"Okay, my people!" "Rise and shine." "Get up, Stripe." "Hey." "You awake yet?" " Sure as shit ain't dreaming no more." " Company!" "Something went down last night in Her Falls, a village about three miles east." "We've got reports of a food store broken into, shit stolen." "Locals think it's roaches." "Roaches!" "We head out in five minutes." "Let's go!" "Hey, so, it looks like you're getting your first real-live roach hunt, huh?" "Hey, new!" "New!" "It's Stripe." "Here's a little tip just in case you get your first toe-to-toe" " with one of them roaches today." " Uh-huh?" "When you see one right here, try not to shit your pants." "It's only gonna piss them off." " I'll try." " Try to ignore Len." "His aim's so bad, he's the only guy on Earth who could shit his own pants and miss." " Fuck you, farm girl." " Farm girl?" "Yeah." "Hunting's in my blood." "Some of us are naturals." "Moving out!" "Whoo!" "Yeah!" "Whoa, whoa, whoa." "Okay." "You can speak now." " It must have been roaches." " Roaches, you see them?" "You see?" "I didn't see them." "I heard them." "All the mess." "It must have been them." "Want a cookie?" " Here you go." " They've been in the food." "We'll have to destroy everything they left." "No one will eat it." "We can replace that, okay?" "They destroyed the cooler." "Broke it and took the parts." "The cooler?" "They stole parts from the cooler?" "Which way did they go?" "There were footprints in the dirt leading that way." "Parn Heidekker." "Parn Heidekker." "Heidekker?" "Is that a name?" "Stop them coming." "Please, you must stop." "Okay." "I have child who is scared." "I will." "I promise." "Stripe!" "Okay." "Our friend here thinks that the roaches went in the direction of Parn Heidekker's place." "Local oddball, seems to be some kind of religious freak." "Anderson, Hague, I want you to stay here and help them torch the food, keep them calm and reassured." "The rest of you, we're gonna drop in on Heidekker." "Ask some questions, sniff around the place." "If there's roaches, we show we're ready for them." "Let's go." "So Mr. Heidekker is not exactly what you call a socialite or a mingler." "Seems like mental health issues." "He's got some interesting views on roaches, by all accounts." "I'm putting his info in your Mass system now." "Been complaints lodged against him going months back." "Locals claim that he let roaches cross his land, left food out for them." "Could be just shit talk from the local villagers though so..." "Yo, how many roaches we got left out here?" "A couple of thousand?" "A couple of hundred, if that?" "I mean, back home we had millions, man." "It only took two years to get shit back on track." "Out here you got rustic fucks throwing them scraps." "No wonder it's taken so long to mop shit up." "But how can anyone be dumb enough to help a fucking roach?" "Hell, yeah." "Portals front and rear." "Windows blacked out." "Chimney smoke." "Someone's home." "Lennard, you use the boomer." "Okay, Mass check." "Everyone got the layout?" " Check." " Check." "Check." "Aikin, Valcon, Coach, you check the outbuildings here." "Take them one at a time and slow." "Stripe, Raiman, you come with me and Lennard." "We go in here." "Len and I will talk to Heidekker, you check the rest of the house." "Okay." "Optimal outcome, no shots fired." "Except on a roach." "Except on a roach." "Morning, sir." "There's no need for this." "I speak your language." "Okay." " What is it you want?" " Just to talk." "That's what we're doing." "Be a little more neighbourly if we did it inside." "Check the upstairs rooms." "Relax." "I'm not your enemy." "Where are they?" "Where are who?" "You know, we got a whole bunch of frightened, angry people in that village." "Roaches have been breaking into the food stores, stealing supplies." "You know anything about that?" "No." "See, it's not just what they stole." "All that food left is gonna be destroyed." " No one's gonna eat it." " Stripe." "Makes life harder for everyone." "Cross on the wall there." "You got principles." "Think all life is sacred." "And I get it." "I agree." "All life is sacred so... you even got to protect the roaches." "Right?" "It's not their fault they're like that." "They didn't ask for this." "I get it." "We get it." "Mm-hmm." "There's shit in their blood that made them that way." "The sickness they're carrying." "That doesn't care about the sanctity of life or the pain