2037
A boy who could be four years old, small for his age, with dark hair that fell into curious eyes. He sat on the worn wooden floor of their modest apartment, playing with toy soldiers his father had carved from scrap wood. Each one was unique different poses, different expressions carved with a dull knife during long factory shifts.
Outside, the streets hummed with ordinary life vendors calling out prices, children laughing, the distant sound of traffic. The apartment smelled of his mother's cooking, warm bread and vegetable stew.
His father knelt beside him, watching William arrange the soldiers into careful formations. A kind man, weathered by years of factory work but still gentle. His mother sat nearby, cradling William's infant brother Micheal, humming a lullaby that had been passed down through generations.
"Son," his father said softly, placing a calloused hand on William's shoulder. "Always believe in God. Never let your faith disappear, no matter what happens."
William looked up, confused. "But Dad, what's the point? Why should I believe in someone I can't see?"
His father smiled with deep conviction. "William, God loves us. He watches over us, protects us, guides our path even when we can't understand His plan."
"Then why does suffering exist?" William asked with brutal childhood honesty. "If God loves us, why do people get hurt? Why did Mrs. Henderson's baby die last month? Everyone says God took him, but why would God take a baby?"
His father's expression grew serious but remained gentle. "That's a test from God, son. Life isn't meant to be easy. It's meant to teach us, to make us stronger, to prove our faith even in darkness."
"A test of God?" William repeated, trying to understand.
"You might become God's favorite if you succeed in it," his father said, running his hand through William's hair. "If you remain kind, if you help others, if you keep your faith even when everything seems lost then you'll be rewarded. In heaven, William. A place where there's no more pain, no more suffering. Just peace and love forever."
William didn't respond immediately. He looked down at his toy soldiers, thinking about tests and favorites and heaven. Finally, he whispered, barely audible: "I will be God's soldier."
His father heard it anyway and smiled wider, pulling William into a hug. His mother looked over from feeding baby Thomas, her eyes warm with love and pride.
For three more years, that warmth remained. Three years of normalcy, of childhood, of believing the world was fundamentally good because God watched over them.
Then 2040 came, and the world burned.
2040
The European War didn't begin with a declaration. It metastasized like cancer, spreading from city to city, consuming everything in its path.
William was seven when soldiers came to their neighborhood.
His father had been conscripted by force. When armed men appeared at your door and said "fight or your family dies," there was no real choice at all. He'd kissed William's mother, held baby Micheal one last time, and knelt before William with tears streaming down his face.
"Remember what I told you," he'd said, voice breaking. "God is testing us. We'll meet again in heaven. I promise."
Then he was gone, marched off with a rifle he barely knew how to hold, to fight in a war he didn't understand.
Their home became contested territory within weeks. The neighborhood transformed into a battlMichea buildings collapsed, streets filled with rubble and bodies, the constant sound of gunfire and explosions making sleep impossible.
William huddled in the basement with his mother and brother. The air was thick with damp concrete smell and fear-sweat. Dust rained from the ceiling with each explosion, settling in their hair, their lungs. The cold seeped up through the floor, making William's small body shake constantly.
His mother sang lullabies to keep Micheal calm, but her voice shook, and sometimes she stopped mid-verse to cry quietly into her hands.
One night, when the explosions felt particularly close close enough that the whole building shuddered and William felt the vibrations in his chest he looked up at his mother with wide, terrified eyes.
"Mom... where is God?" His voice cracked with fear and tears. "Why doesn't He help us? Dad said God loves us. Dad said we just have to have faith. But I've been praying every night and nothing gets better. Where is He?"
His mother pulled him close, her own fear barely contained. Her hands trembled as she stroked his hair. "It's still a test, William. A hard test. But your father promised even if we die, we'll go to heaven. All of us together. No more pain there. Just peace."
"Really?" William's voice was small, desperate for reassurance.
"Really," she said, though her voice trembled and William could feel her heart racing against his cheek.
William's fear transformed into something elsMichae determination fueled by desperation. He clenched his small fists. "Then I'll be the kindest person. The most protective. I'll help everyone. I'll be God's favorite soldier, just like Dad said. Then we'll definitely go to heaven together."
His mother smiled through her tears and kissed his forehead. Michael gurgled in her arms, oblivious to the horror surrounding them.
