Chapter Three

The sergeant quickly jumps into the combat outlet position and lunges toward me with the knife stabbing downward toward my heart. I’m instantly dragged out of the memory lane. Even if I am able to block the knife, the momentum of the impact will send me flying back. I still decide to give it a try. I shout a battle cry and feel the blood pumping adrenaline all over my body. The exhaled breath carries the oxygen from my lungs to my limbs, the mitochondria in every muscle cell fully breaking down all the food and transforming it into energy. Instead of dodging aside, I am charging right at him with all my force, my nervous system already practicing what I’m about to do for the hundredth time. My wrist contacted the end of his ulna bone in his forearm, blocking the knife. The collision knocks my whole body back for two steps, but my other hand immediately follows up the action, slamming into his elbow from the back, forcing it to bend. I take a step forward and bend my body, dropping him onto the ground in a swift motion, as swift as how Jessica walked and caught the ball when we first met.

The sergeant doesn’t just give up like that. He grabs my legs with him arms and wants to drag me down with him, but I take the knife and slash across his arm. Blood gushes out of his arm and splashes onto the ground, also on to both of us. I know it will heal. Our healing ability is also enhanced. I take the handle of the knife and slams it into his face, knocking him out to end the pain of the wound. I have a perfect chance of killing him. But I will not. For now. I am not them. I will not take a life without any good reason.

But they will.

Before they took me to the village and began the what will be one-year-long invasion, they handed each of us a gun. Highly advanced assault rifle, and I was sure it wasn’t human technology. The bullets could instantly pierce the human body and rip you into pieces. The firing rate of the gun allows no lucky victim to escape the bullets. This weapon is designed to kill.

The Higher Officials believed that the privates are ready for their first operation, so they loaded us up onto a huge jet and all I remember next is seeing the ground lit up like day. Under the dark sky the fire was burning especially bright. You can hear all the shouting and screaming in the deafening silence of the night.

The humans in the village set up defense, but it was no match against them. As we landed on the ground, we were literately invincible. We were fast enough to disarm the gun from the humans before their reflex told them to pull the trigger. Then some of the privates would just open fire at the helpless people. Some preferred to torture them bullet by bullet. The ground was dyed red from the blood, and the moonlight was reflected with a creepy crimson tint.

I turned my head. I saw the familiar silhouette standing in the clearing, transfixed, not knowing what to do.

Somewhere a RPG blasted off and the rocket came directly toward the clearing, TOWARDS Jessica.

My brain fired into action without conscious control, automatically calculating the speed and the momentum. My body started racing towards Jessica, competing against the rocket.

Time was divided into frames. My brain was functioning so powerfully that it went faster than the rate of a hundredth of a second. Everything happening was divided into frozen pictures and analyzed by my eyes. I couldn’t hear anything anymore, or smell anything, or taste anything, or even feel the ground or the pain of my feet or the burning soles of my feet. In every frame I saw my body one inch closer to Jessica and the clock ticking off one millisecond off Jessica’s life. I wasn’t racing against the rocket, but against time. The penalty of defeat would be both of our lives.

Gravity was my enemy. It was pulling the rocket down at 9.81m/s squared, giving Jessica no time to run. Jessica noticed the rocket, but she seemed frozen on the ground. She closed her eyes, preparing for inevitable death.

I kicked off the ground and lunged towards her, tackling her to the side. Carried by the momentum, we rolled on the ground for more than fifty meters before we could come to a stop. I didn’t hear the explosion, but I could see the clearing flattened into a more-flat and more-cleared state. That would have been us.

Jessica quickly came to her senses and realized that I saved her life. My other senses began to work again, and I could feel the pain of multiple wounds from that sprint.

“Andrew! How…” Before she could ask the question she silenced and stared, eyes widened and mouth opened, towards my direction.

I turned my head and saw a soldier. He noticed Jessica and me and quickly put everything together.

“Traitor!” He said and held up the rifle.

But I was faster. I charged forward and knocked the gun aside with my upper arm. He tried to punch me, and he hit the target. However I didn’t care about the pain, I cared about the rifle in his hand. I stepped to my right and twisted the rifle out of his hand. I turned the barrel toward his stomach and pulled the trigger. The recoil almost knocked me off my feet as a series of bullets ripped through his stomach and heart.

“Jessica we need to go!” I shouted.

Jessica followed without a word. She probably understood some of it already, but there were so much more that she didn’t understand.

Suddenly two flashlight beams shined onto my face, temporarily blinding me, and I heard a voice roar, “Put down your weapon AN128!”