Episode 8: Paper Dog Tags

So everyone was already gone when Unit Twelve reached the supermarket.

The roof had caved in. The shelves were burned. The cold cases hummed with nothing. The only sound was the clink of broken jars rolling gently under Marla’s boots. Once upon a time this place sold ice cream and aspirin and checkout-line horoscopes. Now it sold death in six aisles and a parking lot full of empty shoes.

“Anyone left?” asked Jin through her headset.

Marla didn’t answer. She was watching the rot drip from the ceiling like a memory trying to forget itself. Her fingers hovered over the trigger. She wore her mask tight, Unit 12’s mark stenciled in yellow. A black dog. A crooked tail. No one laughed at it anymore.

She moved past the frozen section—nothing froze anymore—and saw what used to be a child curled up by the pharmacy. Small bones. Bite marks. No head.

“There was,” she said finally. “Not anymore.”

That’s when the PA system clicked on.

Not theirs.

Not the store’s.

An old voice. A man’s. War-shaped and strange.

“To the trespassers scavenging what belongs to the People’s Army: lay down your weapons. Surrender. You are under citizen’s arrest.”

Jin swore. Dai dropped the medpack.

Marla didn’t move. She knew that voice. Not the tone—but the type. Authority with a clean-shaven edge. The kind of voice that barked orders in sandstorms and never once wondered what happened after. The kind of voice the world used to follow straight into its own grave.

The Underdogs called him the Ghost Marine.

No name. No face. No history. Just dog tags that jingled when he broke your kneecaps.

She whispered: “Run.”

But it was too late. The skylight shattered.

They came down like ghosts. They weren’t infected. They weren’t military. They were something worse. Organized.

“Don’t kill the girl!” someone yelled. “That’s the captain.”

She tried. God, she tried. Three down. One throat shot. Jin covering her six. Dai screaming about the stairwell. But they had gas. They had drones. They had numbers.

They had a tranquilizer dart that hit her just above the collarbone, and suddenly she was swimming in syrup. Time hiccupped. Her knees buckled. Her teeth tasted metal.

And then it all went sideways.

She woke tied to a pipe. Not in a prison. Worse: a school.

The walls still had kid drawings on them. Crayon suns with big smiles. A multiplication table half-torn by claw marks. A chair with dried blood on it.

Her hands were zip-tied behind her. Her mask was gone. Her nameplate too.

A man sat across from her. Dark fatigues. Gloves. No insignia. Just a face that had been sculpted by disappointment and made permanent by war. He had no accent. No smile. No eyes you’d trust.

“You’re Marla.”

“You’re late,” she said. “We’ve been waiting to kill you.”

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t flinch.

“You’re going to tell me where your people are. And you’re going to tell me what you’re doing with the silver.”

She blinked. “The what?”

“The silver,” he repeated. “The boy. Your weapon. The thing that used to be human. Where is it?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” she said, and it was the truth.

(At least, she thought it was.)

He stood. “You’ll remember.”

And then came the pain. Not punches. Electricity. Water. Something colder than fists and older than fear. He didn’t yell. He didn’t threaten. He just waited. Watched. Wrote notes.

She told him nothing. Because that’s what Underdogs do. We bite the leash. We break the chain. We die before we bark.

Later—maybe hours, maybe days—they brought her outside.

A pit. A fire. A crowd of revolutionaries in recycled uniforms. Some of them clapped. Some of them booed. One held a camera.

“This is what terrorists look like,” the Marine said. “This is what happens to them.”

They tied her to a post. Poured something flammable.

Her skin felt too tight for her bones.

Her breath rattled like broken glass in a windpipe.

She closed her eyes and whispered: “Sorry, Jin. Sorry, Dai. I did my best.”

Someone struck a match.

And then the sky broke open.

Silver.

It didn’t fall—it sliced. A flash of light and gravity bent like paper. Something landed in the dirt. Not human. Not not human. A teenager with a body like a broken mirror. His eyes were mercury. His blood dripped like starlight and hissed where it touched the ground.

He moved like memory and lightning had a baby.

The soldiers shot. He didn’t care.

They screamed. He didn’t listen.

He ripped the chains off her with a single touch—and they melted like sugar in the rain.

And then he said her name.

Not Captain. Not Terrorist. Just—

“Marla.”

Her heart stopped.

Because she knew that voice.

Not the tone—but the type.

Kind. Small. Sweet like rust.

She blinked up at him.

“...Ant?”

He nodded once. His silver eyes flickered.

“You died.”

“No,” he said. “I changed.”

She opened her mouth. Said nothing. Closed it again.

Then the pain returned. Her vision went sideways.

She passed out with the taste of metal on her tongue, and the memory of a boy who once made her laugh during a ration drop-off by juggling expired oranges.