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I was weak.
I thought the irresistible tide of war would change me, forge me into something that worked. I may have fooled my...
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last piece of the puzzle I needed...
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But I never wanted to be a hero, loved by millions. Not for a minute. If I could convince the few friends I had that I was someone who could do something in this world, who could leave ...
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I was still weak, and the world was still fucked.
There were anti-war activists out there who were convinced the Mimics were intelligent creatures, and they were trying to open a line of communication with them. Ain’t democracy grand?
So long as the wind blows, I’m born again, and I die. I can’t take anything with me to my next life. The only things I get to keep are my solitude, a fear that no one can understand, and the feel of the trigger against my finger.
It’s a fucked-up world, with fucked-up rules. So fuck it.
I’ll dodge enemy bullets by a hair’s breadth.
a goddess on the battlefield, I’ll watch and learn until I can match her kill for kill. I have all the time in the world.
Nothing better to do. Who knows? Maybe something will change. Or maybe, I’ll find a way to take this fucking world and piss in...
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Rita Vrataski was a very good cat. She killed her share and was duly rewarded. I, on the other hand, was a mangy alley cat padding listlessly through the battlefield, all ready to be skinned, gutted, and made into a tennis racquet.
Waves of heat shimmered above his flattop haircut.
Ferrell finally looked up. His eyes were 20mm rifle barrels firing volleys at me from the bunkers set deep in the lines of his tanned, leathery face. I cooked under the glaring sun.
Ferrell whistled like a falling shell.
Nanobots spilling from Mimic corpses would eat the lungs out of whatever soldiers were left.
kiri-oboeru?”
“It’s an old samurai saying that means ‘Strike down your enemy, and learn.’
“Tsukahara Bokuden, Itou Itousai, Miyamato Musashi—all famous samurai in their day.
“Samurai were warriors who earned their living fighting, just like you and me.
the number is somewhere between three and five hundred. Each.
the only way to know a thing like that is to do it.
A smirk had crept across my face while he was talking and I didn’t even notice.
I could feel the heat cast by their sheer bulk. With muscles like that, I had no doubt they could reach up my ass and yank out my spine. For an instant, I felt an irrational desire to lash out against them.
A sly grin spread across my face.
eyes darted warily around the room.
“I’ve met soldiers who think they can follow in Rita’s footsteps and fail, and I’ve met some who recognize her for the prodigy she is and never even try to match her. But you’re the first person I’ve met who realizes the distance between themselves and Rita and yet is prepared to run it.”
There were only three things a soldier in the UDF did, after all: eat, sleep, and fight.
The man’s body was a wall of meat blocking my way.
Rita wasn’t the type who could turn her back on someone in trouble. Her humanity was starting to show through.
Ferrell had a saying: “Break down every second.” The first time I heard it, I didn’t understand what it meant. A second was a second. There wasn’t anything to stretch or break down. But it turns out that you can carve the perception of time
into finer and finer pieces. If you flipped a switch in the back of your brain, you could watch a second go by like frames in a movie. Once you figure out what would be happening ten frames later, you could take whatever steps you needed to turn the situation to your advantage. All at a subconscious level. In battle, you couldn’t count on anyone who didn’t understand how to break down time.
utilized the Monroe Effect.
The fear never left me. My body trembled with it. When I sensed the presence of an enemy just outside my field of vision, I could feel it crawling along my spine. Who had told me that fear had a way of seeping into your body?
But even as the fear racks my body, it soothes me, comforts me. Soldiers who get washed away in a rush of adrenaline don’t survive. In war, fear is the woman your mother warned you about. You knew she was no good for you, but you couldn’t shake her. You had to find a way to get along, because she wasn’t going anywhere.
Of course, there were only three kinds of battle to begin with: fucked up, seriously fucked up, and fucked up beyond all recognition.
My body never changed, but the OS that ran it had seen a total overhaul. I’d started as a green recruit, a paper doll swept on the winds of war. I’d become a veteran who bent the war to my will. I bore the burden of endless battle like the killing machine I’d become—a machine with blood and nerves in place of oil and wires. A machine doesn’t get distracted. A machine doesn’t cry. A machine wears the same bitter smile day in, day out. It reads the battle as it unfolds. Its eyes scan for the next enemy before it’s finished killing the first, and its mind is already thinking about the third. It
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Trapped in this fucking loop, I had no hope of falling in love. Even if I found someone who could love me in one short day, she’d be gone the next. The loop robbed me of every moment I spent with someone.
He never said a word. I didn’t know much about the other two. I etched the faces of the men I’d let die deep in my mind. In a few hours their pain would be gone, but I would remember. Like a thorn in my heart it tormented me, toughened me for the next battle.
A brilliant sun traced crisp shadows on the ground.
The sea air held a scent that snaked its way down your nose and tickled your tongue on its way to your throat.
The beautiful atoll and the flora and fauna that called it home would all share the same fate as the enemy, if everything went according to plan.
casually ignored him.
“Perish the thought.”
They were busy doing what soldiers did best, which was mocking those less fortunate than themselves.
But there’s a science here you can’t ignore. Each step up the evolutionary ladder—from single-celled organism, to cold-blooded animal, to warm-blooded animal—has seen a tenfold increase in energy consumption.” Ralph licked his lips again. “If you look at the amount of energy a human in modern society consumes, it’s ten times greater than that of a warm-blooded animal of similar size. Yet Mimics, which are supposed to be a cold-blooded animal, consume the same amount of energy as humans.”
To build their endurance, Rita’s squad practiced a standing technique from kung fu known as ma bu. Ma bu consisted of spreading your legs as though you were straddling a horse and maintaining the position for an extended period of time. In addition to strengthening leg muscle, it was an extremely effective way to improve balance.
The stifling wind tugged at her rust-red hair.
She had only met one other man whose eyes even approached the same intensity. Arthur Hendricks’s deep blue eyes had known no fear. Rita had killed him, and now those blue eyes were buried deep in the cold earth.
shared a knowing chuckle.