The world didn't end in fire.
That was the cruel joke of it.
For generations, we'd been taught to expect the apocalypse to arrive in mushroom clouds and screaming sirens, the sky splitting open as missiles traced white scars across the heavens. We imagined chaos—cities burning, governments collapsing, humanity tearing itself apart in a final, unrestrained frenzy.
Instead, the end came quietly. With pens. With signatures. With handshakes broadcast on every screen in the world. They called it The Final Accord. On paper, it was the most rational document humanity had ever produced. No nuclear weapons. No annihilation of the planet. One last, controlled conflict to determine global dominance and end all future wars. A clean solution to centuries of bloodshed.
On the ground, where people like us lived, it had a different name.
The Last War.
Every nation. Every alliance. Every shadow power that had ever pulled strings from behind curtains. All of them signed. And with those signatures came rules that were simple, elegant—and monstrous.
Every man and woman aged eighteen or older would be conscripted. No exemptions. No medical deferments. No "essential worker" clauses. No student protections. No wealth loopholes. Refusal was treason. And treason, under Article 7, triggered the Familial Compliance Clause.
If you refused to serve, your next of kin would also be conscripted. That was how they ensured obedience. Not with threats to your life—but with threats to the people you loved. That was how they got my father. And that was how they got me.
I was sixteen.
My world had been small before the Accord. Not unhappy—just narrow. Our apartment sat above my dad's auto shop, perpetually smelling of oil, old rubber, and burnt coffee. He was a quiet man, the kind who spoke with his hands more than his mouth. His palms were permanently stained with grease, no matter how much he scrubbed, and when he laughed—which wasn't often—it came out loud and sudden, like it surprised even him.
My mom existed only in fragments. A photograph on the mantel. A half-remembered lullaby. A presence defined by absence. When the officers came, it was early morning. Too early. The kind of hour where bad news always arrives. They wore gray uniforms with no national insignia—another Accord compromise. Neutral enforcement. Global authority. Their boots were silent on the stairs, their expressions flat and professional. Dad didn't argue. He didn't plead. He didn't ask questions. He just looked at me once, eyes wide with something raw and terrified, and grabbed my shoulders.
"Hide," he whispered.
He shoved me into the crawlspace behind the water heater, the narrow space barely big enough for my shoulders. Dust filled my nose. I tasted rust and mold. The door slid shut, plunging me into darkness.
"Not a sound, Eli."
I listened to boots. To voices reading charges. To my dad's breathing—fast, controlled, trying not to break. They found him in less than two minutes. He didn't fight when they cuffed him. But when one of them mentioned Article 7, his head snapped up.
"No," he said. For the first time, his voice cracked. "He's a kid."
The officer didn't even blink. "You attempted evasion," she replied. "The clause is automatic." The door to the crawlspace opened. Light flooded in.
And just like that, my childhood ended.
The processing center had once been a sports arena. You could still see the faded banners hanging from the rafters—championship years from decades ago, teams no one remembered anymore. The irony wasn't lost on anyone. It smelled like sweat, antiseptic, fear, and despair. Thousands of people moved through lines marked by glowing floor arrows. Armed military police stood everywhere, faces hidden behind visors.
They separated us immediately. Dad was pulled toward the adult intake line. He didn't look back. I don't know if he couldn't—or if he thought he'd break if he did. I was herded with the others my age. Teenagers. Some crying openly. Some staring straight ahead like sleepwalkers. Some shaking so badly they could barely stand. They called us the Youth Unit. As if a softer name made it less obscene. We were children being prepared for slaughter. The silence was the worst part. No screaming crowds. No riots. Just the low hum of terror, punctuated by the occasional sob or barked command.
I'd always loved war. Or rather, I'd loved the idea of it. On my beat-up console, I was a legend. Frontline: Total Warfare was my domain. I could orchestrate complex flanking maneuvers, predict enemy spawn points, and lead my digital squad to victory with cold, calculated efficiency. I had the brain for it, a mind that naturally mapped terrain and calculated odds. But that was pixels and sound effects. Leading real people, seeing real fear in their eyes—that was a different game entirely. My confidence, so absolute in the virtual world, evaporated in the face of real, trembling humanity. So, in the Youth Unit, I made myself small. I became part of the background noise.
