The rooftop shook with every impact, dust whipping across the broken tiles. Isaac fired his last rifle round—he knew it was the last before he even squeezed. He didn't wait for a sound that would never come. He simply let the empty weapon drop to the side, the sling dragging it across the stone with a hollow scrape.
His hand went straight to the sidearm, drawing the M9 Beretta smooth, thumb brushing the safety, muzzle snapping low against the ridge. Sixteen rounds total—fifteen in the mag, one in the chamber. Effective out to fifty meters if you knew what you were doing, but in this chaos, it might as well have been ten. Isaac knew the specs, knew the limits. This wasn't a rifle. This wasn't control. It was the last step before nothing.
Ortiz was already wild. His SAW lay empty at his feet, belt spent, casing piles cold. He gripped his Beretta and screamed over the ridge, firing blind into the smoke. "Come on! Come the fuck on!" His laughter and curses mixed, half-crazy, his shots cracking high and wide, the brass pinging useless across the rooftop.
Isaac didn't waste it. He held his pistol steady but didn't fire. Breathing calm, shoulders squared, eyes locked. He'd use those rounds only when the fight came close, when the enemy climbed into his lane. Every bullet would count, or it would stay in the mag.
The air thundered. The rotors hit like drums in his chest. Two attack birds tore in low, cannons spitting, windows erupting into dust and gore, RPG teams cut in half before they could fire. Below them, the CH-47 Chinook lumbered in, twin rotors clawing at the sky, its door guns lashing streams of tracers into the street. The crew chief leaned out, waving frantic, chopping his arm toward the roof. The bird didn't land — it hovered, nose high, rotors beating so hard the roof seemed to tremble. A hot extract.
"Go! Go! Now!" Isaac barked, grabbing Ortiz by the vest.
They broke from cover, sprinting across shattered tiles as bullets hissed around them, chips stinging their faces. Rotor wash hit like a storm, nearly knocking them off their feet. Ortiz stumbled, cursing, but Isaac yanked him up and drove him forward.
The Chinook hung just over the roofline, wheels inches from the stone, engines screaming. The crew chief was braced in the open ramp, one hand on a stanchion, the other reaching out. "Move your ass, Marines!"
Isaac launched first, boots leaving the roof. His hand slapped into the crew chief's grip, arm wrenched near out of its socket as he was hauled into the bay. He spun, arm snapping out just in time to grab Ortiz by the shoulder as he leapt. For a second Ortiz dangled, legs kicking, pistol still clutched, then the crew dragged him in too.
The bird surged higher, banking away, tracers clawing at the night below them. The rooftop fell away in a storm of dust, brass, and fire.
They were out — barely.
Isaac exhaled as the Chinook clawed away from the rooftop, rotors hammering through the sky. Maybe thirty seconds. Thirty seconds of breathing, of not being buried in that compound. He leaned against the vibrating deck, pistol still loose in his grip, chest rising and falling like he'd run a mile.
Then the alarm shrieked.
A piercing tone, sharp and alien in the chaos, filled the cabin. Red lights strobed along the bulkhead, painting everyone's faces in blood. The whole bird seemed to vibrate with warning. Isaac's head snapped toward the open ramp—
And he saw it.
A thin smoke trail cutting up from the city, fast, bright, hungry. A missile. A heat-seeker. Later, he'd know it had been an SA-7 Strela-2 MANPAD, Soviet-made, shoulder-fired. In that second, all he knew was that it was coming straight for them.
"SHIT!" Ortiz shouted, scrambling in his harness. "OH SHIT!"
The rocket slammed into the tail.
The explosion ripped metal apart in a white-orange flash, shearing through the rear rotor housing. The whole bird jolted like it had been punched by a god. The back end snapped sideways, plates shrieking, fragments slicing across the cabin like knives. Hot shards cut through packs, seats, and flesh — one crewman's arm split open to the bone as he was flung across the bay.
Isaac's stomach lurched as the deck tilted hard. The Chinook spun, tail shredded, rotors screaming uneven. Everything not bolted down became shrapnel — ammo cans, helmets, rifles — slamming around like they were in a blender. Sparks rained from the ceiling as wires tore loose, fire streaking through the fuselage.
