Wait. We’d broken into the PX last night. I remembered the whole thing. I was nervous about it being my first battle, so I’d decided to duck out a bit early. I had come back to my bunk and started reading that mystery novel. I even remembered helping Yonabaru up to his bed when he came staggering in from partying with the ladies.

Unless-unless I had dreamed that too?

Yonabaru smirked. “You don’t look so good, Keiji.”

I picked the novel up off my bed. I’d brought it along to read in my spare time, but I’d been so busy drilling formation that it had stayed stuffed in the bottom of my bag. I remember thinking how appropriately ironic it was that I hadn’t had any time to start reading it until the day before I was probably going to die. I opened the book to the last page I’d read. The American detective who was supposed to be an expert on the Orient was discussing the finer points of green tea, just like I remembered. If today was the day before the battle, when had I read the book? Nothing was making any sense.

“Listen. There’s nothin’ to tomorrow’s operation.”

I blinked. “Nothin’ to it, huh?”

“Just get yourself home without shooting anyone in the back, and you’ll be fine.”

I grunted in reply.

Yonabaru curled his hand into a gun and pointed his index finger at his head. “I’m serious. Sweat it too much, you’ll turn into a feedhead-end up losing your mind before they even get a chance to blow your brains out.”

The guy I’d replaced had gone a little haywire, so they pulled him from the front lines. They say he started picking up comm feeds about how humanity was doomed. Not the kind of shit you want heavily armed UDF Jacket jockeys listening to. We might not lose as many to that as we do to the enemy, but it’s not pretty either way. In battle, unless you’re sound of body and mind, you’re a liability. I’d only just arrived on the front lines-hadn’t even seen any action-and already I was having hallucinations. Who knows what warning lights were going off in my head.