The sun shone high in the sky, and the zombies smiled at me. The deranged man in a headscarf shouted, "Allahu Akbar..."
BOOM!!
"Fucking!" Breathing the hot, foul air filtered through his gas mask, Leon jumped from the vehicle arriving from Sweep Zone 2-1, Bridge A. With a side-slide and a sharp stop behind the cover at Bridge B's entrance, he landed in one smooth motion.
To the side, the old beam bridge's riveted steel bars—its paint peeling, rivets rusted—glimmered irregularly under the scorching sun. Rust dust, debris, and spray swirled with the explosion's shockwave, blurring the tragic scene of refugees on the bridge.
Shattered limbs stained the bridge crimson. Human flesh turned to pulp and mush, blood dripping steadily to the ground. The scene was horrific.
It was a suicide bombing.
Leon's gray-blue eyes scanned the bridge—broken bodies, mangled survivors, panicked refugees stampeding over each other—as he searched for the stationed allied guards.
Finally, he found them—half-buried under collapsed sandbag cover.
Their uniforms were shredded, blood splattered everywhere, even their Militech standard EXO suits destroyed. One's arm, along with the exoskeleton's hydraulic frame, was bent nearly fifty degrees—white bone protruding through torn flesh.
Another was pinned to the bridge railing by the blast, all four limbs gone, his flesh split open and blood dripping toward the river below.
Leon knew him.
A good guy from the B.S.A.A., named Nathan. He spoke Arabic, and before the battle, he had shared his plans for the future—said he'd buy a house when he went home after the war.
Unfortunately, there were bad people among the crowd.
While assisting and checking citizens, he encountered an enemy suicide bomber disguised as a refugee.
Nathan had been at the front, comforting the elderly and children, maintaining order.
"Rescue the wounded—now!"
With his hand raised, signaling "cover me," Leon was just about to throw a smoke grenade when a shout erupted: "RPG!"
Before any human could react, tat-tat-tat!—several Militech M.B.C.S. wheeled IFVs opened fire.
Their rapid-fire autocannons spat tongues of flame, a 35mm programmable shell barrage intercepting more than a dozen incoming rockets midair.
But the steel bridge's structure and the wounded civilians restricted the line of fire. Several rockets slipped through the dead angles and hit—BOOM BOOM BOOM!
Steel barricades, roadblocks, and sandbags exploded apart, sending dust high into the air.
"Oh, shit! Watch out!"
A Humvee was struck, overturned, and caught fire.
The soldier operating the roof-mounted M2 "Old Mama" .50 cal was thrown off but managed to roll away, his exoskeleton cushioning the impact.
The driver wasn't so lucky—burns, fractures, and bruises covered his body. When the medics dragged him out, he was already unconscious.
Leon didn't waste time.
After tossing the smoke grenade, he barked, "Move up! Take the door panels!" Then, pushing off with his legs, he sprinted from cover, rushing onto the bridge under the veil of smoke.
Keeping low, he darted between sandbags and debris-strewn obstacles, heading straight for the blast site.
Soon, he arrived.
Leon dropped to one knee, scanning the east-west steel bridge from his first-person view.
The bridge deck was made of crossed steel grating welded together, with an asphalt layer patterned for traction.
After the bombing, the asphalt was shattered, exposing the grating beneath.
The charred surface cracked in radial lines from the blast, damaged but not collapsed. Around it, piles of bloody remains still steamed with heat.
Nearby, the dying gasped for air; the wounded screamed; grieving voices sobbed; some panicked souls jumped into the river below. Chaos reigned.
The explosive's charge wasn't large. Leon instantly judged.
He bent down and plucked a steel ball from the sticky remains.
Steel ball bearings were poor at damaging bridges—but lethal to people. Obviously, these Fallujah madmen weren't targeting infrastructure, but people—aiming to sow chaos and maximize casualties.
As for the innocent victims? Collateral.
"Stay alert! Suppressive fire! Watch for car bombs!" Leon ordered sharply through his earpiece, bloodshot eyes narrowing as he pressed forward.
Clack, clack.
Working quickly, Leon dug out the two comrades half-buried beneath torn sandbags, then rushed to the shattered gap in the railing. Carefully, he pried apart the twisted metal and pulled down Nathan's barely recognizable, half-suspended body.
Honestly speaking, according to pre-millennial battlefield medical protocol, soldiers injured to Nathan's extent—hell, even half as bad—would've been given low-priority rescue status.
