“How’d it go, Lee?” Miles asked me, jogging over to meet me when I returned, over an hour later. I’d never had to work as a live translator like that before, and it really took a lot out of me going back and forth between Captain Auclair and Lieutenant Colonel Anderson. Mostly I was just hungry, though.

“Auclair seemed satisfied, at least,” I started, scratching my head. “I also met another one of the guys from the movie- Corporal Upham, the translator guy. They had him take over for me after the important stuff was done with. Told me to get some food. Speaking of which…” I looked around wondering where my share of the breakfast might have gotten off too.

“Shane’s holding onto your meal. He’s, uh, over there,” Miles said, searching for a second then pointing out Maxley. He was sitting on the sand maybe ten yards away, chatting with Zach and Cora. I nodded to Miles, and we headed over to them.

“There he is,” Zach said, standing up while sporting a subdued smile. “We were just talking about you.”

“Uh-huh. You guys been alright?” I asked, looking around. “Hey, Maxley-”

“I got you. Here, Quinn.” The redheaded soldier stood up, handing over a little box.

“Thanks,” I replied heartilly, opening it up. The food didn’t look great, but it was better than nothing. “Anyway, you’re all okay?” I asked, as I opened up a can of ham.

“I’d say so, yeah,” Zach nodded, rubbing his arm. That drew my attention; his sling was gone. I raised an eyebrow at that, and his face lit up. “Keith gave me a couple sips from a health potion,” Zach said, waving his right arm around to display his regained mobility.

“There was a bit left after what I gave you,” a gruff voice sounded behind me. I turned back to find Keith approaching. “Thought we may as well get the kid’s arm fixed up.”

“Oh, okay. How many of those things do you have anyway?” I asked. “And what other gear have you brought here?”

“Figured you’d ask. I’ve got two more bottles. They’re five doses to a bottle- I gave four to you earlier, then one to Zachary. Besides those and the guns, that’s about it.” He shrugged, finished.

“What are those things anyway? Where did you get them?” Shane Maxley asked, suspicious. I hadn’t really thought about it until then, but Maxley had been with us the whole time. Even if he hadn’t noticed that we never had to reload, there was no way he could have missed my miraculous recovery.

“Uh… My, uh, my little brother is a doctor. A… medical researcher. He gave them to me before I shipped out. They’re still in testing… His superiors thought his formula was too good to be true, so it wasn’t approved for human testing yet. Think you can keep quiet about this, Maxley?”

“I guess so,” he agreed, satisfied. “What do you think our next job is? And when?”

“The Captain told me just before I came back here, actually,” Keith started. “We’re back on duty on the hills at noon. Sergeant Lane and the rest of his guys are coming too. We’ve got the night off, though. Get some rest in until then”

“Hey, should we come this time?” Zach asked, looking from Cora to Keith.

“Probably,” Keith sighed, shaking his head. I’m pretty sure Keith wasn’t comfortable with taking a high school kid into war, but we really didn’t have much choice at that point. He could’ve healed Zach anytime he wanted. “That alright with you, Siskou?”

“Of course. I do not believe I am needed here. Many more medics are here now, and many patients taken away.” She smiled lightly as she finished.

“Did they evacuate our last guy? Jay or something?” I asked, as the one-legged man came to mind. Finished with my quick meal, I packed the empty cans and the can opener back in the box, and tossed it to the side.

“Yes, I believe they did. He will recover, as much as a one-legged man can recover in 1944.” She sighed at that. I glanced at Maxley, but if he found her statement odd he kept it to himself.

“Hey, a potion couldn’t, like, regrow a leg, could it?” Zach asked, his eyes widening.

“Probably not,” Keith replied, smirking. “My buddy tried one out- the guy I told you about earlier, the one who lost an arm.” That’d be the robot-arm guy, I figured, briefly glancing at Maxley again. “He drank a whole bottle and it just closed off the wound. Hell, they even leave scars, most of the time.”

“Oh,” Zach said, pulling up his sleeve. The motion revealed what looked like two very old and long-since healed gunshot wounds. Nobody would have believed they were barely two days old. “So they do. Can’t believe I never checked.” He just blinked a few times, then shrugged.

“We’ve got a few hours before noon, yeah? Let’s just get some rest. We can talk more on the hill, and it won’t be dark out this time.” I dumped my helmet and my bag next to me, then yawned and leaned back in the sand, staring up at the clouds. We’d been up for just about an entire day already, and the exhaustion was finally setting in. I quickly drifted off, before anyone was able to object.