The war was scheduled to commence in four months. Four months to turn civilians, and children, into something resembling soldiers. We all knew the statistics they didn't voice: most of us would be dead within the first week of actual combat. We were cannon fodder, a demographic sacrifice to appease the gods of this new, deranged world order. The terror was a constant, low hum in my veins, like a faulty electrical current.
My strategy for survival was simple: never excel. I aimed for perpetual, believable mediocrity. I hoped if I was useless enough, they'd discard me, send me home to wait until my eighteenth birthday when I could be conscripted "properly." I became a master of failure. During drill, I was always half a step out of sync. During physical training, I finished in the dead middle of the pack, never last, never first. The rifle range was my masterpiece. I learned the weight and pull of the standard-issue trainer so intimately that I could miss with pinpoint accuracy. I'd aim for the center bullseye and put my round consistently in the outer third ring, just barely on the paper. I varied my missed shots—high left, low right—so it never formed a pattern. I'd fumble reloads, sigh with visible frustration, and shrug at the drill instructors.
It earned me a nickname: "Rookie." It was whispered with a mix of pity and contempt. In the cruel ecosystem of military nicknames, it was benign. I preferred it to what others got. Sally, a tall girl who tripped over her own feet during an obstacle course, became "Klutz." Mack, who once accidentally discharged his weapon during safety briefing (thankfully into the ground), was forever "Blunder." Rookie I could live with. It fit my persona.
My true test was during strategy sims. We'd be put in VR rooms, given command of small units in generic urban and woodland scenarios. My instincts screamed, pointing out flaws in the pre-set tactics, seeing lanes of attack the program didn't. Once, when the kid "leading" our sim squad led us into a perfect ambush kill-box, my hand actually twitched to point out the alternate ridge route. I clenched my fist, bit my tongue, and died digitally with the rest of them. Stay hidden, Eli. Stay small.
The weeks bled together into a monotonous slurry of exhaustion, bad food, and controlled panic. Then, abruptly, it was over. The four months of half-baked training had evaporated. The real machinery of war engaged with a series of cold, administrative clicks.
We were assembled on the main parade ground, now swollen to ten times its original size with fresh, terrified faces. The announcement came from towering holographic banners: Unit Assignment. We were to be divided into "Wave Units," each comprising roughly 5,000 soldiers, assembled by a global lottery system they called "randomized strategic dispersion." A fancy term for a dice roll with your life.
Names and ID numbers scrolled on the screens. I watched, my heart a drum in my throat, as the Youth Unit was scattered like chaff. Sally-Klutz was assigned to Wave 7. Mack-Blunder to Wave 12. Then I saw my name: ELI J. CARVER, YU-447. ASSIGNMENT: WAVE UNIT ONE.
A cold that had nothing to do with the weather seeped into my bones. Wave One. The first wave. The tip of the spear that was meant to shatter against the anvil. The destination was displayed next, a name that carried the weight of a century's dread: CHERNOBYL EXCLUSION ZONE, UKRAINIAN SECTOR.
A collective gasp, then a suffocating silence, fell over my section of the crowd. Chernobyl. A place synonymous with invisible death. They were sending them into a poisoned, overgrown graveyard.
Processing after that was a blur. We were funneled through a series of stations. At the first, a grim-faced technician clamped a device onto my left wrist—my dominant side. It was a DTW, a Dog-Tag Watch. A slab of matte-black, hyper-durable composite. It was cold and heavy. My name, ID number, blood type, and Wave Unit were laser-etched onto its face. "This is you now," the technician said flatly. "It's rated for everything short of a direct nuclear hit. If you end up as paste, this will let them know what paste you were." He wasn't joking.
Next came the briefing on the Rules of Engagement, which were laughable in their simplicity and horror. The Final Accord had two primary dictates: 1) No tactical or strategic nuclear devices. 2) The Geneva Conventions were to be "observed in principle." In principle. The unspoken truth was that everything else was sanctioned. It was to be a global team deathmatch, with nations as teams. The only small mercy was the integration policy: each Wave Unit would be a mix of conscripted civilians like me and "professional military personnel." The term was loose. These "professionals" could be anything from grizzled veterans to nineteen-year-olds who'd simply done six months of basic training before the Accord.