But in the new century, with Militech's cybernetic augmentation technology reaching maturity—especially the breakthroughs in anti-rejection therapy—prosthetic organ systems like artificial heart valves, vertebrae, and lungs had become standardized and affordable. Battlefield medical procedures evolved accordingly: as long as the head was intact, the body recognizable, and the patient not dead on the spot—there was still a chance to save them.
"Buddy, let's hope you pull through," Leon muttered softly as he gently yet swiftly placed Nathan onto the medic's stretcher.
While tossing a smoke grenade toward the east bridgehead to thicken the haze, Leon fired through the smoke.
The coalition troops had just tossed a volley of smart grenades—threat-sensing types.
Bang, bang! Whether by burst or suppressive fire, they targeted shuffling figures twisted in narrow alleyways and crouched silhouettes hiding behind broken walls.
The terrorists' sporadic sniper fire at the east bridgehead faltered instantly.
Click! Leon reloaded.
Suddenly, his movement froze—his hand slick with something soft and sticky. He realized it had come from earlier when he'd pried open the railing: a piece of dead, sloughed skin—burnt and torn from Nathan's body.
"Goddamn it," Leon cursed under his breath, flicking off the clinging flesh.
Suicide bombers—disgusting, vile things. One lapse in vigilance, and you were done for. Impossible to guard against.
Since the beginning of the Fallujah offensive, most coalition casualties had been from such moments—trying to protect one thing or another.
For a fleeting moment, a violent urge rose within him.
If you can't tell friend from foe... then don't bother distinguishing.
Everyone has a moral scale in their heart. Even a calm, disciplined man like Leon—between his fallen comrades and a crowd of strangers—the direction that balance tilted toward was obvious.
But when he looked again at the tragic scene before him, he sighed.
Fine. Keep saving people.
As the wounded were being evacuated—
"Cough... my... my arm..." A soldier, barely conscious despite losing an arm and pumped full of painkillers, managed to speak. He was among the lucky ones—the least injured.
"Oh, oh, easy, buddy," the medic said with forced cheer. "You'll be fine. Missing an arm or two's no big deal—just trade up for new ones. Government subsidy, Militech sponsorship—top-grade stuff."
The wounded soldier gave a twisted smile, his soot-smeared, bloodstained face contorting in a grimace uglier than a cry.
As Leon and his team scrambled to rescue, identify, and move survivors, a frantic shout pierced the chaos—
"B.O.W.!!"
A soldier yelled in alarm: "Leon! It's a Tyrant!"
Leon turned sharply, his Militech AR helmet's battlefield HUD overlay flickering active—granting full tactical awareness.
Across the city ruins beyond Bridge B, through swirling smoke and dust, several enormous, grotesquely muscular figures emerged from the rubble.
Humanoid—heads, shoulders, limbs.
It was unmistakable—the internationally infamous B.O.W. (Bio-Organic Weapon) product line: the Tyrant Series.
"ROAR!!" Their inhuman bellows sounded like the horns of an advancing army.
Tat-tat-tat! Gunfire that had been suppressed on the east bridgehead suddenly grew ferocious again.
Bullets whizzed across the steel beams, sparking off the trusses—ricochets flying. Some rounds struck fleeing civilians; screams rang out as bodies tumbled and splashed into the filthy river below, crimson spreading in the water.
The Tyrants charged straight for the bridgehead.
"These lunatics!" Leon cursed bitterly.
The bridge was packed with wounded, women, and children awaiting evacuation.
The coalition outpost at Bridge B's eastern end had already been destroyed by a truck bomb—that's why Leon had rushed here from Bridge A. Panic among refugees caused an even greater crush—families dragging luggage, desperate to cross the bridge to safety. Nathan and the other guards stationed here had been overwhelmed by the chaos, which allowed suicide bombers to slip through.
Without doubt, the Fallujah terrorists were using their own people as human shields.
And the sudden flood of refugees in this area? Almost certainly their doing.
Released hostages—on purpose.
The coalition forces, constrained by international scrutiny and the moral premise of Operation New Dawn, found themselves in a difficult position.
War correspondents were right behind them, recording everything, and every soldier wore a body cam. If they attacked recklessly, civilian casualties would tarnish their image. If they didn't fight, it would be dereliction of duty. And if they simply stood by, this entire operation would become a farce—perhaps not as disastrous as Black Hawk Down in Somalia, but still enough to ruin the reputation of this highly publicized mission.