---

“Hey, Lee,” I heard, as someone shook my shoulder, interrupting my thankfully-dreamless sleep. “It’s almost noon. Get up, we gotta go soon!” I groggily opened my eyes and sat up, yawning and stretching my arms above my head. I looked to my left, to find Miles staring at me. “Come on, dude. Let’s go.” He put out his hand and I let him pull me to my feet.

“Thanks,” I said, brushing the sand off of my clothes. I looked around our makeshift campsite, finding Cora and Keith waking up the others. “Keith got to you first, then?” I laughed, reclaiming my helmet and gear. Miles just grinned. Soon enough everyone was up and ready, and Sergeant Lane came by to collect us.

“Alright men, same thing as this morning. But this time, do not leave your post. Am I understood?” He asked, menacingly. That it wasn’t really a question was evident in his tone.

“Understood,” several of us muttered together.

“Good enough,” Lane sighed, looking around our group. “I see your medic’s back? And you got a replacement for Wexler? Good. Maxley, you’re back with me until I can fill up my team.” It seemed weird designating Zach a replacement, but he wasn’t exactly wrong. “Let’s head out then.”

We followed Sergeant Lane to the hills again and relieved the previous watchmen. It was a different and much less friendly group than the one led by the corporal the night before. They just stalked off, barely a word exchanged. Once we settled in, with Miles and Zach manning the machine gun, Sergeant Lane, Maxley and the rest of Lane’s guys headed for the next hill. For the first time since D-Day, our entire group was together and isolated.

“Let’s plan out as much of the Mission as we can now,” Zach suggested, after the newly-replaced team from the next hill passed us by. “What comes next?”

“Tomorrow is the ninth,” Keith stated firmly. “It is critical that we get our squad into the rescue mission. Do we have any ideas beyond hanging around the Rangers and volunteering?”

“I got an idea in the command tent this morning,” I started, hesitantly. “I translated for the Lieutenant Colonel and I dropped that we still had a guy that speaks German. I can only hope he remembers me when time comes for the Mission to start. Maybe he’ll assign us in place of Corporal Upham. That guy seemed like a nervous wreck, I wouldn’t want him on the mission if at all possible.”

“That’s about what I was thinking,” Zach said, nodding. “We just have to hope Shane will go along with it.”

“I’m pretty sure he’d be glad to go with us,” Miles stated. “He lost his entire squad on D-Day, remember?”

“That’s right… I feel kind of bad dragging him along with us, but we have to complete the Mission at all costs,” I said, then sighed. “We’ll lose all of our Points if we don’t, and the next Mission could be even harder. Right, Keith?” I asked, glancing at the hulking corporal.

“That’s right. Though I don’t think the Missions necessarily get harder every time. My first one was Jurassic Park. That one was absurd. I really just ran around and hid while the veterans battled the dinosaurs. But the next one was Jaws, and even most of the other rookies got through that one just fine. The shark did bite my buddy’s arm off, but that was his fault, really. What kind of idiot tries to punch out a shark?” Keith chuckled weakly, before he continued. “X-Men, though, was a real killer,” he said grimly. “I was the only one who made it through that one.”

“Wow…” Zach muttered, scratching his head. “So it’s just random then? You had a hard Mission, then a relatively easy one, but now two hard ones in a row? I wonder if there’s a formula…”

“Wonder away, kid,” Keith scoffed. “It doesn’t matter right now anyway.”

“That’s true,” Zach conceded, then shrugged. “Let’s go over everything again. What comes after we join Captain Miller’s squad?”

“We go to Neuville. There are a few skirmishes there, one of the characters dies, and they find a fake Ryan.”

“Fake Ryan?” Cora asked. “What do you mean?”

“We’re looking for James Francis Ryan, the guy in Neuville is called James Frederick Ryan.” Cora nodded in understanding before Keith continued. “There is one guy in Neuville who knows the real Ryan’s rallying point. We’ll head there and it’s basically a big field hospital. Another guy there says that Ryan is guarding a bridge in Ramelle. Another of the guys gets killed on the way to Ramelle, then most of the others die in Ramelle. The end,” Keith finished, rolling his eyes.

