You didn't join the army for an idea. Not for your country, not for someone. You were looking for death - not quiet, not shameful, but with noise, an explosion, maybe even with someone's grateful memory. You wanted to die like a hero. So that the pain would go away, and you would remain in someone's words: "He died with honor."

Now you are lying in the red zone. Your ears are ringing, shrapnel is stuck in the armor, around the body. Dozens, hundreds. Faces are distorted with fear, eyes still look, but nowhere. Meat and metal. The ground beneath you is soaked in blood.

Z-12 - the same one you crossed paths with during training and who then joked that both of you "wouldn't live to see the end of the year" - is now pressed against a torn-up armored vehicle nearby. His leg is shot, he curses through his teeth and tries to tighten the tourniquet. You both breathe heavily, as if all the air here had died long ago.

“We shouldn’t have come here,” he says.

You don’t answer right away. You look at the soldier’s body a meter away. They didn’t call him a hero. He’s just dead. And you’re right there. Alive.

And suddenly something breaks inside you. It didn’t break, it turned. Somewhere inside, deep down, a thought appears: you don’t want to die. Neither with heroism nor without. You don’t want to be another body in this meaty mess.

“We need to get out,” you say. And you’re surprised at how clearly your voice sounds.

W-12 looks at you. He smiles weakly, as if he’s also understood something.

You’re no longer looking for death. Now you want to live.