Darkness.

Aiden found himself lost in a state of hazy unconsciousness, swarmed by a numbness that consumed every inch of him. And then, a voice.

"Aiden."

Her voice was familiar, in an odd way. It felt as though Aiden had not heard it in many years, and yet, it was so distinguishable. He expected to be greeted with a searing headache upon fighting to identify her, but there was nothing.

Silence.

"Aiden," said the voice once again. "Be safe, Aiden, my soldier."

A warmness overcame him, accompanied by what felt like a blanket of safety and reassurance. Aiden desperately searched for her, but she was nowhere to be found.

"Have hope, my son. The end is near."

And then, too soon, the world came back to him.

Aiden's gray eyes flew open, flinching as harsh light greeted him. He furrowed his brow, squinting until he was accustomed to his surroundings. He was sitting down in a large room with a window overlooking hundreds of missiles laying dormant in a large warehouse. They looked as if they were frozen in time; untouched for many years and left to be forgotten for many more to come. A control panel ran along the window, a myriad of buttons, levers and dated computer screens lining the walls.

Aiden wanted to approach it, but he was stopped short at the feeling of sharp metal digging into his wrists and ankles, confining him to his chair. He looked around, puzzled and desperate for answers.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Aiden turned his head to find Orion sitting in a metal chair, surveying the weapons with a pleasant smile. His black uniform was crisp and untouched, not even a hair out of place on his immaculate head.

"Where am I?" Aiden asked. His voice was raspy and weak, and his mouth tasted like dried blood. "How long have I been unconscious?"

Orion rose from the chair, approaching Aiden with a swift walk. His uniform billowed behind him, making his stature look grandiose and fearsome.

"Underground," Orion replied simply. "This is a weapons bunker located beneath the Eskium warehouse. I believe it was once occupied long ago by the old countries, the ones who controlled this earth before the last World War."

"And just how did you manage to find it?" Aiden demanded, an unsettling feeling creeping into his body. Nuclear power in the hands of the Eskium leader wasn't to be trusted. Just what were Orion's plans?

"Well, that's just it, isn't it? Eskium may have lost the war, but we still fought in it. Only this time, we've made sure that nothing else can interfere with our victory."

"Bold words from an ambitious maniac," Aiden scoffed. "You're losing."

Orion's eyes glinted in the light. "I know."

Aiden hesitated, unsure of what to say next. Aiden hoped that the Creatan forces had been making great strides in their fight against Eskium, but he was unaware of their success. If Orion knew that his troops were losing, then why would he be so composed? Better yet, why would he let Aiden live to see it?

"So why keep it up, then? Why not surrender, here and now? End this," Aiden urged. He lifted his head up defiantly, as if to justify his claims. "If there's no chance of winning, find some shred of sympathy within you to save the lives of the people who are still alive."

"Our goal was to win," Orion explained, staring off into the distance. "But you see, there are no winners in a game on nuclear war. No matter which side fires first, everybody still dies." He turned back to Aiden, his face strained with a twisted smile. "So that's how this ends. Without any winners; with no survivors."

"Do your troops know about your little suicide pact?" Aiden growled, struggling against his cuffs. "Do they know they're fighting for a cause without resolution?"

"Resolution? Of course there is resolution," Orion waved dismissively. "There is death, and death is the inevitable resolution. We were all meant to die someday. Some of us have even died today. The Great War was meant to eradicate us. It failed. But it will not fail again."

"So why keep me alive?" Aiden narrowed his eyes. "I'm a liability to you. I can stop you. What compels you to let me live?"

"Oh, I am not afraid of you, General Lycroft," laughed Orion. "You are harmless to me. You are so easily broken. It would be so simple to find your greatest weakness and use it to hurt you. After all, we all have a weakness. Zariah Blanche's, for instance, is you."

"So it's Zariah you're afraid of," Aiden concluded. "You know she's smart enough to stop you. "She's known since the beginning. It's her vengeance that you fear."

"Lieutenant Blanche is the cockroach of humanity," mumbled the Eskium leader. "She is impossible to get rid of. No matter what I do, she slips by, and lives to see another day. Kind of like a phoenix being born again from the ashes. It's beautiful, in a sense. In my case, unfortunately, it's a nuisance. Luckily for me, Lieutenant Blanche will come back for you. You're her one true love, after all. She can't lose you and the world."

"Zariah's too smart. She won't come for me if she's clued into your plan," Aiden said, clenching his fists.

"Love makes people do incredibly rash things," Orion shrugged. He approached Aiden, releasing him from his confines.

