He is an eighteen-year-old killer, and the sniper rifle is very heavy in his hands.
He watched for a long, long time, he was trained for this, he knew how to slow down his heartbeat, how to control his breathing and the natural tremors of his body until his whole body was as motionless as a sculpture.
Predator.
prey.
His mind gradually became cold, his attention was absolutely concentrated, and the prayers recited silently in his heart became the only way to see the world.
Predator.
prey.
With no other thought except this, he pulled the trigger, and two thousand meters away, a life was lost.
hunter.
The hunted.
"Target eliminated."
He said this to himself.
——————
He was a twenty-year-old man, sleeping on the same operating table as before.
The chemicals coursing through his veins lulled him into sleep, and he dreamed of the scene again.
My mind is suspended in silence, entering the dreamland of two worlds.
In a world where his brain is sleeping, his thoughts are rolling and echoing in the compressed memory.
In another world, his eyes were observing the intersection of the corridors, but his thoughts were beating slowly, just like his blood pulse.
His eyes were open, and his pupils were dilated and trembling, as if he saw something moving in front of him, but there was nothing in front of him, only three long, dark corridors.
He had been like this for fifty-six hours, more than half awake, and the remaining half half-awake and in the sleep he could now control.
In the real world, needles and medical probes penetrated the flesh and blood on his back and injected various liquids directly into his spine.
He coughed, which was because his sleeping body was reacting to the invasion of foreign objects. The acidic saliva spurted from his mouth hissed where it hit the ground, eroding several deep pits on the tiled floor.
When he woke up, it was several days later.
He could feel the slots lining his spine, the scars, the metal nodules...
He knew that in a universe with only endless war, only by approaching death infinitely could he finally become a saint.
The gray-eyed pharmacist looked at him, like an artist looking at his most perfect work, and for the first time he smiled from the bottom of his heart.
——————
He is a new soldier, looking into his own eyes.
He stood naked in a dark room, standing in a row with a dozen other people. The other newcomers beside him were also naked, and their pale skin was full of traces of surgery.
** is a forgotten concept that does not exist in his mind, and it is just one of the tens of thousands of human desires abandoned by his consciousness.
He could no longer remember his parents' faces. He only remembered his own name because the instructors of the legion never changed his name.
He stared at the pair of eyes that now belonged to him, and the pair of deep, slanted "eyes" stared back at him - they were a pair of eyes embedded in the helmet whose visor was painted gray-white.
When he looked at the battle helmet that was as white as a skull, the helmet was also looking at him with its dark reflection.
This is his face now.
Through these eyes, he will see the entire Milky Way.
Through this helmet, he will roar with rage at those traitors and xenos who dare to defy the Emperor.
"You are Soshyan Alexei."
A chapter instructor said this to him.
"Belongs to the Seventh Company."
——————
He is a champion and lives to win.
"Status confirmation——"
Soshyan sent a message to two other people through the communicator.
"Intersection 21 is stable and has not moved, just like before."
"They're right outside."
Axel, who was in the same team, responded like this, and his voice turned into a low roar in the communication.
"They are coming. Didn't the rotten hole in the nest where you were born teach you to be patient?"
"Oh, it taught me, but somehow it didn't teach me to enjoy floating in a vacuum waiting for unknown enemies to appear. Besides, the place I live in is not a hive."
There was not much extra emotion in Soshiyang's voice, but the other party laughed, and the sound echoed in the silence like a rapid barking.
"It won't end like this-"
The cautious tone of another person in the team came, his name was Nad, he was from the same planet as Soshyan, and he was also from the same batch of recruits.
"If we are here, the enemy is also here."
“What if that’s not what’s being taught?”
As Soshyan spoke, he changed his body shape and stared into one of the three passages.
Several cables hung down from the cocked inspection box cover, and the pipelines leaked from the protective tubes like severed blood vessels. They were in a dangerous area in a transport ship that was opened and parked in the void, and other reconnaissance teams were scattered.
Throughout the hull, each has a different mission, but no one knows where the other squads are or the details of their missions.
Soshyan, Axel, and Nad were tasked with monitoring a dead-end passage, all of them wearing only a spacesuit and armed with a bolter and a chainsword.
"What do you mean?"
Axey growled, and Soshyan took a careful breath before answering. This young man could change from cheerful and generous to furious in a heartbeat. All the changes to his mind and body were not erased.
This characteristic makes his temper even more obvious.
"What if waiting is the wrong thing to do? What if there's no danger? The only thing trapping us here is that we think there's a threat."
"No, Soshyan."
Nader retorted before Axel could speak.
"We have a mission, and we're going to see it done."
"But what is the mission?"
Soshyan was still asking questions. He turned around and looked into the second passage. The movement brought him down so that he had to hold on to the safety rope connecting him to the wall to steady himself.
Then the second channel is empty, just like the first one.
"What if we don't understand it correctly?"
"this……"
Nad still wanted to speak, but was interrupted by Axel's intervention.
"What do you mean?"
"What I mean is that maybe there are no enemies here, they may be somewhere else, and because we are standing here, there is a bitter fighting elsewhere."
"This is due to duty, not fear."
"Yeah?"
Soshyan asked without having time to control himself, but he regretted it when the words blurted out.
He noticed that this was happening more and more, that emotion and impatience would suddenly appear out of nowhere, as if there was another person living in his mind, someone who was cold and impatient.
He had no clue as to why.
"I'm very sorry……"
"okay."
Nad's voice was very calm, and he didn't seem to have such trouble.
"We are brothers, you don't need to say anything more, just don't say that again."
Brother, the word was still as foreign to his world as the organs added to his body.
——————
He is a demigod, a complete superman, ageless and immortal.
He looked at the surface of the world through the crimson mirror. A series of data represented by sharp, clear white runes rolled on his retina. He watched the lives of his brothers displayed in the form of numbers.
, he felt the temperature outside the sealed armor, and he watched the target locking frame flash as his eyes moved.
He felt his hand, the hand holding his blaster, tense as it tried to follow each target lock.
The remaining ammunition counter lets him know how many enemies have died today.
The aliens fell dead around him.
Ten, a hundred, a thousand, his brothers fought their way through this garbage dump-like city.
"Bros!"
As he yelled this word, he fired a burst of explosives into each passage. It was enough to shatter an ordinary person's arm, but the recoil was as light as a feather in his hands.
"I'll be at your place soon."
Axel is roaring.
"I'm moving towards you!"
Nad's voice was filled with electromagnetic explosions.
He fired again, cycling from shot to shot, and he saw the enemies too.
They crawl on the wall like spiders, with linked metal limbs replacing the arms and legs. The head is raised on the neck made of steel rings. The weapon bay is connected to a device like a scorpion tail from the back of the spine, and
There are dozens of them.
"I see you!"
Axel's voice came.
"I have some targets."
The flash of firing lit up the distant passage, flickering as shrapnel tore through the air.
Soshyan also fired again, firing three rounds. Four balls of metal and flesh exploded. He glanced over his shoulder. Axel was ten meters away, stuck between the wall and a group of machines. He aimed at the alien closest to Soshyan.
They're on fire.
"Hey!"
Between battles, he was still in the mood to shout via messenger.
"At least we found the enemy this time."
Soshyan also laughed.
Blasters roared, chainswords roared, and in the chorus of battle noises, the battle brothers roared angrily at the enemy through the loudspeakers in their helmets.
The sound is always the same.
The bolters roared, the chainswords roared, and the Astartes shouted their rage.
He shouted the words that were engraved in the deepest part of his brain, the words that would soon become the value of his life to him.
But now, he and his brothers were shouting loudly, words that he had not thought about, words that he had not felt.