The unit’s dog had taken to sleeping against my legs. When I sat up to tie my boots, he lifted his head and nudged the bag with his nose. I opened the flap. He crawled back in without hesitation.

I pulled the chunk of foam from the basement window. Cold air poured in along the bottom, pressing against the warm stink pushing out the top — like strangers squeezing past each other through a subway door. One in. One out. A slow collision.

Around me, the others stirred. Cigarettes. Boots. Farts. Toothbrushes. Ration bars. Weapon checks. No one spoke. They made noise like it mattered.

Technically, we were still the 42nd Independent Reconnaissance and Signals Detachment. But the brigade had reassigned us under a Mobile Response Task Group. That meant one thing: we weren’t watching the enemy anymore.

We were watching each other.

Storm-Z. Wagner. Deserters.

Korolev found me while the others were outside smoking. Voice low, flat.

“One of ours slipped the line overnight. Conscript. Headed west. If he crosses, he talks.”

He didn’t have to say more. But he did.

“We can’t let him reach the other side.”

I shrugged. “What’s he gonna tell them? The food’s bad?”

No smile. “This one’s different. Trained. Knows how to slip the grid. If he makes it, they won’t just debrief him. They’ll use him.”

I nodded once.

He studied me for a moment. “I need you sharp on this one.”

I didn’t answer. Just started the checklist. Battery. Optics. Cold calibrations.

Still, something itched at me. If this guy was that valuable, what the hell was he doing out here, near the front, with no leash?

Didn’t matter. My job wasn’t to ask. My job was to see.

This wasn’t recon. It was containment.

One morning, he found Misha sitting out front and asked for a ride to the airport.

“Where are you headed?” Misha asked, turning down the radio as they hit the ring road.

“Yerevan,” the friend said. “Armenia. One in thirty people there’s a refugee now. They need help.”

Misha glanced over. “You’re doing a good deed. I wish I could go and help too.”

The man gave a small smile. “Stay. Focus on your studies. And Sima.”

He said her name like it meant something permanent.

“You’re lucky, Misha,” he added. “To have found love this early. You might take it for granted, but not everyone gets that. I know.”

Misha nodded, not sure what to say.

“I know I’m lucky,” he said. “And I know you’ll find love too someday.”

He didn’t say it just to return the kindness. He meant it. He wanted his friend to believe it.

At the curb, the man stepped out, waved, and turned toward the terminal. Then he stopped. He leaned back through the open passenger window and extended his hand.

“Take these,” he said. “Don’t trash the place.”

It was the keys to his apartment.

Then he was gone.

Korolev and I were getting closer to HQ. The fields and hamlets had started turning into gas stations and four-lane roads, surrounded by apartment blocks. The darkness was giving way to the thin morning light.

He looked at me for a long moment, then asked, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Does she write?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

I told him the truth by lying, and a lie by telling the truth. I told him everything about us—how we met, how we went to school, the trip to Georgia, returning home, getting conscripted. I didn’t tell him about her disappearance. I left that part out.

“You’re okay, kid,” he said. “You’re okay.”

The next day, instead of sending me off to another deployment, he kept me around. Said he could use me on some assignments. He asked if I’d be interested in helping him find missing soldiers.

Drone work. My kind of work. Clean. Detached. Just fly, scan, track. Mostly damage assessment and looking for soldiers who had gotten separated from their units.

And sometimes we were looking for deserters, but you didn’t really know until you got out there.

Deserters moved differently. They always walked fast toward the enemy line. They almost never had their rifles. Some carried rags, white or close enough, holding them low in one hand like a ticket to another life.

Most didn’t make it far; they got shot from behind, not by the enemy but by their own. By the ones they thought they were leaving.

And that was the job.

Not the person or the moment, not the story you tell about it now. I mean the kiss itself. The feeling of it. The temperature of the air. The weight in your chest before it happened and what changed after.

Most people don’t.

We remember who, maybe where. But not how it felt. Because we didn’t have the words. No framework. It came before we could hold it properly. So it passed through us. Our bodies kept it. Our minds let it go.

One of the most important moments of your young life, and it’s half gone.

Not because it wasn’t real.

Because it was too real.

After that kiss I told you about, Sima and I saw each other every day. We were still kids, but the current had started pulling. We weren’t just sweethearts anymore. Something had changed. We were a we.

We left for university together. Same city, different paths. We were careful but close. We shared food. Shared books. Shared silence.

It felt like we had time.

We didn’t.

The war reached us before it officially did. Mobilization notices started circulating. Then the rumors. Border closures. Detentions. I knew I was going to be drafted.

We had one conversation about it. It wasn’t emotional. It was quiet, focused. We looked at train routes. We ran the numbers. We ruled things out.

Overland was too slow. Too exposed. Checkpoints everywhere. Every road had lists, and lists had names.

We put our money together and bought me a plane ticket. One-way. To Tbilisi. Georgia.