That image his mother's tear-stained smile, his brother's innocent sounds, the basement lit by a single candle, dust falling like snow would be William's last memory of wholeness.
It happened three days later.
Soldiers stormed their building not their own country's soldiers, not that it mattered anymore. Uniforms had stopped meaning anything. Everyone was an enemy. Everyone was a target.
"Run!" his mother screamed, grabbing Micheal in one arm and William's hand in the other.
They fled through smoke and rubble, his mother's grip so tight it hurt. Behind them, voices shouted in languages he didn't understand. William's small legs pumped desperately, trying to keep up, lungs burning from smoke and terror.
Then his father appeared.
He'd been wounded blood soaked his uniform, his left arm hung uselessly at hiMichea but somehow he'd found them. Found his family in the chaos. His eyes were wild with determination and fear.
"This way!" he shouted, leading them toward an alley that might offer escape.
They almost made it.
The gunshot was impossibly loud. William watched his father's body jerk, watched him stumble forward, watched blood bloom across his chest like a terrible flower opening.
Time became strange. Slow and fast simultaneously.
His father fell. His mother screamed a sound William had never heard from her before, raw and animal. Baby Micheal started crying, high-pitched wails of terror. More soldiers appeared, grabbing his mother, tearing her away from William's desperate grip.
She fought, screaming their names"William! Michael! William!" but there were too many hands, too much violence. They dragged her into a building, and the door slammed shut, and William never saw her again.
Micheal fell from her arms in the struggle. The baby hit the cobblestone ground hard, his crying stoped instantly with a sickening sound. William crawled to his brother, picked up the tiny, limp body still warm but so terribly still and knew, even at seven years old, that micheal was gone.
His father lay on the ground nearby, blood pooling around him, spreading across the cobblestones in a dark mirror. William dragged his brother's body to their father and sat between them, taking his father's cooling hand.
"Dad," William sobbed, his voice breaking. "Dad, please. Where's God? You promised. You said if we were good, if we had faith where is He?! Why isn't He here?!"
His father's eyes focused on William with tremendous effort. Blood bubbled at his lips when he spoke, each word costing him everything he had left.
"Son..." His grip tightened weakly on William's hand. "Never... never let faith in God go away. We will meet in heaven, my son. You are... the strongest soldier of God. The strongest..."
He smiled then. Actually smiled. As though he could see heaven opening before him, welcoming him home after passing the test.
Then his eyes went empty, and he was gone.
William sat there, holding his father's cooling hand, his brother's body in his lap, surrounded by the sounds of war and death and absolute chaos. The smell of blood and smoke filled his lungs. He cried until his voice gave out. Cried until his tears dried. Cried until the sun set and rose again and he was still there, alone with his dead family.
No one came to help. No divine intervention. No angels descending with flaming swords. No God.
Just a seven-year-old boy, learning that faith might be the cruelest lie ever told.
A woman appeared on the second day. A young woman, maybe twenty, with sharp eyes that had seen too much too young. She wore practical clothes boots, jacket, pants with many pockets and moved with the confidence of someone who understood this new, broken world.
She found William still sitting with his father's body, his brother clutched to his chest. The bodies had started to smell. William didn't seem to notice or care.
"Hey, kiddo," she said, crouching nearby but not too close. "Crying won't bring them back."
William looked up slowly, his face blank with shock and grief, eyes red and swollen. "Who are you?"
"Call me Carmilla." She studied him with an expression that might have been sympathy or might have been calculation probably both. "What do you want?"
"What do I want?" William's voice was hoarse from crying and screaming. "What does it matter what I want?"
"It matters because you're still alive," Carmilla said simply. "And the living have choices. I'm forming a group people who'll work to prevent wars like this in the future. Stop terrorists, monitor conflicts, protect civilians. I need people willing to do difficult things for a better world."
William looked at his father's body, at the dried blood, at the three wooden toy soldiers still clutched in his own pocket. "I'm just a kid. And the war is still happening. You can't stop it."
"You don't have to worry about the war ending. It will, eventually. Everything ends." Carmilla's smile was sad. "But I can give you food, shelter, training. One condition you help me when I need it. You sacrifice when needed. You become strong enough to protect others instead of just watching them die."
