The Forgotten Soldier

The train screeched to a halt, its brakes screaming like wounded metal. Among the passengers stepping out was a man in a faded military jacket, the insignia half-torn, the name patch unreadable. His eyes carried the weight of years he could no longer measure Captain Aaron Hale had returned home. Or at least, he thought he had.

The streets of Brookvale looked the same, yet everything felt… off. The corner bakery where he used to buy coffee was now a tech store. Children played in the park, but no one recognized him. His heart pounded as he reached his old house on Elmsbury Street the one with the red mailbox and the oak tree out front.

But the name on the doorbell read Miller.

He knocked. A woman in her 30s opened the door. “Can I help you?” she asked politely.

“This is my home,” Aaron said, voice trembling. “I—I’m Captain Hale. I lived here with my wife.”

The woman frowned. “Sir, we’ve been here for seven years. There’s never been a Captain Hale here.”

Aaron froze. Seven years? He’d only been deployed for three.

He pulled out his military ID, the only proof of who he was. The woman glanced at it. “This looks fake,” she said cautiously, stepping back. “You should leave.”

When the door shut, Aaron stood there in silence, the cold wind slicing through him. His name. His home. His past all erased.

He went to the local Veterans Affairs office the next day. The clerk scanned the database, typing his name with indifferent fingers.

“There’s no record of a Captain Aaron Hale,” she said flatly. “No service record, no enlistment, nothing.”

“That’s impossible,” Aaron said, his voice rising. “I fought in the Taranis Conflict. Third Battalion, Recon Division!”

The woman gave him a sympathetic look. “Maybe you should talk to someone. A counselor, perhaps.”

As security escorted him out, Aaron’s mind spiraled. If the government had erased his name, then maybe maybe it wasn’t just a clerical error. Maybe it was deliberate.

That night, he checked into a run-down motel and spread his meager belongings across the bed: the ID, a medal, a crumpled photo of his squad faces he could barely recall. He tried searching for them online, but found nothing. No military records. No obituaries. No mention of the Taranis Conflict at all.

It was as if the war had never happened.

Days turned into weeks. Aaron began noticing people following him a black SUV parked too long near his motel, a man in a gray suit lingering by the corner. One night, when he tried to call the number on the back of his old dog tags, he heard a whisper instead of a dial tone:

“Stop digging, Captain. You were never here.”

His blood ran cold.

He fled the city, taking only what he could carry. In an abandoned diner outside town, he met another man gaunt, eyes sharp, wearing the same kind of military jacket.

“They erased you too, didn’t they?” the man said.

Aaron nodded slowly. “How did you know?”

“Because I remember you,” the man replied. “Taranis. Recon Division. We were there.”

Aaron’s heart pounded. “Then it was real.”

The man pulled out a small device, humming with faint blue light. “They called it Project Oblivion. They wiped soldiers’ records after the war said it was for national security. But it was about control. We saw something we weren’t supposed to.”

“What did we see?” Aaron asked.

The man hesitated. “Not what. Who.”

Before he could explain, a gunshot shattered the window. The man fell, blood staining his uniform. Outside, headlights flared black SUVs closing in.

Aaron ran.

Weeks later, the news reported an unidentified fugitive accused of “terrorist conspiracy.” No photo. No name. Just a shadow.

But in whispers, across hidden networks and dark corners of the web, a story spread of erased soldiers, of a secret war no one remembered.

And somewhere in the ruins of a forgotten city, Aaron Hale kept moving, carrying the last piece of his truth a single photo of his squad, with a message scrawled on the back:

“If they erase us, we’ll remember each other.”

He tucked it into his jacket, disappearing into the fog.

Because even if the world forgot him, Aaron Hale would not forget who he was.

Not again.