Blood.
That was the last truth Jorge Ramirez knew—thick and metallic, filling his mouth as he lay broken in the rubble of Fallujah. It mixed with the dust of collapsed buildings and the sour tang of his own fear gone stale. Above him, the Iraqi sun bleached the sky into a white-hot smear. His lungs whistled through the exit wound in his back, each breath a wet, sucking agony. Around him, the war raged on without him: the crack-hiss of AK-47s, the distant thump of mortars, the screaming. Always the screaming.
Baker's head vanishing in pink mist.
Choi's legs charred black inside her armor.
His own rifle slipping from fingers gone numb.
Meaningless, he thought as darkness crept in. All for sand and flags and politicians' lies.
Then—cold.
Absolute, suffocating cold. The kind that freezes bone marrow.
Then—sound.
A high, thin wail that scraped raw against his nerves. A child's scream. His scream.
Jorge's eyes snapped open.
Sterile white ceiling tiles swam into focus. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a sickly pallor. The air reeked of antiseptic, ozone, and something else… cloying sweetness. Magic. The word surfaced from some dark, untouched corner of his mind. Not a fairy tale. A fact.
A woman leaned over him, her face blurred at the edges. Teal scrubs. Kind eyes, tight with concern. Her hands hovered above his small chest, palms radiating an emerald light that danced like swamp gas. "Shh, Jason. Almost done, sweetheart. Just breathe."
Jason?
Her glowing hands pressed gently against his ribs. Warmth spread through him—comforting at first, then wrong. It felt like napalm splashing on his soul.
—the concussive ROAR of the IED—
—Baker's blood, hot as coffee, spraying Jorge's face—
—the smell of burning pork as Choi's legs cooked inside her armor—
NO.
The scream tore from his throat—a six-year-old's raw, terrified shriek, ripped through with a soldier's bottomless rage.
Something unseen and violent erupted from his small palms.
CRACK-BOOM!
The world detonated. Glass exploded inward in a glittering storm. Medical monitors shattered, spitting sparks like angry serpents. The healer flew backward as if yanked by wires, crashing into a supply cart with a metallic clang. Silence slammed down, thick and deafening, before the klaxons began their mindless, electronic wail.
Through the jagged hole where the window had been, Jorge saw impossibility.
A cityscape clawed at a bruised twilight sky, but this was no Baghdad, no Boston he remembered. Neon dragons coiled around chrome skyscrapers. Levitating trams snaked between buildings like glowing centipedes. Drones—sleek, insectile things—zipped through the rain-slick air, projecting shimmering logos onto wet pavement: a stylized chrome V, a crimson lotus, a snarling wolf's head.
A flickering holographic newscast hovered above a nearby rooftop, its female anchor's voice tinny and strained:
"—Manhattan Containment Zone reports Category 4 Voidspawn breach! Citizens advised to shelter in warded basements. Repeat, this is not a drill. Veridian Peacekeepers are en ro—"
The broadcast dissolved into static snow.
The door to the hospital room burst inward. Two figures filled the frame, encased in armor the color of spoiled milk. Mirror-polished visors reflected the chaos. Single-lens optics glowed a malevolent crimson. They moved with synchronized, unnatural precision, raising boxy rifles humming with contained lightning.
"Sundered minor," a flat, synthetic voice grated from the lead figure. "Biosignature spike registered. Anomaly confirmed. Authorized for immediate retrieval."
Retrieval. The word clicked coldly in Jorge's soldier-brain. Capture. Dissection. Erasure.
He moved before conscious thought. Asset: Scalpel glinting on the floor near his cot. Threats: Two hostiles, armored, unknown weapon capabilities. Environment: Shattered room, single exit blocked.
Ambush.
He rolled sideways off the cot, small fingers snatching the scalpel. The lead Peacekeeper's rifle cracked—a bolt of searing blue energy vaporizing the pillow where his head had lain. The smell of scorched fabric filled the air.
Slow. Predictable.
Jorge scrambled behind an overturned gurney. The second Peacekeeper tracked him, rifle humming to full charge. Jorge felt the targeting lock prickle against his skin. He wanted to be three feet to the left, behind the relative safety of a shattered supply cabinet—
—and the world blurred.
Not running. Teleporting. A gut-wrenching lurch, like falling through ice-cold water. He reappeared crouched behind the cabinet, heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Spatial displacement. Instinctive. Uncontrolled.
The Peacekeeper froze, its crimson optic flickering rapidly. "Anomaly detected. Spatial manipulation confirmed. Priority Alpha."
Priority Alpha. That sounded very, very bad.
Jorge didn't hesitate. Small body, old instincts. He lunged low and fast, scalpel flashing. It slid through the gap between the Peacekeeper's helmet and chest plate—a space barely wider than a finger—and found purchase. Hot hydraulic fluid and something darker, thicker—oil? blood?—jetted out, spraying Jorge's face with warmth that smelled like hot metal and burnt plastic. The Peacekeeper staggered, its synthetic voice gargling static.
Jorge didn't wait. He bolted for the shattered doorway, ducking under the other Peacekeeper's wild shot that blew a crater in the wall. He sprinted down a corridor painted in panic—alarms blaring, nurses screaming, patients moaning. The sterile white walls seemed to pulse.
He passed a reflective emergency panel. A ghost stared back—a small, pale boy, maybe six years old, with messy dark hair and eyes that held centuries of war. Haunted. Hollow. Familiar.
Jorge Ramirez was dead in the sand.
Jason Reed was running through a nightmare.
War had just declared itself.