The Forge: Fire and Ice

FORGED Dan Staniforth

I stand at the top of a pharmacological cliff. Cold waves pound at its base. Watching from the promontory I cannot tell what makes up the water. I see only hazy blue and feel its power.

‘You want Fire?’ the weasel-faced sergeant asks. ‘For real?’

I nod.

‘You got an op tomorrow. Fire’s gonna make that dicey.’ My money’s good, and she knows she’ll take it. The credit chip lies between us on an ammunition case. My stillness unsettles her, and she palms the chip, leaving two bright red capsules.

‘Your funeral.’ She leaves quickly and I am alone in the tent. The shadows press in on me, full of faces I cannot remember.

We all take ICE. The drug numbs certain parts of our brains and enhances others. On ICE, I’m faster on my feet, on the trigger and in my head. I can go for hours. My spatial reasoning is top percentile, and unless you’re in my unit, you might as well be a paper target for all the thought I’ll give as I take you down. We got the shot before we flew out here, and every six months we get a booster. I’ve been here four years, I think.

The tent is cold and dark, so I pull a blanket around myself as I look at the pills. This stuff is Fire. It might let me know what grinds away at me every night. I’ve seen soldiers take speck doses of Fire before furlough, especially when they have a booster shot of ICE coming up. This is no microdose though, this is the full burn. We don’t remember our dreams, but I’ve been waking up with tears on my face. Pillow damp and pressure building in me, filling me with something. My mind only shows me smudges. A chalkboard, erased just before I see it.

Soldiers using ICE follow orders more efficiently and accurately; they perform at peak capacity. As it wears off, so do memories of the combat zone. Proper regimens increase operational security and lower instances of PTSD and related traumas.

I remember briefings. Manuals. Orders.

Old conflicts produced broken soldiers. Men and women who came home whole in body but not in mind. PTSD put veterans on the streets and destroyed families. No matter what I have to do out here, when I go home, when it wears off, I’ll be human again.

The pressure is unbearable. I scoop, swallow, wash them down with plastic-tasting water from my canteen. Fire in the hole. My next booster isn’t for two months. I hope I make it.

The sergeant was right. I have an op tomorrow, but there are eight hours’ sleep owed me, and unconscious, that’s a long time. I’m a soldier: I sleep fast, and I sleep hard. My head hits the pillow.

‘Within ICE, memories which are not chemically conditioned will fade. At daily briefings, you are required to take supplements. These ensure crucial data will remain available to you. Extraneous details will fade from your mind. Do not worry, Cadets, memories formed before ICE will be unaffected. You will not forget your name, your mothers, or your high school sweetheart.’

‘Please can I forget my wife?’ some smart-ass chimes.

‘We cannot provide that service, Cadet. However, grateful souls in the disputed territories may be able to help.’

I remembered Jas. The way she looked at me when I told her I had signed up. As if I was some sort of idiot hero. She wanted to punch me and fuck me at once. Jas was finishing medical school while I was out here. She was the smart one.

‘You will do basic training while taking supplements, but you will not be issued ICE until deployment. Make the most of these memories, they’ll be lasting you until you come home.’

On the sofa in our rented cellar we shared wine. Jas didn’t like the idea of novel neural depressants.

‘They’re still a work in progress, Raf. Nobody knows what effects these drugs will have in the long term.’

‘I’ll never forget you, Jas. Or how you make me feel.’ We drank more wine and went to bed.

‘ICE will make you a better, quicker soldier. It will help keep you alive, more capable of keeping your unit alive. Without it, you are a weak link. You do not have to partake, but you are responsible for those around you.’

One cadet refused the supplements. He lasted a week before he was shipped home. Another changed her mind halfway through and ran away. By dose day, everyone was on board.

‘Injections today, then you take a weekend furlough. ICE won’t kick in until you get back. We take a pill and a plane and go win this war. Dismissed, Soldiers.’

Jas and I made promises. She’d write. I’d do what I could from a combat zone. I took a lock of her hair, and she took a cheek swab for a slide. Jas had funny ideas about what was romantic, but she said it would keep me close. We partied, fucked, and stayed up late holding each other, making plans. She drove me to the base the next day, and as we parted she told me something, but I can’t remember what.

As I sleep, cliffs crumble. Water destroys the rocks that held it back. Floods roll in. Jas’s voice ripples through me.

‘I’m pregnant.’

Sadness that originates there flows forward, covering me. Is this the truth the drug obscures? I kissed her and walked away, ICE already forming layers. Left the country and didn’t return. Was that ICE? Or was that me?

‘You ok, bro?’

I wake, not ok, but I cannot tell my squad-mates. We have a job to do. I kit up and we move. An hour later I’m on the streets of what used to be a city. I’ve never seen a landscape like this without ICE. Buildings are skeletons and stones, history told only by outlines and detritus. Figures stagger from the shadows, dark eyes looking at us with no hope, no hatred, no interest. All landmarks are gone, leaving only memories and damage.