Finally, we were issued our gear. It was the moment the simulation ended, and lethal reality began. A heavy forearm data-pad was strapped to my right arm, already blinking with preliminary orders and maps of the Exclusion Zone. Then came the equipment. We traded our scratchy training uniforms for the real thing. The combat uniform was a marvel of grim technology: a digitized, adaptive camouflage armored suit that felt like a second skin but could supposedly stop shrapnel and low-velocity rounds. The material was designed to blur thermal signatures, making us slightly harder to spot on infrared. The helmet was a full-head enclosure. I pulled it on, and the world snapped into a high-definition, data-rich view. A Heads-Up Display glowed to life in my vision—ammo counter, compass, biometric readouts (my heart rate was 118 bpm), and a network link. It looked like something straight out of the old Holo vids my dad and I used to watch; he'd call it an ODST's kit.
The rifle placed in my hands made the trainer feel like a toy. This was an HRM392 Designated Marksman Rifle. It was all cold, black polymer and forged alloy, a brutalist piece of machinery. It had weight, heft, intent. I recognized it from Holo: Reach—a DMR. A weapon for killing at distance. Along with it came a standard sidearm, extra magazines, and a combat knife that felt obscenely sharp.
The rest was a lesson in bleak pragmatism. A survival pack with a water filtration straw and fire-starting gel. A small bottle of radiation-blocker pills with the cheerful instruction: "TAKE ONE EVERY 12 HRS FOR DURATION OF DEPLOYMENT." A rudimentary medkit—tourniquet, clotting gauze, morphine auto-injector. And finally, three days of ration bars. Three days. The message was clear: after that, you forage, you steal, or you starve.
Holding that gear, the finality of it all crashed down. We weren't coming home. Not until it was over, one way or another. The Accord stated that once deployed, extraction was only for critical injury. And once patched up, you'd be re-inserted. We were permanent pieces on the board now. This war, we were told, would not only end all wars but would determine the hierarchy of the new world order that would rise from the ashes. The surviving leadership of the victorious nation would become the global brass. We were the chess pieces they were sacrificing to claim the board.
I made a promise to myself then, standing in that echoing hangar surrounded by the sounds of clattering gear and frightened whispers. I would not die here. My dad was out there, in some other Wave. I would see him again. I would live to be an old, boring man, to have a life that wasn't dictated by a global death sentence. The thought was a tiny, defiant flame in the vast cold.
We were loaded onto a C-5M Super Galaxy, a colossal aircraft that groaned under the weight of our war. It wasn't just soldiers; the belly of the beast held Humvees, crates of supplies, and mobile command posts. The interior was a cavern of noise and tension. I found a fold-down seat along the fuselage, the metal vibrating beneath me. I mechanically checked my gear again—DMR mags full, sidearm secure, DTW snug on my wrist.
Around me, the atmosphere was a mix of stark terror and forced bravado. A group of older conscripts, men in their forties and fifties, were holding court a few rows over. They were the "grandpas," guys who'd maybe served decades ago in forgotten conflicts. One, a man with a graying mustache and the bearing of a former sergeant, was holding a photo.
"Back in the Sandbox," he said, his voice loud to carry over the engine whine, "we had real dust. Got in everything. This fancy camo wouldn't have lasted a day." It was nostalgia as a shield, a way to pretend this was just another deployment.
His friend, a thinner man with sharp eyes, chuckled without humor. "Yeah, Sarge. And the rules were different. This… this is just a meat grinder with a treaty."
Their words washed over me. I leaned my head back against the vibrating hull, closing my eyes. The plane's engines cycled up to a deafening roar. We were moving. There was no going back. The fear was a physical thing, a tight band around my chest. But beneath it, that small flame of defiance flickered. I would not be just meat for the grinder. I had a brain they hadn't seen. I had a will they hadn't broken.
