Germline: The Subterrene War: Book 1 by T.C. McCarthy

noticing that my teeth had begun to hurt. Who cared? Soon I wouldn’t feel anything.
    “Scout, civilian reporter with
Stripes.
”
    “Oh man,” the sergeant said. Suddenly he was awake, animated. “You should have been here yesterday, we pushed and got our asses kicked, didn’t even have time to blow our tunnels, just plugged ’em. I lost half my guys, woulda made some story.”
    I looked where he pointed. A huge circular alloy plug had been sealed into the north wall, blocking what had once been an attack tunnel, and was the only thingbetween us and an empty passage—one that ran straight to the Russians.
    “When did you guys lose coms?” I asked.
    The sergeant and his men looked at each other like I was crazy. “What are you talking about?”
    “That’s why the Gs are here, said they lost communication with Third Marine a few days ago. There’s an entire division of genetics spreading out across the lines right now.”
    “Man, that’s off,” said the sergeant. “I don’t know who told you that but we’ve been in communication the whole time. I was just back at Battalion yesterday, all normal. Either someone got it backwards, or that’s just a story they told the Gs. What’re they like?”
    “What?” I asked.
    “The Gs. You came in with ’em?”
    I nodded. The zip had kicked in by then and I grinned like a madman. “Wild.”
    If I hadn’t been wired to the gills, I might have been able to figure out that everything was wrong. Didn’t fit. But I didn’t care anymore; I was back in subterrene, rock walls on every side so that nothing could hurt me.
    Dan Wodzinski. Greatest reporter who ever lived. He blew a head vein when he found out that I’d got the nod for subterrene, for the line, and he didn’t try to hide it. We got piss drunk in the hotel, the bartender shaking his head until he left the bottle so he wouldn’t have to keep pouring. Dan had covered the Syrian Campaign back in ’45. He went in with the Special Forces when they first inserted behind the lines, and was practically a moviestar, the Supreme Chancellor of the Press Corps, the one we all wanted to be. We hated and loved him at the same time, because he knew he was good but was so damn generous with his experiences—handed them out like candy to anyone who wanted a taste. That made it worse. It would have been easier to handle him if he had been good
and
a total prick, but because he was gracious about it, everyone assumed that he was a world-class jerk-off, not your garden variety.
    “You goddamn
rube
!” he said. “Man, I can’t believe you got the nod, serves me right for going freelance, no machine to bribe the right people anymore.”
    “Are you insinuating that I had to buy my way to the line?”
    “Yep. You couldn’t write your way out of a bad romance novel.
No
way. You could eat my ’puter, and you
still
wouldn’t be able to shit a sentence as good as my worst.”
    He got all serious then. Stared off in the distance, same look I saw on that Special Forces guy on the road—somewhere else, in a different world, channeling demons and ghosts.
    “It’ll end badly,” he said.
    “Don’t give me that crap. I don’t want to hear it.”
    He shook his head. “Nah, not you. You’ll be fine, go get some. I’m talking about the war. Even if we win, it’ll end badly.”
    “I don’t follow.”
    “The genetics. We played with nature and soon we’ll get it shoved in our faces, rammed into our bungholes whether we like it or not.”
    He must have seen the confusion on my face, read it.
    “How long do you think it’ll be before Popov makes his own genetics?” Dan asked.
    I didn’t know how even to
start
answering that one.
    That was a long time ago, but when I woke up in the tunnel, I remembered it. Bridgette had found me slumped over, and I had forgotten to take out my zip before passing out. Luckily, I
had
taken off my helmet. A puddle of puke had dried around my head, and as soon as I sat up, I dry heaved,