My stomach churns. The chiaroscuro of the day makes my eyes hurt. I hit the ground but I’m missing something. Fire is still inside me, old layers of ICE peeling back like wallpaper strata as a house burns. I can smell the scorch marks on the walls as my unit moves forwards. My gun is out, pointed, but I don’t see what surrounds me.

My Captain seats me in the oddly empty tent. Words fall from her mouth to my ears, but they don’t stick.

‘News from home. I’m afraid it’s not good. Jasmine is dead.’

I am not present in my body as I shake my head, looking like I don’t understand.

‘Jasmine Alvarez. She had you as next of kin alongside her parents.’

Jas. Oh. I stagger and take a knee in the dark squalor of the building. My partner hears me go down and turns.

‘You ok? Raf?’

A weak nod and raised hand buys me time.

Jasmine. How? How did I forget? Why did I give this up?

‘You know Jasmine, from home?’ my Captain asks me gently, and I nod. I remember, but through fog.

‘Your daughter is fine. She’s with her grandparents.’

Chills run through me. Jas, her laugh, her smell. Remembrance comes at me like a truck and I drop my gun. I have a…

Bullets run dry. I fumble for a reload as I hear footsteps. ICE reflexes drop my empty rifle. My pistol comes free as a crouching figure leans from the doorway. Full face mask and filthy clothes rob the figure of gender, but it steps back. Eyes widen in terror behind the mask, shadows moving beneath dark water as I fire, splashing bright blood on shattered black plastic.

‘Raf. What’s up? I need you, brother.’

He’s shaking me and I see shrapnel-marked walls and a corridor. A door ahead.

‘We’re nearly there, but I need you here. What’s going on?’

Pushing memories from my head I take my weapon and stand. I am needed here. I hear the radio in my ear, see remnants of the surrounding building, rubbed away by the bombs.

‘Door on three, two, one…’

We move forward, opening and passing through. This is what we came for, where the target should be. I have a daughter. Our target, dead or alive, will be here. Intelligence tells us this is true.

She must be three now, three and a half. When do children stop counting half years? Behind these doors, in these tunnels, is the man we seek. The man we are hunting. His team, his people, his nexus. Have I ever seen my daughter? What does she look like?

Dark shadows in every room hold fears and danger. I enter, check my corners, kneel, aim, confirm, and room by room we continue. The building is empty. Stairs down.

I catch sight of myself in the broken glass of a door. Black hair, brown eyes. I know what I look like, but do I know who I am? Who’s inside? We would have made a beautiful baby, Jas and I. She must be special.

Stairs down. Focus. Stairs into darkness. The torches we carry poke holes into the unknown, exposing edges and walls, dangling lights that no longer have power. We build a picture of the unseen from glances in our beams. I lead down, open a door and stop.

How long ago? When did I learn that Jas died? Why did I stay here?

I am in the chair again, Captain standing before me.

‘I understand if you want to go home. Be with family. We can make that happen.’

There’s nothing in my face, behind those eyes. I see the words hit and slide off as if my mind was greased.

‘We can put a replacement into your unit until you get back.’

I shake my head. These men and women rely on me. Brothers and sisters. Leaving them in the hands of a stranger is unthinkable.

‘Your daughter is well looked after. We’ll ensure her grandparents have all they need. When your tour is done you can go home a hero.’

We stand at the bottom of the staircase, clustered around the doorway. The room is crowded, but not with insurgents. Children fill it. There is no blood, but no life either. They have died from smoke inhalation. Older boys and girls with their arms around younger ones. There are three adults, teachers perhaps. Everyone is dead.

The unit leader turns and points back up the stairs.

‘He’s not here. RTB. We keep looking.’

My ride back doesn’t stop at the base, I take it all the way. The Fire doesn’t wear off, it keeps finding new layers to peel back. Memories I don’t want. All I can think about is Jas and my daughter. I don’t even know her name.

All I can see is destruction. My actions causing death. My finger on the trigger. Blood, pain and darkness spilling from me, fear and hatred pooling around me as we travel through the warzone we have created. The melt comes and brings floods of poison waking me nightly, bombed out skeletal structures like hands reaching for me, awareness of my complicity. Emptiness in my eyes as I kill or brutally interrogate. The defence of my sanity at the cost of my soul.

I find the house where my daughter lives. A blue front door, narrow yard with a potted plant and a child’s bike. Chalk on the pavement. I watch her scamper from the house with her grandparents. They are happy. They have grieved and recovered, and I cannot approach them.

I stand at the bottom of a precipice. The sea of memories which surrounds me is dark and freezing. Atop the cliff my daughter dances, unaware.

the end