Everyone in This War Is Already Dead

Chapter 2

The transport shuttle that deposited Aderic at the edge of the Northern Front was a rusted, shuddering beast, its internal acoustics a symphony of rattling plates and pressurized gas. As the loading ramp hissed open, the environment outside hit him with the force of a physical blow. The air was thin, tasting of ozone and pulverized stone, and the sky was a bruised, permanent twilight, choked by heavy, soot-stained clouds.

Aderic stepped onto the cracked tarmac, his boots crunching against the debris of a war that refused to end. He stood before the gates of Fort Halvyr, a jagged scar of concrete and reinforced iron embedded into the side of a dead, frozen mountain. It looked less like a military outpost and more like a mausoleum.

The path leading to the entrance was a graveyard of history. Scraps of uniforms fluttered in the biting wind, caught on the rusted spikes of perimeter fencing. There were tanks, half-buried in the silt, their barrels pointed toward an enemy that hadn't been seen in years. Aderic walked through the quiet, his skin crawling. He had spent his life dealing with the numbers of this conflict, but seeing the physical reality—the sheer, stagnant scale of the waste—felt like walking through a dream where the nightmare had crystallized into reality.

He reached the main gate, where two sentries stood like statues. They were gaunt, their armor chipped and layered with decades of grime. They didn't move as he approached; their eyes remained locked on the horizon, hollow and unblinking.

"I am Logistics Clerk Aderic Vaun," he said, his voice sounding thin against the whistling wind. He held up his credentials, the digital badge glowing a defiant, sterile blue in the dim light. "I have a priority deployment order. I need to see Commander Kesthra Morcant."

The sentry on the left turned his head slowly. The movement was stiff, as if the hydraulics in his suit were failing. He looked at the badge, then up at Aderic’s face, his eyes narrowing.

"Logistics," the sentry spat, the word carrying a sneer. "You’re a long way from your desk, clerk. This isn't a supply hub. It's a furnace."

"I have orders," Aderic insisted, stepping forward, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "Priority Alpha. Encrypted. Check the internal server."

The sentry gripped his rifle tighter, his knuckles white. "We don't get signals from the capital anymore. Whatever you’ve got on that piece of plastic is probably as dead as the rest of us."

"Check it," Aderic commanded, his voice hardening, fueled by the terrifying adrenaline of his own confusion. "Or I will report the obstruction of a high-priority logistical mandate to the central authority. Do you really want to explain to the Ministry why you denied an audit officer access to a terminal?"

The sentries shared a glance. It was a brief, wordless communication, a flicker of fear that had nothing to do with Aderic and everything to do with the looming, unseen machinery they served. The gate groaned open, a screech of metal that echoed for miles.

Aderic moved inside. The interior of Fort Halvyr was a labyrinth of dim, flickering corridors lined with rows of bunks, most of them empty. He followed the signs to the Command Deck, his footsteps loud and uneven on the grate flooring.

In the center of the command room, bathed in the sickly yellow glow of a terminal, stood Commander Kesthra Morcant. She was shorter than he expected, her hair cropped close, with a scar running from her temple down to her jawline. She didn't look up as he entered, her fingers flying across a holographic interface that seemed to be struggling to maintain its form.

"Commander Morcant," Aderic began, his voice steadying.

She turned, her hand resting instinctively on the holster at her hip. Her eyes were sharp, scanning him with a predatory intensity. "You’re not supposed to be here. There are no supply lines left for this sector. We were written off ages ago."

Aderic held out his terminal, the deployment order glowing in the air between them. "I’m not here to deliver rations, Commander. I was called. Look at the signature. Look at the credentials."

Kesthra stepped forward, peering at the file. As the authorization stamp resolved, her composure cracked. Her hand dropped from her holster, her fingers trembling slightly. "This is a forgery. It has to be. The 17th Battalion doesn't exist. My people… they’re all that’s left."

"I didn't forge it," Aderic said, his throat tight. "I found it in the records. I'm as confused as you are. Why am I here, Commander?"

Kesthra looked at him, truly looking at him, and her expression shifted from suspicion to a deep, agonizing sorrow. "You don't remember, do you? You don't remember the mud, the screams, the moment the sky turned black?"

"I was born in the capital," Aderic said, though the words felt like a lie even as he spoke them. "I’ve worked in the Ministry for five years."

"Five years," she laughed, a dry, humorless sound. "You’ve been serving for a century, Vaun. You just haven't been doing it in this timeline."

Before he could press her, a commotion erupted near the barracks entrance. A small group of soldiers had gathered, drawn by the sound of an outsider. They stood in the shadows, watching Aderic with a mixture of reverence and primal dread.

One of them, a man with a face etched with the deep lines of a man who had seen too many winters, stepped into the light. His eyes widened, his jaw dropping as if he were seeing a phantom. He walked toward Aderic, ignoring the commander’s warning shout.

The veteran stopped inches away, his breath hitching in his chest. He reached out, his hand shaking, and hovered it near Aderic’s shoulder, not daring to make contact.

"We buried you," the soldier whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of awe and horror. "We laid you out in the trenches of the 17th. We saw the life leave your eyes, Lieutenant. We buried you ourselves, right under the crest of the Northern ridge. Why are you back?"

Aderic felt the cold air of the fort turn to ice in his lungs. He looked around at the faces of the soldiers, at the way they leaned in, waiting for a miracle or a curse. The logical, ordered world he had inhabited for twenty-eight years shattered, leaving nothing but the raw, terrifying truth of his own impossible existence.

He didn't have an answer. He only had the cold, heavy weight of the uniform he wore and the crushing realization that the ghos

t he was chasing wasn't someone else.

It was him.