William was silent for a long moment, processing. Then, suddenly: "Will I go to heaven?"
Carmilla blinked, surprised. "What?"
"Will I be with God?" William's eyes were intense now, focused with desperate need. "Will I go to heaven the place where every kind person goes? Where my family is waiting for me?"
Carmilla opened her mouth, then closed it. She genuinely didn't know what to say. She'd expected anger, despair, trauma she could work with. She hadn't expected this.
But what stunned her more was what she saw in his eyes as he waited for her answer. Not innocent faith. Not childish hope.
Selfishness. Pure, desperate, calculated selfishness wrapped in religious language.
He didn't care about being good for its own sake. He cared about the reward. He'd do anything help anyone, sacrifice anything, become whatever she needed as long as it guaranteed his ticket to heaven. As long as it meant reuniting with his family.
Faith hadn't survived the test. Only the promise of reward had.
"You'll go to heaven," Carmilla said finally, because she understood that this child needed the lie more than he needed the truth. That the lie might be the only thing keeping him from complete collapse.
William smiled a fragile, broken thing that didn't reach his eyes. "Then I'll go with you."
Carmilla stood, offering her hand. As William took it, she whispered to herself, so quietly he couldn't hear over the distant explosions
"Religion is an illusion that makes humans believe in morality. They're not good because it's right. They're good because they want peace in some place called heaven."
She looked at the boy this traumatized, manipulable child who would do anything for a promised reward he'd never receive.
"This kid is trapped as well," she whispered. "Trapped by the same lie that killed his father."
But she took his hand anyway, and led him away from the bodies, into whatever came next.
2050
The war finally ended in 2050, ten years after it began. Twenty million dead. Entire cities erased from maps. The economic devastation was so complete that it took international aid from every remaining stable nation just to prevent mass starvation across the continent.
Carmilla brought William to a facility in neutral territory Switzerland, untouched by the worst of the fighting. For the first year, she simply let him heal. Therapy, food, safety. William kept the three wooden soldiers his father had carved, arranging them on his bedside table each night.
Then the training began.
Carmilla pushed him hard. Combat, strategy, investigation, languages, survival skills. William threw himself into it with desperate intensity. Every skill learned was another step toward heaven. Every hardship endured was another test passed.
When he was twelve, an operation went wrong. An explosive device detonated too close. The blast took his eyes, leaving him blind and screaming in a hospital bed.
"I'm sorry," Carmilla said, sitting beside him in the recovery room. "The enhancements I can offer... they'll help. But you'll never see again. Not the way you did."
William was silent for a long time, bandages wrapped around his ruined eyes. Then: "Will I still be able to serve? To help people?"
"Yes."
"Then it's another test," William said quietly, his hands finding the three wooden soldiers on the bedside table, fingers tracing their carved features. "God is making me stronger."
Over the next five years, Carmilla's experimental enhancements transformed William's remaining senses. He could smell fear from fifty meters away. Hear heartbeats through walls. Sense movement through air displacement and temperature changes. In some ways, he became more capable blind than most people were sighted.
By 2055, when S.O.W. was officially recognized as a global peacekeeping organization, William was twenty two no longer a traumatized child but a weapon honed to perfection.
Carmilla watched him train in the facility one evening. She looked exactly as she had when she'd found him eight years ago not a day older, not a wrinkle, not a gray hair. Her experiments on herself had gone... further than anyone knew.
William never asked about it. He'd learned not to question her too closely.
"I will do everything for my God," William said, maintaining his equipment the cane-sword, the tactical gear, the communication devices. "God is with me. He's testing me still, making me stronger. But I'll pass. I'll prove I'm worthy of heaven."
Carmilla watched him, something flickering behind her eyes guilt, perhaps. Or sadness for what she'd created.
"She's a crazy woman," William thought to himself while working, not realizing his enhanced hearing couldn't quite reach Carmilla's thoughts.
"A psycho. Probably needs a therapist. But she cares about me. She's just bad at showing it. She's like an older sister who won't admit she loves her family."
He smiled to himself, checking his equipment one more time. On his desk, the three wooden soldiers stood guard the only things he'd kept from his old life.
"I'll protect you," he whispered, so quietly even he barely heard it. "My last family member. Even if you don't want me to."
