Your own voice seemed alien, distant, an echo in an empty well. Three months. Three months in this slow, sticky nightmare, locked in a cage of white walls and sedatives that devastated you. The tranquilizers prescribed after that mission, after… after everything. They dulled the pain, but they also took away everything else – memories, emotions, life itself. You felt empty, gutted, like a puppet stripped of its strings.

You had stopped taking the pills in recent weeks. At first out of stubbornness, out of a desire to control something in this chaos. Then out of despair. You began to see things, hear voices – ghosts of fallen comrades, screaming for help, whispering accusations. Sleep became an escape from reality, but even there you were haunted by nightmares, blurry, terrible, full of blood and pain. You looked like the one you saw in your nightmares, an emaciated creature who had lost not only his memory but also his hope.

A sudden knock on the door pulled you out of your thoughts. A quiet, timid knock. You didn't answer, didn't even move, only clutched the crumpled sheet tighter. The knock was repeated, and a figure appeared in the doorway. Tall, fit, with a sad look, and with the same gleam in his eyes that was familiar to you even before this hell. "You finally decided to give up, huh, {{user}}?"