My Angel

Waking up was difficult. The ground beneath you was hard and unforgiving, scraping you as you sat up from your sprawled position. There was a ringing in your ears, a pounding in your head, and smoke stung your lungs with every breath. Everything hurt and you wanted nothing more than to pass out again. You almost gave into that urge, slowly lowering yourself back to the ground. Until you remembered where you were, and why you were there.

In an instant you were up, wide awake, and coiled to spring. You looked around the scene of chaos and death surrounding you, racking your brain to remember what happened. Your memories were hazy, all you could remember was trying to clear and area for the wounded when you were knocked off your feet by an explosion...

The sky was hazy with smoke from fires billowing in the distance. Bodies, dead and alive littered the ground. Parts of them in piles of mush. You cringed as you realized that you were stepping some. Flashes of light caught your eye, creating bright spots in your vision as the sun reflected off bullet shells. Remains of buildings lied in heaps of rubble around you. Others barely standing. The only ones that looked intact were government buildings, which were all protected by magic.

The ringing in your ears began to fade as you regained your bearing, gunshots and explosions replacing it instead. One of the bodies moved, making you jump, their uniform didn't match yours. In a flash you had whipped out your side arm, pointing it at their head. Blood splattered the ground, and the body went limp, dead from the gaping hole in their head. You tore the rifle out of their hands, placing it on your back where the magnet in your armor would hold it. More began to move in the crater caused by the explosion, sounds of pain filled the air as they regained consciousness. You grimaced when you realized only one type of person could have caused this amount destruction.

You broke into a sprint, searching for a place to hide and fix yourself. Quickly you ducked into a crumbling apartment building, locking yourself in a room. Clicking sounds echoed off the wall as you reloaded your weapons and adjusted the straps on you gear. A huff of relief left your body as you drank the cool water from your canteen, the metal looking worn down and dented. All the tech in your suit was down you soon realized, and you reached for your emergency repair kit and started working.

After a couple minutes you had managed to reactivate most of your gear, except for your left arm, which looked extremely damaged. Wires poked out of it in odd places and it looked as if a feral dog had mauled it. The radio in your helmet wasn't working either. Finally you managed to get it to work, sighing in relief as the sound of static reached your ears, placing it on your head and securing it with a strap.

"This is second lieutenant l/n does anybody copy?" The message ended with a burst of static as it always did, beeping when you had an incoming message. Hope flooded your body when you heard that beep, tears blurring your vision when you realized just how truly scared you felt being all alone. The voice of your first sergeant filled your ears, loud and booming as always.

"Lieutenant l/n! Holy hell you're alive! You were unresponsive after the bomber attacked the aid site and we had to evac immediately after," she says.

"I understand. How far has the unit gone?" you ask.

"We made it back to base. We're in the process of dressing our wounds and counting who's left,"she says, voice heavy with grief. You grimaced hearing that, knowing you must've been out for a long time for them to already be back at base.

"Do we still have troops in the area?"

"Yes ma'am, they are trying to clear the area of soldiers and get them all back to base to send in a new dispatch. Find them, and you find a transport," she explains.

"Roger I-"

The radio cuts off in a burst of static, draining of the little bit of life you had managed to breathe back into it. You curse and grip your pistol firmly, as soon as you left your hiding place all hell would break lose.

......

Blood and dirt coated your once semi-clean armor, making it now grimy and disgusting. A combination of blood, sweat, and dirt is plastered against any bits of exposed skin. You've been moving nonstop for about two hours through zones of destruction and unforgiving landscape. Rocks, debris, and bodies threatened to trip you with every step you took. Bullets from enemies have pounded into your armor, creating bruises where they hit. Of course not long after each bullet made contact against your armor you unloaded your own into their flesh, blood pooling beneath their cooling bodies. And yet after all the distance you had covered, you still hadn't seen a soul wearing your uniform.

Despair began to set in as you traveled for another hour and still saw no one. Everything in your body ached, begging you to lie down, close your eyes, and give into the darkness pulling at you. You almost gave into that feeling when your foot caught on something, and you hit the ground hard. Cuts from the ground stung your face.

It would be so easy.

Groaning you rolled onto your side, seeing what had tripped you. The attire on them matched your own, but their eyes didn't. Empty and glassy.

Dead.

A fire burned in yours, alive. While theirs had been smothered. It angered you. Slowly you clambered onto your feet, fighting your exhaustion and hopelessness.

Their life won't go to waste. I'm still alive. And I will keep fighting.

You repeated this to yourself like a mantra, gritting your teeth to fight against the pain. Then you heard it, a scream the made the hair on your arms stand on end. You barely saw it between two crumbling buildings, but there was no mistaking the colors they were.

Two wearing yours, the other two not. Your feet seemed to have a mind of their won and sprinted after them, avoiding hazards on the ground.

But suddenly the sounds were cut off, the source of it being a bunker. It was clearly a government building, it stood tall and whole. Not threatening to fall in on itself. You yanked open the heavy iron door.

Cautiously you crept in to what looked like a storage unit, closing the door behind you slowly. Crates lined the walls, all labelled and stacked neatly. Lights flickered above you , giving the concrete building an eery feel. On the other end of the room you saw stairs leading down. A sharp voice echoed off the walls of the dark stairwell. As you crept closer and began to slowly descend could you make out the voices.

"... they all left you for dead. And if you don't stop crying you will soon be too," said the sharp voice, heavy with a middle eastern accent. Finally you were at the end of the stairwell, peeking around the corner to find to people with their backs facing you, and two others on their knees.