Ortiz's voice was a raw roar. "FUCK! FUCK!" He clawed at a strap, eyes wide, spit flying as the world pitched sideways.
Isaac was weightless for a heartbeat, body tearing against the harness, the red strobes flashing faster. His vision tunneled, ears full of the engine's death scream, fire in his lungs from the burning fuel.
And then—blackness swallowed it all.
Life wasn't a fairytale.
Isaac wouldn't remember the next six months. His body had been pulled out of the wreck more dead than alive, and the medical reports told the story in cold detail. Severe concussion — his skull rocked hard enough to rattle everything inside, but the scans would later show his brain had survived mostly intact. No shearing, no permanent collapse, just a brutal concussion that kept him under for weeks.
The rest of his body had paid the price. Third-degree burns covered ten percent of his skin — angry, deep burns across his left arm, shoulder, and along his ribs where fire had kissed through cammies and armor. Twenty-seven bones broken outright: ribs shattered, forearm snapped, femur fractured. His pelvis cracked in three places. The vertebrae at his waistline were crushed, spine basically snapped like a stick under a boot. He lived in traction, surgeons piecing him back together, rods and pins holding him like scaffolding.
But somehow he was marked one of the "lucky ones." Alive.
Ortiz hadn't been so lucky. When the tanks ruptured and sprayed, jet fuel turned the bay into a furnace. Ortiz caught it head-on, doused in burning fuel. His body had been scorched completely — a one-hundred-percent burn casualty. Blackened, swollen, split open like a marshmallow left too long in fire. And somehow, impossibly, he'd still been breathing when they dragged him clear. He clung to life for a week before his body gave in.
Isaac never remembered the rescue. Never remembered the corpsmen hauling him, never remembered the rotors of the medevac, the chest tubes, the frantic hands working to keep his lungs inflated.
All he remembered was hanging on.
And the truth was, that stubborn grip on life was just as essential as scalpels and surgeons. More than once in those first weeks, his body gave out. Monitors screamed flatline, doctors threw everything they had at him. But every time, something in him clawed back. He didn't want to die. Wouldn't. The refusal itself was part of the fight, as critical as every transfusion, every stitch, every rod bracing his broken bones.
It wasn't a cure, and it didn't erase the scars. But Isaac believed, even years later, that will — raw, defiant will — had worked hand in hand with medicine to drag him through.
And against every odd, it had been enough.
Isaac refused to surrender. He wanted life, not a chemical fog. The nerve pain never stopped — a constant, grinding burn in a body that barely worked. Some days it felt like his legs were on fire, others like nails hammered into his spine. It wore him down, soaked him in sweat, and left his eyes bloodshot from nights without sleep. But he wouldn't drown it out with pills.
What was life if you lived it high all the time?
For six months it was surgery after surgery. Rods bolted into his spine. Plates and screws holding fractures together. Grafts stretched tight across burns that never stopped itching. By the end of it, he was a shell of the Marine he had been — twenty-seven breaks fused back with hardware, his body patched and scarred like scrap metal hammered into shape.
Then came rehab. A year of it. Isaac lived in a wheelchair, his spine brittle but fused, his legs nothing but dead weight. He pissed into tubes, fought off infections, and watched muscle vanish until he looked like a ghost of the man who had once carried a squad on his back.
Most people would've cracked under that.
Isaac didn't.
Not because it was easy. Not because he didn't feel himself slipping at times. But because something anchored him when grit wasn't enough. Anime.
Not his idea — his roommate's. Ashton Tanaka, Japanese American, third generation, with cousins in Japan who kept him stacked with DVDs and manga. His half of the room looked like a dorm, plastered with posters, cluttered with model kits. Ashton had lost his right leg to an IED, and he carried it with a grin like it was just another scar.
Isaac met him seven months into recovery, when he was awake more than drugged. At first, the anime was noise — strange voices, subtitles blurring, colors flashing across the dark. But Ashton kept nudging him. "Bro, you'll like this one. It's about some weak kid. Nobody thinks he'll make it. Then he grinds his way up till he's untouchable. That's you, man."
Slowly, Isaac started to watch.
