head that makes you all woozy and shaky on your feet as you stumble into the bathroom for some medicine.
I close my eyes, and listen to the battle going on around me. The reports from military rifles are sporadic, single rounds here and there, with the occasional short burst. The gunshots from civilian weaponry are getting more frequent, and it seems like they’re coming from every direction now.
“I’m hit,” someone yells on the squad channel. I’m too out of it to recognize the voice—Baker? Priest?—but there’s nothing I can do, anyway. I barely have the energy to keep breathing.
Then there’s a new sound, a thunderous roar overhead. I smell the stench of burning fuel, and a hot gust blows across my face. I hear what sounds like a giant zipper being undone, and look up to see the welcome silhouette of a Hornet-class drop ship overhead, gun turret blazing as the hulking machine descends in a graceful hover.
I fade out again for a little while. There’s the sensation of floating away from the ground. People are talking right next to my head, but it all sounds like it’s coming through a brick wall, and I don’t even try to make sense of it. I get jostled against a hard surface, and the pain in my side flares up. I squirm, but there are strong hands holding me down, and I feel the pinprick of an injector against my neck.
Then the world turns quiet around me.
Chapter 13
When I was younger, I often dreamed of falling from a great height. The part of the dream that was most terrifying was the moment of weightless feeling just after I stepped out over the abyss—the second when I realized I was going to fall, and my stomach tried to float up inside of me. The dream always felt so real that I took it for the real thing every time, and I was always terrified when I plunged toward the ground, certain that I was experiencing the last moments of my life.
I would always wake up before hitting the ground, but in a way, my mind lived through my final moments hundreds of times. I remember feeling regret every single time—for things I had done, or failed to do, and for all the things I would leave unaccomplished. Sometimes I would think of my mother, and the sorrow that would be added to her already joyless life by surviving her only child.
This time, the dream is different. When I step over the precipice, I am in my battle armor, holding my rifle, and I am fully aware that I am merely dreaming. Still, the feeling of weightlessness is real, and so is the fear that grips my mind as my body falls into the darkness below.
This time, I don’t wake up before hitting the ground. This time, I crash onto the ground after a fall that seems impossibly long. I don’t blink out of existence, which is what should happen after a fall from such a height, a body shattered in a microsecond, just enough time for the brain to register a final shock before getting turned into paste. Instead, I am aware of the impact, the shock it sends through my body, and the way it seems to jar every molecule in me out of alignment. Nobody can survive a fall like that, but here I am, flat on my back, still breathing. Nothing seems to be broken—there is no pain at all, actually—and when I try to sit up, my body obeys instantly. My armor is unscratched, and my rifle still safely cradled in the harness on my chest.
Then there’s a bright light in my face, and I flinch. I feel hands on my shoulders, holding my upper body steady, and my brain finally decides to let go of the dream and rejoin the real world.
The bright light is the end of an optical wand, and it’s a scant inch away from my eyes. I’m flat on my back, and as I try to emulate the action in my dream and sit up, I make it about half an inch before a pair of hands gently, but firmly pushes me back into the horizontal position.
“Hold up there, soldier. You can’t do that yet, ‘less you want to undo all the patchwork.”
The voice sounds jovial, but professional, someone who’s used to giving advice and equally used to having it followed. The person standing over me is a woman in a TA Class B