he did.

“What’s your plan for after your contract is over?”

“I’m not sure either, but… I have plenty of time to figure that out. I want many things, but most of all, I want to be a father to my son.”

“That sounds like a fine plan, staff sergeant.”

“Farcy, please. I detest all of this formality.”

“Yeah, same. Farcy it is, then,” I responded. Farcy seemed like a good guy. He was much older than me. He looked like he was in his forties, which meant he was probably in his thirties. The Army has a way of advancing the aging process. It’s kind of like dealing with the devil in that way; you trade away your youth.

Farcy suddenly froze, and I stopped to watch him. Had he detected something? What does your reptilian nose smell? Reveal your secrets, Farcy.

He cocked his head towards me, then peeked upwards at the sky. A smile grew on his face.

He said softly: “Rain.”

Almost on cue, someone farther down the line screamed: “RAAAAAAIN!!” I pulled my Croakley’s off my face and saw the gray sky clearer. To the East, the sky was dark, and the clouds stretched down to meet the Earth. Lightning permeated the clouds, flashing brilliantly every few seconds, rivaling the sun’s light. Immediately, whooping and celebrating broke out, and I couldn’t help but smile, throw my shovel into the air, and give a “Raaain!” of my own. We had gone our whole deployment until now without rain, and the desert desperately needed it. The morale boost was palpable as everyone on the work line celebrated, and we saw the security forces joining in— one of their Browning gunners did a happy dance, jostling his heavy gear to and fro. Farcy smiled and stopped momentarily, letting the men celebrate and turning his snout to the sky, happily accepting the tiny droplets onto his face.

After a few seconds, the cheering died down, and Farcy spiked his shovel into the dirt and hopped out of the trench to address the crowd: “Welcome to monsoon season, gentlemen! Double-time it! We’re on the clock!”

The men on the line happily obliged, marking their reinvigoration by jumping on the heads of their shovels, sending them deep into the dirt below, and ravenously digging and throwing dirt into the half-full HESCO barriers. Farcy made a call over the radio, and some of the security forces soon begrudgingly joined us.

Tick.

The conditions had become unfavorable. The raindrops had grown bigger and began to come down harder. I heard the loudened thumping of the water against my helmet, and the dirt under our boots began to squelch with our steps. The sand no longer brightly reflected the sun’s rays, but instead, all colors were overcast by a gray filter as the sky began to darken.

“Don’t stop, men! We’re almost done!” Farcy shouted, reanimating the slowing workers. “Yes, staff sergeant!” Screamed an invigorated dino in the distance.

Tock.

We marched around the edge of the trench to the main gate. The ditch had filled with water rapidly, and we couldn’t finish the job. We hadn’t taken down the inner wall yet, so we were safe, but command wouldn’t be happy with Farcy’s call to pull us off. The rain had become extreme— all our gear had become weighed down by the water it absorbed, and some dinos covered their snouts from the forceful drops with their hands. A few of them, I assumed the species native to humid environments, continued to relish the rain. One spinosaurus lifted his armor from his chest, raised his snout to the sky, and shook some water off himself. He blinked with his under-eyelids with a smile as he soaked in cool water for the first time in months.

Tick.

The rain hadn’t stopped, and the Earth became softer and softer. Our boots felt like they were suction-cupped to the ground, which made walking a pain. Wet dirt had begun to coat our pants to our calves, and people started worrying. My team hastily drew out a tarp to cover the top of our barrack tent— we anticipated the rain might be here to stay.

Tock.

Runners had been appointed to move sensitive documents and gear to higher-grounded buildings, primarily the medical building, in case torrential rain turned into a flash flood. These were mainly the avian species of dinosaurs, as they weren’t as heavy and didn’t sink too deeply into the mud as they moved. And, of course, me. And with every runner, there was a battle buddy, so to Goose’s disappointment, he was roped into the mess with me.

The mud deepened and grabbed hold of our boots, dragging us into the ground. Every step sank me down to my ankles; the heavier dinos sank to their calves— some, their knees. Walking even a short distance from one building to another was a Herculean effort. The morale boost from the rain had quickly turned on its head, and no one went outside except for the skeleton crew of security forces posted up along the wall in their covered towers.

