Grace is part of an elite strike force, the kind of unit that got sent in when things were already past saving. Hours earlier they’d fought and won a brutal battle against a pack of vicious aliens, Scrammers, as her squad called them, but victory had come with a price. Heavy casualties. Too many. And among them, her best friend, SSG Jake Connelly.

Now she sat alone in the shadowed corner of an abandoned factory where the survivors had holed up to lick their wounds. The squad murmured quietly around her, but Grace felt sealed off from all of them, trapped in her own grief. Her only company was Jake’s dog tags, some warm Heineken, and a battered pack of cigarettes. She felt hollow, heartbroken, and dangerously close to not caring what happened next.

She cracked open the beer, lit a cigarette, and wiped at the tears that kept threatening to spill. The darkness in front of her seemed to pull memories out of her, Jake laughing, Jake teasing her, Jake being the kind of friend every good soul deserves at least once in their life. Remembering him only made the ache sharper, and soon her grief was twisting into something harder, hotter.

Payback.

The LT, Chris Lane, called out to her. "Grace, we’re moving out. More Scrammers inbound".
She stood, slung her gear, and followed the squad topside. And there, a blessed sight, their own Drones were already carving up the incoming Scrammers with ruthless precision, shredding them without mercy.

Grace watched, chest tight. "I wish Jake was here to see this", she said quietly.

Chris glanced at her, steady and sure. "He is", he said. "I know he is".
Grace closed her fingers around Jake’s dog tags, feeling the cool metal press into her palm like a promise.

The Drones kept carving through the Scrammers, bright arcs of blue fire lighting the ruined skyline, and for the first time since Jake fell, she felt something move inside her, not peace, not yet, but purpose.

She straightened, wiped the last of her tears with the back of her hand, and nodded to Chris. "Alright", she said softly. "Let’s finish this." And with Jake’s memory burning steady in her chest, Grace stepped forward into the fight.