Jack awoke choking.
Mud filled his mouth, thick and gritty, grinding between his teeth as he spat and gagged, clawing at the ground like a drowning man breaking the surface of a black sea. Cold rain lashed his face, sharp as needles, driven sideways by an angry wind. His ears rang. His chest burned. Every breath tasted of rust, rot, and smoke.
This wasn't his bedroom.
That thought came slowly, stupidly, as if his mind were refusing to accept the obvious. He rolled onto his back and stared upward, blinking rain from his eyes. The sky was a torn, sickly gray, split open again and again by flashes of orange and white. Each flash was followed by a thunderous crack that shook the earth itself, sending ripples through the ground beneath him.
Artillery.
Something screamed overhead, then the world exploded in a flash of red and orange.
A shell slammed into the earth less than fifty meters away. The blast lifted Jack off the ground and hurled him sideways. He hit hard, pain blooming across his ribs, the air ripped from his lungs. Mud and shattered wood rained down, mixed with darker shapes that his mind refused to identify at first.
Then one landed beside him.
A hand. Or what was left of one.
Jack froze.
He turned his head slowly, dread coiling tighter with each inch, until he saw the body it belonged to, or rather, the ruin of one. A man lay twisted at an impossible angle, uniform torn open, chest caved in. His face was gone. Not damaged. Gone. As if someone had erased it with violence.
Jack screamed.
The sound was swallowed instantly by the barrage, by the ceaseless thunder of guns and the screams of others scattered across the field. Men ran through the mud, slipping, falling, disappearing in geysers of earth and fire. Some crawled. Some didn't move at all.
Bodies were everywhere.
Not lying neatly, not peacefully. They were half-buried, trampled into the mire, tangled in barbed wire like grotesque decorations. The mud itself seemed alive, sucking at boots, pulling the dead and dying down into itself inch by inch.
Jack pushed himself upright, hands shaking violently.
'This isn't real. This can't be real.'
His heart hammered so hard he thought it might tear itself free. He stumbled forward, then stopped short as his gaze dropped to his hands.
They weren't his.
They were larger, rougher, and the skin cracked and raw from cold and wet. Mud was ground beneath his fingernails. His dark gray-green wool was soaked and heavy. He looked down at his chest and felt his stomach drop.
A German officer's uniform stared back at him.
The double-breasted coat. The insignia. The iron-gray color he recognized from books and documentaries. A pistol hung at his side in a leather holster, and a pair of binoculars bounced against his chest as another shell detonated somewhere behind him.
"No," Jack whispered, his voice hoarse and strange to his own ears. It carried a faint accent, not strong, but there.
He staggered forward again as instinct screamed at him to move, to get off the open ground. Another shell hit closer this time, blowing a crater so massive Jack could have parked several trucks inside it. The shockwave slammed into him, throwing him face-first into the mud once more.
He didn't bother screaming this time. He just ran.
He ran blindly, boots sucking and slipping, lungs burning, heart threatening to burst. He didn't know where he was going, only that staying still meant dying. Somewhere through the chaos, through the thunder and shrieks and tearing metal, he heard voices.
German voices.
Shouted commands. Panicked curses. Familiar not because he spoke the language fluently, he didn't, but because something deep inside him understood.
That terrified him more than the shells.
Jack changed direction, splashing through knee-deep muck toward the sound. He nearly collided with the first soldier, a young man with mud smeared across his face and eyes too wide with terror. The man raised his rifle instinctively, then froze.
"Herr Leutnant!" the soldier shouted over the noise.
Others emerged from the smoke and rain—five of them, then seven. A full squad. Their uniforms matched his own, though none bore officer insignia. Helmets were dented and scarred, some missing chunks. Faces were streaked with grime and blood, eyes hollow and exhausted.
One of them, broader than the rest with a thick mustache plastered to his face by rain, grabbed Jack's arm.
"Orders, sir?" he yelled. "The barrage is pushing us back!"
Jack opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
His mind was blank, screaming, fractured. He had no orders. No idea where he was or what he was supposed to do. All he knew was that standing here meant death.
Another shell landed close enough that the ground bucked beneath them. A soldier screamed as shrapnel tore into his leg, dropping him into the mud.
That snapped something into place.
"Fall back!" Jack shouted, the words spilling out in German before he could think about them. "Retreat to the Fire line! Now!"
The men didn't hesitate. They moved instantly, dragging the wounded soldier with them, splashing through the mud toward a jagged line of earthworks barely visible through the smoke. Jack ran with them, heart pounding, mind racing.