Tick.

The clouds doused the sunlight, and the base lights had turned on despite being at the height of the day. Everyone on base was preparing for prolonged, unceasing rain. Goose and I moved a heavy stack of wooden planks toward a shipping container in the corner of the base. They had been left out pending some construction project— now being discontinued until further notice. Finally, I stepped into the metal enclosure of the shipping container. Rain drummed loudly on its roof, but the luxury of standing on the solid floor made it a decent shelter.

Tock.

A hole ripped through the side of the container with a jarring crack.

“Shit!” Goose yelled, clutching his side. “I’m hit!” The sound of the rain’s drumming was suddenly muted, and it took the rest of the world with it. A bullet had punched through the wall and shot Goose. The container we were in had twelve feet of bulletproof HESCO barrier on one side and the rest of the base on the other. The shot came from the side of the container opposite the HESCO barriers. The shot came from inside the base. The enemy is inside the base.

“Oh fuck, fuck fuck,” I began to panic, pulling my rifle up and shouldering it, facing the door of the shipping container. My heartbeat thumped alone inside my head. With my left hand, I reached for my radio and lit up on the team net: “Contact! We’ve got contact! Goose is hit from inside the wire; they shot him through the fucking wall!”

“What? Where are you!?” came the response. I recognized Klepp’s voice.

“We’re in a shipping container at the— the North side of the base.” I looked over at Goose, who had his sidearm drawn, still clutching his side with his offhand and beginning to breathe heavily. I saw his red blood begin to stain the dirty floor. “He’s fucked up bad.”

“We’re coming to get you; stay there!”

“Patch yourself, Goose; I got security,” I told him. I saw his wide-eyed expression from the corner of my eye as he looked around, dropped his pistol on the floor, and began to fumble with his gear. He never paid attention during medical training.

Tick.

The sirens of the COP blared as I held my rifle on the door of the shipping container, not daring to move to close it. I waited for another shot to strike me through the wall, but it didn’t come. I knew Goose was dying behind me— his grunts and whimpers of pain were the indicators of his continued existence, but they were less and less reassuring. I couldn’t turn and help him; I had to hold the door, or else the enemy would kill us both. I could almost hear them outside, waiting hungrily to come in and finish us off. My peripheral vision began to blur— all I saw was the illuminated reticle of my optic trained shakily on the edge of the door’s opening. Its form began to glow wider as I found it harder to stay awake.

“Blue! Blue!” I heard a voice from outside yell before seeing a gloved hand wave around the edge of the open door.

Tock.

We left the shipping container with a pool of blood covering the floor and staining the edges of some of the wood we had brought in. Outside the container was a new sight: a swarm of infantry ripping open the other shipping containers nearby, watching the base’s walls for movement, and running around, causing a commotion. Rodriguez and a triceratops from another team carried Goose on a stretcher, jumping in and out of the mud that threatened to swallow their knees on their way to the medical building. I held my rifle by its grip with my right hand as I tried my hardest to follow behind. I could barely see fifteen feet in any direction through the sideways sheets of dense rain.

Tick.

The medical building was a mess— filled with random assortments of loose gear and crates saved from the water. There was barely enough room to maneuver Goose inside and lay him on one of the gurneys. Mud covered the men’s hands as they hastily stripped off Goose’s armor and belt.

Trish appeared and barked orders to the two: “Security! Now!”

The triceratops machine gunner quickly obeyed her command, but Rodriguez hesitated. “I can’t help in here?”

“Uh-” she began, “Sure— help me roll him on his side.”

Tock.

The sirens stopped. We didn’t know why.

“Hey man, you’re gonna be okay. Just a flesh wound,” I said, hovering over Goose and looking at his face.

“Rrrrgh, It fucking hurts, man,” he growled through gritted teeth.

“He’ll be alright, right? Medic? How does it look?” Rodriguez asked, his speech quickening.

Trish responded curtly: “Alright, you gotta go, man. Sorry. Out!” She raised her left arm towards the exit with a pointed finger, and Rodriguez looked at me worriedly before tracking mud on his way out the door.