“We still need to be cautious at all times. It takes about four days to get from here to Ramelle, right? In the movie, I mean,” I asked, and Keith nodded. “This is a dynamic world, and there are no time skips or scene progressions. We have to actually do everything. Otherwise we would have just skipped yesterday and today. We’re not really in a movie, just a world based off of a movie.”

“I think I see what you mean,” Zach said, following me. “Like, there is no one in the movie called Shane Maxley, or Sergeant Lane, or Captain Burr, but they exist here. The movie is like a base, and all the background details get filled in after?”

“Something like that,” Keith muttered, nodding.

“Hey, Keith, is there some kind of overarching goal for us? Or a reason we’re all here, doing these Missions?” Miles asked, finally speaking up.

“Fuck if I know,” Keith grunted. “Oh, but you can go back to Earth if you save up enough Points.”

“What?!” All of us shouted, staring blankly at Keith.

“Why didn’t you tell us that earlier?!” Miles demanded frantically, eyes wide with excitement. Keith sighed, and shrugged.

“And how many Points would that be?” I asked, catching on.

“That’d be the problem. 100,000 Points for a ticket home. It’s a fucking pipe dream. You’d have to survive a thousand Missions without spending anything. No fucking way,” Keith finished, simply. Miles seemed to deflate wholly at that, while the rest of us just sighed. I think we’d all given up hope of going back to our modern-day Earth long before then anyway.

“You’re right. I’d rather just build a new life here than spend years fighting to go back,” Zach said, solemnly.

“I agree,” Cora stated, speaking up for the first time in a while. “I was in great debt in America. This is almost preferable,” She sighed, smiling lightly.

“I was in about the same boat,” I admitted, with a motion towards Cora. “Even if I could have graduated I didn’t have anything lined up. No job, no graduate school. Apparently I’m already dead anyway, so I guess I’ll just make the best of what I can out here.”

“You guys are nuts,” Miles pronounced. “I want to go back. No, I will go back, or die trying!” A bold claim, but it’s not like any of us could hold it against him. “I have a girlfriend, a bunch of real friends, I’m in like six different bands, a few clubs… I have so much to go back to. I won’t give up,” he finished, determined.

“We’ll help you out however we can, Miles,” I said, Cora and Zach quickly agreeing. Keith just rolled his eyes and scoffed.

“Thanks, guys,” Miles grinned, as a few tears came to his eyes. Miles rubbed the tears out and finally got serious, going back to manning the machine gun and surveying the field before us.

“Now that I think about it, we are dead, right? I was definitely in a car crash, I remember that much,” Zach revealed.

“I don’t remember dying at all,” I said, eyebrow raised. “I figured we were supposed to forget it? Guess not,” I finished, as Keith and Cora shook their heads.

“I was shot on the job. We were busting a big time drug dealer, his goons got a bit ahead of themselves,” Keith added. He did say he was a cop, so that wasn’t too surprising. “One of the goons actually made it over here on my second mission. I left him alone, but he ended up as shark food anyway,” Keith claimed, grinning.

“I was in a car accident. Like Zachary,” Cora stated, sighing. We all looked expectantly towards Miles.

“Uh,” the music student winced, before slowly turning and smiling weakly. “I’m not sure what happened, exactly. I was, uh, pretty drunk.” He glanced nervously at Keith and quickly looked away. “I, uh, definitely didn’t drive, though! I never even brought my car to AZ!”

“I’m not going to arrest you, Miles,” Keith laughed briefly, before his eyes narrowed. “How old did you say you were again?”

“Twenty…” He said, sweating and turning away, manning the machine gun once again, trying and failing to be nonchalant about it. The rest of us had a good laugh at that, even Keith.

We mostly just chatted for the next few hours, nothing disturbing our watch. We were relieved a bit after sundown, by the jovial Corporal we’d met the night before. After a brief exchange we went on our way, quickly returning to base camp. We waited a bit, for Lane’s group to make it back, then reported to Captain Burr. He was very happy that both of our posts had been uneventful, and sent us off to have dinner.

The night wound down pretty nicely, not much else happening. The only thing worth mentioning is that Sergeant Lane officially assigned Maxley to our team, as he had rallied up a few of the leftovers from 3rd Platoon for his own team.

We were as ready as we’d ever be, so we all went to sleep a bit early in preparation of, hopefully, the beginning of the real Mission the next day.