War is never a good thing, especially when it reaches home. I was only a young man when I received my government summons to fight for the country I didn’t choose to be a part of. The taxes were too demanding, the governing parties were so deeply influenced by corruption you couldn’t trust anyone, and the violence was at an intolerably high level. No one could walk across the street without something being taken. Didn’t matter if it were a few dollars or your life or anything in between, you’d lose it.

So when I finally got my summons saying I was to try not to die fighting for the corruption, I thought it was my ticket out of this hellhole into another, but I was wrong. Basic training was certainly hell. Us cadets were the government’s dogs the way the treated us. More productive than the sun for seven hundred and thirty-one days. Ten mile runs just to see the sunrise, run back for an unsatisfactory breakfast of usually plain oatmeal and last night’s mashed potatoes, then combat training until our shadows stood directly underneath us, then strategy studying consisting of using city layouts for battle maneuvering, followed by mental manipulation against any machine, chemical, or psychic attacks, ending the day with just five hours sleep. Yep… if that wasn’t hell, I don’t want to know what it really is.

Finally, it was our time to serve. I was placed in the 212th battalion, one of eighty-seven that did not see oversees violence. But maybe that was for the better. We were told to keep our streets clear of any militia that invaded our home territory.

Finally, after two months of analyzing radio signals, we got the call we were being deployed. A sleeper cell has been ousted and was attacking from behind lines. By then I was so fueled by the enhancement foods they served us and rage against the government I just wanted to kill people, didn’t matter who, as long as they were the bad guys. My battalion was loaded into a naval sho and sent out to the front line, no outside views, no internal navigations for the troops inside, just the intercom man stating how many more clicks before launch.

When the green light lit and the Bombay doors eventually opened, none of us knew where we were. All except for me. I recognized those steeples from St. Martimam’s anywhere. I had seen them for years growing up, but never went inside. Imagine my shock when I hear over the intercoms to fire the motors and see those steeples explode in a ball of fire.

I always knew the government was corrupt, but to turn inward on itself at such a scale… they were no longer people running the world, only skin puppets for something much more terrible and terrifying than the greed of man.