Yours

"He's yours, Bruno."

They declare it with pride, each syllable stressed with congratulations, as if the man being transferred to him is a prize in some sort of unannounced game.

War, they termed it. The game is called war.

He'd been trying to believe it, to coalesce the two separate items into one—yet they weren't, he knew; they never would be. Pawns were never meant to be people, fluttering about here and there in pursuit of a goal not even theirs to begin with. One person, rules or not, was not supposed to navigate the entire board, control it, brainwash it, assigning roles, deciding who gets to be the rich and who gets to be the rug under their feet—mashed, tattered, fading into nonexistence.

But who was he to talk? He was the German in the uniform.

The fellow shoulders nod at him, awaiting his predefined actions, his hateful squint, his gun. Surely, every move was already scripted for him, this whole scene, these lines, this man...

I'm supposed to kill him.

It whispers its way through his mind like a curse, a secret, but it isn't one; it's not revealing. He's already known it for months. It has been hammered into his skull, engraved into his skin, massaged into his uniform until it rubbed him raw—but no. That was never important. He could have known it forever, yet he’d have known nothing impactful. Because no matter what they did, they couldn't fuse it into him.

"Go on," he dismissed the onlookers, regretting his voice's break between syllables. "I have something planned." He rumbled a deep, emotionless laugh: fake. "Something private."

It was true. Maybe they'd believe him.