Isolation & Fear (Damned of the 2/19th Book Seven)

I Should Have Run

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you will all die here
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Little-Bit smiled at me, laying on the bed. She was completely naked, and while I sat in the chair I went to sharpen the blade again, looking down at the knife.

The rasp of the blade being slid across the stone, blade edge first, didn't cover the sound of a woman screaming above us. I stared at the way the thin layer of oil coated the edge of the blade, the angle and direction preventing a razor sharp edge from curling over the edge to reduce the sharpness.

"What's it like?" Little-Bit suddenly asked.

PROCESSOR INTERRUPT

I looked up at her. "What?"

"What's it like being the Ant?" She asked, lifting up her hands and lacing them behind her head. "You're so different from Tony, and I'm wondering what it's like being you."

I thought for a long second, ignoring the shout in German above us and the crashing of boots against the floor.

"Is it like split personalities? Like you're schizophrenic or something?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No, nothing like that."

"But you're so different," she tried.

I sighed, shrugging, looking back down at the knife in my hand. "It's compartmentalism," I told her honestly. "Out at Atlas and in combat, there's things I can't afford to feel, can't afford to think about, can afford to have happen."

"Like they teach us to control and use our fear," She tried.

I nodded. "It's the way my brain works," I told her. I sighed. "I had a bad temper as a child."

"From being abused. You lashed out," She guessed.

I nodded. "My father taught me to meditate,  I read a lot of books on meditation, on the strong mind strong body attitudes," I told her. "I read that locking things away was unhealthy, that it was like acid or poison, and would keep affecting me, keep hurting me."

"So, compartmentalization so you could eventually deal with it?" Little-Bit asked.

"Yeah, because that's working so well," Westlin said from where she was leaning against the radiator, her Kevlar vest open, her t-shirt sliced up the middle, exposing her bra and the bullet wound that had taken her life.

"Kind of," I said, shrugging.

"So, tell me, what's it like being the Ant?" She asked again.

I shrugged. "What's it like being Little-Bit?"

She smiled at that. "Lonely a lot of time. I spend most of my waking hours looking at the world through a scope attached to a fifty-caliber sniper rifle capable of shooting through a light armored vehicle, waiting for the signal that the war has started. The majority of people I look at through my scope, I cannot afford to think of as human, merely targets. I'm not interested in their hopes, their dreams, although I know they have them, I only care about how their brain stem lines up with the barrel of my rifle."

I nodded at that. "I'll admit, that's kind of what the world looks like to me right now. There's targets, objectives,"

WARNING! IFF SYSTEM REPORTS VOLTAGE SPIKES
NOMINAL VOLTAGE: 0.07V
CURRENT VOLTAGE: 0.062 - 0.082 +/- 0.004
IFF SYSTEM OFFLINE
DAMAGE CONTROL AT 04%

"Military IFF and targeting," Little-Bit guessed. I nodded. "So you feel pain?"

I shrugged. "It's there, I just don't care."