Her name is Alisha.

Correction. I’m sorry. Her name was Alisha. Here, she is called Subject-048.

Alisha, no, Subject-048 is 13 years old. She is a Cryokinetic Anomaly. Her abilities, left unchecked, have left people frozen to death. She caused John to lose his leg when she froze him to the ground. She is dangerous.

She is scared.

I never cared for anomalies before her. I had never known one personally, I only heard news of the carnage they had caused in the city, so naturally in my mind I associated all Anoms with destruction. When I joined Purity, I was 18 and had a rose-tinted ideal vision of a world without Anoms, without the devastation that they created.

They were the bad guys in my story.

And we all know that in the stories, the bad guys lose and the good guys save the day. Sure, it’s all over-simplified but in my mind that was enough motive to sign away my life to a Private Military Corporation in hopes for a better future.

Maybe it was pity. Or guilt. I’m not quite sure, but it felt like a heavy weight in my chest that grew denser and denser as they days went by. I couldn’t tell anyone. They’d call me a deserter or a madman for feeling like this. I’ve seen how they ridicule some of the ‘weaker’ mercs. I’ve ridiculed the weaker mercs. I’ve told them that feeling anything for these monsters made you a sympathiser, and that was an actionable offence.

Yet here I am feeling… sympathy.

I’m such a fucking idiot.

“Chill the fuck out,” Will said as he fiddled mindlessly with a rubiks cube, “Your pacing is making me anxious.”

“Sorry,” I replied, taking a deep breath to try and calm myself. I leaned against the edge of our bunk bed and looked down at his fiddling hands. “How are you so okay with all of this?”

“All of what?”

“This.”

“Since when did you start talking like a pussy, Jarles?” he asked with a voice so nonchalant and dismissive that I felt immediately insulted.

“I’m just saying.”

“Alright Mr Actionable offence.”

“It’s different this time. It’s--”

Will completed the rubiks cube with a click, presenting it to me briefly before speaking, “A child. You’re upset because it’s a child.”

“She’s a child.”

“It.” He paused, then he began scrambling the cube again. “If you call it an it, it’ll make you feel better.”

“How is that meant to make me feel better?”

“Dissociating or whatever. Or is it disassociating… But you get it, right? You don’t call it a ‘she’ or a ‘he’, you don’t give it a name or a face, you just forget about it.”

“I can’t just forget about it, Will. I shot her in the leg! I’ve never shot a kid before.”

“It’s an Anom. It’s different.”

“How is it any different from shooting a child? She’s still 13 years old!”

“Just grow a pair and stop whining about it. It’s tiring.”

“I shot a child, and then essentially abducted her and put her in a cage to be experimented on. Doesn’t that sound fucked up to you?”

Will sighed, putting his rubiks cube and standing up so he could meet my gaze. He clapped his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “We’re mercenaries, Jarles. This is our job. They don’t pay us to pity the captures. They don’t feed us for being sympathetic model citizens. So I suggest you build a bridge and get over it.”

“Don’t you have an ounce of regret?” I asked.

Will paused. Then he shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not a stupid kid like you are. I knew what I was getting myself into. I bet you didn’t even bother to read the fine print.”

“Will--”

“It’s kids like you that make this very difficult. Stop thinking so hard. You make it all the more difficult for yourself,” he said, removing his hand from my shoulder and dusting it off casually. Will was always hard to read, always incredibly stoic in his features and otherwise unreadable. Even his voice left a lot to be interpreted. Hard to tell whether he was serious or sarcastic half the time.

“She’s 13 years old. That’s my brother’s age.”

“You see, that’s your problem. You’re associating. You gotta stop that. You signed the papers, you signed the wavers, you’re here now and that’s the job you’re being paid to do. I ain’t saying it’s a pretty job. It’s awful. Shouldn’t be killing kids whether they’re human or Anom but… don’t matter in the end. We kill who we’re told to kill. Don’t waste your time dealing with guilt that shouldn’t be yours.”

I stared at him, the looked away as I tried to process it all. “I don’t get how you do it, Will. You’re always so… so…”

“Just spend a few years in a war and then come home to another war. It’ll really put things in perspective.”

“And what perspective is that?”

“There ain’t no winners in this war, Jarles. There’s only losers, and you gotta ensure you’re on the team that loses less.”