about who else is gonna suffer." "We don't stop the roaches, in five, ten, 20 years from now, you're still gonna get kids born that way, and then they're gonna breed." "Bingo." "And so it goes on." "That cycle of pain." "That sickness, and it could have been avoided." "Fucking roach nest." "You check in there." "I'll take the stairs." "Every roach you save today, you condemn God knows how many people to despair and misery tomorrow." "You can't still see them as human." "Understandable sentiment, granted, but it's misguided." "We gotta take them out if humankind is gonna carry on in this world." "That's just the hard truth." "Gotta make sacrifices." "What the fuck?" "Help me out here!" "Fuck!" "* Try to shame me and still I'll care *" "* You can run around, even put me down *" "* I'll still be there for you *" "Rai!" "We gotta listen to Mr. Sunday School all the way back to base?" "You can cover your ears." "Yeah, or, uh...." "I'll just hit permanent mute." "Lower your weapon." "Roach lover counts as a kill too, right?" "He's a civ, right?" "You shoot a civ, that's gonna stay with you the rest of your life." "Yo, Stripe, why don't you, uh..." "pull the stick out of your ass?" "Because I'm fucking with him, not you." "I guess I had you both going, right?" "All right!" "Let's torch the place." "Hey, you okay, man?" "Yeah." " I heard you popped one in there." " Two." "Wait, two?" " I got another one, with my knife." " With your knife?" "Holy shit!" " Pretty good, right?" " Yeah, you fucking Terminator." "Damn!" "First time out, he gets two." "You lucky motherfucker, man." "Sweet dreams for this asshole." "Gonna get a treat tonight." "Whoo-hoo!" "Whoo!" "I love you." "Whoa!" "Miss Sharp Shooter." "Patronising fuck!" "Ruthless!" "You're the Grim Reaper." "Yeah, well, no roach gets away next time." "Are you still sweating that?" "Well, I grew up tracking deer." "You never give up." "I don't like it when they get away." "Nice." "Yeah, if that fucker made it to the forest, probably made it to the border, gone for good." "Yeah." "It's all right for you." "You popped two of 'em." "It's been a while for me." "You know, the gal is getting twitchy." "Come on, Rai." "You sleep good?" "Yeah, I slept OK." "What, that's all you're gonna give me?" "Okay?" "You know, if I got two in one go," "I would want to come for like an hour!" "All right, shut up." "All right." "Ah!" "That's the way." "Hey, you okay, man?" "Yeah, think I'm tired is all." "Uh-huh?" "All right, so you did have a good night." "39, 40, 41.... 42... 43, 44, 45, 46," "47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52," "53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59..." "Strong and pure." "Strong and pure." " Hey, Stripe, you okay?" " Yeah." "I mean, I... don't know." "I feel a little off." "I mean, I ain't sick or nothing." "It's just, uh..." "Report to the sick bay." "Running diagnostic." "What do you see?" "A cube." " Rotating?" " Yeah." " And now?" " A tree." " Like an apple tree." " Touch the apples for me." "Full marks." " So you say you had like a headache?" " Yeah, but just quick." "Nothing big, just..." "Well, everything looks okay." "No sign of any malfunction or dropout with your Mass implant." "And physically, you're in exemplary shape." "You've just seen combat, you can expect some sort of side effect." "There was this, uh... this thing... with a light on it at the farmhouse." " Roach had it." " A roach had it?" " Kind of like a flashlight." " Flashlight?" "Kinda." "I don't know." "Seriously, you're fine." "Your Mass is fine." "Blood's fine." "It's all fine." "Okay." "Yeah." "Maybe you should speak to Arquette." "Who's Arquette?" "So, you must be Koinanchey?" "Koinange." "Folks call me Stripe." "Why would they call you that?" "Couldn't pronounce Koinange either, I guess." " That's funny." " Thank you." "At ease, son." "Sit down." "So you recently logged your first kills?" " Two roaches?" " Uh-huh." "First time out." "It's impressive." "Yeah, I guess." "So what happened?" " What, with the kills?" " Mm-hmm." "Oh." "I'm in this, uh... farmhouse." "There's this, like, hidden room or something." "We go in and there they are." "First one, I just..." "It was automatic." "Just pop-pop, you know?" "Right." "Just like in training." "Yeah, just like that, yeah." "Yeah." " And the second?" " I mean, he was on the ground with me." "He?" "It was a he." "Oh." "So, this