'How do I know this language?'
They dove into the trench just as another shell obliterated the ground where they'd been standing seconds before. Earth rained down into the trench, burying them in dirt and splinters. Jack fell headfirst, slamming into the trench wall, gasping, his hands shaking uncontrollably.
The trench was a nightmare of its own.
Mud filled it almost to the knee. Water pooled at the bottom, dark and foul. The walls were reinforced with rotting planks and sandbags that sagged under their own weight. Bodies lay slumped along the trench floor, some covered with tarps, others simply left where they'd fallen.
The wounded soldier was laid against the wall, crying out as another man tore open a field dressing with his teeth.
The barrage continued overhead, but it felt distant now, muffled by layers of earth.
For the first time since waking, Jack felt something like safety.
It lasted exactly three seconds.
A translucent blue screen flickered into existence in front of his eyes.
Jack flinched violently, slamming his back into the trench wall. The soldiers shouted in alarm, weapons raised, looking around wildly.
"What is it, sir?" one asked. "Gas?"
Jack shook his head, unable to speak.
The screen hovered inches from his face, unaffected by rain or mud or smoke. Clean. Perfect. Impossible.
MERCENARY SYSTEM INITIALIZING…
A progress bar filled smoothly.
Jack's breathing turned shallow.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no…"
The bar reached the end.
INITIALIZATION COMPLETE.
WELCOME, JACK MILLER.
The letters were sharp, precise, and written in English.
Jack stared.
'It knows my name.'
The soldiers continued talking around him, oblivious to the glowing interface only he could see.
You have been selected as an Independent Combat Asset.
Time Period: World War I.
Location: Ypres Salient – Opening Phase of the Battle of Passchendaele.
Jack's blood ran cold.
Passchendaele. He knew that name. Hundreds of thousands dead for a few miles of ground.
Status: Contracted Asset.
Employer: German Empire.
The words felt like a punch to the gut.
Role: Gun for Hire.
Images flickered briefly: battlefields, contracts, flags changing hands, blood soaking into different kinds of soil. Jack squeezed his eyes shut, but the images burned on the inside of his eyelids.
You are not bound by ideology, loyalty, or nationality.
You are bound by contract.
Jack swallowed hard.
The screen shifted.
CURRENT CONTRACT AVAILABLE
Objective: Capture and secure Polygon Wood.
Assets Provided: One infantry squad.
Conditions: The Main German force will draw the Entente's attention away from the objective.
Failure Consequence: Contract termination / Permanent Deletion
Jack's stomach twisted.
One squad? Against that?
Another line appeared.
Reward Upon Completion:
– Gewehr M16
– Unlimited Ammunition
Jack barked out a short, hysterical laugh.
"Unlimited ammo," he whispered. "Of course. Why not?"
The reality of it hit him all at once. He was standing in a trench in 1914, wearing the uniform of an officer, in a body that wasn't his and in a world that was supposed to be in a history book, not real life.
His hands began to shake so badly that he had to clench them into fists.
"I'm going to die," he muttered. "I'm going to die here."
The screen pulsed softly, as if listening.
NOTICE: Asset Stress Levels Critical.
A new line appeared.
Death is not permanent.
Jack froze.
"What?" he whispered.
The screen brightened.
Upon Asset Death, the temporal state will reset to the start of the operational day.
Memory retention guaranteed.
Progress retained.
Jack stared, his mind refusing to process the words.
"You're telling me," he said slowly, "that if I die…"
The day resets.
The sounds of the trench faded into the background. The screams, the distant guns, the rain, all of it dimmed beneath the weight of that single idea.
Reset.
Again.
And again.
Jack let out a long, shaking breath.
Fear was still there, raw and overwhelming, but beneath it, something else stirred. Something dangerous. His mind fractured and began to weld itself to death, the dieing and respawning reminding him of the games he played before. That logic became reality as his brain rewired itself.
Jack looked up as one of the soldiers approached him, saluting sharply despite the mud and exhaustion.
"Herr Leutnant," the man said. "Orders?"
Jack glanced once more at the glowing objective hovering in his vision.
Polygon Wood.
He straightened slowly, forcing his trembling hands to still.
"Rest while you can," Jack said, his voice steadier than he felt. "We mount an assault again soon."
The soldier nodded and stepped away.
Jack leaned back against the trench wall, rain dripping down his helmet, and stared into the gray sky. The reality was washing over him as his mind just rewired itself, reinforcing that this isn't real, that this was simply a game. But something deep within Jack bled as his brain confronted the horrors of this war to be.