• "This is the golden age of humanity!"A tall man stood in front of a sea of people, banging his fist on a podium with his misleading words. Unbeknownst to the crowd, the man made a small fissure from his fist. Because it was not a flesh fist. It was a cold, steel one.
    His words were hollow, and meant nothing to the uniformed women beside him. Any normal citizen could identify her. Olive-green suit, gleaming semi-automatic rifle, terror bringing crimson armband. She was a Nazi. A guardian of the Kaiser.The citizens merely knew her and her colleagues as Das Jager. Hunters for the government, assassins of the Kaiser himself.
    The year was 2945, a thousand years after the annihilation of millions of people. Humans have "evolved". But they still have an autocratic government and corporation that controls all. Mechanicorp. The people were just mice of the pied piper's trail to the hellish gates of oblivion.
    The piper's flute was the law. Safe Citizen Law #1: Mechanicorp issued that all humans must register a mechanical implant. All. Any unregistered men, women, and children are marked as die verloren werden. They will be rooted out, and killed mercilessly. The messenger of the "divine punishment"? Das Jager themselves.
    But the women was different. She was hypocritical against it all. She had no implants, no prosthetics. But she would still carry out her orders swiftly and unyieldingly. She was one of the few "real" humans left. So much metal in their audience, so little heart. Such little emotion.
    People were screaming empty, devoid words of support at the Kaiser. To the soldier, it was sickening how they recognized the one little man as a leader to a whole country of people. Such insolence from the people, being mice. Mice to be abused on the Kaiser's rule. The Safe Citizen Law wasn't helping the economy, it was destroying it. Taking money and bonds from all the other manufacturers, planting fake evidence on them, shutting them down. The cycle of pumping money into Mechanicorp's own pocket. And the silent soldier worked and served for that government.
    The women's face turned to the Kaiser, wearing a scowl of utter disgust. Soon, ever so soon she would place the plans she dreamt of into action. Before long, her most atrocious desire would be achieved soon. To kill the Kaiser. She would stay up in to the late hours of the night, planning. Waiting. She would grow tired. So very, very tired.
    The rally was soon over, and people began shuffling mindlessly back to their work. The soldier's first duty was to protect the kaiser, and nothing else. That duty had been fulfilled, so she would soon have to return to work. She had more lives to bring to a screeching stop. When she arrived at her station, her Brigadier General was standing arrogantly by a doorway. His arm was bulging with muscle, rippling with rock hard brawn. His other arm was silver, like a star on a clear night. A blazing scarlet armband emblazoned with a giant, coal black swastika was sewn onto his olive-tinted overcoat.
    "Colonel!" He barked, Brigadier General's badge swinging wildly, almost pretentiously from his chest. The women soldier showed no respect for her general, answering back thusly,
    "Sir?" Hand flying roughly to salute position, mouth crooked in a hateful grimace. She could predict her next orders by the dark look in the general's face.
    " We have orders that a renegade mother and her son are hiding in the outskirts of the city. The barrens." For a second, the soldier recoiled in surprise, wondering why anyone would live in that deserted wasteland. But the general snapped her back to focusing when he continued speaking, "This is a search and destroy mission, colonel. No mercy"
    "Yes, sir." She turned to leave, but turned again to face her general while she was standing in the doorway. "For the Kaiser!" She announced loudly, the general returning her salute with a nod of approval. Dispatching quickly, she left the city carrying light arms. It was just die verloren werden, fully human citizens. But in a way, the soldiers felt pangs of sympathy for them. They were the same. Yet so different. She killed, they ran. The soldier murdered, while die verloren werden lived.
    After walking several miles to the damned desert outside of town, the wind immediately slapped her face. As far as she could see, there was only rubble and more ever-stretching, blazing dunes ahead of her. The setting sun scorching her human body.
    Alas, she arrived where her captain had directed her. There was no door to the underground, seemingly empty house, just a drawn curtain. She put a plasma-like visor around her left shooting eye. It was scientifically engineered to help her firing accuracy. The interior of the house was filthy. Peeling wallpaper, grimy, 20th century wood. The chipped paint looked like tear drops on the stained, moldy carpet. Tear drops shed by those dragged from this home maybe, thought the quiet soldier, Maybe tear drops shed by the ones dragging them out.
    Inside what could only be assumed to be a kitchen was a boy eating in some sort of vigil. Contently he would fluidly, completely humanly pick up the holo-spoon to bring it to his mouth. The Nazi couldn't help but smile at his innocence, and almost couldn't bear to shoot the child. Almost. But she didn't want the child to die barbarically, so she came out of the position she was holding. She had been hugging the walls of the house, hiding in the shadows. She had already screwed on a silencer to her rifle, but kept it hidden from the view of the boy. She bent low to his eye level and whispered in a misleadingly polite voice,
    " Run child. Run far away." The boy's face darkened as he turned his back to run. When the child reached to curtain to run as fast as he could from the house, the huntress raised her scope to her eye. Her trigger finger rubbed up and down the trigger passionately, craving the sight of blood. Sighing, the huntress gave into her trigger finger's desire. She pulled the trigger, letting the child die with some hope to clear his mind.
    The huntress soldier's heart twinged, but continued beating when the bullet penetrated through the boy's head. It ricochet of a metal plated wall, creating a loud, resonating sound. The mother of the child was alerted by that damned sound. The mother was horrified by what she saw, the boy's limp body tumbling slowly down the stairs he had recently climbed. The bedraggled corpse of the boy, the sodden blood-covered Nazi, and a fuming rifle. It was one of those three things that set the women off in a frenzied rage.
    " Target two, prepare to die in the name of Das Jager. In the name of the Kaiser" she shot, but when she looked from her scope, there was no body at her feet. The mother was gone in a flash, drawing a lead-plasma bat from a wall safe. The Nazi immediately dropped her gun, thinking it bad to have a medium/long range rifle in close armed combat.
    The women soon disappeared again, so the the soldier whipped around in a flash, but was no quick enough. In a deafening crack, the women's anger exploded into an impact of her chest. She was slammed against a wall, the impact busting her skull open. The women lurched forward, eyebrows arched in absolute anger. Her teeth were bared in fury, breathing heavily.
    " Die, die! You robotic scum!" the women continued beating the downed soldier, each blow gaining more and more force. The soldier could feel blood filling in her lungs, and she knew she was dying.
    " I am human. I am not robotic." muttered the Nazi through the blood pooling in her mouth. She would go nowhere more, she and the mother knew. She dropped her lead-plasma bat, and ran to the body of her son. She clutched the child to her breast, yelling something at the dying hunter. But the soldier heard nothing but the drips of her blood.
    Throbing pain attacked her mind, head pulsating like hammer beats. Her arm hung limply until she lifted it to rub the back of her neck. The soldier gasped, fingers brushing lightly over something cold and metallic. Wincing, she pulled an alien, nail-like object from her neck. She held it in her battered hands. It was a sanguine, flashing implant that was gory with her own blood. The soldier was enlightened.
    Humanity had not evolved. Technology had. It evolved past the humans, de-evolving them. Those the last thoughts of the wounded, nameless soldier as she closed her eyes for a final time. She was so very, very tired.