Anstractor (The New Phase Book 1) by Greg Dragon

around him had not been brought with them on their march through hell to take the city. The strangeness of it all and the man’s odd appearance made Rafian think that the doctor may have been flown in, just like the rest of the equipment, which meant that things were pretty bad for their tiny group.
    “How long have I been in stasis?” Rafian asked, but the man was ignoring him, typing away at a panel and looking over notes the entire time.
    “You’ve been here a week,” he finally replied, and then shifted his attention to another machine.
    “How long were you in that 3B suit?” the doctor asked Rafian as he checked the computer rapidly, paging through the vitals on the screen.
    “A little over a month, I think.”
    He felt as if he had run a marathon, because his breathing seemed to get increasingly harder.
    “Son, have they sat you soldiers down and explained to you what the 3B suit is and why you should use it sparingly?”
    “Sure they have, doc, but that was a long time ago for me. We have always worn these suits—hell, for a time, they were a fashion statement on the base.” And he smiled at the Memory.
    The doctor turned around with a serious look on his face and then gave Rafian some bad news. “Lieutenant, the 3B suit is a deep-space Zyrotech experiment that got pushed ahead way before it should have. It was due to the war that we went ahead and bypassed protocol to allow it, but this was contingent on the user knowing and understanding the risks. When you put on your marine armor, the suit should have been removed first. The suit is an alien technology that adapts to your environment and to the needs of the life-form wearing it. What has happened to you is, your body has adapted to the suit and vice versa. So when you took it off, your vitals panicked, and they are now trying to fix whatever it is that they assume is missing…even though you technically are healthy.”
    The doctor’s lecture was the last thing that Rafian wanted to hear, as he had welcomed the thought of finishing the entire mission whole. He asked if he could just wear the suit temporarily to rejoin his comrades, but the doctor wasn’t trying to hear it. He sedated Rafian in order to prevent him from leaving—as most soldiers tended to do when told they were unable to fight—and then began working on fixing the damage the 3B suit had done. It took another week before Rafian was released and able to move around on his own without issues.
    He found out that the legendary Hellgate had gotten killed. He asked if she was flying when it happened but was told that it was at her camp that the war maiden had met her demise. Of all the bad news throughout the war, this was the one that finally got to Rafian, and he struggled with his emotions and whether or not it was appropriate. Colonel Rend was using Hellgate as the mission codename for taking Arisani, and he came to the camp to give Relled ZEK the objectives before leaving with three soldiers for recon.
    “That was my bloody call!” Rafian muttered under his breath as a young girl by the name of Levoria DRE told him everything he had missed while in recovery.
    “So how do you feel, Lieutenant?” the young girl asked. She couldn’t be any older than fifteen and was only on the mission because her teacher (Wei Venthai), an expert anthropologist, died from a bullet upon deployment. Levoria was very knowledgeable about the geography of Meruda, so they sent for her immediately to aid in the affairs of the takeover.
    “You are to stay here until you’re summoned,” she reminded him, as if to squelch any hope he may have had of being allowed to grab his gear and run after the squadron. It wasn’t as if he could, since his 3B suit was now worthless and had been sent back to Missio-tral for salvage. Rafian was not trained as an infantry grunt. If he were to try to leave, the heavy armor and automatic weapons would only serve to annoy him, since they were not the tools of war the