Secondborn

Barren trees twist deep purple in this light. I rise and walk toward the fighting. Near the former frontline trenches and bunkers, the bodies begin to pile up. Blood soaks the muddy terrain. A tide of war washed through here at some point during the night, laying waste. The carnage is everywhere. I lift my face to the sky, looking for an answer to it all. Mist on my visor is the only response.

I hear a groan near me, drop to my knees, and begin digging through mud and pieces of soft flesh. Wiping grit from armor, I see the sword-shaped emblem that indicates one of us. A wave of relief washes over me. I open his visor to see his face. He’s older, maybe in his thirties. Blood trickles from one of his nostrils.

“Help me,” he begs, his eyes unfocused.

“You’re going to be fine,” I assure him, hoping that it’s true. I fumble with the pouch clipped to my waist. My gloves are too thick, so I strip them off and clip them to my waistband. The air is cold. My fingertips turn pink. From the beacon pouch, I extract a red disc and place it on his armor. It sticks like a magnet. A red light flashes on and off, signaling a medical drone.

I begin to stand, but the soldier grasps my hand. “Please help me.”

“A med-drone is on the way. You’re going to be fine, soldier.” My voice is strained and low.

“Please,” he begs. I take his hand, holding it until the medical drone arrives, then I move back so it can work on him. Its blue laser light flashes over him, giving him a full-body scan. A robotic arm emerges from the drone, ratchets down, and sticks the soldier in the neck with a syringe full of white liquid. The soldier stops moaning and closes his eyes.

Two more claws emerge from the medical drone. One attaches to the armor of the soldier while the other stabilizes his neck and back. Together, the claws lift him from the ground while a third arm emerges and places a swatch of cloth beneath the soldier’s body. The swatch inflates into an air-pallet. The claws lower the soldier to the pallet, securing him to it with straps. The air-pallet lifts from the ground and hovers away with the soldier in tow, in the opposite direction of the battlefield. The medical drone retracts its arms and flies into the mist. I move on, pawing through bodies, checking for pulses, opening visors to check for breathing. No one is alive—not Swords, and not the Gates of Dawn soldiers in their warrior armor and unique helmets.

At midday, the sky is just as gray as it was at dawn, and the mist is no less thick. I take a sip of water from the straw in my helmet. The supply is running low. I’m not sure when, or if, they plan to pick me up.

I’m so near the battle now that the noise is no longer muffled. An arm moves in my peripheral vision. A dark-armored soldier with heavy black gates etched into his breastplate lies on the ground amid others with violet-colored Tree emblems on their breastplates. His visor is down, a swirling night sky engulfed by black holes. I’ve seen it before, like the one the Gates of Dawn leader wore when my hovercade was attacked. The one I dream about almost every night. It can’t be the same man. They’re probably just both from the Fate of Stars.

He reaches for his fusionblade, but a body bogs him down. He struggles against the dead weight as he sees me nearing him. One of his arms is useless. His armor is sliced open from his shoulder to his abdomen.

I’m close now. He tries again to grasp his fusionblade, but it’s just out of his reach. I kick it away, he stops struggling, and his head drops, his breathing coming in heavy pants from beneath his visor. My hand trembles. I have to see him.

I inch nearer, drawing my fusionblade. I hold it close to his neck. “Open your visor,” I order.

“Why?” he asks in a deep voice.

“Do it.”

The visor skips back to reveal his grimace. He squints in pain. I stare at him for a long moment. “What are you looking at? Just do it! Kill me already!” My hand trembles, and he sees it. I extinguish my fusionblade, attaching it to the weapon’s clamp on my thigh armor. “Aw, I thought you were brave, Little Sword,” he says. I unzip my pouch and fumble for a black death-drone beacon. “But you’re a robot, same as the rest of them. They programmed you not to think for yourself. To follow orders. To do as you’re told. I bet you don’t even know why you can’t think for yourself. It’s the way you were raised, indoctrinated into their society—and it is their society. It was never yours, not since the moment you took your first breath. It was always theirs.”

I set the black beacon on the side of his boot. He tries to scrape it off, but it holds firm. The ominous black light blinks on and off, calling to the nearest death drones. The ground rattles beneath us, the battle growing louder. The injured man tries again to reach his sword. He groans in anguish and tries to scrape the beacon off his boot again, but it clings with the tenacity of a parasitic insect.