I was back in Kolkata.
Not the present-day highly militarized and guarded version of it —this was before the sirens, before the rain stopped meaning anything. The sky was filled with smoke and ashes in our lane. The plaster on the walls still peeled in slow silence, not violence.
And I was walking.
From the hallway to the balcony.
I remember the soft thudding of my soles against the uneven floor. I remember the smell of agarbatti and rust. And beside me — someone I knew. A friend. Though I couldn't see their face, just the sense of someone warm, familiar.
We stepped out into the air. The door creaked open like it always had.
And then—
I saw something.
I felt something.
My breath caught sharp in my throat.
Gasp.
The next second, I was sitting bolt upright in my bunk, chest heaving, sweat freezing against my skin like ice on a knife's edge. It was morning, or maybe just close to it. The jungle outside NU Outpost-14 buzzed with the distant scream of drones and the low static hum of a war.
But none of that mattered.
What mattered was this:
I see it all the time.
The same dream. The same balcony. The same end.
My mother's dead face.
Mouth slightly open. Eyes fixed on me.
As if asking something I still haven't answered.
I don't scream anymore when I see her.
That part of me broke a long time ago.
Now I just wake up like this — gasping for air in a world that already feels like the afterlife.
My chest was burning.
Not just from the dream — it was something deeper, dragging behind the ribs. And then, like clockwork, the voice came in. Calm, metallic, annoyingly motherly.
"S-14, you have a fever. Core temperature 100.7°F. Elevated stress markers. Please hydrate."
KLA-1.
My assigned assistant AI — short for Kinetic-Land-AI Model 1.
She was installed in my bloodstream during my transfar from Taipei transfer to the Southeast Front. Barely asked me if I wanted her. Typical NU procedure: scan, inject, optimize.
"I'm fine," I muttered, voice hoarse.
But she didn't respond this time. Maybe she knew better than to argue with me before I'd washed my face.
I threw off the thermal sheet and dragged myself toward the washroom — barely five steps away in the narrow bunk corridor. The metal floor groaned beneath my heel.
Then it crackled.
bzzt—kshhk—S-14, come in. This is General Chi. Priority Red. Repeat—Priority Red. Come in.
The walkie-talkie on the desk flared to life, the red diode blinking like a wound.
I froze, hand just inches from the bathroom latch.
I picked up the walkie, thumbed the receiver. It was still warm from static.
"S-14, come in," the voice repeated, more playfully this time.
"This is General Chi. Priority Red—your KLA says you're dying of flu."
I closed my eyes and exhaled through my nose.
"Sir. I'm awake."
"Mmm. Shame. I was hoping to leave you in peace and send Loula instead. But she'd punch me."
Typical Chi. Always dangling between commander and clown. If he hadn't lost his entire family in Da Nang during the 2029 air raids, I might've thought he was unserious. But war reshapes people into strange balances. He'd chosen humour instead of grief.
"There's been weird radio silence from Outpost 19," he continued, tone flattening.
"You're heading there. Take your pack, one drone, three tabs of flu med. No one's picking up the uplink near Hoa Lư. Could be a nest, or just another blackout. You leave in thirty."
Hoa Lư.
Vietnam's ancient capital — limestone hills, collapsed temples, once a cradle of emperors and now just dirt soaked in memory.
Outpost 19 wasn't far. But out here, distance meant nothing. Ten minutes could stretch into ten hours depending on the jungle's mood.
I stared at the rusting corner of my bunk and felt KLA-1 pulse slightly against the back of my neck.
"Mission acknowledged," I said.
Chi didn't respond with his usual sarcasm. Just a short click of confirmation. And then silence.
I brushed in silence. I didn't look in the mirror. Haven't for years.
KLA-1 hovered an alert over my cornea:
Hydration 32%. Emotional load: suppressed. Heart rate irregular.
I blinked it away.
By the time I zipped up the outer vest and locked my sidearm in place, the sun had begun to bleed through the moss-cracked roof tiles. A faded version of morning.
Outside, near the makeshift vehicle bay, I spotted him.
Sam.
Sunglasses even in the mist. Legs up on the dash of his rust-painted, half-functioning NU Rover like we weren't in the middle of the most volatile sector in Southeast Asia.
"Morning, babe," he called, without looking.
"Don't call me that."
"Fine. Officer S-14. Bringer of Badies."
I got in.
The Rover smelled like engine fluid, cheap incense, and chewing gum. Sam started the ignition with a groan — from the machine and himself.
We rolled forward into the dirt path flanked by cây đa roots and forgotten bunkers. The jungle, alive and listening.
"Chi told me you've a fever." Sam said.
"You sure you're up for this? You look like someone who would fall asleep at any moment."
"I'm always up for it," I muttered.
And then, it came out of me — the usual bitterness, unfiltered by coffee or conscience.
"It's probably another sabotage. Wouldn't surprise me if some bored American command thread sent the wrong frequency just to check how many of us still breathe."
"Or maybe they want another drone base set up right on Hoa Lư's spine, just so they can 'observe local cultural resilience' — whatever the hell that means."
"Always poking their nose in ruins they helped ruin."
Sam glanced sideways.
