The valley was a furnace of dust and cordite. Commander Robert White, the youngest to ever hold his rank in the USMC, stood at the center of a chaotic symphony of violence. This was a high-stakes joint operation: to his left, the soldiers of the national army—the local forces of the host nation—held the perimeter with desperate ferocity to reclaim their soil, while his USMC units moved with surgical precision.
"VIP is moving! Cover the flank!" Robert's voice tore through the roar of the sand-clogged wind.
The VIP, a vital member of Cyberdyne Systems, was the prize. The terrorist cell holding him in this warzone didn't just want ransom; they wanted the confidential information he carried—data that whispered of a project called Skynet. Robert didn't care about the corporate secrets; he cared about the man. Every member of Cyberdyne represented a link to Emily, his girlfriend back in the States who worked in the very same company.
The VTOL screamed overhead, its rotors kicking up a blinding grit as it touched down. As the soldiers of the national army and the Marines formed a desperate human corridor, the VIP scrambled toward the ramp.
Realising their leverage was escaping, the terrorist group launched a final, suicidal surge. A wall of lead erupted from the ruins. Robert didn't flinch. He stepped into the line of fire, a human barrier for the escaping aircraft. He felt the first rounds punch through his armor—sledgehammer blows that tore through flesh and bone. One, two, four... the impacts pushed him back, but he kept his rifle level, barking fire until the VTOL cleared the ridge.
The aircraft vanished into the haze. The mission was a success.
Robert finally hit the dirt, the ancient sand of the nation he had come to protect mixing with his own blood. Beside him, several soldiers of the national army lay still—brothers-in-arms who had fallen in the same desperate defense. Robert's breath came in ragged, wet gasps. He didn't think about his record-breaking rise through the ranks or the medals he would never wear. He thought of Emily.
"Emily..." he whispered, his breath hitching.
The scorching sun of the Middle East began to fade, turning into a cold, absolute black. Commander Robert White took his last breath, his heart slowing to a final stop as the world he knew flickered out.
******
Robert snapped his eyes open. The searing heat of the desert was gone, replaced by a biting, synthetic chill. He didn't feel the wet stickiness of his own blood anymore. He felt... cold.
He was alive.
He struggled to sit up, his heart hammering against his ribs. He was in the hollowed-out skeleton of a massive building, but it wasn't the terrorist stronghold. The walls were pulverized into grey dust, and the sky visible through the jagged ceiling was a sickly, bruised purple—choked with soot that never settled.
How? I was in the valley. I was dying, he thought, his mind racing. Who hit this place? Was it a nuke?
He realized then that he was completely naked. His skin was pale, marked only by strange, silver-white scars where the bullets had punched through him minutes—or a lifetime—ago. Shivering, he crawled through the ash, desperate for cover.
In the corner of the ruined hall, he found a body. The man looked American, his features familiar, but his uniform was a total enigma. It was a rugged, charcoal-grey tactical suit made of a heavy, synthetic weave Robert had never seen in the Corps. It looked like experimental gear, far more advanced than his own desert digitals.
Beside the corpse lay a heavy, blocky rifle. It didn't have a traditional barrel or a magazine. Instead, a small display on the side flickered with a low, pulsing red light. Next to it were several heavy canisters—ammunition that hummed with that same eerie red glow.
Robert's gaze drifted past the soldier, and his breath hitched. The room was a graveyard of metal skeletons. They weren't human. They were chrome-plated nightmares, their steel ribcages crushed under the rubble, their grinning metallic teeth frozen in a permanent snarl. Each one gripped a sleek, black weapon—different from the one the dead soldier carried.
His Marine instincts took over, suppressing the sheer terror of the unknown. He stripped the uniform from the fresh corpse; it was cold but durable, and he pulled it on over his bare skin. He grabbed the strange rifle, feeling its unnatural weight, and shoved the glowing red ammunition cells into the tactical pouches of the vest.
Before leaving, he knelt by the metal skeletons. He didn't know what they were, but he knew they were armed. He worked quickly, unloading the ammunitions from every single rifle those machines held. He stuffed the extra power cells into his kit, leaving the skeletons' weapons empty and useless behind him.
He stepped out of the ruins and into the street. The silence was absolute, broken only by the wind whistling through the hollowed skyscrapers of what looked like a dead Los Angeles.
"Emily..." he whispered, looking at the devastation.
He didn't know where he was. He didn't know when he was. He only knew that the war he had died in was nothing compared to the one he had just woken up in.