Dawn Is Coming

Chapter 1

Akira

My hands are trembling and my eye is strained from looking into the scope on my sniper for too long. I lie down flat against the ground to avoid bullets, doing my best to fill my lungs up with the oxygen-lacking air and tucking my greasy blonde hair behind my ears. I can't inhale enough; it feels as if every single pathway in my body is constricting. My throat is being squeezed by a menacing hand, my blood vessels being stepped on by merciless feet. My heart is pounding inside my chest but it feels as if it's pounding on every square millimetre of my body. My bones are sawed and drilled, and my brain is wrung dry. I sit there, gripping the dead grass and breathing hard and trying to stop myself from pulling my ears off to not have to hear the guns. My head is exploding.

"Are you alright, Akira?" My general's gruff voice thunders through my earpiece.

I cough, one, two, three times before telling him that I need a break. Without even waiting for his reply, I take out my earpiece and shove it deep in a pocket in my military vest. I disassemble my sniper and clumsily shove it in its case. I press the cold, steel box to my forehead, trying to cool down the burning pain in my head. I take my last deep breaths before standing up from the ground and running down the hill I shoot from. The view is painfully breathtaking; hundreds of men are shooting and stabbing at each other on the battlefield, and I can't even tell which men are with me and which men are set out to kill me. The sky is dark. The artificial moon provides a small amount of light, just barely illuminating my surroundings. It's a shame the battlegrounds are around 10 kilometers away from Ruinexus, my home country. The very country I'm supposed to be fighting for right now on this expansive plain of dead, yellow grass. I finally make it to the base of my hill, the hill on which I've shot and killed hundreds of soldiers. I take a few more seconds to make sure nothing drastic happens while I analyze the busy battlefield. I'm around 500 meters away from the nearest soldier. I'm safe, but not really. I don't know how much more of this suffocating feeling I can take.

As I begin to turn around to leave the battlefield and run home like a coward, I see him. Tall, standing out among the crowd with his bright, intoxicatingly bright, golden hair. Grant. I even feel a tiny bit better from the thought of him. I always feel so embarrassed when I catch myself thinking about him on the battlefield, but I would give anything right now to have my thoughts focused on him instead of the pain that is numbing my brain.

I'm finally facing the long and unnaturally straight dirt path that leads me home to Ruinexus. I take a few deep breaths before gathering my remaining strength and sprinting along the road. It's wide, probably around 5 meters; the perfect width for Military Vehicles (or MVs, as they're most often called) to drive on. They're massive vans made of iron that can camouflage and disappear into their surroundings. I look to my sides, seeing nothing but an expanse of dreary yellows and greys that blur together into a shade of gloom. I wonder how this field would look like at dawn. Grant once told me that long, long ago, the sun used to be visible. It would rise at around 0800, and then set at 2000. I remember how passionate I felt when my third grade teacher taught us about the sun. The blazing orange ball of fire would bring the scenery around me to life, would bring us to life. I can almost imagine the feeling of the warm rays baking my skin. Would it feel like the heat from a fire? That's how I imagine it.

My legs feel stiff, and I can feel my bones scraping against each other. My black combat boots kick up dust, but once the cloud of dust forms, I'm already far ahead of it. I can feel the wind on my face, cooling down my burning skin. I almost trip over a small stone on the path, and I'm sent hurling forward even faster as I try to regain my balance. I finally manage to make out the faint outline of the massive iron gates guarding Ruinexus around a kilometre ahead. After a minute, I'm already there. I stop in front of the gates, and I pant hard, my body stooping. After a few minutes, I can feel my body regaining its strength, and the constrictions start to weaken. I've been experiencing these constrictions for the past few weeks, and it gets worse every time they start.