And when the pain chewed at him, when the chair felt like a prison, anime became his escape. He liked the weak-to-strong stories the most. Heroes clawing their way up from nothing, beaten but never broken. They mirrored exactly what he wanted for himself.
Most men cracked. Isaac didn't.
And in the glow of Ashton's laptop screen, he found the proof that he wasn't broken yet.
One year later, Isaac was in the therapy room, hands locked tight around the parallel bars. His palms were wet, sweat sliding between his fingers and onto the padded grips. His arms trembled under the weight of his frame, muscles twitching and jumping with the effort to keep him upright. Every push forward was earned with fire in his shoulders and chest, every inch gained against the betrayal of his own body.
Amanda stayed close, moving with him. She was tall for a woman, six feet, with the clean build of someone who had lived her life training. A swimmer's shoulders, the lean legs of a runner, and not an ounce of softness wasted on her frame. Chestnut-brown hair was tied back, her eyes the same shade, watching him with a steady intensity. Her skin was pale but healthy, the kind of skin that spoke of long runs outside and early mornings in the pool. She didn't look like the therapists he'd expected — she looked like someone who could grind with the best of them.
"Keep going, Isaac," she said, her voice low but firm. "You've got more in you. Don't let go yet."
He grunted, jaw tight, and pushed. His six-foot frame, one-ninety stripped down to what was left, pulled itself forward with the force of arms and back alone. The legs hung useless, but his upper body carried him, chest and shoulders straining with each shove. Sweat rolled down his temple, soaking into the black hair he had let grow long and messy over the past months. His hazel eyes narrowed, fixed ahead, refusing to look down.
The pain was constant. It tore through his arms, across his shoulders, down into the fused wreck of his spine. His muscles cramped, nerves fired hot and wrong, every second telling him to stop. But he kept going.
Amanda shadowed his movement, hand hovering near his ribs, ready if he faltered. "That's it. Push it. One more."
Isaac dragged himself forward again, breath ragged, sweat dripping from his chin onto the rubber mat below. His arms quivered, triceps screaming, chest burning with the strain. He clenched the grips harder, pulled once more — then his arms buckled.
The world tilted. His body sagged sideways.
Amanda stepped in fast, sliding an arm under his shoulder, catching him before he collapsed to the floor. She held him steady, her strength surprising even now, then guided him back until he sank into the wheelchair waiting behind him.
Isaac's chest heaved as he slumped into the seat, sweat soaking his shirt, hair plastered across his forehead. His hazel eyes flicked up to her, exhaustion and stubbornness mixing in the look. His once-tan skin, faded pale from a year indoors, was slowly regaining some color from afternoons in the courtyard, but the hollowness of long recovery still showed in the sharp lines of his face.
Amanda crouched briefly, checking him with her eyes, scanning his breathing. He waved her off, panting.
He could still feel every nerve, every muscle protesting the work, but compared to what it had been in those first months — when lifting a spoon had felt impossible — this was progress.
Today had been just another battle. And Isaac still lived for the fight. But instead of war in the streets, today he fought his own broken body.
One more round," Isaac said, his voice rough, his chest heaving. Sweat pooled down his sternum, soaking into the cotton of his shirt until it clung to him. His arms trembled as he gripped the bars, each muscle firing in ragged protest, but his hazel eyes still burned with that same sharp fire. He loved the push. He loved the fight.
Amanda shook her head, chestnut-brown hair slipping loose from her ponytail, brushing against her cheek before she tucked it back. "Sorry," she said, matter-of-fact, not unkind. "You already extended your session. I've got other patients waiting. You need to rest."
Isaac grinned at her, wide and sharp. It wasn't the smile of a broken man — not even close. If someone could look past the scars that tracked up his forearms, the grafted patches of pale skin across his neck, and the hollow frame carved down by months of atrophy, it would have been a lady-killer grin. The kind that had once gotten him into more trouble than he could count.
Amanda stepped toward him, but he waved her off. "I've got it."
He braced his arms, thick veins raised across the skin, and shifted his weight. The screws and rods fused into his spine lit up like a row of firecrackers, and his shoulders quaked with the strain, but he lowered himself inch by inch. His jaw locked, breath coming sharp through his nose. Finally, with a muted thump, he dropped into the wheelchair waiting behind him.
