They say the world ended in 2037.
It didn't. It just changed owners.
I was there when the bombs started falling. Not in a bunker. Not in uniform. I was in a windowless office, writing a procurement report no one would read. The fluorescent lights flickered once. Then the building shook.
I remember the look my manager gave me—mouth open, eyes wide like a stunned cow. He asked, "Is that thunder?"
"No," I said. "That's war."
We were told it was a containment strike. America said Malaysia had become a cyber-threat. Something about AI corruption, algorithmic destabilization—whatever justification they came up with to make the first hit look clean. The missiles didn't care. Langkawi disappeared. George Town got glassed. Then they came for us.
I wasn't a soldier. I had no training, no trigger discipline, no idea what a ballistic path even meant. I was a logistics officer, buried in paperwork and vending machine coffee. My parents had died in a car accident five years earlier. I never visited the grave.
They pulled me off my chair, slapped a rifle in my hands, and called me military. No prep. No gear. Just numbers. Another body for the fire.
Most of the other recruits were like me—nobodies. Kids, clerks, drivers. You could see it in their eyes: they thought someone was coming to save us.
I knew better.
We were already dead. Some of us just hadn't realized it yet.
The first firefight was outside Bentong. I remember my CO yelling at us to push forward. Half the squad froze. One guy vomited. Another tried to run. I stayed still, lying prone in the mud, counting the intervals between the drone passes.
"Move, damn it!" the CO screamed.
I replied calmly, "If we move now, we die. Wait six seconds. Let the drone loop around."
He didn't listen. He got torn in half.
I survived. Six seconds later, we all moved.
After that, people started listening to me.
I wasn't braver. Just smarter. I treated combat like math. Risk versus reward. Acceptable losses. Strategic neglect.
When someone screamed for help, I calculated the value of their survival against my ammo count. Most times, the math didn't work in their favor.
I kept living.
In 2039, something changed. We started seeing strange machines dropped in by foreign powers—China, Eurasian coalitions, even smugglers. They weren't soldiers. They were field-testers. Trying out their new toys in our broken country.
That's when the Hulubalang units appeared—early mobile weapons. Not elegant. Not stable. Barely controllable.
But they worked.
Barely.
They asked for volunteers. Everyone looked away.
I stepped forward.
The technician looked at me like I was crazy. "You know most of the pilots die during sync?"
"Then I just have to be better than most."
He laughed, but not for long.
The first time I entered the cockpit, it felt like being thrown into a blender. Neural sync pulsed behind my eyes. The machine's reactor throbbed like a second heartbeat in my skull.
I vomited blood on day one. Blacked out on day two. Killed my first target on day three.
After that, it got easier.
My kill count grew. My body adapted. My empathy shrank.
"I can't feel my legs," one of the other pilots said after a failed mission.
"Then don't waste time complaining," I told him. "You're already half-dead. Either crawl or die."
He died.
I didn't.
By late 2040, Malaysia was gone.
No official statement. No final stand. Just silence. Radios dead. Cities burnt out. Flags rotting in the rain.
I kept fighting. Not for a cause. For continuity. For rhythm.
Eventually, my Hulubalang failed—power core burned out, joints fried. I left it behind and wandered the jungle, bleeding and exhausted.
I didn't expect to be saved.
Then I saw the black aircraft.
No markings. No flag. Just cold metal and precise movement.
They landed without a word. Out stepped a man in a clean coat, flanked by armed escorts. He looked at me like I was a stray dog.
"State your name," he said.
"Does it matter?" I replied.
"No," he said. "It doesn't."
He tossed a canteen at my feet. I didn't reach for it.
"You have two options," he said. "Die here. Pointlessly. Forgotten. Or live. As property. Useful. Owned."
There was no sympathy in his tone. Just terms.
I looked at the gun I could barely hold, the blood soaking through my jacket, and the clouded jungle behind him.
"…What does living get me?"
"Time," he said.
That was enough.
I nodded. "Fine. I'll be your dog."
He smiled slightly. "Good. Dogs live longer than martyrs."
That was the day I stopped being a soldier.
And started becoming something else.
Something worse.