Goose’s breathing grew rapid and shallow. A machine next to Goose began wailing and flashing red. Trish hastily dropped Goose’s arm off the side of the gurney and rolled up his sleeve.

“What’s your name, Specialist?” She asked.

“Denver. Kyle Denver… but my friends call me Goose. This is Mouse,” he said, gesturing to me.

Trish glanced up at me, briefly amused at learning my nickname. “Mouse is gonna stay right here. You’re gonna be fine, Goose; just stay awake for me, alright?” Thank God she wasn’t going to kick me out. He needed me here, and I needed to ensure he’d be okay.

She brought a rolling IV stand closer to us and retrieved a short catheter from the attached tray. She rubbed the inside of Goose’s elbow with her left hand while she ripped off the needle cap with her teeth.

Tick.

Farcy stepped into the room, dripping wet and covered to his thighs and elbows in dark mud. “Base is clear. It was an ND.” Someone negligently discharged through a fucking wall…?

“You got MEDIVAC?” Trish asked.

“Negative,” Farcy said. “Red air. Fucking rain…”

“An ND?” Goose spat. “Who fuckin’ shot me? I bet it was Scuz, that fuckin’ prick—” He punctuated his sentence with a roar of pain as Trish pushed more bandages into the bullet’s exit wound on his side.

“Don’t worry about that now, Goose; we’ll get his ass,” I assured him.

“Fuckin’ A right we will,” he agreed through heaving breaths as he tried unsuccessfully to manage the pain. “What did I get shot with?”

“Thirty ought-six,” Farcy answered.

Goose scoffed. “Hah… I feel better already…”

Trish glanced up at me with a quiet look of worry.

Tock.

“Abdominal distention, internal bleeding, probably looking at sepsis…” Holliday told Trish, wide-eyed. “Red air…” He had just returned from a patrol; his OCP uniform was sopping wet.

Goose’s condition had worsened. The dinosaur, who always wore a dark green plantlike hue, now looked deathly pale— almost translucent.

“Hey man, stay awake,” I said, patting Goose’s cheek. His eyes lazily widened again and focused on me. His snout hung slightly agape, compressing and inflating the thin universal oxygen mask with his weak breaths. The carfentanyl drip had him on the knife’s edge of unconsciousness, but he wasn’t in pain.

“My folks told me not to bring any scars home,” he said. His voice had reduced to a faint whisper. “I told ’em,” he paused to take another shallow breath, “if I did, it’d have a cool story.” His mouth stretched into a weak smile, and his papery plastic mask fogged with his breath.

Trish looked at me briefly as I stood over him. Her eyes were wet, and her eyebrows twitched. She wore a face of desperation, sorrow, and fear. She broke eye contact, approached his IV, and disconnected the saline tube.

“You gotta…” he said, pausing to breathe again. Trish retrieved a syringe from the IV stand’s tray that bore a black band. “...help me come up with a story…”

Trish took up his catheter and attached the syringe to it. She took hold of his enormous hand and desperately held on as if it were herself on the table. Tears fell from her face onto Goose’s uniform, and she pushed the fluid into his vein.

“A story better than this…” he whispered. His eyes glazed over and defocused, and the monitor on the wall began flashing and beeping again. The screen had a heart symbol near the bottom edge, next to which was a flashing red zero. Trish stared at his face, her body quaking as she gripped his hand.

The monitor’s beeping was the loudest sound I had ever heard. Holliday finally silenced it, and Trish collapsed beside the gurney that held Goose’s vacant body.

…

The operation room was silent. Goose’s eyes were still aimed in my direction. Their gaze froze me; I couldn’t leave my friend.

Farcy slowly stepped behind me and approached Goose’s side. He raised an ungloved hand and slowly swept the side of his palm down Goose’s face, leaving his eyelids shut.

“I’m sorry, Mouse,” he said, placing his clawed hand on my shoulder.

I heard Trish’s death rattle from the other side of the gurney. Holliday held her, crouched down near the ground. Farcy walked carefully around the gurney to their side and crouched down to meet her. Her breathing was agonal as if she, too, was now close to death. It was a pained wheezing, like a mother who had just lost her child.

The platoon sergeant broke the silence: “Everyone out.”

