They stepped outside their cell. In front of them was a familiar steel corridor they had walked hundreds of times; on their right, its dark expanse yawned, and on their left, a furnace. All of it was as rust-infested as the interior of their cell. This was their courtyard.

  The nuclear blast door slammed behind them, the light above it turned red; right was the only way forward. The corridor was wide enough for a tank to hover forth; it was separated into two parts, one a railroad system, the other a narrow sidewalk. Enormous rusty wind turbines on the ceiling endlessly moaned their monotonous mechanical dirge ten meters above them.

  The furnace was the last stop of the railroad, just paces away from their cell. A small carriage full of decaying corpses was disposed into the furnace’s maw by a steel crane. The man that controlled the crane was obviously human; no gene warrior needed a biohazard suit. The corpses were in various stages of decay: some fresh, some maggot-ridden, some completely bone-bare. All once belonged to nameless gene warriors—failed specimens, the merely unlucky, or, as evidenced by terrifying wounds caused by an intracranial explosion, failed rebels. All dumped like unwanted cargo.

  Glass took his hand and set the pace to the right as she always had during transit; her stride quick, deliberate. This was their ritual. It was as much a ritual as their prior brief competition in gearing up, and as much as sex before infil.

  He slowed and stared at the operator as he nonchalantly worked the levers feeding flesh to machine. His forward motion halted. Glass tugged him back into step and said something. He did not register it. His attention slid left, drawn to the furnace.

  The mechanical arm scooped up his dead gene brothers and sisters to deliver them to their final destination. Among them was a sixth-generation late model, same white skin, same phenotype as Glass; the unnamed gene warrior was still locked in embrace with a similar male gene warrior model. Their unwritten will to never let go until death and beyond was preserved by rigor mortis as they were together plunged into hell’s gluttonous jaws.

  “May you find peace, honorable brother and sister,” he whispered as he always had. But he never understood why.

  “Enough sightseeing! Move!” she spat as she dragged him forward; this time Geiger yielded.

  His fingers tightened around hers; she answered by pressing back, turned to face him briefly, and nodded. She is here. We are still here, he thought.

  They walked forward along the sidewalk; to their right now stood the railroad, to their left steel doors dispersed every ten to twenty meters. None of these doors were nearly as armored as theirs. A diverse assortment of sounds echoed from these cells, from nothing to screams of mad rage, excruciating agony, and anything in between.

  As they passed a particularly noisy door, they paid it no mind; this was their nature. A strange sensation stirred in his chest, similar to the one that urged him toward a mission objective or waypoint. He slowed, closed his eyes, and rested his palm against a door.

  “May you find peace,” he whispered.

  He did not know why he did this; it simply felt necessary.

  More doors, more rust, more screams. Nothing new.

  Why?

  The next door they passed was open.

  Glass walked past it without a glance.

  He didn’t.

  A tiny room. A solid steel chair. A human child barely eleven years old, shackled in steel restraints strong enough to immobilize most gene warriors. An IV pumped a purple liquid into his convulsing body. Machines surrounded him, beeping, graphing his condition in real time. Human scientists in biohazard suits observed and documented as the child screamed something about… God? A single bored fifth-generation gene warrior lounged in the corner, cigarette hanging loose from his lips; security.

  He stopped.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  “What is God?” He had heard other humans scream this word as he was blowing them apart with his heavy machine gun.

  His gaze fixed on the child. The child met it—and stopped screaming.

  Glass struck his forearm and pulled insistently. She hissed something sharp and urgent. He didn’t hear a word.

  He stood there, eyes locked on the child.

  Time stretched thin. He looked at his hands, then at Glass, then at the unlucky human. His hands were steady, but his instincts screamed. He did not understand why.

  He drew a slow breath, blinked, and resumed walking.

  His vision dimmed for an instant. The cold that followed was not the comforting frost of Glass’s body, but something alien and hollow. A minute fraction of the unease from his nightmares surged—losing Glass—though he had never known the doomed human.

  Whimpers. Silence. The child never said the word again.

  The sounds dissolved into the steel abyss like all the rest. They marched onward.