I made it. Just barely. The airport was full of men like me. Some older, most younger. No one spoke. We looked like soldiers already. We just weren’t wearing the uniforms yet.

Sima had followed. She took the train.

Later, I heard she made it to the border.

Then she was detained.

They questioned her. Held her. Demanded names. She gave them nothing.

I didn’t hear this from her. I heard it from others who were there, who saw her, who told me what happened long after it was over.

She never told them my name.

I’ll tell you what I remember about that kiss.

Not the shape of it. Not the angle.

I remember the moment before, when her breath caught and the air felt thinner. I remember thinking she might back away.

She didn’t.

That’s what a kiss feels like.

It feels like someone choosing not to run.

The engine sounded like a dying generator but didn't quit. The transmission whined over each rut and rock. A boxy Soviet-era 4x4 came out of the woods, approached the crater, and stopped.

The lieutenant colonel who stepped out and stood in the headlights looked older than the truck. He surveyed what was left: the black earth, trash, and silence.

Then he turned. Somehow, through the darkness, he looked right at me as I was lying in the forest.

"Ride?" he said. Not really a question.

I didn't answer. He didn't wait. He just climbed back in and started reversing to where I was. I grabbed my gear and met him by the trail. He didn't look surprised. He just pushed the door open. I climbed in without a word.

"Hungry?" he said, handing me an energy bar.

I nodded and ate it. There was no small talk. When I finished, he reached behind the seat and pulled out a soda, holding it out without looking. I took it.

"What happened?" he asked, calm like it was routine.

We were running the maintenance protocol, got spotted, and then got hit.

He glanced over. Not doubting or believing. Just filing it away.

"How did you survive?"

"I went to take a shit in the woods."

That got a half smile out of him.

"Did you see the spotter?"

"No. But after, it came around."

"Then what?"

"It left."

"And somehow, you're still alive."

"They didn't have an FPV with my name on it. Must have used up their supply."

He nodded like he'd heard something. Not the words. The space between them.

We drove on in silence for a while. He didn't press. Didn't reach for the radio. The ruts in the road kept throwing me into the door. Neither of us complained.

With my face lowered, I listened to the rotors fade. The operator was doing the smart thing, pulling it back quickly rather than risk losing it to ground fire when there was apparently nothing left to kill.

Now, I had to survive the night. No grunt from a nearby unit and nobody from Command was going to risk coming this close to the line in daylight. And if I moved without permission, I risked being shot for desertion. So I stayed put.

The dugout was gone. Everything inside had been shredded and burned by the blast. But some overflow gear stashed near the entrance, stuff that didn't fit inside or wasn't worth stealing, had been flung into the forest. I found a sleeping bag and some rations. Enough to get by for a while.

I felt exposed. Stupid, even. Caught with my mouth half open, eyes blank, still staring across the meadow at the steaming crater I had summoned into existence.

Now my focus snapped back. Be invisible.

I was standing out in the open, but shielded by a lone birch tree. The drone, a repurposed agricultural quadcopter with 4K optics and night vision bolted on, hovered near the treeline. It eased into view like a cautious crow approaching a hand-held scrap of bread. Curious, but wary. Never trustful.

It edged forward, camera angled toward the crater.

I did not move. Not even a breath too deep.

Any motion could draw the eye. And I know firsthand, from long hours behind a control screen, how drone operators develop something like peripheral intuition. They feel things just outside the frame, things that do not belong. You do not see them at first. But you sense them. And then, when you look, there they are. Betrayed by motion. By pattern.

The drone hovered, then shifted left, circling the blast site clockwise. The meadow opened before it, framed by scorched grass and powdered frost. And there I was. A smear of shadow and shape, blurred against the tree’s broken outline, my uniform blending with bark and snow.

I lowered my head. Brought my hands behind my back.

The face is always the giveaway. Even camouflaged, even still, the human face burns through pattern like a flare.

The drone drifted along the treeline, slow and deliberate, its camera eye sweeping toward me.

Still not too close. Still careful. Like it was not sure what it had found.

I waited.

Had I been seen?

A high-explosive round leaves the barrel of an M777 howitzer (thank you, USA, UK, Canada, Australia) at approximately 827 meters per second. That’s 2,713 feet per second — more than twice the speed of sound.

The shell that hit — the one I summoned, indirectly — was almost certainly an M982 Excalibur. GPS-guided. Smart-fused. Precision-manufactured for pinpoint kills up to 40 kilometers away. Standard NATO design. Steel casing. Refined brutality.

It carries about 10 kilograms of high explosive, packed inside a shell that weighs just under 50 kilograms total — roughly 106 pounds.

Kinetic energy at impact?

KE = ½ × m × v²

= 0.5 × 50 × (827)²

= 17,099,450 joules

≈ 17.1 megajoules

That’s before the fuse even ignites.

Put another way: it's like being hit by a small car — a Honda Civic — doing over 400 miles per hour. Except all that energy is concentrated into a point the size of a soup can. That’s what punched into the dugout. That’s what buried itself in the dirt beneath them, before exploding upward.