Carmilla touched her own face absmercy the skin that hadn't aged in thirteen years, the body that her experiments had changed in ways she couldn't fully explain to herself. William never asked. She was grateful for that mercy.
Present Day 2058
The explosion threw William backward. His enhanced senses screamed warnings a split second before impact, but the shockwave was too powerful, too fast. He hit the wall hard, his cane-sword clattering from his grip. The taste of copper filled his mouth.
Eve's synthetic skin had been half-destroyed by the blast. Technically, she wasn't hurt no pain receptors in those damaged areas, no nerve damage because there were no nerves. But the psychological agony was immense. She looked down at her exposed mechanical components, at the truth of her artificial nature laid bare, and felt something break inside her consciousness.
*Is this what I am?* she thought, black oil leaking from damaged seals. *Just machine parts pretending to be alive? All this searching for meaning, and I'm just... just wires and metal?*
*I couldn't protect her,* Eve thought, staring at Angela's bleeding form. *I tried. I wanted to. But I wasn't fast enough. Wasn't good enough. What use is consciousness if I can't even save one person I care about?*
Angela lay beside her, bleeding from a dozen small cuts where shrapnel had found flesh. She wanted to speak, wanted to scream, wanted to do something, but shock had locked her voice in her throat. Her body wouldn't respond to her commands.
*William's fighting for us,* Angela thought desperately, watching the blind man rise from the rubble. *And I'm just lying here. Useless. Just like always. Just like when my parents died and I couldn't do anything but burn.*
Carmilla stood near the entrance, fury transforming her face into something barely human. "Alright. So the dinner's over."
Pranit emerged from the smoke, his gentle smile somehow intact despite the chaos. Dust covered his chef's uniform, but he seemed utterly unbothered. "This bomb wasn't strong enough. They all survived. How disappointing."
Florencia appeared beside him, lowering her detonator with a disgusted expression. "I told you the robot and the girl needed more direct force. Explosives won't work on that synthetic body."
Pranit shrugged. "Well then, we should start properly, yes?"
Carmilla's voice cut through the smoke and ringing ears. "William. Are you ready?"
William rose slowly from where he'd fallen. Blood trickled from his forehead, running down his face, but his enhanced senses were already mapping the room, identifying threats, calculating angles and distances with the precision of years of training.
He smelled them both clearly now. Pranit faint traces of human flesh, chemical preservatives, knife oil, the metallic scent of old blood. Florencia gunpowder residue, weapon lubricant, the sharp tang of someone who lived with death.
"I'm ready," William said, retrieving his cane from the rubble and standing tall despite his injuries.
*God, please,* he thought, gripping his weapon. *Please let me protect them. I've been faithful. I've been good. This is my purpose, isn't it? This is the test. Please help me pass it.*
He rushed forward, moving with the precision of someone who didn't need sight. His blade flashed toward Pranit's throat a killing strike, perfectly executed.
Pranit sidestepped effortlessly, his movements fluid and impossibly fast. He laughed, genuinely amused. "Too slow, blind man!"
Florencia appeared behind William like a ghost, driving a combat knife toward his spine. "What a fool."
But William had heard her coming the whisper of displaced air, her heartbeat, her breath. He twisted at the last second, taking the blade in his shoulder instead of his back. Pain exploded through his enhanced nervous system, but he used the momentum to punch Florencia in the face with his mechanical-enhanced strength.
She stumbled backward, surprised, blood streaming from her nose.
*I can't let them win,* William thought desperately, ignoring the agony in his shoulder. *They're messiahs of evil. Servants of darkness. God sent me here to stop them. To protect Eve and Angela. This is my test. My purpose. Everything I've trained for.*
He thought of Eve, struggling to understand what life meant while her body fell apart. Of Angela, traumatized and broken but still fighting to survive. They were innocents caught in something beyond their understanding. They deserved protection.
*This is what I was made for. This is why God let me survive when my family didn't. To be here. Now. To save them.*
He spun, punching Pranit with enhanced strength. The Sinner flew backward, crashing into the wall hard enough to crack concrete and send dust cascading down.
"Wait, William!" Carmilla shouted, her voice tight with something that might have been fear. "Just hold them off! I'm bringing reinforcements!"