So, they had to fight—but couldn't use heavy weapons.
Thinking this through, Leon made his decision.
"Deploy the 'door panels' right here! Watch for infected among the crowd! Fire teams—ignore the bridgehead, just suppress those bastards hiding in the ruins! Everyone else, with me—we'll take them down up close!"
With that, he sprinted out of cover.
"Move or get down!" he shouted, charging east against the flow of fleeing people.
As he advanced, the thinning smoke cleared, and his view sharpened.
Leon finally saw the Tyrants clearly.
Different models—some still wearing restraint suits, shoulder-mounted quad rocket launchers and PKM machine guns in hand; others fully unshackled, their bodies grotesquely mutated, arms transformed into monstrous claws, muscle fibers hardened like armor; some were failed prototypes, rotting and covered in writhing tendrils.
They charged forward—driving refugees ahead of them, with zombies trailing behind.
"ROAR!" The rocket-wielding Tyrant was the first to react. Its clouded eyes locked onto the steel bridge as it growled, "Kill... USAF... BSAA... MBCS..." Then it squeezed the trigger.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh—
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Rockets streaked across the open span, slamming into coalition defenses—tanks, IFVs, and bunkers erupting in flames. Shouts and curses filled the air.
One rocket, off-course or intentional, angled low—heading straight for the crowd at the ruined checkpoint.
But—
BOOM! The rocket struck a door panel and detonated.
Yes, a door panel.
The black-and-yellow Militech logo on the frame marked its identity.
A Doorframe Bot.
"Ugh..." A coalition soldier peeked out from behind the 2-meter-tall, gunmetal-gray slab, shaking his head to clear the ringing in his ears. Glancing at the line of standing Doorframe Bots, he turned to the Militech M.B.C.S. operator. "Why the hell didn't you bring those out earlier?"
"New company prototype—needs live combat testing," the operator replied.
Then—whirrr!—metal scraped against metal as the Doorframe Bot's shield split down the middle, folding back into its leg assemblies. Clang, clang! The retractable spike anchors in its heels withdrew, and the machine began walking forward with an eerie gait. It stopped farther east, re-anchored itself, unfolded its small-caliber machine guns, temperature sensors, and scanners—forming a new line of automated checkpoints.
Meanwhile, on the west bridgehead—
"Danger! Mr. Pyle, please move back—"
"No, no, no—you do your job, I'll do mine. My duty is to show the public the soldiers' heroism."
A war correspondent, wearing only a Kevlar vest, wrestled free from a soldier's grip, camera clutched tight. Sweating and panting, he scrambled to an open slope, flopped onto a sandbag, and started filming while chewing gum.
"Oh, walking doorframes? Robots? Another invention by Vela A. Russell? A new Militech military product?"
"Tyrants?! Oh my god—unbelievable! They're using civilians as human shields! This is a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe! Who can save them? The monsters are charging the bridge—wait, is that... Militech M.B.C.S. troops? They're counterattacking the bioweapons?!"
...
Bang! Bang! Coalition sniper fire sparked against the Tyrants' armored restraint suits—fibers fraying, ceramic plating shattering.
New-generation suits—reinforced with ballistic plates.
Tch. To make their B.O.W. products more marketable, it seemed even the black-market smugglers were including bonus features now.
Footsteps thundered closer. Leon narrowed his eyes, expressionless.
Closer. Closer still.
He could see the Tyrant's swollen, pulsating muscles shifting beneath the bruised, discolored skin of its face.
"Come on, sweetheart," Leon whispered, taking a deep breath. Adrenaline surged; the world seemed to slow.
"ROAR!" The Tyrant, spotting Leon and the M.B.C.S. operatives, roared.
Its PKM roared in response—
A storm of bullets shredded the air.
Now! Leon triggered the power boosters on his custom EXO suit—whoosh!—propelling himself several meters through the air, out of the firing line. In doing so, he came face-to-face with the rocket-launching Tyrant that had just vaulted onto the bridgehead.
The creature dropped its launcher and lunged, its massive fist swinging toward Leon's face with blinding speed.
Leon remained calm. One hand reached behind his back—
Bzzzt! The hum of a charged electromagnetic weapon.
Whoosh! The EXO's side thrusters fired briefly—
Then—BOOM!!