The Reborn Soldier's Revenge

The sky was burning.

Ethan Vance stared upward as another missile tore through the clouds. For one brief second, the entire battlefield turned white.

Then the explosion swallowed everything.

Heat slammed into his body. His boots left the ground. He crashed backward against the metal remains of an overturned combat vehicle, pain exploding through his ribs.

"Ethan!"

A familiar voice screamed his name. His eyes snapped open.

Through the smoke, he saw Chloe. His wife. Running toward him, silver combat armor covered in dust and blood, brown hair whipping loose from beneath her helmet.

For a moment, Ethan forgot about the war. Forgot the missiles. Forgot the enemy army advancing across the desert. All he could see was her.

"Chloe!"

He pushed himself upright, hands trembling as he activated his combat system. A blue holographic screen bloomed in front of his eyes.

[HP: 42%][POWER SHIELD: 18%][ENERGY: 31%][LEGENDARY ARMOR: ACTIVE]

"Get back to the defensive line!" he shouted.

Chloe stopped several feet away. Her face looked strange. Not frightened. Not relieved. Cold. Ethan didn't notice, not yet, because another explosion rocked the ground and a massive mechanical tank emerged from the smoke, four armored legs crushing everything in its path.

[WARNING! ENEMY TARGET LOCKED.]

Ethan raised his left arm. A translucent blue shield exploded into existence, caught the laser, and shattered.

"Damn it."

Thousands of soldiers fought across the Nevada desert below a sky that no longer looked like a sky. Digital screens floated between the clouds. Red numbers counted down across the horizon.

[GLOBAL WAR SYSTEM] [DAY 1] [SURVIVAL PHASE ACTIVE]

Nobody knew where the system had come from. Two weeks ago the world had been normal, people driving to work, kids at school. Then the sky changed, the weapons appeared, and humanity got dragged into a fight nobody signed up for.

Ethan had survived because he was good at it. Very good. His legendary armor was one of the rarest pieces of equipment in existence, his power shield strong enough to stop attacks that would kill an ordinary soldier outright.

And right now, none of it was enough.

"Ethan!" Chloe screamed again. He looked straight at her.

"What's wrong?"

She didn't answer. Her eyes moved past him, over his shoulder, and Ethan turned to find his older half-brother walking toward them.

Julian Vance.

"Julian? Where have you been. We've been looking for you for almost an hour."

Julian didn't answer either. His eyes weren't on the battlefield or the enemy. They were fixed on Ethan's armor. Then he smiled, and it wasn't a friendly smile. It was the smile of a man who'd already won something.

"You're still alive," Julian said.

"What kind of question is that?"

Julian's gaze slid to Chloe. Something passed between them, something Ethan didn't understand yet, and his heart started beating faster.

"Chloe. What's going on."

"Nothing," she said, too fast.

A soldier shouted from behind them. "Enemy reinforcements incoming!" Three robotic tanks crested the eastern ridge, drones filling the sky above them.

"We talk after the battle," Ethan said, turning back to her. "Stay behind me."

She didn't move.

"Ethan." Something in her voice stopped him cold. She was holding a small black device, and he recognized it instantly.

"Where did you get that."

Julian took a step back. Chloe's fingers tightened around the device, and Ethan's armor flashed a warning across his display.

[SYSTEM ERROR] [UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED]

"What the hell?"

[WARNING] [USER ACCOUNT COMPROMISED]

"System, emergency override!" Nothing answered him. His armor began to vibrate. He looked at Chloe's face, pale, but not surprised, and understood.

"You're doing this."

"Ethan, listen."

"You're doing this!"

Julian lifted both hands. "Calm down."

"Shut up." Ethan's voice shook, staring at the woman he'd loved for years, protected through the war, built a future for. She had the device. She had hacked his account. And she was standing next to his brother.

"No. This isn't possible."

Guilt flickered across Chloe's face, there and gone. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry? You hacked my system in the middle of a battlefield and you're sorry?"

The system flashed again. [LEGENDARY POWER SHIELD TRANSFER INITIATED.]

His armor started disappearing, piece by piece. Shield first, then the energy core, then the armor itself, data bleeding away into nothing.

"No," Ethan said, looking at his brother.

"You were always the lucky one," Julian said, stepping closer. "Father loved you because you were his real son. Mother hated you for the same reason. And Chloe."

"Shut up."

Julian glanced at Chloe, and Ethan followed the look, and something in his chest gave way. Not her. Not the woman he'd trusted with his whole life.

"Chloe. Tell me he's lying."

She said nothing. Her eyes filled with tears, and she didn't deny it.