"You're aware I'm American, right?"
"Yeah. That's why I hate you."
He snorted. "Wow. Spicy."
"They destabilize everything, then come in smiling with protein bars and 'psychological support units.' We don't need support, Sam. They don't Fucking understand that. Neither do the Chinese suits with their emotionless contracts and lunar dreams."
I stared out at the vines curling around an old, rusted statue. A broken tiger head — painted with decades of mold and bullet scarring.
"They all want a stake in a place they never bled for."
Sam didn't argue. That's why I trusted him.
The Rover rumbled deeper into the jungle, toward the unknown hum of Outpost 19 — and whatever silence it now held.
We reached the capital ruins around midday.
Or what was left of them.
Hoa Lư after the WW3 started was bombed multiple times by China. Beneath layers of vine, silence, and collapsed history. The broken stone gates still bore the carvings of old emperors, half-eaten by moss. Beneath them, the Rover could go no further. The path ahead narrowed into nothing but cracked stone, broken steps, and too many eyes in the trees.
"We go on foot," I said, already slinging the signal bag across my shoulder.
Sam climbed down with a grunt, scanning the brushline with a half-hearted sweep.
"Lovely. Just what I needed. Jungle rot and nostalgia."
We walked in silence, following the faded NU markers carved into bark and stone — left behind by group -NB1π stationed at The outpost.The forest here had a pulse of its own.
After twenty minutes, we saw the outer plates of Outpost 19 — melted steel, half-sunken into the red mud like a corpse trying to disappear. The entry post was blackened.
Then KLA spoke, voice low and neutral in my right ear:
> "Thermal signatures negative. Structural integrity: 42%. Evidence of recent drone strike. Estimated: 6 to 7 hours ago."
I paused. My boot crunched over something soft.
A melted visor.
"Drone strike?" Sam echoed from behind, already gripping his plasma-shielded repeater.
"Ours?"
"Unknown." his Ai assistance Bud-1 answered before I could.
"No NU trace markers found. Likely foreign model. Flight pattern irregular. Autonomous attack." said Kla.
I unlatched the recon drone from my shoulder pack — small, matte black, responsive. It rose with a whisper and a blue blink.
> "Switch to Mode C. Scan perimeter. Broadcast thermal and structural feedback. Record all anomalies."
The drone obeyed instantly, zipping into the canopy.
"Sam, stay near the south entrance. If anything breathes near that treeline, I want you to see it before it sees you."
He gave a mock salute. "Copy that, daddy."
"As always you asshole American."
The drone fed images back to my ocular overlay. Burn scars. Impact rings. A strange spiral pattern across the north side of the comms unit — not standard weaponry.
And something else.
A faint heat trail… leading underground.
I adjusted the zoom and muttered, almost to myself:
"Someone was here… someone survived."
KLA pulsed.
"Life pattern possibly recent. Trace elements suggest human presence within last 3.4 hours. No further data."
"Damn it," I whispered.
Sam's voice buzzed through my earpiece.
"You getting that weird signal fluctuation near the west wall?"
"Yeah."
"Think someone's jamming?"
"No," I said slowly.
"I think someone's hiding."
The drone led us deeper, past crumbled stone and broken data cables buried in mud. Eventually, I reached the tower — or what used to be one.
It had collapsed like a dying animal, its skeletal remains twisted and blackened. Beneath the largest slab, half-buried in scorched earth, was a man.
Dead.
One arm pinned under what might've once been a comms array. Tools still clipped to his belt. His mouth open in a half-choked grimace — like he died watching something that didn't make sense.
Kla identified him as a constructor.
I crouched beside the body, the jungle heat thick on my skin.
"Guess it's in our fate," I murmured.
"Build the structure just to be crushed under them."
Sam didn't say anything.
Then — a drone Striked.
It happened in less than a second. A sharp hiss in the treeline. A flash of silver streak. Something slammed into my shoulder.
My body jerked sideways, breath caught mid-word.
The walkie flew from my grip, skidding across the cracked stone with a sharp screech.
Another whistle — this one closer. Too close.
"Target located—" KLA's voice rang, but I'd already moved.
I rolled toward the wall, drew my repeater, and fired three quick bursts into the treeline where the projectile came from. The jungle spat back sparks and silence.
The enemy drone — a flat-winged, low-altitude model — dropped, smoking and hissing from its undercarriage. Not NU. Definitely not friendly.
I scrambled for the walkie, and just as I gripped it, Sam's voice snapped through:
"S-14! I've got him—it's a fucking Chinese soldier! Alive! "
"Alive?" I shot back.
"Yeah — but barely. Bastard tried to run. I shot near his leg. He dropped."
By the time I reached him, Sam was already tying a makeshift sling around the soldier's bleeding knee. Too young. Breathing shallow. Mouth foaming slightly from whatever stim patch he'd bitten into.
He was mumbling in half-cracked Mandarin. KLA started translating automatically, low in my ear.
"le...ave me plea....se.I be... g you"
Sam stared at me.
"Chi's gonna love this."
I didn't reply. Just looked at the broken tower again.
Maybe it was in all our fate — to build things just to be buried beneath them.