Sometime around 2077
The blast hit close - too close. The kind of sharp, concussive thud that you feel before you hear. My ears went hollow for a moment, everything moving like slow water, and when it cleared, the sniper was down.
He was still conscious. Half his upper vest shredded, blood spilling in sheets between his fingers. He was trying to press the wound closed, but it was deep - shrapnel entry, maybe an inch below the collarbone. I was already moving before he called out.
I dropped beside him, rifle slung, medkit open on instinct. The others were shouting, trying to get a bearing on where the grenade came from, but I tuned it out. The rest of the world goes quiet when you’ve got a man bleeding out under your hands.
“Stay still,” I said.
He winced. “Am I hit bad?”
“No. You’ll live. Even if it gets infected.”
He believed it. They always do when you say it like that - flat, calm, confident. You say it enough times, it stops sounding like a lie, even when it is.
I tore the shirt open, cleaned what I could with iodine, pushed the gauze deep, and wrapped it tight. His breath hitched every few seconds, but he didn’t panic. Good sign. Still lucid.
Outside, someone fired. We returned fire, then silence. The smell of cordite mixed with dust and iron. The medic’s perfume.
When I finished, he reached for his rifle, but I pushed it back down. “You’re out until we move. You lose more blood, you’ll drop.”
He nodded, teeth clenched. I could tell he hated sitting still. Snipers always do - they’re used to control, not helplessness.
I looked around at the others. They were scattered along a half-collapsed wall, eyes scanning rooftops for movement. Our squad wasn’t big. Eight of us now, maybe seven by the next sunrise. The kind of number where every loss cuts a little deeper, even when you stop feeling it.
The air reeked of carbon and rot. Smoke rolled low, clinging to the ground like a ghost. The sniper’s spotter was trying to keep him alert, whispering useless encouragements, pretending not to see the blood pooling through the bandage.
We waited for the next push. It didn’t come. Maybe they were regrouping. Maybe they were dead. Didn’t matter. We’d be moving soon.
I sat back against the cracked wall, fingers still sticky. My gloves were red halfway to the wrist. I wiped them on my vest out of habit, not that it made a difference.
The sniper looked at me once, eyes glassy but focused. “Thanks, Doc.”
I nodded. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t want to.
He didn’t know that the infection had already started. Didn’t know that the odds of surviving a wound like that, with what I had left in my pack, were zero.
The others didn’t ask questions. They never did anymore. They all saw me work. They saw me pull men out of worse - at least, ones who didn’t die screaming later. My word carried weight, heavier than rank.
The truth is, I stopped being a medic when my last squad got wiped out. Stopped believing in saving anyone. The only thing left is keeping them moving long enough for it to matter.
When I told him he’d live, it wasn’t comfort. It was procedure. Routine. The lie that keeps the war going.
And when you tell it long enough, it starts sounding a lot like the truth.
We moved at first light, just like always. Didn’t matter that the sniper couldn’t lift his rifle anymore. We wrapped it, strapped it to his back. He staggered between the spotter and the grenadier, one arm around each of their shoulders. The autorifleman kept watching me like he was waiting for something to boil over.
I didn’t talk. I was scanning the skyline, looking for scopes, barrels, anything that didn’t belong. You start seeing patterns where there aren’t any when you’ve been in long enough, and you learn to trust the gut over the eyes. That gut’s saved more lives than any degree or trauma cert.
Midday, we took cover in the shell of a hotel. Half the building was gone, pancaked from artillery two months ago. The rest stood like a skeleton. It gave us angles to shoot from, enough walls for cover, and a place to fall apart without being seen. Good enough.
I started redressing his wound while the others cleared rooms. His fever was climbing. Sweat poured off him even in the cold, his lips dry and cracked. He kept asking for water every ten minutes, and I kept lying, saying he just needed to wait for it to settle in his stomach. Truth was I was watching his breath rate. Shallow. Weak. He didn’t have more than a day left.
That’s when the autorifleman cornered me. Quiet, just inside a blown doorway. Grenadier hovered behind him again. I knew the look. Not defiance. Not mutiny. Just desperation wrapped in concern.
“You lied to him,” autorifleman said.
I looked at him. “Yeah.”
He frowned. “He’s not doing better. Infection’s setting in.”
“No shit.”
Silence sat between us for a second, broken only by the wind through the broken rebar and glass.
“Why?” grenadier asked. His voice was low. He wasn’t accusing me. He just wanted to understand.
“Because he’s still walking. Still thinking he’s got a shot. And as long as he thinks that, he’s useful. I tell him the truth, he gives up. The second he accepts it, he’s dead. I’ve seen it before. You can watch it in the eyes - the flicker just... go out.”
Autorifleman didn’t answer. His jaw was set.
I leaned against the wall and looked between them.
“You think I don’t care? I care more than both of you put together. I’m the one that has to hold their guts in. I’m the one that has to tell them they’re gonna be okay when I already know their blood’s cold in ten minutes. We’re out of antibiotics. Command’s not sending shit. Medevac’s a joke. So yeah, I lie. Because it's the only thing I can do.”
They didn’t move. Just watched me. Like maybe there was some version of this where I wasn’t right.
“So let me be real clear with you two,” I said, straightening. “If either of you tells him - if either of you opens your mouth and tells that kid he’s already dead - I will put a bullet in both your skulls. I will do it clean, and I’ll write it up as friendly fire, or shelling, or a fucking training accident, and command will believe me. Because they always do.”
