00
Rashika Rao
Each soldier was marked.
An innocuous thing, really: a line of tiny black numbers inset into the soft skin of the wrist. Ticking spots of ink that counted down to a deadline none of them ever liked to think about.
No one ever came back from 00:00.
It was unclear to the roughies whether everyone had the numbers. Superior officers always wore gloves, and even the most reckless trooper wasn’t so welcoming of death as to attempt to peek under one. There was no point in checking civilians: Most of them were already dead. They were on their own, each and every one of them; and yet they were united in the knowledge that “going negative” was unavoidable. After all, no matter how hard they trained, none of them could outrun time.
So the soldiers did what soldiers do best: soldiered on through the pain and the worry, the snow and the heat, the incessant rain of oncoming fire and the battering trepidation consistently emanating from the markings on their wrists. Ceasefire, they’d all secretly pray, ready for an end to the hell- one way or another.
Cease. Just cease.