As the giant aircraft lifted off, my stomach dropping, a motto formed in my mind. It wasn't heroic. It wasn't about winning or glory. It was the bare, essential truth of my existence now, carved from the cold dread and the stubborn flame. I repeated it silently, a mantra against the roaring darkness.
Don't plan to die today.
Just today. That was all I had to get through. Then tomorrow, I'd make the same plan.
The flight was long, cold, and dark. The HUD in my helmet displayed a countdown timer synchronized with our drop zone. 06:12:17… 06:12:16… I watched the seconds bleed away, each one carrying me closer to the poisoned ground of Chernobyl. I thought of my dad, wondering which sky he was under. I thought of the video game strategies that felt like a childish fantasy now. I ran my thumb over the safety selector of the DMR, clicking it back and forth silently: Safe. Semi. Safe. Semi.
The "grandpas" had quieted down. The only sounds were the engine drone and the occasional cough or rustle of gear. Some slept, or pretended to. I just watched the timer.
Five hours in, the data-pad on my arm chimed. Incoming orders. The text scrolled across my HUD.
WAVE ONE - INITIAL INSERTION BRIEF DZ: CHERNOBYL EXCLUSION ZONE, GRID SECTOR 7-ALPHA (APPROX 10KM SW OF PRI PYAT REACTOR 4) OBJECTIVE: ESTABLISH BEACHHEAD. SECURE AND HOLD DESIGNATED LZ FOR WAVE TWO INSERTION IN 72 HRS. INTEL: ENEMY CONTACT EXPECTED. MULTIPLE NATIONS ASSIGNED TO SAME SECTOR. TERRAIN HIGHLY HAZARDOUS. RADIATION LEVELS VARIABLE BUT ELEVATED. REMEMBER: THE CONVENTIONS ARE IN EFFECT. NO QUARTER IS NOT AUTHORIZED. BUT SURVIVAL IS PRIORITY ONE. GODSPEED.
"No quarter is not authorized." A double negative that meant we could take prisoners, but we didn't have to. "Survival is priority one." That was the only real order.
The timer hit 00:30:00. A red light began to pulse in the cargo hold. The crew chiefs, clad in full gear, started moving down the lines, their voices booming over the intercom.
"Thirty minutes! Lock and load! Check your oxygen scrubbers! Rad pills on my mark!"
I fumbled the small bottle from my vest, dry-swallowed one of the chalky pills. Around me, five thousand others did the same. The sound of weapons being charged, bolts snapping forward, filled the air. A sharp, metallic symphony of impending violence.
I stood up, my legs shaky. The vibration of the plane was different now, a choppy shudder as we began our descent. The rear ramp of the Super Galaxy started to lower with a hydraulic whine. Howling wind and blinding gray light flooded in. We were in thick cloud cover.
"Stand by for drop!" a chief yelled, hand cupped over his ear to hear his comms. "It's a hot LZ! Satellites show movement all over the sector! Stick to your squad manifests! Find your unit lead on the ground!"
I hadn't even looked at my squad manifest. I tapped my data-pad. A list of nine names appeared, with designations. I was #4. RIFLEMAN. The squad leader was a "PFC J. VARGAS" – one of the "professionals." His profile picture showed a young man with a severe haircut and empty eyes.
The plane leveled out. The ramp was fully down, revealing a terrifying vista of rushing cloud and, far below, a sickly green and brown patchwork of forest and decay. Chernobyl.
"GO! GO! GO!"
The line surged forward. There were no parachutes. This was a low-altitude, powered descent. We ran for the ramp and jumped into the void. My stomach lurched into my throat. The wind screamed around me. My HUD flashed: AUTO-GUIDANCE ACTIVE. BRACE FOR LANDING.
My suit stiffened, and small maneuvering thrusters on my back and legs fired, arresting my fall. I plummeted through the cloud layer, and the ground rushed up—a nightmare landscape of skeletal trees, crumbling concrete structures, and the omnipresent, rusting hulk of the reactor complex in the distance, a dark scar on the horizon.
I hit the ground hard, knees bending, rolling as they'd drilled into us a thousand times. The impact drove the air from my lungs. I came up in a crouch, DMR already coming to my shoulder, my eyes scanning the HUD's threat detector. It was chaos. All around me, figures in identical camo were thudding to the earth. Some landed clean. Others fell awkwardly. I heard a sickening crack and a scream to my left that was abruptly cut off.
