A loud boom echoed through the silent night, sending splinters of shattered wood across the desert plains. I hunkered down within the little shack Stryme and I commandeered, waiting for the dust to settle. Fuck…I lobbed it too close! I thought sourly.

Stryme shrieked the blast for a second, then I watched him push himself up, squeezing his trigger hoping to hit the Doasians, smart, but not smart.

I swept my feet, bringing him down and five bullets shot right past his face, leaving him startled, possibly shitting himself as well. “Get down, you just fucking exposed it!”

Bullets riddle the shack and Stryme and I rolled out of the shack. He waved his AR7, unclipped the safety and fired at the two doasians once more. I pivoted left, took aim and squeezed the trigger aimed at the west, where three Doasians appeared in my sights. “HEAD TO THE WEST SIDE. I DON’T SEE ANY HEAT SIGNATURES OVER THERE!” I shouted, “I’LL TRY TO STALL, ONCE SHIT IS CLEAR, HEAD TO THE SOUTH AND HEAD UP THE WALL”

“WHAT ABOUT THE DOASIAN CAMP!?” Stryme hissed.

“WE CAN’T WORRY ABOUT THAT NOW. HEAD WEST!”

Stryme grumbled something between his lips, and disappeared between the shacks, keeping himself.

I fired in all three directions of where the Doasians were sifting through, trying to keep them as unbalanced as possible, but when my magazine ran dry. I forced myself to the ground and tried scrambling through the village as smooth as I possibly could.

Sceleratus was six hundred meters in the distance. It was so close, I could fucking smell it, I just needed to clear the forty-foot wall!

My eyes drifted left and watched as the Doasian camp woke and began to grow wary, spraying its floodlights toward the village. Shit, they’re onto us!

“Stryme, The Doasians know we’re here, we have to make this snappy before we get caught. I saw what those bastards are doing to get information!”

Stryme didn’t answer, but I heard his heavy breathing through the mic. “Eltessa, can you lay cover fire against those Doasian camps? I’m gonna try to eliminate the sand!”

“I can’t guarantee that Cypher, we’re low on ammo as it is.”

“Gotcha, I’ll figure it to fuck out!” I growled. “FUCK!”

I rolled to my right, pulling my pistol free, then fired three shots at the Doasians on the right. The bullets hit one in the chest, spraying blood but the two charged me as if they were dogs in heat. Why the fuck are they so goddamn FAST?

I leapt to my left, rolling in the sand then scampered across the ground, trying my best to stay low as bullets began to rain in on me like bees to honey.

I know the Doasian saw where I went, but that was the plan.

In the corner of my eye, two Doasians fired wildly but missed me as I slowly flanked them. I knew my back was exposed to the Doasians who were yet to recover from the explosion, but I still had time double back.

I dove into a hut with three corpses and then used them as a shield. Two of the corpses' eyes begged me for mercy, as congealed blood seeped from their eye sockets as if they’d been recently executed.

It was cruel, but not my business, my business was to fucking survive and they just happened to help. I allowed a second corpse a bit of reprieve, then traced my eyes across the abandoned village feeling the strain of my SMB pulsing my brain like a muscle. Keep it together Cypher, I thought, “You don’t have my choice or you’re dead.”

A ding pulsed into my ear and I felt my body being pushed to the ground. I looked left, realising the two Doasians had caught wind of my plan to flank me and were now flanking me on either side.

I dropped my assault rifle, grabbing the wrist of a Doasian woman that appeared to my left, gun trained on me. “Found you Scavish!”

I fired my wrist at her jaw, kneeing her instantly. I yanked my pistol free from my waist and shot the second Doasian in the chest the moment our eyes met. I spun back to the doasian woman and left a hole in her head.

Anger…sorrow…frustration, all of it was written on her face. Her eyes glassed as her emotions reached a tipping point, right before I killed her. Wrong place, wrong time.

The moment I got out of view from the Doasians. I pivoted back into the open. I spun around, noticing a Doasian to my right and left.

I fired two shots, hitting one in the knee, and then the other in the chest. They sagged to the ground with a moan and thud, leaving me to end this.

I took one step on the giant boulder, using it as leverage, and then kicked off, sailing into the air. The roofs of the huts appeared in front of me as I flew in the air, watching them creep ever close to me.

The wind rushed into my mouth, and my eyes drifted to down the doasian whose back was still stapled to the boulder. His eyes gapped when he saw me, which happened to be the last thing he saw.

My bullet went right through his throat, and he tried pulling it out, not realising it was too late. He dropped to the ground with a thud, and so did I. “ELTESSA?” I howled

“FIVE TRUCKS JUST LEFT CAMP.”

“Stryme?”

“I’m already halfway there!”

“I need backup, they’re on my ass!”

“COME ON CYPHER I’M RIGHT THERE!”

“Stryme, help Cypher for fuck-sakes. We need him for the mission!” Eltessa barked.

Stryme groaned in the comm, and from the sound of heavy breathing, I knew he huffed in annoyance. “Are they in range YET?!” I asked Eltessa.

