The truck rattled like it was held together by string and bad faith. Eight men sat shoulder to shoulder in the back, rifles across their laps, helmets bumping each time the suspension gave out. Nobody spoke much. The air stank of oil, sweat, and canvas.
Cole sat wedged between two boys who looked younger than him, though they probably weren't. One picked at the strap of his vest until his fingers bled. The other stared down at his boots as if expecting them to vanish.
A sergeant riding near the tailgate barked over the engine noise. "This is it. D.C. line. No retreat. No fallback. You hold, or you die. Simple as that."
Nods passed through the truck. Some men muttered prayers. One laughed too loud, nervous, then went quiet.
Cole said nothing. He kept his eyes on the steel floor, one hand tightening around the rifle he hadn't wanted to carry in the first place.
The kid next to him leaned in, voice cracking. "You scared?"
Cole looked at him, slow, flat-eyed. He opened his mouth, shut it again, then finally muttered, "If I wasn't, I'd be crazy."
That was it. The boy seemed almost relieved by the answer, as if it proved something about both of them. Cole went silent again, listening to the engine drag them closer to the frontline where the world had already started ending.
The year the country cut itself loose from NATO like it was throwing ballast overboard. Politicians called it "independence," like it was strength. To Cole it looked more like arrogance dressed in a flag. Europe fractured, Russia grinned, and China started moving pieces across the board with no one left to stop them. He could still see the smug faces on TV, men in suits promising it was the dawn of a new era. All it really did was set the fire they were now being shoved into.
Like a hangover that never ended. NATO stumbling without a spine, Germany trying to lead but looking more like it was dragging a corpse. Russia and China holding hands in the open now, daring anyone to do something about it. At home, all Cole saw were headlines about "strategic realignment," as if anyone outside the capital had a say in what that meant. He remembered his mother shaking her head at the kitchen table, bills stacked like bricks, muttering that none of these men had ever missed a meal in their lives. He hadn't understood the weight of it then, but he did now.
The mask came off. Russia and China sealed their pact, no more whispers or half-truths. Cyberattacks lit up the grid, banks stuttered, shipments backed up at every port. People on the news called it "gray warfare." To Cole it looked like the world being pulled apart thread by thread while the men in charge still insisted the fabric was strong.
OPEC fractured the same year, oil prices spiking like a fever. He remembered waiting with his mother at a gas station outside Lacon, the line curling around the block. Men shouting at each other, one fistfight breaking out when the pumps ran dry before half the cars moved. His little brother in the back seat crying, asking if they could just go home. His mother had kept her jaw tight, silent, as if any word might break her.
The last illusions died. Ukraine stopped existing. Russia stamped its flag on the ruins and installed puppets like it was theater. China moved on Taiwan—not with bombs at first, but with pressure, blockades, strangling the island inch by inch. The Pacific became America's obsession, and all the headlines screamed about "containing Beijing."
Cole remembered the footage—aircraft carriers steaming west while the East Coast just kept getting poorer. Prices went up again. His mother started skipping meals so his kid brother wouldn't. Nobody called it rationing yet, but it was.
The refugees poured into Europe. Train stations in Berlin, Paris, Rome—packed with faces that had nowhere left to go. America sent thoughts and prayers, nothing else.
Ukraine gone for good, Europe cracking under the weight of its displaced millions. Russia and China running drills together, fleets and bombers circling like vultures fattening themselves before the kill. Global shipping broke down piece by piece, routes cut, ports jammed. Shelves at home thinned further. Washington wagged its finger and told the country to "stay calm." Cole had learned by then that every time a politician said those words, it meant they were already out of answers.
2025, the year the floor gave way. China went for Taiwan in the open—no more strangling by inches. Amphibious landings, missiles flashing over the strait, broadcasts of soldiers raising red flags on beaches that had been plastered with American promises for decades. Washington howled, but the carriers were already burning fuel in the Pacific and there weren't enough left to matter.
At the same time Russia tightened its grip on the Arctic, cutting through ice with warships like it was their birthright. Energy markets collapsed. Prices shot up again, and this time they never came back down.
The U.S. tried to call it a "temporary trade disruption." Cole saw what it was: the mask slipping. Store shelves that used to groan with food now looked like someone had already looted them. Lines grew longer, rations shrank smaller. His mother learned which days to stand outside the church for handouts, though she never admitted it out loud.
People whispered about shortages. By summer the whispers turned to fights in grocery aisles. By winter the government made it official: ration cards. Cole remembered standing in line, stamping his feet against the cold, his little brother clutching his arm. When the clerk handed over a thin bundle of paper chits, it felt less like relief and more like a sentence.
Not with boots on Illinois soil yet, but with notices slid under doors and broadcast warnings that read like threats. January burned on the edges of the map—China hammering California, Russia flooding Alaska, Hawaii and Guam gone in days. People still told themselves it was far away, that the country was too wide to fall all at once.
