Everyone in This War Is Already Dead

Chapter 6

Aderic didn’t wait for the echoes of his own footsteps to die down before he breached the command deck. The air inside was thick with the scent of ozone and the sterile, metallic tang of an overclocked processor. Commander Kesthra Morcant was where he had left her, still staring at the flickering map, her posture rigid, her hands hovering over a console that pulsed with a rhythm faster than a heartbeat.

He didn't bother with a salute. He didn't have time for the theater of rank. He crossed the floor in three long strides, his pulse hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm against his ribs. He slammed the leather-bound ledger onto the console, the heavy, archaic volume skidding across the sleek surface and knocking over a data-pad.

"Read it," Aderic said, his voice barely a rasp. He was still vibrating from the run, his lungs burning with the sharp, freezing air of the fort’s lower levels.

Kesthra glanced at the book, then at him. Her eyes narrowed, the scar on her cheek pulling taut as she leaned in. She didn't touch the book at first, as if she feared the paper would burn her skin. "What is this? You’ve been gone for hours, Aderic. Where did you get that?"

"It’s the master ledger," he snapped, his fingers trembling as he flipped the pages to the final, marked entry. "It’s not just a supply manifest, Kesthra. It’s a liquidation log. Read the execution order for the 17th. Look at the signature."

She hesitated, her gaze darting to the terminal, then down at the page. As she read, her face drained of color. The predatory, battle-hardened intensity that usually defined her features flickered, replaced by a sudden, hollow fragility. Her fingers hovered over the digital thumbprint—the scan he had left behind, a ghost of his own ambition.

"You," she whispered, her voice a fragile thing that barely broke the silence of the room. "You signed this? Why? We were your unit. We were your people."

"I don't know," Aderic lied, the words tasting like ash. He knew, but the truth was a jagged blade he couldn't afford to unsheathe while the alarms were still blaring. "I was an auditor. I was a puppet for a system that doesn't care if we’re living or dead. But I’m not signing it again. I’m going to stop it."

Before she could press him, the console groaned. The holographic display, previously flickering with static, suddenly inverted. The yellow light vanished, replaced by a blinding, aggressive violet. A high-priority transmission burst through the speakers, the audio distorted by a screech of white noise that made them both flinch.

URGENT DEPLOYMENT ORDER: ASSETS 88-492-V AND K-MORCANT. RELOCATE IMMEDIATELY TO SEKTOR D-9. OBJECTIVE: RECLAMATION OF DATA ARCHIVE 4-ALPHA. FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE SECTOR PURGE.

The transmission cut out. Silence reclaimed the room, heavier and more suffocating than before.

Kesthra stared at the screen, her hand instinctively going to the holster at her hip, even though she knew her sidearm was as empty as the sector. "Sektor D-9? That place doesn't exist. It was bombed into the crust during the third week of the Siege. There’s nothing there but craters and radiation."

"It’s a trap," Aderic said, his mind racing. "They want us out of the fort. If we’re out in the open, we’re easier to scrub."

"If we stay," Kesthra countered, her voice hardening with a grim, fatalistic resolve, "they purge the fort. Everyone, Aderic. Every soldier, every wounded man in the infirmary. You saw the list. They’re all on the schedule."

Aderic looked at the exit, then at the flickering light of the command console. The choice was a binary, cruel and absolute. "If we go, we might find a way to reach the main grid. We might find a way to kill the command signal."

Kesthra grabbed her gear, a heavy, worn pulse-rifle that looked more like a relic than a weapon. "Then we move. We don't have a choice."

The journey to Sektor D-9 was a blur of frozen, jagged landscape. The transport shuttle they commandeered was little more than a pressurized shell, rattling violently as it tore through the dense, soot-stained clouds. When they finally touched down, the ground was a nightmare of twisted rebar and pulverized concrete.

The sector was a graveyard. The landscape stretched out, a grey, barren expanse of ruins that looked as if they had been chewed by some colossal, unseen machine. There was no sign of the archive they were supposed to 'reclaim,' only the skeleton of a city that had been erased a century ago.

"Look," Kesthra murmured, stepping off the ramp. Her boots crunched on glass and charred bone. She walked toward a small, sunken pile of debris that had once been a command tent.

She knelt, her movements stiff, and began sifting through the layers of frozen, blackened soil. Her hands were trembling, not from the cold, but from a sudden, visceral recognition. She pulled out a small, metallic chain. It was a dog tag, encrusted with decades of grime.

She wiped the dirt away with her thumb. Her breath hitched, a sharp, ragged sound.

"Kesthra?" Aderic stepped closer, his heart thudding in his chest. "What is it?"

She held the tag up. The light from the dying, bruised sky caught the metal, revealing the name stamped into the surface. It wasn't a standard military issue tag. It was hers. She held it for a long, agonizing moment, then dropped it as if it were red-hot.

"This is impossible," she whispered, her eyes wide as she looked around the wasteland. "I was never here. I was at the Orvain Bridge. We were all at the bridge."

"We were everywhere," Aderic said, the realization hitting him like a physical blow. He walked to the edge of the crater, looking out at the endless, desolate horizon. He saw shadows moving in the distance—thousands of them, standing in the ruins, waiting. "We aren't soldiers, Kesthra. We’re backups. We’ve been dying here for ninety years. This isn't a battlefield. It’s a memory dump."

She stood up, her face pale, the mask of the commander slipping away to reveal the terrified girl underneath. "If we’re dead... if this is all just a cycle..."

"Then we’re the only ones who can end it," Aderic said, his resolve hardening into something cold and sharp.

Suddenly, a voice crackled over the comms-link in Kesthra’s helmet. It wasn't the metallic, synthesized voice of the Ministry. It was deep, resonant, and disturbingly familiar—the voice of a commander she had served under long ago, a man who had died in the first days of the war.

"General Morcant," the voice purred, the title sounding like a mockery. "You were never meant to find the tags. The audit is complete, and the record is being closed. I’m afraid you and your clerk are already running on empty."

"Who is this?" Kesthra shouted into her comms, her voice shaking with rage. "Identify yourself!"

"You’re late for the fight, Commander," the voice replied, followed by a low, rhythmic laughter that seemed to come from everywhere at once. "And the incinerator is already warming up. You should have stayed in the ledgers where you belong."

The comms clicked off. Aderic reached out, grabbing Kesthra’s arm as the ground beneath them began to shudder. A low, subterranean roar rippled through the ruins, and the sky above the sector began to tear open, revealing the cold, infinite black of the void.

"They aren't just erasing us," Aderic shouted over the growing, deafening roar of the collapsing reality. "They’re hitting the delete button on the entire sector."

He looked at her, his eyes locking onto hers with a fierce, desperate intensity. "Hold on. If we can reach the center of the archive coordinates, we might be able to jump the signal. We have to go, now!"

They sprinted into the ruins, the world around them flickering, dissolving into streams of raw, cascading data. They were running

out of time, and the ghost of his own past was chasing them down.