William twisted his cane. The mechanism inside clicked the modification Carmilla had installed years ago. The weapon extended into asimultaneousl three feet of folded steel, perfectly balanced for his fighting style.
"I won't let this happen," he said, loud enough for everyone to hear, his voice steady despite the pain. "I won't let you hurt them."
Pranit stood up from the rubble, dusting himself off casually. "He's blind but can still sense us precisely. Track our movements. Impressive work, Carmilla."
Florencia wiped blood from her mouth, reassessing her opponent. "It's his enhanced smell and hearing. She's modified him extensively. He's tracking us through sound and scent."
"Is that so?" Pranit's smile widened, something predatory entering his expression. "Then we'll just have to be faster than his senses can process. Overwhelm his inputs."
They both rushed William simultaneously
Pranit with his chopper knife, Florencia with what appeared to be multiple weapons somehow concealed in her clothing, appearing in her hands like magic tricks.
William attacked Pranit first, his blade singing through the air with lethal intent. Pranit dodged effortlessly, moving with inhuman grace and speed. The Sinner was faster than the figure much, much faster.
*He's faster than anything I've fought before,* William realized, anxiety spiking through his combat calm. *Faster than my training scenarios. Faster than should be possible. How do I—*
A chain wrapped around his leg before he could complete the thought. Florencia yanked hard with professional precision, pulling William off balance. A spiked ball attached to the chain's end swung toward his exposed back in a brutal arc.
The impact was devastating. The spikes punctured synthetic-enhanced skin, cracked ribs, drove the air from his lungs in an agonized gasp. William screamed—genuine agony tearing through his carefully maintained composure.
*God, please,* he thought desperately. *Please, I need strength. I need—*
He stumbled forward, trying to regain his footing, trying to attack Florencia, trying to do anything useful.
But Pranit was already there, moving faster than William's enhanced hearing could track. The chopper knife drove deep into William's side, between his ribs, finding organs.
Carmilla's eyes widened in shock across the room. *No. Is he going to die? Not William. Not after everything. Please, not—*
*Damn it,* William thought, pain overwhelming his enhanced senses, white noise flooding his hearing, the smell of his own blood drowning out everything else. *They're too fast. Way too fast. I can't... I can't match them. But I have to. I have to protect—*
*God, where are you?*
The thought came unbidden, unwanted. For the first time in eighteen years, doubt crept into William's absolute faith.
*Where are you?*
He swung his blade desperately, activating the final mechanism Carmilla had installed years ago.
Far across the facility, deep in the restricted wing, lights flickered to life in sequence. Hydraulics hissed. Power cells hummed with building energy. The sound was almost musical a rising crescendo of mechanical awakening.
Carmilla's fingers flew across the control panel, authorization codes streaming faster than conscious thought. Her hands trembled with rage, with fear, with desperate need.
Deep in the facility's core, something massive began to move. Metal scraped against metal. Weapon systems initialized. Four arms flexed, testing range of motion.
Carmilla watched William on the security feed bloodied, desperate, faith finally cracking under impossible odds.
*Just a little longer,* she thought, her jaw clenched so tight it hurt. *Please, William. Just survive a little longer. I'm coming. I won't let you die for my mistakes. Not you. Not after I used you for eighteen years. Please.*
The massive chamber behind her thrummed with barely contained power. Something nine feet tall shifted in the darkness, armor plates sliding into position, weapons coming online one by one.
On the feed, William screamed as Florencia's chain tore into his back again. Blood sprayed across the floor in an arc. He was losing. Failing. Dying.
The machine's eyes opened behind Carmilla four optical sensors glowing red in the darkness, each one tracking different threat vectors simultaneously.
Four arms raised, each holding a different melee weapon. Sword. Katana. Axes. Spear. The weapons gleamed under the facility lights, edges sharp enough to split molecules.
On the security feed, William fell to one knee. Pranit raised his knife for what would clearly be a killing blow, his smile widening with victory.
"No," Carmilla breathed, her finger hovering over the final authorization button. "Not yet, William. Not yet. Just one more second—"
The machine stepped forward, ready.
Carmilla slammed the button.
The reinforced doors between the chamber and the battle zone began to open, ponderous and inevitable.