The system flashed once more. [LEGENDARY POWER SHIELD SUCCESSFULLY TRANSFERRED.]

Gold light wrapped around Julian's body as the shield activated. He laughed, deep and delighted.

"Finally."

Ethan stared at his own empty arm. Stolen. By his wife. For his brother.

"Why," he said, barely a whisper.

"You don't understand," Chloe said.

"Then explain it."

"EXPLAIN IT."

A massive explosion rocked the ground behind them. Ethan didn't move. Couldn't.

"Because Julian is the one who deserves to survive," Chloe said, tears falling now. "You were never going to make it. None of us expected you to survive this."

His mind caught up all at once. This wasn't an accident. They'd planned it, waited for the chaos, then taken what they came for. They wanted him dead.

"How long," he said, hands shaking.

Silence.

"How long have you two been together?"

"Almost a year," Julian answered for her.

A year. Twelve months of her sleeping beside him while sleeping with his brother, twelve months of Ethan fighting to build something for people who were laughing behind his back the entire time.

"Did you ever love me?"

Chloe's lips trembled. "I did."

"No," Julian said. "She loved what you could give her."

Something in Ethan went hollow. His marriage, his family, his whole life. A lie, start to finish.

[CRITICAL WARNING] [IMPACT IN: 8 SECONDS]

He looked up. A missile, growing larger by the second. He looked at Chloe. She was already running, Julian beside her, neither of them looking back.

"Ethan!" She screamed his name on her way out the door of his life.

[IMPACT IN: 5 SECONDS]

He stood alone. No armor. No shield. No wife. No brother. Only hatred left where everything else used to be.

[IMPACT IN: 3 SECONDS]

He laughed, and he didn't know why, except that everything had finally gone clear. He'd spent his whole life earning the love of people who never wanted him. Father. Stepmother. Brother. Wife. Wasted, every year of it.

[IMPACT IN: 1 SECOND]

His eyes locked on Chloe's retreating back.

"If I get another chance," he said, "I'll make you regret surviving me."

The missile struck. Light swallowed the world, and the last thought in Ethan Vance's head wasn't survival, wasn't family, wasn't even the war.

It was revenge.

Then everything went black.

Ethan opened his eyes to darkness. He tried to move and pain shot through him, and then he heard his own voice, weak, and alive.

Alive.

He touched his face, his chest, his stomach. No burns. No broken bones. No blood.

He pushed himself upright into a room he recognized. A bed. A wooden cabinet. A window.

His old bedroom.

Impossible.

He stumbled to the mirror. A young man stared back, twenty four years old, whole, healthy. He looked at the calendar on his desk and read the date three times before his breathing stopped.

Two months before the war. Two months before the battlefield. Two months before Chloe put a device in his hands' reach and took everything he had.

He looked at the wedding photo on his desk, Chloe smiling out of the frame, and a slow, cold smile spread across his own face. He set the photo face down and walked to the window.

Outside, the world was still peaceful. People driving to work. Kids playing. Blue sky, no missiles, no war. Nobody out there knew what was coming.

Ethan did. He'd already lived it. He'd already died in it.

His phone rang. CHLOE, the screen read. He let it ring twice before he answered.

"Hello?"

"Ethan? Good morning, darling."

He closed his eyes. For one second he was back on the battlefield, watching her run, watching the missile close the distance. Then he opened them again, and there was no fear left in him at all.

"Good morning, Chloe."

"I was wondering if you were awake."

Two months. He had two months to get stronger, to make sure his family could never touch him again, to find out exactly what this war really was.

"Of course I'm awake."

"You sound different," she said.

He smiled. The future wasn't fixed anymore. He'd already changed it, and she had no idea.

"I'm better than ever."

He ended the call and looked out at the peaceful city below.

A blue holographic screen bloomed in front of him, and his smile died on his face.

[SYSTEM INITIALIZATION DETECTED] [WELCOME, PLAYER ETHAN VANCE]

He'd expected this in two months. During the war. Not here, not now.

[PREVIOUS LIFE DATA RECOVERED] [SPECIAL CONDITION DETECTED]

"What special condition?"

[PLAYER ETHAN VANCE HAS BEEN SELECTED FOR EXPERIMENTAL OBSERVATION] [OBSERVATION PERIOD: 60 DAYS] [THE EXPERIMENT WILL BEGIN EARLY]

The screen vanished. Outside, the city stayed exactly as peaceful as it had been thirty seconds ago, but Ethan couldn't hear any of it anymore.

He had come back to fix the past.

Someone else had already been waiting for him to try.