The sharp voice belonged to a man with dark skin, wearing the uniform of the New Middle East. Beside him stood a girl, brown hair pulled into a bun which was slowly falling apart. She wore your uniform, that clearly didn't belong to her, as it was too baggy on her small frame. It might've been stolen off a dead body.

The thought made you angry, nobody should be violated like that in death.

In front of them on them on their knees, hands tied behind their back were two soldiers. They both wore your colors, the combat armor for the Marine Corps. Both wore calm expression despite the dire conditions they were being faced with. But that was the way of the Core.

One male and one female. Burn marks covered their faces and eyebrows appeared to be non existent, having been singed off by fire. Their eyes landed on you for a split second, but quickly returned to their captor, not wanting to give anything away.

"Lushka, take their weapons," the man barks. The girl answers, voice heavy with a russian accent.

"But father I'm not-"

The blow from her father send her to the hard ground.

Lushka spits out blood onto the stone floor, an angry red mark blooming on her face. Her eyes are cast down on the floor, unable to meet her fathers eyes. You reach for your pistol, bringing it down in front of you.

"You shouldn't let him treat you like that," says Lopez, indicated by the name tag on his chest. You stop moving forward, worried that him speaking might make the captors turn around. A kick in the stomach silences his next words, he grunts, doubling over from the pain.

"That's enough out of you,"the man snears.

The girl stares at Lopez, her eyes hard as she takes both the soldiers weapons with shaky hands. She takes the woman's first, her name is Villalobos, shown by her name tag.

Then she takes Lopez's, never breaking his gaze as she takes the knife strapped to his leg and the pistol at his hip. Her hands shake nonstop the hold time.

The pistol is placed in her father's waiting hand, as she still clutches the knife.

Lopez closes his eyes as the barrel of the gun is pressed against his forward. The safety clicks.

He says something in foreign language, old Arabic by the sound of it. You had to learn some before being deployed here.

He never finishes his statement. The knife stabbed into his throat makes sure of it.

Blood spurts out of the wound, onto his killers face, who's eyes are wide as the realization of what she's done hits her.

Betrayal is what he must feel from his daughter, who is now beside him, weeping and wailing in a mix of Russian and Arabic. She tries to staunch the bleeding, but instead finds a large hand closing around her throat.

The sudden movement scares her, a choked scream fills your ears and the knife is yanked out of his throat, coming down again.

And again.

By this point the soldiers have gotten a hold of the woman's knife and have cut their bindings and are now at you side, watching this scene of horror unfold before your eyes.

The man is long dead by now, but that doesn't stop Lushka. Her ear splitting screams echo off the walls, a pool of blood forms beneath her. It grows with each stab, her arm never ceases to stop coming down over and over again. Only when the click of your safety clicks does she freeze in place.

"Drop the knife," you say slowly. Her hand tightens around the handle. She eyes your weapon pointing at her torso.

"I said drop the fucking knife!" you demand.

She flinches, her fingers relinquishing her hold on the weapon. It lands with a loud clatter, she starts to stand up, moving slowly.

"Kick it toward me," you say.

She does. It spins toward you and you stop it with your boot.

"Hands up. You two, go. There's supposed to be a transport to take us to base," you say, walking toward Lushka.

She backs up as you move forward, clearly afraid of you,but there's something in her eyes. A Something that tells you this girl isn't entirely sane anymore.

"Lieutenant, that girl is a bomber. You may need help" Lopez says, eyeing the girl wearily.

A bomber.

She needs to go.

"You can help by getting to safety and attending to those burns. I will handle this," you say sternly.

Lushka seems to know what you mean and narrows her eyes.

"With all due respect ma'am, you look like shit," Villalobos says, giving you a concerned look.

You give them a glare and jut your thumb up the stairs.

"Go, that's a damn order," you say firmly.

They don't like it, but they leave.

It was the right thing to do. So why do I feel like this will go horribly wrong without them?

"He made me,"she whispers, staring down at the floor.

"Shut up!" you snap, "turn around."

She doesn't.

"He made me steal this uniform, act like one of you, and kill all of you," she says, getting louder.

And then it hits you. This is her, the person who had caused the destruction you had woken up to.

She snuck into the safe zone, dressed in the uniform of someone in the ARMY. It was a camp for the wounded, and she had killed them all with a simple touch. They were helpless people who couldn't defend themselves. People with family they wanted to see again. Now they never would.

Because of this girl.

She steps toward you.

"Back the fuck up!" You growl.

Shoot her.

"He made me this way!" she screams, gesturing at the body on the floor, " they killed my family when I was just a little girl. He trained me to be his pet! To do his bidding!" Her words do something to you. Something in you softens. She takes another step, a smile spreads over her face.

Just pull the damn trigger!

You can't.

"I hate him! I hate you! I hate myself! I hate everything!" she yells, spit flying. She steps closer. Those eyes... there's not trace of humanity in them.

She's just a child. She didn't ask for this.

" And now comes the time to pay for your sins!" She hisses. And now those eyes are finally filled with something.

Determination.

The gunshot pierces your skull and her heart, while yours drops at the hand wrapped around your unprotected arm.

A smile graces her face.

Her eyes now are filled with something you didn't expect. Bliss. Those lips part as she sees the fear in your eyes and blood running down her chest.

And she laughs.

You barley have time to scream before your arm erupts in a shower of blood, flesh, and bone.

.......................................

Don't forget to vote mi amors!

(Edited)