Jeff ducked down into the trenches, gasping for air and slumping his gun onto his lap. He coughed, spitting onto the dirt and wheezing. His lungs felt like someone had kindly lit them on fire, his body ached like it never had before. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept. It wasn't how he expected war would be like. Jeff thought in the very least that they would have been given enough food rations to cease the rumbling in his gut. It was just another thing that the Canadians stole from them.
Jeff recalled the passing looks from the townsfolk at home. How every able body, men and women alike, were called to war. The Canadian-American border had been destroyed – all that was left was the charred and shredded remains of his brothers and sisters. He remembered everyone gazing at him as though he was just another pig for slaughter. Maybe he was. After all, there wasn't any drinkable water left, hardly any food to get by, and hygiene was out of the question. Most died from disease instead of the foe.
He had only seen them a couple times from very far away. Beneath all that talk of world peace and maple syrup, the Canadians had been secretly creating a technological army, a force unlike any other. The AI was incredibly refined, able to kill an unarmed soldier without second thought. Point and shoot, just like a video game.
Jeff hacked again, spitting out a fair bit of blood. He wasn't fairing so well, either. He would have retreated to ask for help, but there wasn't another live human being in sight. It was a miracle that he survived the first wave of the robot warriors. Half of them gone in an instant. The rest scrambled to hang onto their already wasted lives, cowering in the trenches.
He cleared his throat, stiffening. Jeff knew he had to find a way out of this, whether he charged ahead and was blown to smithereens or could make it ten feet to camp before he was obliterated. The odds weren't exactly optimal.
All around him were corpses. Their limbs at impossible angles, muscle torn from their throats. Jessica, Lorne, Matthew. Just yesterday they laughed at whimsical things, dancing around the fire of the night. Jeff laughed, wiping his face. There really was no escape. Could he dig a hole and hide himself, hoping not to be discovered when the AI advanced again?
A rustle. Loss of breath. A quickened heartbeat, a painstakingly slow turn of his head. An impenetrable force of metal slicked in beside him, its single blue eye focusing on him. He pulled the trigger, the bullets bouncing off it like a trampoline. He whimpered, scuttling away as fast as his broken body would let him.
"So sorry," It apologized, transforming what was once a leg into a charging gun. "But we must keep you eagles away from us, eh?" A blinding flash of light, a noise reminiscent of a popping gun, and Jeff was everywhere.
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