Then March ripped that lie out by the root. Baltimore shelled, Philadelphia crumbling, D.C. under fire. The maps on TV lit up red along the coast. The government started calling it the "final line"—Washington to Ocean City to New York. Nobody believed it. Everyone knew the line was just another grave waiting to be filled.
That's when the draft lost its mask. Conscript papers piled in mailboxes. Eighteen was the magic number—old enough to hold a rifle, young enough to be disposable. Cole's number came stamped and sealed. No choice, no appeal. Conscript or a cell.
His mother didn't fight it, not really. Just sat at the kitchen table with her hands folded tight, as if the right grip might keep the family from breaking apart. His little brother wouldn't look at him, wouldn't speak. Cole packed in silence, each shirt and pair of socks folded like it was evidence.
By 2027, the United States existed only as a thin line of trenches and bunkers stretching from Washington through Ocean City to New York. The rest of the map was enemy ground. Illinois, the place he'd once called home, had vanished without ceremony—swallowed whole, as if it had never been there.
What stuck with him wasn't just the fall, but the speed of it. A country that had once called itself the strongest on earth had been gutted in less than a year. Tanks and boots moved faster now, supported by drones, satellites, networks of machines that never slept. Supply lines that used to take weeks collapsed in hours. Skies filled, grids went black, cities folded almost overnight.
Cole thought about how history books had always written wars as years, sometimes decades. This one played out in days and weeks. A single offensive could erase a state. A single month could erase a region. He'd watched it happen on the maps—Illinois turning red before the fighting even seemed close.
The world had gotten fast. Too fast. Faster than anyone in charge had believed. And now he was sitting on the last piece of ground they hadn't yet swallowed, wondering how long it would take for even this line to disappear.
The truck lurched forward, the silence inside broken by a sudden chorus of alarms. Every phone lit at once, buzzing in pockets and packs. Cole didn't need to look—he could already read it in the faces around him. One of the kids pulled his phone up anyway, the glow painting him pale.
"National Emergency Alert. Hostile strike in progress. Washington D.C. under attack. Civilians advised to shelter indoors and avoid travel. Military operations underway."
The words hung in the stale air. No exclamation marks, no plea. Just a flat voice from a dead system, announcing the capital was on fire. The phones went dim one by one, but nobody said anything.
Cole kept his eyes forward. He thought it was strange how clean the message looked for something so filthy.
The brakes groaned and the truck lurched to a stop. No one asked why. A figure moved along the line of canvas backs, banging the side with a gloved hand.
"Out. Move it." The officer's voice cut through the noise, flat and practiced.
Boots hit dirt one after another. Cole slid down last, landing in mud that sucked at his soles. Around them stretched the edge of the line—barbed wire strung loose over poles, barricades of concrete blocks, and the restless shuffle of men who'd been here longer than they wanted. The air smelled of oil and damp earth, heavy with the sense of waiting.
Cole's eyes swept the formation. Strangers again. Every friend he'd made in training had been peeled away, reassigned somewhere else along this massive scar that ran from Washington to New York. Names he'd grown used to shouting in drills were gone, scattered like cards thrown in the wind.
An officer stood waiting, clipboard in hand, a cigarette burning down between two fingers. He didn't look at them so much as through them, already bored with the faces. Beside him a staff sergeant kept his arms folded, expression carved from stone.
The officer started reading. Names fired off like shells. Each one followed by a company. "Peterson — Delta Company. Singh — Iron Company. Alvarez — Ash Company."
Men peeled away, grabbed by other NCOs and herded off. No time for words. No chance to stick together.
"Harper."
Cole stepped forward, duffel strap biting into his shoulder.
"Legion Company. Staff Sergeant Keene will take you."
The clipboard flicked, name gone, just like that.
Cole shifted forward. That's when he saw the man waiting for him. Not the officer with his cigarette, not the stone-faced sergeant from before — but another figure, standing apart.
Staff Sergeant Keene.
He wasn't loud. Didn't need to be. His presence did the work — posture straight as a pike, eyes sharp and fixed on Cole like he was measuring weight and worth in the same breath. He gave a single nod. Nothing more.
"This way," Keene said. The tone wasn't barked. It was steady, assured. Like the ground itself had spoken.
Cole followed. For a moment, he felt the urge to look back — maybe see if anyone else from the truck was trailing with him — but no one was. Their names had been swallowed into other companies. His ties cut clean in less than a minute.
Keene led him past the tents and mud-soaked paths until they reached an open stretch where two hundred men and women lingered. Some sat on crates cleaning their rifles, others hunched by cookfires, a few just smoking in silence. Their gear looked lived-in, scarred by weather and use. Each of them wore the same strip of cloth somewhere on their body—some wrapped across their faces, some knotted to their rifles, others tied at the arm like a quiet badge.
