"Who are you?" the man asked.
His voice didn't echo. It just hung there, thin and cold, in the half-collapsed warehouse. He sat in a dented metal folding chair, the kind every school and church owned by the dozen. It squeaked as he leaned back, the frame whining under his weight.
"How far are you willing to go?" he asked again. He didn't wait for an answer. He didn't expect one. He sat forward, the oversized plate carrier he'd taken from the armory resting heavy against his lap. His helmet, straps undone, slid low on his forehead.
"Why are you still alive?"
He turned the .380 snubnose revolver in his gloved hands, the rag around it rubbing against the cheap metal with a soft, steady squeak.
He stood suddenly, tired of the silence, and unlatched the cylinder. Five rounds. All five.
He didn't smile.
He didn't react at all.
"What the fuck are you talking about!" the man across from him finally shouted. His voice came out wrong — choked, uneven, trembling. He tried to wrench free, rope grinding against steel. The blindfold, soaking his face, dripped cold water down his cheeks like tears he refused to shed.
The questions weren't meant for him.
They were for the man holding the gun.
The soldier looked like a ghost in uniform. His tan balaclava erased his expression. His eyes were hidden behind dark, reflective lenses that revealed nothing. The shemagh wrapped around his neck looked warm, almost comfortable — but in the middle of summer, it only made him seem more wrong. More detached. More gone.
He stood there dressed like a soldier, but everything about him felt slightly misplaced, undone, out of sync.
Almost Aberrant.
The buzzing light overhead flickered. The building groaned from old Fault damage.
The silence suffocated.
"I'm going to fucking kill you!" the tied man screamed. A pause. A stutter. "You… you son of a bitch!"
The soldier exhaled slowly through his mask and threw the rag aside.
"If you don't let me go, my boys will find you," the man spat, voice cracking, "and cut off your dick. You hear me? You're dead! You're fucking dead!"
Blood streaked his wrists as he rubbed against the rope.
The threats slid right past the soldier. Didn't matter. Didn't land.
"What do you think you deserve?" he asked.
The man flinched. "Are you insane? Untie me! Who the hell even are you?!"
The soldier stayed silent, but in his head the question repeated like a heartbeat:
"Do you believe you are a good man?"
He snapped the cylinder shut. The metallic click rang through the room.
"What did you do today that made you worth the air you breathed?"
The tied man started sobbing, words breaking apart. "I'll kill you! I swear! I have people! A whole crew — they'll find you!"
He wasn't convincing anyone.
Least of all himself.
The soldier didn't answer.
The questions weren't for him.
"What would your mother think of you now?"
That one stayed.
Hung.
Echoed.
The man broke completely. "Please! Please — don't do this! I'll leave! I won't say anything! Just let me go, man — please. Please."
He knew now.
He knew.
The soldier stepped forward. The floor creaked under his boots. The snubnose felt weightless. Cheap. But enough.
He raised it and pressed the barrel to the man's forehead.
Another thought drifted up, slow and calm:
"What do you gain by letting him live?"
Nothing.
Nothing he needed.
He pulled the hammer back. The sharp click cut the air in half.
The man froze.
Stopped breathing for a moment.
"Wait — wait — please don't—"
There was no anger in the soldier's movements.
No hate.
No satisfaction.
Just the stillness of a man who had long since stopped arguing with himself.
"Why are you still alive?" he whispered in his mind.
The gun fired.
The shot burst through the warehouse, violent and final.
The man's head snapped back, blood spraying dark against the crumbling wall. His body sagged, held up only for a heartbeat before the ropes gave and he folded forward, lifeless.
The soldier holstered the revolver.
"I think I'll keep this," he murmured. "A memento."
He didn't look at the body again. He slung his assault bag over his shoulder, grabbed his rifles, and walked toward the open doorway.
Night wind pushed dust across the floor. Somewhere out in the hills, a Fault hummed — a low metallic vibration that sounded too close to breathing.
He stepped outside.
Didn't look back.
He had miles before dawn.
And only one reason left to keep walking.