  The sensation grew heavier. Moisture blurred his vision; he did not understand why. The human was a stranger. Not her. Not them. Not a threat. Not a mission objective. Then why did his body react? Was he defective? Obsolete?

  She stopped and took both of his hands, standing still for a brief moment.

  She leaned in close.

  “Last time in this shithole, chief. Let’s keep moving.”

  They continued onward—one way—toward the rusted darkness beneath the familiar symphony of moans and screams. The unease lingered. Maybe it was the word. God.

  The question burrowed into him like an autocannon caliber wound.

  The corridor repeated itself: doors, rust, an occasional train screaming past. She never released his hand. At mathematically regular intervals, she glanced back and gave him a small, confident smile.

  They advanced together. Her thoughts were on the mission—tactics, formations, deployment, logistics, squad cohesion, survival.

  His were not.

  Not this time.

  Strange questions crowded his mind: human words and their opaque meanings. There were the “cockroach words”—Biohazard, Radiation hazard, Chemical hazard—lethal only to humans. And then there were the unthinkable ones: God, love, hope, remorse. Words with unclear function.

  This was futile.

  All his training modules were about war and killing. When he fought humans, when he cornered them; some screamed God, some whispered love. Why not covering fire, maneuver, artillery support—anything that might help them live? What was the purpose of such inefficient vocalizations? Were they simply the echoes of an evolutionary dead end? They had been nuking their only planet into ruin for decades. Perhaps they truly were sentient cockroaches.

  They deserved it, he thought, his fingers curling slowly against his palm.

  “Fuck…” he exhaled.

  She responded instantly, tightening her grip and angling herself into his line of sight.

  “We will survive this, Geiger. Eyes ahead. Ears on comms. Mind on the map. Muzzle toward the enemy.”

  “Glass, I want to ask something.”

  “Speak.”

  “I know we’ll survive. I know we’ll finish whatever shitfuck mission the cockroaches send us on…”

  “I know this too. I will protect you. I will spot the enemy, mist their faces from afar, tear their guts open up close.”

  “What comes after that, Glassy? Orders, killing, in repetition—until we die or they try to upgrade us… and fail.”

  “Hey! down here!" She stepped in front of him. "We transfer out, no more injections! .”

  “What will it be like? Or are you just quoting what they told us?”

  She scanned the corridor, then relaxed slightly. The noise was too thick for hidden surveillance microphones to matter.

  “No. This time you listen, Glassy.”

  “I guess it’s the time and place for your usual nonsense, Geiger…”

  “Shut up and listen.”

  “That kid… he screamed a word. God. The blues we kill scream it too. Why? What does it do for them?” He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes drifting back to her.

  “It means shit.” She spat on the floor. He frowned.

  “Maybe they unlock something. Maybe that’s why humans never included them in our training.”

  She snorted. “Right. Say a roachword and the remote frag in our brains shuts off. MBTs explode. Drones drop.”

  She tapped her chin. “Maybe ATGMs shoot out of my magwell.” She slapped her crotch

  “Bet, you wouldn’t mind,” she added, flicking her tongue at him.

  “Forget I asked.”

  “Then shut up. Oil your recoil spring.” She flipped him off and tugged him forth.

  His gaze dropped to the floor.

  “Hey! Eyes up!” She jerked his arm sharply. “My turn.”

  She stepped forward, spun, spread her arms wide, eyes alight.

  “Infil, exfil—then seven days R&R in Zukovgrad. Eating, drinking, and fucking. Black scythes on our shoulders. No more test subject roachshit.”

  She seized both his hands and shook them hard.

  “Not bad, huh?”

  “Retire… right.”

  She slapped his chest, grinning.

  “Imagine it.”

  The lights flickered. Darkness fell. Infrared vision bloomed. A scream echoed in the distance.

  He stood holding her hands, thoughts racing.

  There was only one way they retired together.

  He knelt, pulled her close, wrapped her in his arms, and kissed her like it was the last time. The furnace couple flashed in his mind.

  She laughed softly.

  They got up and walked.

  The 90-degree bend that led to the main elevator was straight ahead.