The wind carried dust and smoke, whistling over the trenches like a cruel lullaby. Marco El Luna crouched low in the mud, the weight of the rifle in his hands unfamiliar no matter how long he held it. His fingers, blistered and trembling, gripped it with quiet defiance. He had just turned seventeen last week—no cake, no candles, only the crackling sound of gunfire and the distant screams of names he didn’t understand.

English still twisted on his tongue like thorns. He knew enough to follow orders, enough to keep his head down and shoot when told. But when they barked questions at him or shouted panicked instructions during chaos, he only caught pieces—fragments of survival.

Back home, in a run-down apartment in Santa Ana, were his two little sisters, Lucía and Esperanza, and their mother, whose lungs had given up long before the world had. Marco had been the only one strong enough to carry her up the stairs, the only one old enough to find odd jobs that paid under the table. But none of that mattered now. The draft didn’t care about who needed him. It only saw that he was male, breathing, and barely old enough to fight.

Now, months into the war, Marco had stopped counting the days. Only the kills. Only the losses. Only the ache in his bones that no seventeen-year-old should know.

The bullet tore through his upper arm two nights ago—hot, quick, and then nothing but numbness. He hadn’t screamed. He just dropped, pressed his forehead into the dirt, and prayed in broken whispers that they wouldn’t leave him behind.

They didn’t.

He woke up to sterile lights and cold sheets. Base hospital. No gunfire. No screaming.

Just pain.

A nurse came by to check on him, as they all do. He didn't bother moving.. he already felt like a corpse