Tess won't ever forget her first kill.

Soldiers aren't as lucky as Fireflies; they don't get to ease into the process. They're desperate for recruits, so they thrust a gun into her eighteen-year-old hands, show her how to load, reload, and fire, and they send her to the streets. Unlike other soldiers, Tess won't even be lucky enough to have her first kill be an Infected, the nice bridge between an animal and a human. Her only experience with death is snuffing spiders out with tissue. She remembers squishing bugs and hearing their skeletons crack.

She forces her hands to be steady on the gun. She tries not to shake. She tries not to think about it, about the fact that killing is as easy as pulling a trigger. She considers the abstract possibility of lifting it to her own skull and applying pressure with her index finger.

She doesn't, though.

She focuses on the faces of her family. They need supplies. They need to survive. And if she has to destroy her innocence in the meantime, so be it. She's shot people in games before—how different can this be?

It won't be bad if you don't think about it. You're doing it 'cause you have to. Just focus on pulling the trigger. Don't think about the person.

Tess knows the moment is coming her first day on patrol. Soldiers always end up killing, whether they find Fireflies, smugglers, or Infected. Quarantine Zones maintain their safety only through a massive death count.

"Your first day, huh?" one of her fellows asks, brusquely but not without pity. "You'll get used to it. Just do as you're told."

Like the Nazis did, Tess thinks dully, and her hands clench around the smooth handle of the gun they've given her. She's holding it so tightly that the metal is no longer cold.

Trepidation is the worst part. Throughout the day the thought hangs over her as they roam the streets, scan people for infection, chase away loiterers. Her eyes are glassy and her breath comes in short bursts. She licks her lips and assures herself that the fear will be worse than the action. She almost wishes it would happen already, just happen, so it's over with.

The day ends with them at the border of the zone, checking incomers. Officers force people to their knees and scan for infection. Those unfortunates who turn up positive get a quick syringe and a relatively painless death.

Tess is walking down the end of the line, no other officers around. A man at the end of the line is visibly nervous, twitching, his eyes going back and forth. Before it happens, Tess knows it's going to happen; before it happens, Tess knows what she's going to do.

He lunges to his feet and runs for the gate. Without thinking, without feeling, only because it feels like all she can do, Tess remembers her training and aims the gun and pulls the trigger again and again. Her shots land. The body hits the ground with a thud. Unthinking, unfeeling, she watches blood pool underneath him on the ground.

One of her teammates gives her a curt nod. "Good job. It's always annoying when they try to run."

Good job? What exactly did she do that deserves praise? Tess doesn't feel like a successful soldier. She feels like a fucking murderer. She could have let him run. She could have let her comrades take him down. She could have claimed she was paralyzed, a perfectly legitimate excuse.

But she pulled the trigger. She killed him.

She's a murderer.

And the worst part is that she can't feel anything. She wants to feel sad for the man she killed. Her mind is telling her that he had a family, that people loved him, but her heart isn't responding. She's already forgetting his face. She wants to feel sadness, or pain, or anything human. That would be the natural response, wouldn't it? But she can't. She feels empty, like she didn't just pull the trigger, like she didn't just end a life.

She goes home to the family she convinced herself to kill for and looks at them like she's never seen them before. She hates them all for sitting there, smiling blithely up at her, clueless as to anything she's just gone through.

"How was your first day?"

Tess furrows her eyebrows at her mother. What does she expect? Her first day involved her watching her fellows act like death was nothing. Her first day involved a pat on the back for a murder. She's killed and she's going to have to kill again.

"Fine."

She doesn't sleep that night. She lies awake and stares at the ceiling, feeling a phantom gun in her fingers, watching the man die over and over again.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

She cries because she wants to cry, not because she feels sad. There's still just that awful numbness beating through her veins like blood.

Day two sees another three victims. By the end of week one, she stops crying.

The voice in her head doesn't go away.

Murderer.