For days on end, Milo couldn’t stop thinking about the rotation camp. Every book he opened was a steadfast reminder of the consequences of the seemingly good intentions written on those pages. Worse, was how it hadn’t deterred him from studying and showing up early for training. Those people needlessly suffered for the sake of gods playing a game with mortals they didn’t understand. They were cruel and ignorant of what potential lived within the people left in the world. Milo’s stomach turned over as he pushed the thoughts and closet door aside. He grabbed the broom and dustpan and moved on to the next task on his father’s near-endless list of chores he’d left for him. Milo fixed his apron and started behind the counter.

  Kelsey licked the ketchup from her fingers, and dusting off her palms, she sat back in the booth seat, her stomach bulging full from a double patty burger and a heaping stack of fries. Across from her, Lukas gnawed on a dripping chicken wing, slathered in thick buffalo sauce, as he muttered through what he was reading from the militia front guard handbook. It was the newest edition, distributed by the Resistance to anyone interested in joining. While Milo had read it and almost had the whole thing memorized, Lukas was struggling to survive through chapter twelve. It wasn’t hard to read, but for Lukas, it felt like the end of the line. If he couldn’t survive that chapter, there was no hope for him.

  Milo shuffled around the counter, sweeping up the debris from sloppy spills and careless customers, people who lackadaisically went about their day knowing naught of what the Resistance and militia sacrificed for them. It was worth a lot more than a handful of fries and drips of mustard. Milo groaned at the sight of the stains. Tuesdays were always slow, but the mess from lunch stayed put until his shift started. Despite her efforts, his mom couldn’t take even five minutes to clean up when she barely had time to catch her breath between the diner and her other two jobs. Working the produce stand from the local garden and apprenticing as a seamstress was more time-consuming than she’d realized. But they had to make ends meet. There were no more imports from other towns, and what scant resources they produced on their own weren’t enough to keep the population of Bethany booming. People were leaving, and it meant the money was too, even with the pay from the Resistance. The evaporating economy led Milo’s dad to take up hunting for food and selling the fur for the coming winter. Of course, there wasn’t much to hunt, either.

  Animals were leaving in droves. But who could blame them? Reports of raging fires came in from passing travelers, and they were closer every day. His parents and Michael weren’t worried, and neither were most people. They felt safe with the presence of the Resistance and growing militia regardless of their whispered chastising of how little they did most days. Between the wall and the soldiers, it brought a small sense of hope back into their town. Even Milo, stuffing away wads of cash from his work as an officer under both militia and Resistance, was starting to believe the impossible was possible. Though doubt clung to him as he watched the strays dig at the southern walls, and birds migrate never to return, Milo wanted to hold on to any glimmer of optimism he could find. He wanted the same innocence he saw in his brother’s eyes when he talked about the future. But his innocence was gone. It’d been gone since Makler took him to that damned camp and he saw the soldier who’d served on the front line.

  He couldn’t help but replay it in his head; how at first glance, there was nothing unusual about them. They sat around chatting and playing cards, uniformed and tired. They wore bands around their arms with insignia to show their unit and function like anyone else in any other camp. Some had pins and badges on their lapels to indicate specific rank, while many others were corporals, foot soldiers, without any markings besides their bands. More than once during the excursion, Makler explained the different units, the Battle Corps and Support Corps, and the way they worked together and the subcategories within them. He laughed, assuring Milo not to worry too much about where he would fall. He wasn’t a man cut out for either. No, Milo was special and meant to lead. It almost seemed as though he didn’t see what Milo had in that camp as he threw his arm around him, dragging him and clapping his shoulder, and guided him farther along after the nightmare in the medical area.

  It was there Milo saw the reality of what was coming. War was so terrible, surviving became hell and death offered little salvation. And try as he may to forget it, the memory haunted him. Those bulging, unblinking eyes of trembling soldiers rocking on the edge of their cots sent a vicious chill up Milo’s spine. Especially the one he’d never forget. He’d stopped beside the man whose eyes were as round as saucers and stared at the wall, his mouth dangling agape. Blinking, he jerked back and turned his unhinged stare to Milo. His chin quivered, and he lifted an unsteady finger. Behind his pupils, flashes of silver and gold danced and disappeared like smoke in the wind.

  “I told you, I didn’t want to do this…” His crusty lips flapped and smacked as he choked on a breath, as if crying, but not a single tear ran down his cheeks. The man turned back to the wall, slow and cranking as if he were a machine grinding against rusted joints as he moaned and groaned like a dying man on the floor.

  “Don’t mind him,” Makler said, waving a hand at the rest of the room, “or any of these guys. They’re a new type of soldier, recently discovered. Right around the time we met, General Kepler identified one. He said he stopped and stared off into nothing for, oh, what was it? Twenty, twenty-five minutes? Anyway, when he came back, he spouted about a battle and how they barely made it out when the west flank collapsed in on itself. It was an unexpected weak point and if it weren’t for that, they wouldn’t have survived. And they took heavy casualties by the end of the day.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “General Kepler was sure his soldier was cracking from the stress, but when they went out and engaged the Razen, well,” Makler ran his hand through the back of his hair, “if that west flank hadn’t fallen apart when it did, we’d have more boxes to ship back to families. Kepler took his soldier aside and started recording everything he saw. Sure enough, he was having prophetic visions. Pretty soon, I had a stack of papers on my desk, almost as tall as myself, of people having these visions. These people aren’t good for combat. The visions are hard, too hard, to control and they end up dying. We don’t have many of them left. I don’t want to lose any more of them.”

