All You Need Is Kill

“Watch the doors, don’t want nobody breakin’ this up! I got ten bucks on the scrawny guy!” followed immediately by, “Twenty on Rita!” Then someone else cried out, “Where’s my fried shrimp? I lost my fried shrimp!”

It was hot, it was loud, and in a way I can’t explain, it felt like home. There was an invisible bond that hadn’t been there my previous times through the loop. I’d had a taste of what tomorrow would bring, and suddenly all the little things that happen in our lives, the minutiae of the day, took on new importance. Just then, being surrounded by all that noise felt good.

In the end, we ate every industrially packed umeboshi in the barrel. Rita had the last one. I argued that it was a tie, but since Rita had gone first, she insisted that she had won. When I objected, Rita grinned and offered to settle it over another barrel. It’s hard to say whether that grin meant she really could have gone on eating or if the overload of sour food had made her a little funny in the head. The gorilla from the 4th brought in another full barrel of the red fruit from Hell and placed it in the middle of the table with a thud.

By that point, I felt like I was made of umeboshi from the waist on down. I waved the white flag.

After that, I talked with Rita about everything-Yonabaru who never shut up, Sergeant Ferrell and his training obsession, the rivalry between our platoon and the 4th. For her part, Rita told me things she hadn’t had time to get to in the last loop. When not encased in her Jacket, the Bitch wore a shy smile that suited her well. Her fingertips smelled of machine grease, pickled plum, and a hint of coffee.

I don’t know which flags I’d set or how, but on that 160th loop my relationship with Rita deepened as it never had before. The next morning, Corporal Jin Yonabaru didn’t wake up on the top bunk. He woke up on the floor.

3

I found no peace in sleep. A Mimic would snuff out my life, or I’d black out in the middle of battle. After that, nothing. Then without warning, the nothingness gave way. The finger that had been squeezing the trigger of my rifle was wedged three quarters of the way through my paperback. I’d find myself lying in bed, surrounded by its pipe frame, listening to the high-pitched voice of the DJ read the day’s weather. Clear and sunny out here on the islands, same as yesterday, with a UV warning for the afternoon. Each word wormed its way into my skull and stuck there.

By “sunny” I had picked up the pen, by “islands” I was writing the number on my hand, and by the time she’d gotten to “UV warning” I was out of bed and on my way to the armory. That was my wake-up routine.

Sleep on the night before the battle was an extension of training. For some reason, my body never grew fatigued. The only thing I brought with me were my memories and the skills I’d mastered. I spent the night tossing and turning, my mind replaying the movements it had learned the previous day as it burned the program into my brain. I had to be able to do what I couldn’t the last time through the loop, to kill the Mimics I couldn’t kill, to save the friends I couldn’t save. Like doing an iso push-up in my mind. My own private nightly torment.

I awoke in battle mode. Like a pilot flipping through switches before takeoff, I inspected myself one part at a time, checking for any muscles that might have knotted up overnight. I didn’t skip so much as a pinky toe.

Rotating ninety degrees on my ass, I sprang out of bed and opened my eyes. I blinked. My vision blurred. The room was different. The prime minister’s head wasn’t staring out at me from atop the swimsuit model. By the time I noticed, it was too late; my foot missed a platform that wasn’t there and my inertia sent me tumbling from the bed. My head slammed into a tile-covered floor, and I finally realized where I was.

Sunlight shone through layers of blast-resistant glass and spilled across the vast, airy room. An artificial breeze from the purifier poured over my body as I lay sprawled on the floor. The thick walls and glass completely blocked out the sounds of the base that were usually so loud in my ears.

I was in the Sky Lounge. In a base of exposed steel and khaki-colored, fire-retardant wood, this was the one and only properly appointed room. Originally an officers’ meeting room that doubled as a reception hall, the night view of Uchibo through its multilayered glass would have fetched a good price.

As nice as the view was, it was a lousy place to wake up, unless you were a mountain goat or a dedicated hermit with a love of heights. Or you could be Yonabaru. I’d heard he had some secret spot up here one floor higher than even the officers were allowed to go. “His love nest,” we called it.

More like a love aerie.