Alone and bloodied, Romero walked back to the hovertank and sat down on her turret and waited for Kate's power plants to restart. As he sat, he contemplated the night's events. Midge and the soldiers in her VTOL had died, and the invasion had progressed as if they had never existed. Ajax had died horribly, and the war still went on. If he had died, nothing would have mattered or changed. I really am just a cog in the machine, easily replaced. The thought shook him to his core, sickening him.

He thought hard, searching for something positive, something to give him hope. Saving the lives of that family had meant something. He recalled the odd look on the boy's face. It hadn't been one of recrimination, hate, or fear. It had been confused gratitude. Had the Chinese pilot seen that? Was that why he had been spared? A random, spontaneous act of honor and respect between enemies?

Then a realization struck Romero like a bolt of lightning. He was done with killing.

He'd never found satisfaction in bloodshed. Ever since he was a kid, all he'd ever wanted to was to go fast. Romero enlisted only as a way of avoiding jail for grand theft auto. The only reason he volunteered for the Cybernetic Program was that the procedure opened up a world of cutting-edge vehicles to drive. Killing was a cost he no longer wanted to pay.

Romero rolled his options around in his head. He was still obligated to the Army for a little more than a year of service. With the newborn war with China, there was no way the Army would allow him to discharge on time. Nor would they allow him to withhold his talents. He was stuck.

He wiped his face with his hand. It came away wet with his blood. There was the answer he sought. Relief washed through Romero.  As soon as he returned to base, he would resign his commission as a tanker and request reassignment to the medevac team. His exemplary record and extraordinary piloting skills would make his request impossible to deny.  He smiled and nodded to himself; it was the right solution, he could feel it in his bones. From this point onward, if he was going to risk his life, it would be to save others.

There was another reason for this shift in his career and, if he was going to be honest with himself, he had to accept that truth as well. He'd enjoyed the rush of playing the fox more than any other sensation he had ever felt. It was a thrill he had never experienced as the hunter. He laughed out loud. No one had ever made a hovertank fly. No one would ever know the feeling he had when he had defied death and escaped the inescapable. No one except perhaps an enemy pilot who had inexplicably given him back his life.

Romero shrugged, whether the decision stemmed from the idea of being a lifesaver or the thrill of being the fox didn't matter. "Fuck it," he hopped off the turret and shouted to the stars, "From now I on I am going to live the hell out of my life. On my terms and no one else's!"

Adrejan 'Wr8th' Romero climbed into the cockpit of the Berserker hovertank with a new sense of purpose in his life.

Tonight, he had died and been reborn.