My eyes drifted to where the explosion took place. The two Doasians pushed themselves up, shouldered their submachine guns and began hazily walking toward me. “You’ve got to be shitting me, they recovered already?”

I grit my teeth and spun around, darting back, raising my AR7. I shouldered it and squeezed the trigger firing at the former dazed Doasians. The bastards split apart like the mist and began charging toward me. Where are the other Doasians?

I switched to infrared and three sets of footsteps appeared. To my left, was one set of footsteps two shacks over. On the right, they were two sets of footsteps, but the heat signature was withering away. Fuck, they know where I am!

“Stryme, I’m being flanked from both sides, I can't see ‘em!”

“I see you Cypher, but I don’t have visuals on the ones to your left, I can only deal with the ones to your right!”

“That’s fine.”

A bullet cracked throughout the air in a second and watched the bastard drop to his knees as matter and gore spilt from his brain like a spilt glass of milk pouring out into the sand. “About fucking time!” I snarled darting past the newly created corpse.

“Try to flank ‘em, I’ll try to hold them off!”

“Can’t!” He roared back. “I’m heading to the fucking wall Cypher. The fucking camp is on the move!”

“Shit.”

I snapped my right and charged towards the huts on the right. It was taking me further from Sceleratus, but I had to find a way to weave through these men because clearly, eight men weren’t here, but at least fifteen.

The growling sound of the trucks that were coming from the Doasian camp sounded like thunder beating in the middle of the night. Its only purpose was to serve fear into my heart, filling me with despair.

I didn’t want to admit it, but fuck I was scared, but more importantly, I wasn’t dead, not yet anyway. As my heart sank, my frustration began to settle in. “No…not today,” I whispered, then charged through the shacks, weaving as though I was a bulldozer.

My body couldn’t handle the dead, and with each step, my muscles cried it, yet the Doasian that were still hiding appeared in front of me firing waves of bullets.

Bullets razed from my left, as the remaining Doasians regained their footing. Not giving myself enough time to think, my body leapt forward spraying itself on the sand like a dead body.

I kept low, worming my way through the sand, turning right and hiding within another hut. The bullets trailed to my right, as their eyes lost track of me, which provided a little reprieve.

I know it was far enough to myself safe, but with the looming approach of the full Doasian army, I had one thing to do now and that was to hide.

No…I thought, there has to be a reason why the Doasians haven’t tried to parley…they’re scared…scared of coming into the range of the bullets, they’re aren’t aware of Lieutenant Ranton’s death, so these men were sent to infiltrate, just like me!

I fired three burst rounds, hitting a Doasian in the shoulder and watching him crash into a shed giving my position away to the last doasian who for some reason, disappeared.

I snapped right, hearing footsteps fluttering towards me like the wind. I pivoted left, half-spinning in response with my pistol in hand, I fired three shots hitting a Doasian in the back before he could hide behind the cover of a corpse.

I turned left, tapping my wrist and changing the colour of the Furtiven Suit to match the sand. It wasn’t Active Camouflage, but it was the closest thing to it. The reason why I didn’t have Active Camouflage embedded within my Furtiven Suit was due to my cybernetic circuitry.

A flaw in the design for active camouflage would burn out if introduced to cybernetic circuitry. The roving growl of the engine sped through the huts, destroying three huts, as I heard the wood snap from the engine's ferocity as it pummeled its way through.

A doofing sound barely audible rose into the air, making me snap right. A line of smoke appeared in the air coming from the direction of the Sceleratus wall.

A small capsule the size of a pebble led the smoke path to the middle of the abandoned village. “You could’ve at least warned me of the fucking bazooka shot Eltessa!”

“No time to warn Cypher, just run!”

A large explosion groaned out by the boulder with the reverberating sound of snaps and cracks singing in the air. The stars flickered in the night sky whilst the cold wind wrapped its embrace around me. It felt good for a second, but then it didn’t.

The explosion sent me flying back a few meters crashing into a hut and rolling as my body finally stopped after twelve rolls.

The swirling rings in my ears pounded back and forth, making my mind as hazy as ever. I grit my teeth and pushed myself off the ground.

My vision was blurred and my arms shook with each millisecond I used to push myself off the ground. “Get up Cypher…or you’ll die here,” I said softly.

My brain rang out from the strain of my SMB as I shot my cybernetic wrist into the air, as I heard the rolling wheels of the oncoming trucks growling towards me.

My left eye went blank for a second and the camera within my wrist came alive. Twelve trucks were roaring through the sand heading towards me, and despite them not knowing who I was I was sure as well sure they were about to kill me.

I recalled my wrist, snapping into place quickly and scanned for my haversack,

It appeared ten meters from me to the left and darted towards it, eyes hazed from Eltessa’s work. “Cypher are you still there!?”

“BARELY, THANKS TO YOU!” I growled, scooping up my haversack.

I turned, eyes scanning in front of me and began running as fast as I could towards the Sceleratus, hoping I won’t get a bullet in my back as I did so.