My HUD flickered, painting icons over the other soldiers—green for my Wave, yellow for unknowns. Already, yellow icons were blinking at the tree line 200 meters ahead. Enemy Wave. Someone else's first wave, hitting the same LZ. The first shots weren't the sharp crack of my DMR. They were the deeper, hollower thump of a heavy machine gun from the tree line. Tracer fire, glowing a malevolent green in the gloomy light, arced across the field, stitching a line through the chaos of landing troops. Bodies jerked and fell. Return fire erupted from our scattered ranks, uncoordinated, panicked. The noise was overwhelming—the roar of the machine gun, the sharper reports of rifles, the shouts and screams.
My training, my carefully cultivated persona of "Rookie," evaporated. Instinct, the cold, calculating instinct of a thousand virtual battles, took over. I wasn't Eli the conscript. I was a player, and this was the hardest match of my life. I scanned the tree line. The machine gun nest was the key. It was pinning down dozens of us in the open field. My HUD highlighted its position, inferring it from the tracer origin. I saw a drainage ditch, half-filled with murky water, leading off to the right, toward a collapsed service building.
"Squad! This is Vargas!" a voice crackled in my helmet comm, tight with stress. "Form on me! Grid Lambda-7!"
I saw his icon, blinking erratically. He was behind a low mound of earth, exposed. Going to him was suicide. The machine gun had that approach zeroed in.
The video game logic clicked. Flank it. Suppress it. Eliminate it.
I didn't ask for permission. I broke left, sprinting in a low crouch for the drainage ditch. Mud and foul water splashed up to my knees. Tracer fire zipped overhead, close enough I felt the air part. I dove into the ditch, sloshing forward. My heart hammered against my ribs, but my mind was eerily calm. Distance: 150 meters. Cover: intermittent. Enemy likely has spotter.
I reached the ruined building. The wall facing the field was gone. I peered around a corroded steel beam. I had an angle. I could see the muzzle flash of the machine gun now, winking from a prepared position of sandbags and logs.
I brought the DMR up. The HUD automatically calculated range, windage, and the faint, worrying flicker of a radiation hotspot nearby. I exhaled, half of it. My finger took up the slack on the trigger. The world narrowed to the circle of my scope, the flashing muzzle, the hint of a helmet behind it.
'Don't plan to die today'... I fired.
The report was loud, even in the general din. The muzzle flash in my scope vanished. The stream of green tracers ceased. A hit. Maybe the gunner, maybe the weapon. It didn't matter. It was suppressed.
"Machine gun down!" Vargas's voice shouted over the comm, a note of shock in it. "Who did that? Good shot! Now push! Push to the tree line!"
A ragged cheer went up. Green icons began to move forward, firing as they advanced. I didn't move. I scanned. The spotter. Where was the spotter? My eyes caught movement—a figure scrambling back from a nearby tree, trying to relocate.
I led him slightly, breathed, and fired again. The figure sprawled forward and didn't move.
Only then did I move from my position, sliding back into the ditch and working my way toward the rally point Vargas had called. As I ran, a new icon appeared on my HUD, tagging me. It was a squad designator from Vargas. And next to it, a text message flashed, visible only to me.
VARGAS (SL): Good initiative. Call-sign change. Rookie is retired. Effective immediately. You're now 'Deadshot.' Report to my position.
I skidded into cover beside Vargas and three other panting squad members. He looked at me, his eyes visible through his helmet visor. They weren't empty anymore. They were assessing, calculating.
"Deadshot," he said, his voice flat. "You just saved a lot of lives. Don't make me regret that call-sign. Now, cover our advance. We're taking that tree line."
He turned and started barking orders to the others. I looked down at the DMR in my hands, still warm. The fear was still there, a constant companion. But something else was there too, something hard and sharp. I had planned not to die today. And so far, the plan was working. I raised my rifle, found a new target in the shifting chaos of the tree line, and prepared to fight for the next minute, the next hour. The Last War had begun, and I had just stepped out of the shadows.