A swimming darkness crept into the waking youth's head. The blood loss from first his temple, then his leg had taken a heavy toll. His dilated eyes opened to an abrupt fluorescent suspended on the makeshift ceiling. A nurse quickly took attendance of the moaning man. He jerked away from the blurry Alliance colors, forgetful of the reason he was still alive.
"Isaac?" the girl asked in a soft voice.
"Uh, yes?" lied Alec as he got ahold of his mind. He rubbed the double-vision from his eyes to find an even greater surprise than waking in an enemy medical facility. Alec could see it all over the young woman standing next to his cot: her eyes, her hair, and mostly her nose. He had never been so close to one before, just fired at them from the frontline. She was one of them. It was her race that sparked this war. It was her and all her kind, their greed, their impure genes...
His eyes uncontrollably bulged, wanting to find disgust but frozen from showing it. "You're a Mod," the imposter finally mustered.
The nurse brushed her vivid hair from out her sharp, smiling face. She batted her unnatural, wholly green eyes and whispered back: "And you're not."
"Katherine!" a low, commanding voice sounded. Another soldier of the Liberation Squad, another one of her kind, another Modan, stood, thick arms folded behind his back. Deep, black eyes pieced through pristine skin below two, bony protrusions on either side of the lieutenant's forehead. A large array of medals adorned his olive jacket, seemingly too many for a man that looked so young. Then again, they all looked young. That's the way they were engineered. "What is wrong with this soldier? Is he defective?"
"Not at all," the nurse sweetly responded. "A resistant infection is keeping him from healing as quickly as normal."
"Very well," huffed the giant of a man. "Be sure he makes a full recovery. We respect life, not like those commie dogs that did this to him."
As the hulk turned to take his leave, the panicked Alec took to his dressing to find just how badly he had injured himself.
"You're not infected," quietly mumbled the attendant. She was met with a curious glance from the traitor, staving his hatred for a moment. "It was the best excuse I could think of," she said with a shrug. "A normal Allied soldier -- a Mod soldier -- would have healed a wound like that last night. It's okay, tho'; your secret's safe with me," the nurse said with a wink.
"The name's Kat. I gotta say, I don't know how you got past all the screening the LS army did when they went solely modified, but... that is really brave of you," she spoke in such a way that it tore open Alec's internal torture and self-accusations again. "I mean, you must believe in this cause so much to risk yourself like this. Whenever I think about all of those people, all of those countries that have lost their freedom, all of those Normacoff murdered-"
"Seeth only cleanses the Modans," the youth automatically defended, programmed to such an extent that he did not even consider the consequences of his words. "No one can say the world isn't better off without those genetically altered bourgeois." Once Alec had realized he even spoke at all, his head nervously shifted to the waiting nurse.
"Harsh words," Kat responded, "but then, a lot of people are mad with them. Guess why that's the reason the WWS is so popular with the lower class." Her eyes went distant as she spoke, she planted her elbows on the cot and leaned in closer. "I wasn't born like this," the girl explained, tracing her elongated neck with a slender finger. "My parents were like most of the people's; they didn't have the money to spend on growing their own child. But when I was young, they said I was brilliant. Y'know," she paused, darting her eyes over to the wounded warrior, "for a human. I was reading and writing by age five, but everyone knew it wouldn't get me anywhere. None of the best schools would waste their time on a human.
"So, my parent scrounged up all the money could, took out loans they are still paying off to this day," she with a forced chuckle, "just to get me a cos injection. I wouldn't have the immune system or the reflexes or anything, but I would look like a Modan -- I would fit in." Reality snapped back into her, on her feet in her normal, chipper tone. "No one ever found out, and here I am today."
"You shouldn't have to hide what you are," growled Alec, whose anger was only subsided by the thought of what a beautiful human Kat would have made.
"No, I shouldn't," the nurse flatly agreed, "but Mods shouldn't be lined up in the street and executed, either. They can't help that their parents made them that way. And while I may not always agree with what the upper class does, I have the right to my opinion, which is more than anyone under Axis control has. And that's what's most important to me."
"Hey, Retro!" interrupted a soldier from behind.
"Excuse me?" questioned Alec, turning to an adorned private with large eyes and blue-tinted skin.
"Ya know, Retro! Yer whole cos: brown hair, brown eyes, totally ironic," the Modan explained. Alec delved into his limited communications experience intercepting transmissions.
"Cos" is short for "cosmetic genetic alteration," he thought. The fake Isaac nonchalantly nodded the comment off, testing the limits of his self-restraint after once again being called a Modan.
"So we thought we got all the commies back in yer battle, right? But when we counted the human fatalities and compared 'em with satellite images -- one got away. Didja see anything?"
"Uh, no, I hit my head," quickly thought the imposter. "That's why my super... duper senses didn't see him... run away."
"Ah, well, we think he went into a local village. We were hopin' you could narrow it down, but it looks like the whole place's gotta go."
"Wait, what?" Alec stopped the soldier before he could depart. "You're just going to level the entire town? But, you don't even know if he... this commie dog... is in there."
The private simply shrugged. "It is just there poor," he told. "There'll always be more."
These people, these Allies are going to destroy an entire population without any cause? thought Alec. All life is useful in some form: workers, soldiers, cannon fodder, but simply to waste a human life? That is when he realized... The Allies have no concern for human life. They all must die.
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