"Artillery fire incoming!" a soldier screams beside Helios.
An explosion thunders nearby, sending a geyser of mud and dust into the air. Helios snaps his eyes open, finding himself splayed on the ground of a slick, waterlogged trench. The sky above is choked with heavy gray clouds that blot out the sun.
"Where... where am I?" Helios rasps, his head ringing with a deafening, metallic hum.
"Get ready, Private! The enemy is pushing!" a soldier shouts, grabbing Helios by the collar and shaking him violently. He thrusts a heavy rifle back into Helios's hands; a jagged, blood-stained bayonet is fixed to the end of the barrel.
"What's going on? I was just talking to those three a minute ago..." Helios mutters, his mind reeling as he hauls himself up to peer over the edge of the trench.
The sight is a nightmare. Men are tearing each other apart in a hailstorm of lead. Corpses are strewn across a wasteland of craters, some tangled in coils of rusted barbed wire that hook into their uniforms and flesh like claws. A bullet whizzes past Helios's ear with a sharp crack, and he instinctively ducks back into the mud.
"I'm in a war," Helios whispers, realization dawning with a surge of adrenaline. He grits his teeth, rises again, and fires. An enemy soldier falls dead.
"Incoming! Get down!" a soldier shrieks as the air whistles. Every man in the trench hits the muck.
"What is happening?!" Helios demands, looking around frantically.
"Get down, Private!" someone bellows.
A shell detonates directly in front of Helios's section. Dust and heat blast over him. A jagged fragment of shrapnel screams through the air, slashing Helios across the throat. He collapses, hands flying to his neck to stem the hot, pulsing spray of blood.
"Get ready to go over the top!" a commander shouts from down the line, his voice cold and indifferent to the dying man at his feet.
So this is what it feels like to die in a war, Helios thinks, his vision tunneling into blackness as his hands go cold.
Helios wakes up again at the exact moment the first artillery shell whistles through the air. This time, he doesn't hesitate; he throws himself flat into the trench water.
"I... I came back," Helios gasps, his lungs burning as he gulps for air.
"Good job, Private. Looks like you've finally got your head on straight," a soldier grunts, glancing at him with grimy eyes.
Helios grabs his rifle, his movements stiff but purposeful. He aims and fires, dropping two enemies with practiced precision.
"Incoming!" the soldier shouts again. Helios is already tucked against the trench wall. The explosion makes his ears ring and sends hot metal shards humming through the air like hornets.
"Get ready to go over! Fix bayonets!" the commander roars. Around Helios, soldiers fumble with ammunition and slap fresh magazines into their rifles.
"Don't fall behind, new guy, or you're a dead man," a soldier says, patting Helios's shoulder with a shaky hand.
Helios looks at him, his eyes completely hollow and void of light. "Thank you for the advice," he says, his voice as cold as the mud beneath them.
"Five! Four! Three!" the commander bellows, his face red with exertion. He reaches one and blows a shrill, piercing blast on his whistle. "Go! Go! Go!"
The men scramble up the ladders. Some are cut down the instant they crest the ridge. Others get snagged on the wire, hanging like puppets as they are riddled with bullets. Helios keeps running, his gaze fixed straight ahead. He spots an enemy reloading and puts a bullet through his chest without breaking stride.
"This mud... it's too slow," Helios growls. His leg sinks deep into a pocket of thick sludge. He struggles to pull free, but an enemy sniper finds his mark. A bullet shatters Helios's skull, and he dies again.
"Go! Go! Go!"
Helios's eyes snap open to the commander's shout. He is already out of the trench.
"Jump over the wire!" Helios bellows, his voice suddenly carrying a natural authority. The soldiers near him instinctively obey, leaping over the rusted barbs instead of getting hooked.
The mud is still a sucking trap. Helios scans the ground for any solid footing. "Move over the dead!" he commands. He begins leaping from one fallen body to another, using the corpses as stepping stones to maintain his speed. The other soldiers, desperate and panicked, follow his lead.
He guns down the soldier who killed him last time, then pivots to kill the sniper in the distance.
"Keep marching! They'll retreat soon!" the commander shouts, firing his pistol into the smoke.
A young soldier nearby takes a round to the leg. Blood gushes onto the gray mud. "Help me! Please!" he cries out, grabbing Helios's ankle.
Helios looks down. His stare is frozen—cold and emotionless. Without a word, he kicks the boy's hand off his leg and continues his sprint.
"Machine guns! Left flank!" a soldier screams, only to be stitched across the back by a burst of fire. He falls, his uniform blossoming with dark red holes.
"Our artillery is zeroed in!" someone behind Helios cheers.
"Retreat! Fall back to the line!" the commander orders as the ground begins to shake from their own supporting fire.
As they turn to run, Helios grabs the wounded soldier he had kicked earlier, hauling him up.
"Thank you..." the boy sobs, wiping mud and tears from his face as they stumble backward.
"You're heavy. I should have left you behind; I don't want to sink with you," Helios says.
"I... I don't know if that's a joke or not. You sound so emotionless," the boy, stammers. "My name is Robin. Let's be friends when this is over? After the war?" He extends a trembling, muddy hand toward Helios.
"Okay," Helios says, a flicker of something human returning to his eyes. But as he reaches out, a bullet tears through Robin's chest, exiting through his back in a spray of red.
"It seems... we won't be friends in this lifetime" the boy whispers, clutching his heart as his life spills out.
The enemy commander's voice echoes across the field, commanding his troops to "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!" at the retreating men.
Helios lets go of Robin's limp body and sprints for the trench. Bullets whistle past his head like angry spirits. A round grazes his arm, hot and stinging, but he dives headfirst into the trench before the next one can find his heart.
His own side's artillery begins to rain down, turning the "No Man's Land" into a landscape of fire and dust. Helios curls into a ball on the floor of the trench, his entire body trembling violently. The memory of the first time he died—the phantom pain of the shrapnel in his throat—tears at his mind.
"I can't die again," he whimpers. "I can't."
The enemy finally begins to pull back.
"Fire back! Don't let them get away!" the commander screams. The soldiers lean over the parapet, picking off the retreating shadows in the mist.
"We survived!" the new recruits shout, weeping and hugging each other in a frenzy of relief.
But the veteran soldiers only look at them with grim pity. "We're all dead men walking," an older soldier mutters, leaning against the wall near Helios. "But being dead and escaping this hell? Doesn't sound so bad."
He looks into Helios's lifeless, wide-eyed stare and nods slowly. "It seems you already know exactly what I'm talking about."