Everyone in This War Is Already Dead

Chapter 1

The Archives of the Ministry of Logistics were a cathedral of silence, built from cold slab-stone and illuminated by the flickering, sterile hum of overhead glow-strips. For Aderic Vaun, this was his entire world. He spent his days buried in the stagnant debris of military bureaucracy, reconciling the ledger entries of a war machine that had been churning since before he was born.

Aderic rubbed his eyes, the skin beneath them feeling papery and tired. He pulled a fresh stack of digital manifests toward him, the holographic interface casting a ghostly blue sheen over his uniform. He was a man of patterns, of rows and columns, of the rigid, comforting truth of numbers. If a crate of synthetic nutrient paste was logged out of the central warehouse, there had to be a corresponding entry at the delivery point.

"Another late shift, Aderic?"

Aderic didn't look up as the office door creaked open. He recognized the heavy, dragging footsteps of Sergeant Miller, the night-duty clerk who spent more time drinking lukewarm coffee than filing reports.

"Just finishing the quarterly audit, Miller," Aderic replied, his voice raspy from hours of disuse. "The numbers are off again. Somebody in the procurement sector must be asleep at the terminal."

Miller leaned against the doorframe, letting out a long, weary sigh. "Man, just fudge the numbers. Who’s gonna notice a few crates of rations missing from ninety years ago? Let the ghosts eat. They aren't complaining."

Aderic tapped his stylus against the desk, his brow furrowing. "That’s exactly the problem. These aren't old discrepancies. They’re active. Someone is pulling rations for the 17th Battalion. That unit was wiped off the map during the Great Siege. Everyone knows that. They’ve been defunct for nearly a century."

"Maybe it's a glitch," Miller said, shrugging. "Tech-priests update the software, mess up the routing, and suddenly the dead get a supply drop. Forget it and go home, pal. You’re gonna burn out."

"I’ll fix it," Aderic muttered, already diving back into the interface. "I don't like loose ends."

"Suit yourself. Don’t stay too long. The cleaners get weird about the lights being on past midnight."

When Miller finally left, the silence of the archive felt heavier, pressing against Aderic’s temples. He dug into the deep-storage database, tracing the supply request back through layers of encrypted transit logs. He followed the trail of the 17th Battalion’s rations with the surgical focus that had defined his career. He bypassed three levels of security protocols—his clearance level allowed him to see much more than he probably should—and finally cracked the primary personnel file for the unit.

The screen flickered, struggling to render files that had been archived for decades. A list of names appeared: soldiers long dead, their service records marked with the obsidian seal of permanent termination.

Aderic scrolled through the names, his finger hovering over the interface. He reached the bottom of the list. His breath caught in his throat.

Vaun, Aderic. Serial Number: 88-492-V.

He stared at the screen, his pulse thudding in his ears like a drum. He leaned closer, his eyes tracing the digital ink. It wasn't just his name. It was his signature, scanned in, written in the frantic, jagged script of someone who had been signing documents under duress.

He tapped the document icon. A death certificate manifested in the air, floating in the dim room. It confirmed the demise of one Aderic Vaun on the 14th of September, ninety-two years ago. It was signed, dated, and authorized by his own hand.

"That's not possible," he whispered, the sound dying in the vast, empty room.

He was twenty-eight. He had been born in the capital, raised in the academies, and recruited into Logistics five years ago. He had no memory of the 17th Battalion. He had no memory of being dead.

The dissonance hit him like a physical blow. His rational mind—the mind that lived for order and logic—screamed that this was a forgery, a bureaucratic error, or a cruel prank. But the file didn't just contain a name; it contained a biometric thumbprint. He pressed his own thumb against the scanner on his desk, his heart hammering against his ribs.

The computer chimed, a sharp, crystalline sound. Match Confirmed. Identity verified.

Aderic stumbled back, his chair clattering to the floor. His lungs felt as though they were filling with liquid nitrogen. He looked at his hands—hands that felt young, warm, and alive—and then back at the death certificate. He had signed his own termination notice while he was supposedly dying on a battlefield a century ago.

Before he could react, the terminal groaned. The interface shifted, turning a deep, warning shade of crimson. A massive packet of data began to d******d, bypassing his security settings and locking his console.

INCOMING TRANSMISSION: PRIORITY ALPHA.

SOURCE: 17TH BATTALION COMMAND.

STATUS: ENCRYPTED. CLASSIFICATION: ETERNAL.

Aderic reached out to disconnect the console, but his fingers froze mid-air. The adrenaline surged through his veins, a sudden, sharp clarity that pushed aside the confusion. If this was a setup, it was sophisticated. If it was real, he was already standing in the crosshairs.

The transmission opened. It wasn't a text log, but an audio file, distorted by static that sounded like the screeching of metal on metal.

"Vaun," the voice on the other end cracked through the speakers. It was deep, authoritative, and carried a tone of absolute command that made Aderic’s spine stiffen involuntarily. "The rations are gone. The sector is collapsing. We’ve been waiting for you to finish your shift for ninety years. Get to the Northern Front. You’re late for the fight."

The transmission cut out. The console went dark, and a set of transit coordinates appeared on his personal terminal, followed by a digital deployment order stamped with his name and the seal of the Commander.

The weight of the order hit him. It wasn't a request. It was a binding, high-priority military mandate. If he refused, he would be court-martialed for desertion within the hour. If he accepted, he was stepping into a ghost story that he was supposedly the star of.

He stood up, his legs shaking slightly before he steadied them. He looked around the archive, the rows of cabinets suddenly feeling like tombstones. There was no way out of this through logic. The bureaucratic machine had finally caught up to him, and it was demanding his presence on a battlefield he had no business surviving.

"Fine," he whispered, his voice trembling but firm.

He gathered his gear, grabbed his identification badge, and locked the terminal. He didn't know what was waiting for him at the Northern Front, but the internal conflict that had gripped him seconds ago had vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp need for the truth.

He walked out of the office, his footsteps echoing in the corridor like the march of an invisible battalion. The doors of the Ministry of Logistics slid shut behind him, sealing away the man he had been only an hour ago. He wasn't just a clerk anymore. He was a variable in a broken equation,

and he intended to solve it—or die trying, for the second time.