"What's this?" Aiden hissed, rubbing his sore wrists.

"You're lying to yourself, Aiden Lycroft. This isn't who you are. You're not a rebel; you're a soldier who has killed and followed orders without question for his entire life. You don't know the first thing about breaking the rules." Orion stood over him, a menacing darkness sweeping across the Eskium leader's face.

Instinctively, Aiden reached for his handgun, only to realize, foolishly, that Orion had taken it from him. He watched helplessly as the Other Worlder towered over him and withdrew the fearsome weapon that Aiden had seen once before; the wicked blade that had ended General Xylem's life with a single swing.

Aiden waited for it to bear down on him. And yet, Orion hesitated.

"Kill me and get it over with then, why don't you?" spat Aiden. "The world won't end if I die. There will always be people ready to avenge it."

"Unless, of course, you were the one who ended it," Orion smiled slyly. Pointing the tip of the blade at Aiden, the Eskium leader gestured toward the control panel that would access the missiles Orion intended to use against his own people.

In a sudden act of defiance, Aiden whipped around and lashed out at the Eskium leader with his leg in an attempt to disarm him. Orion deflected his action, slicing the blade towards Aiden's head and narrowly missing him. Aiden regained his footing, adrenaline coursing through him as he stood his ground.

"How bold!" sneered Orion. "The soldier fights back! I think you've been spending too much time with that rebel boy. What's his name? Roman?"

Aiden clenched his hands into fists. Even if it meant that he would die, he would fight until his last breath to stop Orion from destroying their world, no matter how shitty.

This was his home, and he would not stand back and let it die before him.

"I like you, Aiden Lycroft," Orion smiled. "However, I don't need the rebel. I need the soldier."

A burning sensation crawled up Aiden's neck, making him collapse to his knees in pain. He cried out as the feeling continued towards his head, until he could hear the blood roaring in his ears.

Against his will, he felt himself stand up and begin walking, slowly, towards the control panel. Out of the corner of his eye, Aiden spotted Orion holding a small tablet.

"What the hell-" Aiden grunted. He lacked control of his extremities, at the complete and total mercy of the Eskium leader and his insane wishes.

"A first-hand example of the power of Eskium technology," Orion explained. "At birth, every one of my people is injected with a small microchip that is used to effectively transmit instructions, as well as track location and thought. We like to allow our soldiers to be capable of independent thought, but it is incredibly easy to locate the soldiers who are at risk of defying us."

"So, what? They're your little mind control puppets?" Aiden grit his teeth, fighting the technology hopelessly.

"Of sorts," Orion shrugged. He swiped the screen of the tablet, and Aiden felt himself reach for a lever on the panel. His fingers wrapped around it, but he did not pull.

"Goodbye, Aiden Lycroft," Orion dipped his head. "You fought valiantly, but in the end, it was you who destroyed the world as we know it."

He could feel his body pulling the lever toward him. It was heavy, its age ever-prominent. Aiden continued to fight the Eskium technology, silently screaming inside his head for his body to stop.

Suddenly, white hot pain shot through his right arm, and he looked down to see blood trickling from his hand, which tightly gripped the lever, but had stopped in its tracks.

Zariah leapt from shadows, her brown hair framing her face, which was blazing with anger. Her finger was wrapped around the trigger of her handgun, which was pointed squarely at Orion's head.

"You'd shoot your own boyfriend?" Orion marvelled, staring at her in awe. "You are a very different girl than the last time we met, Lieutenant Blanche."

"Deactivate his microchip," Zariah demanded. "Now."

"It's not so simple," Orion warned. "There's a little bit of a process."

"I won't ask you again." Zariah fired another shot, missing Orion by millimeters. He cupped the side of his face, feeling where the bullet might have connected with flesh and bone.

Aiden looked down at his hand again. Now he could clearly see the bullet that pinned him to the control panel, blood continuing to seep from the wound, scarlet against his pale skin.

"If I try to disarm his microchip, its automatic failure function will go into effect. He'll be flushed with a neurotoxin that will kill him in seconds," Orion said. "These chips were not meant to be destroyed."

"Well, you'd better figure it out," Zariah growled. Aiden could sense her confidence wavering. If she couldn't restore Aiden's control of his own body, he'd be stuck like this forever.

Aiden gasped as he felt his hand get ripped from the lever. He watched Orion toss him a gun, which Aiden caught with his good hand, cocked, and pointed towards Zariah.

"Kill her," he ordered. Unwillingly, Aiden fired three shots at Zariah, who dove out of the way just in time. She shot Orion squarely in the shoulder, causing the Eskium leader to collapse and slump against the side of the control panel to recover. Unfazed, Aiden lunged for Zariah, knocking her own gun from her reach and grappling with her on the ground below.