The Legion.
Keene stopped at the front, his boots sinking into the soft ground. He raised a hand, and the noise around them dimmed. One by one, the soldiers drifted closer, forming into a loose, uneven line before him.
He turned to Cole. For a moment, those blue eyes cut into him—not with judgment, but with the weight of expectation.
"This is Legion Company," Keene said, his voice steady, carrying without force. "Two hundred soldiers. Every one of them stands because they've accepted what must be done, not what they wish to do. You'll learn quickly there's no room here for anything else."
He faced the gathering, raising his voice just enough to reach the last rank.
"This man is Cole Harper. Conscripted, yes. Like many of you once were. He will fight beside you, bleed beside you, and if he's to fall, he will fall as Legion."
There was no cheer, no applause. Just silence, heavier than any sound. A silence of agreement.
Keene reached into a pouch and pulled free a folded strip of cloth—wrap, dyed in the same muted gray as the uniform, fifty stars stitched faintly into the fabric so they blended until caught by the light. He handed it to Cole with no ceremony beyond the act itself.
"Take it," he said. "It belongs to you now. Wear it as you will. It will mean nothing until you prove it means everything."
Cole stared at the cloth.
Keene gave a short nod. "Then you're one of us."
Keene didn't linger. He turned, caught the eye of a man leaning against a supply crate.
"Rourke," he called.
The sergeant pushed himself upright. Stocky frame, sleeves rolled, jaw set like stone. He looked Cole over once, the way a butcher sizes up a cut of meat.
"This one's yours," Keene said simply, before stepping away toward another knot of soldiers.
Rourke spat into the mud, then jabbed a thumb at Cole's chest.
"Name?"
"Cole Harper."
"Doesn't matter. You're new. You're green. That's all I need to know right now." He jerked his head. "Grab your pack. Follow."
Cole trailed him through the camp—past rows of half-collapsed tents, stoves hissing smoke, men and women bent over weapons or cards or nothing at all. No ceremony. Just the machinery of people waiting to be ground down.
Rourke shoved open the flap of a canvas tent. Inside: four cots, three already claimed by piles of gear and the smell of unwashed uniforms.
"That one's yours," Rourke said, pointing to the empty frame in the corner. "Don't lose it. Don't leave shit lying around. Gear's in the duffels at the back—grab what fits, make it work. Nobody's gonna tailor you a parade uniform."
Cole set his pack down, uncertain whether to sit.
Rourke crossed his arms, eyes narrowing. "You'll eat when they eat, march when they march, fight when they fight. I don't care where you're from or how you got dumped here. You screw around, you make it harder for the rest of us to stay breathing. Don't make me regret taking you on."
He turned, already halfway out the tent flap.
"Five minutes. Then you report back outside. Let's see if you can keep up."
Cole let the flap fall closed behind him. The tent was dim, canvass walls breathing faintly in the breeze. He dropped his issued pack onto the cot with a dull thud. For a long moment he just stared at it, feeling like the thing weighed more than he did.
He opened it. Inside was the standard mess: spare fatigues, a poncho, socks rolled tight, a dented canteen, cleaning kit, rations that already looked ten years old. He lined each piece out on the cot with mechanical precision, stacking them in neat squares. Order was the only thing he could control right now.
At the bottom he found the gear Rourke mentioned—a scuffed helmet, a plate carrier that looked like it had been stripped and reissued a dozen times, and a pair of tactical goggles. The lenses were dark, mirrored just enough to cut the glare. Not standard-issue shine. Someone, somewhere, had cared enough to get them tinted for sun.
Cole turned them over in his hands. The strap was fraying, elastic tired, but they fit snug when he pulled them over his eyes. The world dimmed, the muddy tent fading into a muted gray. For the first time since stepping off the truck, the light didn't feel like it was cutting straight into his skull.
Cole let the goggles rest on his cot and reached for the strip of cloth Keene had handed him earlier. He turned it over in his fingers. The fabric was rough, dyed in that muted gray-green the Legion wore—a color that seemed to swallow dirt, dust, and shadow alike. Their uniforms looked built for punishment: heavy stitching, faded knees, shoulders darkened from rain and sweat. Gear scarred but still serviceable, the kind of kit that looked like it had already lived a dozen lives before reaching him.
He couldn't quite tell what the wrap was supposed to be. An armband? A rag? Some kind of marker?
After a moment he decided the simplest answer had to be right—it was a face wrap. He pulled it over his mouth and nose, the stars faint against the fabric, blending until the light caught them. The material smelled faintly of canvas and dust.
He looked at himself in the small square of metal nailed to the post, some soldier's attempt at a mirror. For a second he almost looked like he belonged. Almost.
Then he tugged it down, letting it rest loose around his neck, more a scarf than a mask. It felt less like he was pretending that way.