Sweat rolled down his face, dripping from his chin to the floor. His black hair had grown long and unkempt, plastered to his forehead, strands clinging to his temples. His skin was pale from too many months inside, though time spent in the courtyard had burned a little color back into him. His once-solid, tan frame was gone, replaced by a leaner, scarred version that felt foreign but was slowly clawing strength back into his chest, shoulders, and arms.
Amanda leaned over him, tall enough that her shadow stretched across his lap. She folded her arms, eyes narrowing in appraisal. "Let me push you back, champ."
The word made his jaw tighten for half a second. Champ. Everyone called him that now. The nurses said it with a smile when they wheeled him past. Therapists tossed it out like a pat on the back.
But what mattered were the others. Men and women wrecked like him — the double amputees, the burn casualties, the ones staring down their own ruined futures. They called him champ too. For them, his survival, his relentless grind, had become a kind of inspiration. The Marine who had survived the crash, the burns, the broken spine, and hadn't given in. Proof that you could keep going even when your body told you to quit.
He'd learned to accept it. He was okay being their ideal.
But for Isaac, it was never about being anyone's story.
It was simpler.
He didn't fight for hope. He didn't fight to inspire. He fought because that's what he was built for. The war overseas — the clarity of fire, the rush of adrenaline, the brutal focus of combat — was gone now. He missed it every single day. But here, in this gym, every single morning, a new enemy stared back at him from the mirror. His own body. Nerves that fired like live wires. Muscles that quit too soon. Bones that ached like they'd been welded together with scrap iron.
That was the battlefield now.
Isaac leaned his head back against the chair, chest still rising and falling like he'd just finished a fight. The grin stayed on his face, sweat dripping down his jaw. He lived for the fight. He always had.
Only now, the enemy wasn't out there in the dust and gunfire.
The enemy was himself.
Amanda pushed Isaac's chair down the wide hallway, the squeak of the wheels echoing off the pale walls. She walked steady behind him, tall frame easy in motion, but she kept talking — something she'd started doing more and more lately. He swore she liked him. Why, he didn't know. But she filled the silence all the same.
"You're going home in a few weeks," she said. "What are your plans?"
"Watch anime," Isaac answered without missing a beat, his grin curling despite the sweat still drying on his skin.
Amanda snorted, a quick puff of laughter. "Pfft. Really?" Her tone had the faint edge of judgment — she didn't get the appeal of cartoons with subtitles and big-eyed heroes.
Isaac's grin widened. He didn't care.
Of course, it wasn't all he had in mind. As the chair rolled forward, he gave her the real answer, voice quieter. "I'll probably join a foundation. Help others. Show them how to fight the fight." He shifted slightly, scarred hands gripping the armrests. "Maybe take up basketball. I hear people play it in wheelchairs."
Amanda hummed but kept pushing, chestnut hair catching in the glow of fluorescent lights. The wheels rolled on. They traded small talk — weather, rehab gossip, little comments that barely scratched the surface — until they reached the ward.
His new roommate was Ed Sullivan. Late thirties, once at the peak of his career — whatever that meant before Iraq. An IED had ended it, left him gutted.
The blast hadn't killed him. The surgeons had patched him, fused his spine, wired him back together. Technically, Ed was "healed." But the reality was worse. His body was shot through with nerve damage, constant electrical fire under his skin. Every movement carried pain. Even breathing seemed to hurt.
The ward was quiet at night, but Isaac could hear it in the bed across from him — the groans Ed couldn't hold back, the broken mutters that came when the nerve pain spiked. Sometimes it was curses whispered into the dark, other times it was just sharp gasps, teeth gritted until his jaw ached.
Isaac knew that fight. Pain so thick it smothered you. Pain that made time stop moving.
Sometimes Isaac would just reach across and hold his hand. His grip was firm, scarred fingers wrapping around Ed's. Not to talk, not to preach. Just to let him know someone else was there in the fight with him.
Ed would squeeze back, faint but steady. And for a while, that was enough to carry them both through the night.