Frost

"Look, it's Metal 0-4," Raider chuckled, lounging lazily on the ammo boxes. "A legend. Or rather, its pitiful remains."

Frost stood at the entrance, like a ghost frozen between worlds. Black mask, mirrored glasses, not a single unnecessary movement.

The commander slapped me on the shoulder, and I almost flinched - a habit.

• He's yours now. Bring him up to speed.

“I’m not a nanny,” I muttered, squeezing the cigarette in my teeth.

At night I caught him performing a strange ritual.

We were standing in an old abandoned warehouse, the wind was blowing between the rusty beams, and Frost was sitting by a barely smoldering fire, taking apart a pistol. But not for cleaning.

There were bullets lying next to him. Not ordinary ones - he opened them, carefully pouring the gunpowder onto a piece of tarpaulin.

"What the hell?" I knocked one of them out of his hands.

He wasn't scared. He didn't even flinch. He just slowly raised his head, and in the firelight I saw my distorted reflection in his glasses.

"Lead is too light," he said. His voice was hollow, like an echo in a concrete well.

He took a cartridge case out of his pocket. When he shook it, something inside clanked - not like gunpowder, but like small fragments.

— From the explosion. Those very ones.

And then I understood.

These were the remains. Of his squad. Of those he couldn't pull out. Of those who burned in that hell.

He poured them into the cartridges.

So that they always shoot with him.