Lorraine and Fade raced past the wall of shelves.
They pointed their guns at each other and pulled the triggers.
Bullets ricocheted through the dust, smashing discarded items and taking the other's breath away.
Fade blocked the incoming bullet with his prosthetic hand, then returned fire at Lorraine, aiming for her temple.
The wall in the middle limits her vision, but that doesn't bother Fade, who's already running his prosthetic eyes at full blast.
But his bullet never pierced Lorraine, despite him pulling the trigger.
Lorraine had ducked her head in time to the split-second movement of the trigger.
The bullet only grazed her long, ivory hair.
She avoided it without even looking. Is it just a coincidence? No, it's not. Lorraine is like that.
She hears the voice of the bullet.It's what her coworkers half-jokingly told her when she refused to let a single bullet go by in a hail of bullets.
In other words, they half meant it.
Perhaps it is an ability that appears when certain human talents are pushed to the extreme.
Her senses had been rusted away over the years, but her battle with the Fade had reawakened the senses she'd had in her prime.
The gun in his prosthetic hand aimed at Lorraine while his prosthetic eye was burning as he transmitted the data.
Lorraine's running stance, speed, and where she will be in a few seconds.
In response, the prosthetic doesn't falter in her running position, calculating the trajectory and pulling the trigger with precision.
Still, bullets can't touch them.
Not even the life-sapping replacements, not even the drugs and torture they infuse into his body.
It was once so overwhelming that he felt no jealousy, only infinite respect, but not now that she had become an enemy.
Just as he was about to fire his last bullet, a bullet came flying through the dusty box and hit his prosthetic finger precisely.
-Bam!
No matter how sturdy a prosthetic hand is, it's still a problem when it's aimed at a knuckle.
When the trigger didn't pull, Fade switched the pistol to his other arm, fired the same round, and quickly changed magazines.
However, with his hand lacking aim assistance, he couldn’t even graze a hair on Lorraine.
His head felt hot and his eyes and brain seemed to be pressed against his pharynx.
His entire nervous system was on high alert, to the point where the slightest breeze made his skin tingle.
His senses were extremely sharp, and he felt like all the information was coming in unfiltered.
His mouth tasted sweet and he broke out in a cold sweat. His body, pushed to the limit, was rapidly breaking down, and his mind was becoming a blur.
As he looked at Lorraine's sideways reflection through his prosthetic eyes, Fade saw flashes of the distant past.
He remembered when he and Lorraine had practiced mock combat.
The training ground was a sandy field with logs set up to create obstacles.
A fight that would end only if he could subdue his opponent with a gun and a knife.
Then, as now, Fade had run after Lorraine to take her down.
The bullets fired from this side never reached Lorraine. This was the result of aiming for awkward positions for subduing rather than targeting vital points.
Even if he had aimed for a fatal spot, he probably wouldn't have been able to land a valid hit on her.
The same was true in close combat. Even with all the bullets in his arsenal and knife fighting with a military dagger, Fade couldn't beat Lorraine.
The weight difference didn't matter to Lorraine.
Not close combat, not knife fighting, not marksmanship.
None of it mattered to her.
But the young Fade never thought of it as a disadvantage. On the contrary, he felt a small sense of satisfaction in knowing that the opponent he admired was stronger.
He just liked the situation of the exercise, and he enjoyed being in the palm of his captain's hand.
They were comrades in arms, smiling at each other.
The truth is, he didn't mean what he said when he shouted at her as she walked away.
In truth, Fade wanted to say something else.
He wanted to say that he was grateful.
“Lorraine!”
Fade's tone was a little slurred. The price of overusing his nerves was that some of his bodily functions were paralyzed.
His body had been forced to degrade its non-combat functions in an attempt to stave off death.
“What am I doing now? Am I alive? Is my heart still beating?
My head is dizzy. Thinking is not working. His goals have converged on one simple goal, to kill his opponent.
The two reached the end of the warehouse at almost the same time.
As soon as the wall of display cases that blocked them ended, Fade ran towards Lorraine but there was no initial, sharp movement.
It was a monotonous movement, driven by instinct, but his body, so long on the battlefield, made it menacing.
Kill her. Kill her, and then continue your fight. No. That's the captain. Why am I pointing a gun at the captain? That's not the captain. That's the enemy. The enemy of our noble struggle.
Thoughts and memories tangle and mingle. The body, following its instincts, raises the pistol and aims it at Lorraine.
At that moment, the approaching Lorraine grabs his wrist and spins him around.
-Bang! Bang! BANG!
Bullets shattered the ceiling of the warehouse. The roof collapsed, sending debris rushing down, rain falling from beyond.
Fade gripped the knife with his prosthetic hand. He was still fully functional except for his trigger finger.
He entered the knife fight, hoping to catch Lorraine off guard, but she drew her dagger, parrying or deflecting his blade.
Her movements were perfect, as if measured with a ruler, without a single error.
Fade tried to increase the power of his prosthetic hand, but overuse caused it to self-cool and decrease in power.
Without missing a beat, Lorraine kicked Fade in the shin with her military boot, a leg made of bone and flesh, not prosthetic.
“Kaaaah!”
Off-balance and falling to one knee, Fade shook with rage and squeezed the trigger of his pistol repeatedly as if he wanted to kill her somehow.
He knew it couldn't be, but he was desperate to eliminate the enemy that stood in his way.
The flame of the muzzle. The acrid smell of gunpowder. The feel of the trigger.
It was a sensation Lorraine had come to recognize, to the point of sickening, since she had left them.
A time when he silently followed orders coming down from above, regardless of who the opponent was.
