Status Updates From An Emergency (Zero #1)

4 - '...you dance around Rio for a while. You hit the bottle. Kill a few shits who deserve it. Then, one day, she knocks on your door. She tells you you're not a bad man. You were just taught to take things with force a long time ago. She says your father died when you were so young, you left a part of yourself behind.'

3 - 'Another sound, like paper being ripped apart. An echo that sounded the way I imagined a tornado would sound if you shut all the doors and windows and hid underneath the house and you could still feel it circling... but it would be underneath you somehow, not just above you, it would be below and above and everywhere at once.'

2 - 'Basic training. We all had to go through the box until we managed to get out of it in under two minutes. Kids died, from time to time. Kids died a lot. Only the strongest would survive, and their deaths, well, they would be fuel for our survival... The strange thing is, it felt good. I liked being alone down there. I toyed with the idea of never coming back up. Meeting my parents again.'

1 - 'The training was different back then, more hands-on. Nowadays it's all lock them in a cube with a simulator and let them work out dope them with protein and ritalin. You know I don't really connect with that approach.'
'You're getting old.'