I've died before.
Different wars, different names, same blood in the mud.
I don't remember the details—faces blur, timelines collapse into each other—but I remember the feeling.
The weight of a sword that shouldn't exist in my muscle memory.
The taste of fear before a charge I've never made.
The sound of someone's laugh I can't place but know I loved once.
This time, I thought it would be different.
---
New Mexico doesn't care about Europe's problems.
The desert stretches forever, hot and indifferent, and the war brewing across the Atlantic might as well be happening on the moon.
August 1939, and I'm eighteen years old, working a dead-end job at Henderson's garage, changing oil on trucks that smell like livestock and broken promises.
The radio in the corner crackles.
Pop music, then static, then a voice cutting through:
"—reports from Warsaw indicate German forces have crossed the Polish border in the early hours of this morning. President Roosevelt has issued a statement calling for calm as—"
My chest tightens.
I don't know why.
I've never been to Poland. Can't point to it on a map without thinking hard.
But something in that announcement pulls at me like a fishhook in my sternum, reeling me toward something I don't understand.
Henderson notices me standing still, wrench in hand, staring at nothing.
"You alright, kid?"
"Yeah," I say. "Fine."
I'm not fine.
---
That night, I sit at the small kitchen table in my mother's house—my house, technically, but it'll always be hers.
I listen to the radio broadcast updates.
German armor rolling across Poland. Luftwaffe bombing Warsaw. Britain and France mobilizing.
My mother stands in the doorway, drying a plate with a threadbare towel.
She's forty-two but looks older, the way poverty ages you faster than time alone can manage. My father died when I was seven—WWI veteran who made it through the Argonne Forest only to lose a fight with pneumonia a decade later.
"You're thinking about it," she says.
Not a question.
"Thinking about what?"
"Enlisting."
I should lie. Tell her no, of course not, I've got a job here, got a life here.
But I've never been good at lying to her.
"Maybe."
She sets the plate down carefully. Doesn't look at me.
"You don't owe anyone anything, Rio. That war isn't ours."
"Not yet."
"And when it is, they'll draft you if they need you. You don't have to volunteer."
I want to explain the pull.
The way something in me knows I'm supposed to be there. The fragments of memory that aren't mine but somehow are.
I want to tell her that staying here feels wrong in a way I can't articulate, like wearing someone else's skin.
Instead, I say, "I know."
She looks at me finally. Her eyes are tired.
"You look like him sometimes. Your father. Same expression when he'd made up his mind about something stupid."
"Was he stupid for going?"
"No," she admits quietly. "But he didn't come back the same. And then he didn't come back at all."
I don't have an answer for that.
---
Three days later, I'm on a bus to Albuquerque.
The recruitment office smells like coffee and desperation.
A dozen other men wait, most older than me, all wearing the same expression: some mix of patriotism and economic necessity.
The Depression isn't technically over, no matter what the politicians say. A uniform means steady pay.
For me, it's something else.
The officer processing paperwork barely looks up.
"Name?"
"Rio Castellanos."
"Age?"
"Eighteen. Nineteen next month."
"Education?"
"High school. Didn't finish."
He marks something on the form.
"Any military experience? ROTC? Cadets?"
"No, sir."
"Medical conditions?"
"No, sir."
He slides the papers across.
"Sign here. And here. Initial here."
I sign.
My handwriting looks unfamiliar, like someone else is moving my hand.
Maybe they are. Maybe I've signed enlistment papers a dozen times before, in wars I can't remember, with names I've forgotten.
The officer stamps the documents.
"You'll ship out in two weeks. Europe-bound. They're forming volunteer units to support the Polish resistance and British forces. Congratulations, soldier."
"Thank you, sir."
I don't feel congratulated.
I feel like I've just stepped onto a path I've walked before, one that ends in mud and smoke and the kind of silence that comes after screaming stops.
But I also feel right for the first time since I can remember.