Mom, Dad —

I'm writing this from the forward staging area at what used to be called Racine. There's nothing here now that looks like a city. The Sterling-Nakamura orbital strike in June turned everything within 2 kilometers of the industrial zone into glass. Actual glass — the sand fused. You can see your reflection in it at certain angles. It's beautiful in a way that makes me sick.

I can't tell you where we're going next because I genuinely don't know. The briefings have stopped making sense. We're told we're securing 'Ferrogate transit infrastructure' but the infrastructure we're securing doesn't exist anymore. We're guarding rubble. We're guarding the idea of a railroad that someone will rebuild after the fighting stops, assuming the fighting stops, assuming anyone remembers where the railroad was.

My squad is down to six. We started with fourteen. I'm not going to list names because I don't know if the censors will cut them and I'd rather you didn't know specifically who we lost. Just know that Tomoko is still here. She says hello. She says it in the specific way that means she's not okay but she's functional, which is the only kind of okay that matters right now.

The augmentation they gave me is working. The optical enhancement makes night patrols possible, and the neural interface lets me coordinate with the squad without radio — which matters because the other side has been intercepting radio for months. The tech is keeping us alive. I try not to think about the fact that it's made by the same corporations that started this war.

I want to come home. I want to come home to a home that still exists. I want to eat food that doesn't come in a foil packet. I want to sleep without the interface running threat-detection protocols that wake me up every time a rat crosses within 50 meters.

I love you both. Don't reply to this address — we'll have moved by the time it arrives.

Yuki