The fuse is delay-timed, by design. It waits. Penetrates. Then triggers. Not to kill the men standing outside, but the ones inside — the ones who think they’re safe.

I didn’t pull the trigger. But I gave them something to see.

I flew the drone where I knew their scanners were watching. I moved like bait. That’s how it works: signal, response. Pattern recognition. And if you understand the timing — if you’ve studied the rhythms — you don’t just dance with it. You conduct it.

The dugout is gone now. So are they.

I am still here. Counting. Calculating. Remembering the exact sound the shell made when it landed — the split-second pause, like the world inhaling, before the sky turned orange.

This is not guilt.

This is physics.

This is Misha’s story — a brilliant drone technician posted to the Russian front. He’s logical. Precise. Emotionally restrained. But when pushed beyond the edge, even logic has its limits.

The truck dropped me off at 23:00. Mud and ice clung to the wheels like parasites. The driver didn’t wait — just kicked the gas and disappeared into the dark while I was still closing the door. I stood alone in the cold, the sky a low gray lid, the snow beneath my boots uneven and dirty.

I found the dugout not by sight but by smell: smoke, piss, and the rot of unwashed men. The snow near the entrance had been trodden flat — no crunch left. I followed it with my boots and my nose. No signage. No light. Someone could break a leg out here, walking blind.

Inside, two men grunted when I entered. They were smoking, boots on the table, like they owned the place. They didn’t offer names and didn’t ask mine. I found the empty bunk and lay down. No point starting anything. I needed sleep. Work would begin soon.

---

I woke at 07:00. My internal clock doesn’t miss.

The other two were still asleep — or passed out, more accurately. Boots still on. Filthy uniforms. One of them snored like a dying generator. The air smelled worse than it had when I arrived.

I sat up and reached for my diary.

I remembered Sima.

It was getting dark, and she asked me to walk her home — so I did.

We stopped under a streetlamp, just beyond the edge of her yard. The snow fell slowly, making a cone of falling stars in the light.

We looked up, and for a second, it felt like we were rising through them.

When I looked down, she was looking up at me — right into my eyes, her breath fogging the cold air.

I thought my heart would detonate.

I kissed her — or she kissed me — it didn’t matter. It was brief. Soft. Shy.

But in that moment, I’d crossed a threshold into something enormous.

I wrote it down as clearly as I could. Words fail, but I do my best. I preserve things. If I don’t, no one will.

By 07:30, I’d washed, eaten, and set up my station. Outside, the wind had picked up — low, steady, like an animal breathing through its teeth. I took the drone out and unfolded its wings. The battery was sluggish from the cold, so I warmed it under my arm before running diagnostics. Servos responded with a slight lag. Acceptable tolerances. I ran a short test flight, marked the coordinates, and returned.

When I opened the dugout flap, I heard laughter.

I froze.

They were awake — both of them — and one of them, Semenov, was holding my diary.

“Her upturned face, my exploding heart,” he read aloud in a high, mocking voice. “Jesus. What is this, poetry?”

Vlad let out a wheezing laugh. “Snow kisses? Is this your little sex journal, drone-boy?”

I stepped forward and took the diary from Semenov’s hands. He didn’t resist — not at first.

“You had no right,” I said. “That was private.”

“Oh, look at him. Getting noble,” Vlad sneered.

“You laugh at love,” I said, “because you’ve never been decent enough to deserve it.”

That landed. I saw it in their eyes — confusion first, then anger.

Semenov shoved me. “You calling me indecent, freak?”

I stood my ground. “I’m calling you morally defective.”

I threw my coffee mug at his head. It missed and shattered against the wall.

They swarmed me.

Fists, boots, elbows — a mess of violence and noise. I tried to shield my face. My ribs lit up with pain. My vision blurred.

When they were done, I was on the floor, bleeding into the dirt. But I still held the diary.

“You don’t even understand what you’ve done,” I said quietly.

They laughed. Walked away. Sat back down like nothing had happened.

---

I left the dugout without speaking.

The cold helped. I focused on it — the sharp air in my lungs, the sting of wind on my split lip. I walked to the ridge near the comms post and unpacked the drone again.

Same drone. But I flew it differently this time.

I knew the enemy’s scanning patterns. I knew what would draw their attention. I flew high and slow, just long enough to be seen. Just long enough to give them something to track. Then I landed it on the roof of the dugout and walked away.

It didn’t take long.

The explosion came like a hammer — distant but final. The dugout vanished in a fountain of mud and fire. Smoke boiled up into the gray sky.

I didn’t smile.

I just stood there, the controller still in my hands, and thought of Sima — snowflakes on her eyelashes, her hand in mine, the warmth of her breath in that silent, perfect moment.

Thanks for reading.

I drop a new story every week — fiction with bite, blood, and no clean exits.

If this one left a mark, subscribe or share it with someone who likes their stories sharp.

— Ross