Sometimes it was terrorists, sometimes it was politicians trying to cut the military's budget.
Not everyone was the enemy, and sometimes they killed innocents.
I questioned why, but I didn't ask why. I didn't wonder when.
I just walked, knowing that one day, at the end of this road, there would be freedom and honor.
Among those he killed, along with his men, who had lost all their old comrades and were now replaced by nameless men, were elements of his old army.
Fade stared at the dead man in his office with a gaping hole in his brow.
The man wore medals proudly on his body, symbols of pride he would never earn, a man of wealth and honor, died at the hands of a street dog.
Fade felt a strange sense of emptiness rather than pleasure.
He said he would tell him the truth and such before he died, but that didn't even stick in his mind.
He'd just burned the mansion down and left but Fade was strangely interested in the papers he held like a secret.
Even though he knew he shouldn't, he pulled it out and read it.
-This.
It was a top-secret military memo.
What it contained was astonishing. Taking orphans, putting them through grueling training, and raising them to be Rangers.
And then forcibly modifying them in unethical ways to produce stronger soldiers.
There was also information about the 121st Ranger Unit.
The only unit that kept going when every other Ranger unit died and disappeared.
The higher-ups didn't like their presence, so they sent them on a mission to eliminate terrorists and leaked their information to the terrorists. In fact, they actively participated in their elimination.
It was a moment when all the strength in Fade's body was lost.
There is no false information. It is not a copy, it is the original. It cannot be considered to have been manipulated.
That day in the desert, that hellish experience, was the result of the military betraying them.
Then why is Miller dead? Why did we have to go through all that trouble?
Captain Lorraine.
Why did she have to leave us?
All sorts of emotions jumbled together, coalescing into one jet-black thing.
In that moment, Fade decided what he had to do.
-We shouldn't have killed our guest so casually.
While he was furiously crunching the confidential information, a voice came up from behind him and said, “You can't just kill our guest like that.”
Fade glared at his opponent, gun pointed at him like a ghost. It was a kind of instinct that kept him from pulling the trigger immediately or rather, the instinct that if he pulled the trigger, he would die.
-You're quick. I'll take this over the dead guy any day.
His eyes glowed in the darkness, and he turned to Fade with an offer.
-Why don't you work with us? We can replace your current prosthetic eyes and body with something better. I'll also give you the power and troops to take revenge on the military.
Fade stared at the other man wordlessly, then back at the crumpled document.
-Will you do it?
He didn't need to ask who he was or what he was doing.
At that moment, Fade wanted to hold that hand, even if it was a demon.
Fade wordlessly lowered the muzzle of his gun, and the other man smirked.
-The White House welcomes you.
What happened after that was simple.
Only the leaders had changed—from the military to those guys.
The troops were changed immediately with more competent soldiers that were better at following orders.
They didn't refuse orders, no matter how unreasonable they were.
They were worse off than he was.
The sight of such subordinates, or rather, tools, encouraged Fade to operate as a ghost.
His targets were wealthy men who had invested in the military.
Those who directly or indirectly helped the organization he hated so much to survive.
Kill them all, choke the life out of the military, and finally drive a blade into the heart of the enemy.
That was Fade's plan.
There was no more victory to cling to, no more honor to seek, no more freedom to grasp.
All that remained was vengeance even if it meant burning his life.
I will kill anyone who stands in my way.
I cannot stop. I must not stop.
His hazy eyes looked at Lorraine.
The captain. The one he'd always wanted. The only comrade-in-arms he could trust with everything in this world but at the same time, the face of an unforgivable traitor who stands in his way.
Ideals and reality collide.
His brain felt like it was on fire as he realized that the person he was supposed to protect and the person he was supposed to hate were the same person.
Fade drove a blow into Lorraine's shoulder.
The wound gaped open, smearing red blood across Lorraine's shoulder blade. Her grip loosened, and Fade's pistol was free once more.
Steadying his swaying body, Fade ejected the pistol's magazine with one hand, replaced it in the spare magazine in his thigh pocket, and pulled the slide back with his mouth.
In one fluid motion, Fade pointed the gun at Lorraine.
“Lorraine!”
Lorraine was him, holding a pistol in her other arm, pointing it at Fade.
Her face was stained with sadness and anguish.
-BANG!
A single gunshot rang out.
It emitted a short, dry wail from inside the warehouse, not spreading out into the rain outside.
*
Fade lay down and looked up at the sky.
Then he heard footsteps, and someone approaching his side.
He looked up at the other with one blurry eye.
“Ah, Captain. Have you come?”
The captain of the phantom troop was nowhere to be seen, and he was Fade Wilson, the timid, soft-spoken member of the 121st Rangers.
His eyes were fixed on the hot desert beyond Lorraine, shadowed by shadows.
“How did the mission go? Are our men, are they safe?”
“Yes, sir. They're all safe. All thanks to you.”
Fade smiled faintly at Lorraine's solemn words.
His one eye now held the image of his departed comrades-in-arms.
“Yeah, well, I'm glad to see they're all safe.”
Rainwater dripped through the open ceiling, wetting Fade's face.
“Captain......it's raining. It's the desert, and it's raining.”
“I see.”
“Alas. The canteens. I need to fill the captain's canteen. I've drained it.......”
“Don't worry about it. I've already filled it.”
“Ahhh......thank goodness.”
Finally relieved of the guilt that had been holding him back, Fade closed his eyes with a satisfied smile.
He never spoke again.
Lorraine stood in heavy silence as she watched him die.
May you reach the end of your glory, comrade.
A tear rolled down his pallid face.
*
The door to the old warehouse opened and two men emerged from it.