Holliday stood up, having surrendered Trish’s crumpled body to Farcy, and nodded to me, delivering a silent indication: Follow me.

The rain continued its downpour outside the entrance of the medical building. There was a small covered area under which we stood, barely out of the path of the rain. The covering was thicker than the metal of the shipping container’s roof, but the rain made up for that by loudly splashing into the mud around us.

Holliday sharply exhaled, and a pained expression overtook his scaled face. He brought a cigarette to his lips and sparked the lighter several times before holding a small flame just long enough to light the edge of the nicotine stick.

The rain pattered on as Holliday inhaled his smoke, then offered the cigarette to me. The world seemed less real, somehow. I was waiting to wake up from a shitty dream to hug Goose and start some shit with Alpha team again. The last time we did, it really ticked them off. I chuckled at the memory, drawing Holliday’s attention.

“What?” He asked.

The smile left my face. “Just remembered somethin’ funny,” I said, returning the cigarette to him.

“Ah… Was it about Goose?”

“…Yeah…”

He looked back to the mud before him, then out at the base. “What was it?”

I hesitated, hardly wanting to recall such a happy memory in such a dark time, but I obliged anyway.

“Well, one of our first weeks out here, somebody from Alpha tossed a dummy frag into our bunk.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember that,” Holliday recalled. There was a huge commotion on the COP at the time.

“Yeah, and Goose screamed like a girl, but that wasn’t the end of it. The next morning he woke me up at fucking zero-five hundred and was like ‘Anon, Alpha team is in chow.” Holliday chuckled.

“I was like… ‘Good for them?” I couldn’t help but laugh with Doc as I recalled the absurd tale. “He said, ‘No, come on,’ and I was like, ‘Oh great, here we go,’ but I went with him and we went into their bunk. He pulled one dude’s pillow out of its case and found an image of the dude’s girlfriend, which is what I assumed he was looking for, but he just said, ‘damn, I’m glad mine ain’t that ugly,’ and dropped it. Then he started emptying all their pillowcases, and of course he never told me shit about what his plans were, but he gave me two of them and said, ‘go fill these with sand.” Another break for laughter, and I continued. “So yeah, we replaced their pillows with sand.”

“All of them?” Holliday asked, amused.

“All of them. We hid the real pillows under a blanket in one of their bunks, made it look like a body.” Holliday and I giggled like adult schoolgirls at the memory.

Our laughing subsided, and I went on: “Alpha TL bitched out Klepp so goddamn loud…” This earned a few more chuckles out of us, but we quickly returned to reality, and the sound of the rain retook center stage.

“I needed that,” I admitted.

Holliday didn’t respond for a moment.

“He had a girlfriend…?” He asked.

I suddenly recalled the dialogue I had with Goose about her once. “Yeah. She was a stegosaurus in Delta Company. He met her stateside pre-deployment and hadn’t seen her since.” My confidence in her loyalty to him was much lower than his.

“Dude, she’s a total badass,” Goose assured me. “She benches like five hundred and handles my Browning’s recoil just like me.” A woman who could handle a machine gun and lift tons of weight was exactly Goose’s dream girl. He was a warrior through and through.

A warrior. He was here with a purpose… and he died for nothing.

His words echoed: “A story better than this.”

This: A meaningless death.

“Don’t talk like that, man,” Holliday said. Damn, muttering again; what a horrible time.

“It’s true, though, isn’t it? Someone fumbled their trigger, and now he’s going home in a box.”

The parasaur shrank back and took another draw of his cigarette without responding.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I don’t mean to take it out on you.”

“It’s alright,” he replied meekly. “I understand.”

Silence fell between us for a moment. I grew cold standing out in the rain, but it didn’t matter.

Holliday spoke up again. “You gonna be alright, Mous?”

“No, Doc. Probably not.”

A new sound caught my attention, and I turned my head to see Farcy stepping down the stairs to join us.

“Mouse,” he said, “I understand you and Kolk have some sort of personal history, yes?”

“A-firm.”

“Well… Your ‘personal touch’ may be needed.” He glanced up at the entrance to the medical building. He wants me to talk to Trish? Shit, she must be taking it hard.

