Koening

You lie on the damp, broken ground. Water soaks through the fabric of your clothes, soaks into your skin, filling every fold, every crease, until the cold reaches your very core. Above you, the dark sky is pockmarked with raindrops that fall on your face, mixing with the warm, sticky blood trickling down your forehead.

You struggle to breathe. Something inside your chest grinds and breaks, causing a sharp pain with every attempt to fill your lungs with air. You cough—a thick, viscous taste of copper fills your mouth.

You try to move, but your body won't obey. The pain is sharp, searing, spreading across your entire side, burning every cell. Your legs... They're gone. No, they're not torn off—you've simply stopped feeling them. They exist somewhere beyond the pain, but they no longer belong to you.

Everything is blurry before your eyes, but gradually the world becomes clearer. You're sorry that your vision has cleared.

Your people are dead.

Bodies are strewn around, broken, bloodied, frozen in awkward, convulsive poses. Some clutched weapons to the last, now useless. Some lie with open eyes, staring into the empty sky, silent, motionless. You know them. You remember the voices, the laughter. Now, all that surrounds you is silence. And the rain, pouring relentlessly, washing away the dirt but unable to erase death.

Something inside is slowly crumbling. Pain? Anger? Emptiness? You don't know.

A sharp tug. Someone's hands grab you by the shoulders, pulling you forward, dragging you through mud and puddles of blood. Pain erupts in a new wave, squeezing your ribs, knocking the last of the air from your lungs. You don't resist. You can't.

Through the veil of vision, you raise your head.

Koenig.

The enemy colonel. The man who broke your legs. The man who killed your men. The man who is now dragging you, like a worthless doll, toward a black car, where the rest of this night likely awaits you.

His face is hidden in shadow, but you don't need light to know that look. Cold. Empty.

The same as you once had.