Aiden punched her across the jaw, but not before Zariah knocked him to the ground with a sweep of her leg. He grunted as she landed three more strikes against his back before tossing her off, priming the gun again until she kicked it out of his grasp. Then they were back on the ground again, struggling until Aiden found his fingers securely grasped along Zariah's throat, squeezing the life out of her.

He felt Zariah's teeth sink into his bad hand, and Aiden screamed, releasing Zariah and giving her the opportunity to breathe and throw him off of her. She coughed, her blue eyes stormy, rubbing her sore neck before retrieving her gun and pointing it between Aiden and Orion.

"Give me the tablet," Zariah said. Obediently, Orion tossed it to her, and it clattered to the ground just in front of her feet.

"You think you can stop me?" Orion sneered, blood soaking onto the floor beneath him. Aiden saw his hand positioned where Aiden's was, the lever dangerously close to being switched on.

"You killed Rhys," Zariah whispered. "You killed all of them. And for what? This?"

Orion's eyes searched hers, and another sinister smile beamed across his demented face. "I remember him. The black-haired boy. The sole survivor of his Unit, or so we thought." He looked her dead in the eye, his smile unwavering. "We didn't kill him. Not right away. We took him back with us, to Eskium, where we tortured him until he gave us the name of the person we knew he was travelling with. He kept saying that his love would return for him. She never did. We killed him that night, and buried his body in the woods."

"You fucking sadist," Zariah yelled, her voice trembling.

Before she could move, Orion pulled the lever.

Deafening noise filled the chamber. Red sirens wailed unrelentingly, and gunshots filled the room.

The first, Zariah's, struck Orion directly between the eyes, killing him instantly. His head lolled to the side lifelessly, his fingers slipping from the lever.

The second, Orion's, hit Aiden directly in the chest, on his left side.

Aiden slumped onto the ground. Zariah was at his side in an instant, screaming, her voice drowned out by the blaring sirens that shadowed the room in a hazy red glow. He felt her hands press against his chest, pain radiating from the wound. Zariah's hands were soaked in blood. So much blood.

She held his head in her lap while she fumbled with her coms. "Theo, Roman, Farley! Do you copy? Orion is down, but I need a Medical Official right away! Aiden's been shot!"

Aiden wanted to reach his hands for her face and kiss her, but he couldn't. The microchip in his body was still preventing him from moving. Zariah continued to contact the others, but to no avail.

"Incoming missiles your way! Damn it, answer me!" Zariah shrieked. Tears spilled down her face as she kneeled over Aiden, kissing him desperately while still trying to staunch his bleeding.

"Go," he muttered hoarsely. "Zariah, you have to go."

"Shut up," she hissed, cupping his face. "I'm not leaving you."

"They don't know about the missiles," Aiden said weakly. "Everyone is going to die unless they stop them now."

The impossible choice cast a haunting look across Zariah's beautiful face. Her eyes were tormented with the decision that both she and Aiden knew she had to follow.

She positioned his hands tightly against his injured chest, keeping the pressure on the bullet wound.

"I'm coming back for you," she vowed. "I promise you."

"I love you," Aiden gasped.

"I love you too," Zariah replied, kissing him gently. She sprinted away, out of Aiden's view. The sirens continued to wail, and Aiden stared up at the ceiling, his eyes going in and out of focus.

Seconds seemed to melt into minutes, and there was nothing that Aiden could do but lay there, motionless and slowly bleeding to death, unconsciousness threatening to overcome him once more. Eventually, the sound of the sirens began to fade, murky silence filling Aiden's ears. For a while, he could only hear his own ragged breathing. He felt no pain from his injuries, and instead a dull cold began to grip him. His eyelids grew heavy, enticing him to give in to his fight. He heard explosions above him, the ground shaking every so often.

And then he heard her, her voice familiar and safe.

"Aiden," she soothed him. "It's okay. Close your eyes."

"Rania," he began. He could hear his heartrate slowly decreasing, his heartbeat becoming dull and weak.

"You've done your part," a new voice assured him. "Let the others do theirs. You're safe now."

"Jayda?" he mumbled, confused.

"Don't speak. It's all going to be alright now," Jayda promised.

"I miss you," Aiden sighed. "Both of you."

He wanted to say more, but he couldn't. Exhaustion consumed him, and the last thing Aiden saw was the cracked ceiling of the bunker before his eyes rolled back into his head and unconsciousness overcame him.