Grenadier looked away. Autorifleman held my gaze a second longer, then turned and left.
I stayed in that doorway another minute.
It wasn’t about the lie anymore.
It was about the weight.
Every time I told one, it got heavier. But if I didn’t carry it, no one else would. And someone had to keep the squad moving. Even if it meant stepping over the dying to do it.
The wind picked up that night. Sharp, dry, carrying the stink of old blood and dust. There was no fire, no light, nothing to give away our position. We curled up in the hotel’s upper floor, near what used to be a bar. Half the ceiling was gone, stars poking through the holes in the concrete slab above. It should’ve felt peaceful. It didn’t.
I sat with my back against a load-bearing column, arms crossed, rifle beside me. Still armored. Always armored. Even when the plates dug into my spine, even when my ribs ached from the tight fit. Comfort’s a luxury. I don’t trust it. Haven’t in years.
The others slept. Or tried to. Spotter snored a little. Grenadier twitched now and then. Autorifleman kept shifting positions like he was pretending not to be awake. I didn’t care.
The sniper didn’t sleep at all.
He was laid out near the broken window frame, blanket wrapped tight, shaking like a leaf. Every now and then he coughed - wet, guttural. I’d redressed the wound before we settled. The skin around it had turned dark red, then green. I didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask.
It was around 0300 when he sat up on his elbows and looked at me.
“You ever lose someone?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
He kept staring at the ceiling. “Feels like I’m already gone.”
“You’re not.”
He didn’t argue. That was the worst part.
After my last squad got wiped out, I made a promise to try. Just try. Not for the command. Not even for the dead. For me. So I could sleep at night. So I wouldn’t have to hear them scream when I closed my eyes.
But the more I tried, the more the war bled that instinct out of me. Now, all that’s left is the routine. Hands that know what to do. A mind that knows what happens next. And a mouth that lies with precision.
I used to talk to the wounded. I used to tell stories, give them something to think about besides the pain. Now I just do the work. Wrap, press, seal, tape. Move on.
I watched the sniper for a while. His breath was rattling now. Like lungs filled with syrup. He was slipping under, piece by piece. But he didn’t ask for morphine. He didn’t beg.
He trusted me.
That’s the part that breaks you. Not the blood, not the rot, not the goddamn smell. It’s the trust. The way they look at you like you’re gonna fix it. Like you’ve got some kind of miracle stuffed in your medbag. And every time you don’t, that look burns into you a little deeper.
I stayed up all night. Couldn’t sleep. Not with that sound in his chest. Not with the knowledge that tomorrow I’d have to choose how long to let him suffer.
I kept thinking of my old squad. Lined up in body bags I zipped shut with my own hands. I didn’t cry then. Didn’t curse the war. Just kept my gloves on and moved on to the next unit like nothing happened.
You do that long enough, you stop noticing when the line gets crossed. And when you do notice, you realize you’re too far in to turn back.
The sky started to pale by the time I moved. I stood up, stretched, checked the seal on my gloves. The others were still asleep.
The sun hadn’t fully risen when it started. He’d been half-conscious since dawn, drifting between shivers and fever dreams. His skin was the color of wet ash, pulse so weak I had to press my thumb to his neck to find it. Every few minutes his body jerked from the pain, but he was too far gone to scream anymore. The others kept their distance. Nobody wanted to see what they already knew.
By noon he was awake, barely. His eyes were bloodshot, yellowed at the edges, his breath thick and sour. The infection had gone systemic. You can tell when it hits the heart, the body slows down like an engine seizing, each beat heavier and slower until it just stops. It’s a horrible thing to watch. I’d seen it enough times that the sight didn’t twist my stomach anymore. That scared me more than the war itself.
He turned his head toward me. The movement looked like it took everything he had left.
“You lied to me.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Why?” Tears tracked through the dirt on his cheeks. I could almost see the light fading in his pupils, the heart doesn’t stop cleanly, it fades like a dying signal.
“Because if I didn’t, you’d give up. If we kept fighting, one foot in front of the other, we may have had a chance to pull through and get you what we needed. I just didn’t wanna say it. It’s cause I care, kid. Not because I wanted to deceive you.”
He coughed, wet and violent, and something neon green spilled from his mouth, mixed with red. The smell hit a second later, sharp and metallic. I’d smelled that same rot before, crawling up through dead men’s chests.
He looked at it, then at me. “You just made my last moments more painful,” he croaked.
“To me, you were already dead the second that grenade blew up,” I said quietly. “I’m only here to keep you going, not to save you.”
I pulled out my sidearm, thumbed off the safety, and turned on the helmet cam. Command wanted proof of everything now, every casualty, every mercy. I steadied my hand. “I did my duty. You did yours. You’ve got a couple more hours of suffering until the infection stops your heart. I can stop it right now.”
His eyes didn’t waver. He knew what that meant. The tremor in his voice wasn’t fear anymore, just exhaustion.
“You’re a bastard,” he said. “But you didn’t just leave me to die.” He coughed again, a final rasp, then whispered, “Just do it.”
I nodded once. Pulled the slide back, chambered a round.
One shot.
The echo rolled through the ruins and was gone just as fast.
I sat there for a long time, staring at the stillness. The camera kept recording, but I didn’t stop it. Let it see. Let it all be proof that at least I kept my promise, to try. Even if trying meant lying. Even if it meant pulling the trigger myself.
There are no winners in war.
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