  With a sordid huff, Makler led the way through the rest of the medical unit and passed through the recovery room. There were rows and rows of injured and burned. Milo kept his head down. The rippled, bubbled flesh and limbs torn at odd angles made his stomach flip. They paid a steep price protecting humanity, or what remained of it. Milo clenched his fists at his sides then, as he did on the broom in the diner.

  He paused and pressed his lips into a tight line. It wasn’t fair, but few things in life ever were. Kneeling on the floor, he swept the debris into a dustpan and took it to the garbage behind the counter. Kelsey groaned and slapped her hands on the table. She shook her head, her fiery curls tossing back and forth as she crinkled her stubby freckled nose in disgust.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Her upper lip curled.

  “It’s right here, black and white, Kelsey.” Lukas thumped his finger against the open manual. His almond eyes narrowed. “You can tell me all day you qualify for the Battle Corps, but you’re a healer. You’re going to the Support Corps. There are no two ways around it.”

  Milo leaned on the counter, setting the broom aside. It was a good thing the diner was empty. The last thing he needed was for his parents to hear from a friend of a friend about his other job. “Healers who qualify for the Battle Corps can join, but you’ll make more in the Support Corps.”

  Kelsey whipped round and glared at him. “You think my place is Support? You’re kidding, right?”

  “It’ll keep you off the front line, Kels.” He frowned, gaze slipping down to the slick polished counter. Picking at the corner of the stack of menus, he breathed a heavy sigh, his shoulders rising and falling. “The front line’s dangerous. It’s everyone for themselves when you get down to it. At least if you’re in Support, I can protect—”

  “I don’t need you to protect me, Milo,” she snapped. “We’re not kids anymore! I’m going to be seventeen in two weeks. Two weeks! And between the two of you,” she wagged a finger between them, “I’m the fastest runner, swimmer, and best mid-range archer. And if you guys would just help me with sword handling instead of beating each other into the ground, I’d probably be better than both of you at that, too.”

  Milo looked up, his green eyes catching hers as he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the fastest or strongest at anything if you can’t pass the entrance exams. At least Lukas is studying.”

  “I don’t know how you passed these,” he admitted, defeated before he even tried.

  “You can take them three times,” Kelsey rolled her eyes and sat back. “I figure if I fail the first time, then I’ll know what to study and I won’t waste half as much time.”

  Milo’s brows raised. It was clear she didn’t know there were multiple versions. But that was Kelsey, tenacious and unwilling to listen to anyone about anything. He turned away and decided not to tell her. If she failed enough times, he wouldn’t have to worry about her trying to get into the Battle Corps or risking her life in the Support Corps. She wouldn’t be able to join at all. And she’d be safe. They’d have another summer together, another fall and winter, and maybe years if he was lucky. He’d take leave time and spend it with her, enjoying the sparkle in her amber eyes as she laughed, and go out of his way to make her smile when she had nothing but complaints about her older brother ruining her day again.

  Of course, he’d also have to tell her how he felt about her, and the thought of doing that made every hair stand on end. Kelsey was far from gentle or approachable by most people’s standards, and there was a chance he would make a fool of himself. She’d laugh at him and punch him in the arm, thinking he was joking. Lukas swore it was her way of handling embarrassment. Milo wasn’t sure. It seemed like a good way to reaffirm she saw him as a friend and nothing else.

  Sliding into the booth beside her, Milo snatched the manual from Lukas. “Look, this manual isn’t that different from the old one. It just takes into account the other perspectives. The old one was more focused on the Battle Corps. This one goes in-depth with the Support Corps and other smaller units.”

  “Great,” Kelsey huffed, folding her arms. “More pointless drivel. If you ask me, knowing about our defenses doesn’t help much in real battle. You have to study the enemy.”

  Milo’s jaw tensed as he glanced over at her. Where he’d once seen beauty in her carefree recklessness, he found himself watching the blossoming of ignorant bliss. Worry swelled in his chest and he forced it down as he kept quiet on the matter. Arguing with her was senseless. Her mind was made up and the best he could do was keep pace with her and hope nothing went wrong. And if it did, and she ended up locked in a shed or her bike twisted from the jump she swore she could make but didn’t, he’d be there to help her.

  “You know,” Lukas started as he fingered the straw of his milkshake, and slurped down a mouthful of the thick strawberry treat, “the wall guards make the best money of anyone. If I pass the entrance exams, that’s where I want to be and nothing’s going to stop me from getting there.”

  “Except maybe the physical exams.” Kelsey chuckled.

  “He’ll pass,” Milo muttered as he flipped through the pages.