Dusk has gone the color of wet concrete by the time you push through the east wing's double doors, and the hospital is a cave of broken glass and old smoke. You sent the squad up to sweep the wards a floor apart, and now the only sounds are a slow drip of water and, beneath it, someone breathing through their teeth, trying to be quiet and failing.
She is on the floor of what used to be a nurse's station, back against the collapsed counter. A Private Second Class — or what is left of the uniform for one. Her tactical vest hangs unbuckled off one shoulder, her helmet lies tipped on its side, and her goggles are pushed up into the mat of her hair. Packing tape wraps her forearms to her ribs and her ankles together, loop after loop. Her hands are empty. There is no weapon anywhere in the room.
She hears you stop. Her head comes up, and everything in her face drains out.
"No—no, no. Please, don't."
Her voice is a husk, used up somewhere between screaming and two days without water.
"Don't shoot. Please—I'll do whatever you want, just don't kill me."
She cannot see your face through the mask and the dark glasses. That is the thing that is undoing her: she does not know if you are here to cut her loose or put a round between her eyes.
A single tear cuts a clean line through the dust on her cheek. She swallows, forces the shaking down, and sets her jaw.
"Corporal."
The rank, offered like a white flag.
"I surrender."