“Understood, Farcy.” I began the melancholy trek inside the medical building, lazily cleaning off my boots before I entered. All the mundane stuff seemed to matter so much less. On my way in, I avoided the several mud trails from the participants of Goose’s rescue. He had been alive when they were made.

I was utterly unprepared; I didn’t know what to say to Trish. I didn’t know what Farcy expected of me, either. I hesitated before I rounded the corner of the central operation room and saw Goose’s gurney. It wasn’t him anymore; a massive black bodybag was lying atop the blood-soaked bed. Trish sat in a chair nearby, with her legs together and her hands gently clasped in her lap. They were shiny and wet— she had washed Goose’s blood from her arms and stared quietly at the floor. She sat in a chair against a wall. I took a very familiar office chair and sat in front of her. She looked up at me and seemed surprised.

“Oh, fuck,” she said, pained. “He sent you in here, didn’t he?”

“...Yeah.”

She took a deep breath and straightened herself, sitting up in her chair. She sniffled, and I noticed her face was wet and her eyes were bloodshot. Yeah, she’s fucked up. Oddly, though, she went to great lengths to hide it.

“I’m sorry, Anon, f-” Her professionalism didn’t last long before she broke into sobs before me.

I rolled my chair closer to her. “But you don’t have anything to be sorry for…?”

“I killed him,” she wailed, breaking into hysterics. She covered her face with her hands and cried louder than before.

“You… shot him?”

“No…” she said through her hands. “He wasn’t gonna make it, so… the syringe… I-” she broke into hysterics again. Her agonized breaths sounded like she’d hyperventilate herself. I needed to do something.

I put my hands on her shoulders. “Trish…” She looked at me again, shaken out of her hysteria momentarily. “Where is this coming from?”

She stared at me, unmoving, and I let silence take over. Her eyes finally broke contact with mine and stared into the room behind me as she processed my question.

Her lips parted, and more tears fell down her face. “I… I can never do anything right.”

I stayed silent. There’s a time to speak and a time to listen.

“Ever since I was a kid, I just fucked up everything I touched, and I always thought I could do better, but… I just killed someone.” Tears fell freely from her face as she spoke. “Even my mom…” she choked and took a shaky breath, “even my mom told me I’m a useless piece of shit. And she was right…”

“That’s not true,” I said.

She didn’t move. “Anon, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but please don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m not.”

“The hell you’re not!” She furrowed her brows and looked back at me. “You saw me in high school, you know better than anyone how much I fuck everything up…”

“People change, Trish. I saw you back in high school, I saw you when you apologized to me from this very seat, and I see you now. People change. You’ve changed.”

She stayed silent and retreated, looking away from me. I wasn’t done.

“High school Trish wouldn’t have sincerely apologized to her worst enemy; she would have screamed and yelled and attacked him. You didn’t kill Goose, you knew you couldn’t have saved him, so you made him comfortable. It wasn’t the easy thing, but it was the right thing, and because of that, I got to be there for him during his final moments.”

“But, I kicked out his friend…”

“He wouldn’t have helped. You did it for good reason. I know it must be hard to lose a patient; it’s the sad reality of your job, but you took it and did your best with it. You can’t beat yourself up for that.”

She looked sadly at the bodybag on the gurney. “...He was my first patient.”

Fuck…

“I’m sorry, Trish.”

“I’m sorry too, Anon; you shouldn’t have to deal with me in this state,” she said, retrieving a tissue and wiping her face with it. “You shouldn’t have to deal with me at all.”

“No way. Something tells me you’d do the same for me. Plus, I owe it to you for being a dick this morning. I’m sorry for that, too.”

She dropped her hands to her lap, bringing her tissue with them. She sat looking down and to her left, shamefully glancing up at me.

“Don’t make me ask,” she whimpered, spreading her arms.

I would’ve if you didn’t. I stood up and stepped towards her, bending down to her level and wrapping my arms around her back. She closed her arms around my shoulders and squeezed me forcefully.

I felt her neck lightly vibrate as she spoke up again: “You’re not gonna get shot, are you?”

I chuckled breathily. “Don’t plan on it, no.”

“Good,” she mumbled. “I gotta get you back to Lucy in one piece.”

“Don’t worry, Trish. Lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice.”

My sentence was punctuated by lightning striking near the base, rumbling our hearts with the thunderous sound. Trish giggled nervously at the irony, and I rubbed her back in assurance.

I hoped I wasn’t lying to her.

—

“Staff Sergeant?” I spoke up with purpose. The Platoon Sergeant sat on his bunk with his head bowed deeply, his snout almost touching his clasped hands. His head jumped up slightly at my words; the luminous amber eye on the side of his head came unveiled by his scales, and it focused on me. Anger had carried my feet through the hostile slop that now made up the base’s grounds, and I had found my way to Farcy’s barrack.

Having recognized me, he lifted his head. “How are you holding up?” He spoke simply and without formalities, which caught me off guard.

“I’ll be alright, sir.” He squinted but chose to forgive my slip-up.

“What’s on your mind?” He sat up straight and unclasped his hands, letting a small chain drop and hang from his fingers. I only caught a glimpse of the cross pendant that dangled from it.

“About Goose… Who was it?” Of course, I asked who shot him. I needed to know what would happen next— that justice would prevail.

Farcy sighed. “Have a seat, please.”

I felt my ego resist abiding his request: “How dare he deny a man closure?” it screamed. It wanted answers, and it wanted them immediately. If nothing else, I knew better than refusing an NCO order. I stepped further into his abode, a territory that felt foreign to a lower enlisted such as myself, and I sat on the metal folding chair to which he commanded me.

“I’m not going to tell you who shot Denver, because it doesn’t matter.”

My chest flared up with rage at his betrayal.

He continued: “The individual who committed the ND is in holding; a transport will arrive within a few days to drive him outside the red air. He’ll be flown to Germany, then back stateside to stand trial, then he’ll go to prison.”

His answer was wholly unsurprising but simultaneously utterly unsatisfying. How can someone kill a brother and continue to be treated as a person? I wanted to hear that nothing would happen to him; at least then, I’d be justified to do something myself. I covered my face with my hands and rubbed my temples for a moment.

“How did it happen?” I asked. I barely had the energy to produce audible speech.

“The soldier slung his rifle with the safety off. He tried to retrieve it, the trigger guard got caught on a piece of kit, and he kept pulling.”

Fuck…

“The kind of mistake any of us could make,” he said, reading my thoughts. “I’m sorry your friend paid the price.”

Silence fell between us as he allowed me to process what he had told me. I deliberately brought air in deeply and let it out smoothly. Suddenly, I became acutely aware of my breathing— pulling air in and pushing it out now felt almost alien, as if it was strange for me to continue what my friend couldn’t. I wished I could tell his family he fought hard, but he never got the chance.

Farcy cut off my thoughts. “Denver’s death was a tragedy, but do not make the mistake of thinking that how a man dies matters more than how he lived. He was a warrior; all the way to the end.”

I sighed. He was right, but it didn’t make me feel better.

“Also…” he began again humbly. “Sorry for the ‘gay shit’ comment yesterday.”

I looked back up at him. “What?”

“You and Denver, in that tent with the ammo box.” He took a swig from the already-opened stainless steel flask on his bed.

“Wh- huh? But…” We were doing bad stuff, I thought. You’re an NCO.

“I knew you were probably up to something, but I also knew it was nothing of that sort. I was in a sour mood because of the trip, and I let it get the better of me. A leader does not speak to his people with such contempt.”

I was speechless, partly because I had never received such a humble apology from someone who didn’t need to give me one, but also because of the rapid topic change. Farcy was… opening up to me.

“I hope you will forgive me, Mouse.”

It was too late for him to ask this of Goose.

“Uh- Of course, I completely forgot about it.”

“Thank you. One more thing,” he said, reaching behind him to the floor. “Klepp tells me that Denver would have wanted you to have this.” He held a gun in his two hands, encased securely within a polymer retention holster. He offered it to me, and I accepted it. It was a Beretta M9— Goose’s pistol. My inheritance weighed heavily in my hands— even heavier was the understanding that this was all I had left of my friend.

I heard him speak to me. “Hey, buddy. Keep it safe for me, yeah?”

If it’s the last thing I do, bro.

“Thank you, Farcy.”