was close quarters then?" "Yeah, he's on top of me." "Struggling, I mean..." "I couldn't reach my rifle so I had to stick him." "Stick it." "With my knife." "And how did that... feel?" " What, like...?" " Emotionally." "I didn't." "I mean, it was quick." "It was self-protection." "I guess all I felt was, you know, relief." " Just relief?" " Uh-huh." "It's not unusual to experience other feelings too." "A moment of euphoria even." "Yeah, I guess." "I don't know, I thought maybe I'd feel..." "I don't know." " Something else?" " Yeah, like..." "Regret." "Something like that, but that just wasn't there." "Hmm." "So you'd do it again?" "Yeah, sure." "So... why are you here?" "I don't know." "I mean..." "I had a few weird moments." "My Mass looked like it was glitching out." "But your implants, I mean, they passed every diagnostic." " There is nothing wrong with that?" " Yeah, they said it's fine." "I don't know, I think I just..." "Felt like something was up with it." " But there's not." " No." "You did a big thing." "You should be proud of yourself." "Okay?" "It'll pass." "Let's get you a good sleep tonight, huh?" "A real good sleep." "Fuck me." "Way to go, fuck fingers." "It seems Heidekker didn't stay silent too long once we got to work on him." "He's given up a location, someplace the roaches have been scavenging." "Well, all right." "It's a housing project that's been empty since the war." "It's not far from here." "So control wants us to do recon before we go back to base." "Can we hurry it up here?" "We ought to burn the whole forest down, huh?" "Give those roaches nowhere to run." "Okay, you see that?" "Solar panel looks cleaner than the rest." "And there are some cables." " There's got to be roaches leaching power." " Why here?" "Christ knows." "All right." "Better dial it in." "Control." "This is Medina." "Positive ID." "Signs of activity here at the housing project location." "Sighted one solar panel, looks recently wiped clean and some cabling." "Roger so far." " You all right there?" " Smell the grass." "We can't usually smell nothing." " You ever noticed that?" " No, I never noticed that." "Requesting course of action." "Didn't read." "Please repeat." "Okay." "Control says we should fall back and await comm..." "Shit!" "Medina." "Oh!" "Medina." "Stripe, get back!" "She's dead." "Come on!" "Okay." "Ready?" "Cover me." "Rai!" "Rai, come on." "Okay." "Oh, fucking roach got a rifle." "Jesus Christ." "Fuck." "Piece of shit." "Okay, Stripe." "Stripe, come on." "Get it together, dude." "He fired six shots." "His rifle looks old, bolt action." " Should take him ten seconds to reload." " We go in?" "We go in and take him out." "Are you with me?" " I'm with you." " Let's go!" "Follow me!" "Ready?" "Okay, three, two, one." "Cover me." "Come on, man!" "What the fuck?" "What the fuck is this shit?" "Let's go." "Stripe!" "Whoa, whoa!" "It's okay." "Hey." "Hey." "Calm down." "Calm down." "Calm down." "It's okay." "It's okay." "I'm not gonna hurt you." "I'm not gonna hurt you." "Okay?" "Go on, get out of here." "Go on." "It's not safe." "There's roaches here." "Go on." "Get." "Come on!" " Rai, what did you do?" " Shut up!" "Come on!" "What did you do, Rai?" "Got ya." "Rai!" "No!" " Run!" " What the fuck are you doing?" " You're killing them!" " They're roaches!" "You're fucking killing them, Rai!" "Fuck you!" "What the fuck's wrong with you, man?" "You got some blown shit." " Pull it together!" " No." "Are you all right?" "You gotta get out of here." "Come on." "Come on!" "Fuck!" "You better run." "Shh." "Shh." "Here." "I'm all right." "You see me as I am." "Of course I see you." "You don't see roach?" "You ain't a roach." "Roaches is all..." "Fucked up?" "Roaches don't speak." "You just can't hear us." " What the fuck are you talking about?" " Your implants." "Your army implants." "The Mass system?" "They put it in your head to help you fight, and when it works, you see us as something other." "One of us, Luka, was making a... a machine." "Light flashes." "Said it can interfere with the implant." "You're roaches?" "But I've seen roaches." "I've seen them, they're fucking..." "They're like, uh..." " Animals?" " No, they're monsters." "I've seen them." "The implant made you see this." "Fuck." "The villagers..." "Huh?" "The locals, they... they ain't army." "They got no Mass in their heads." "They're scared of the roaches." " They hate the fucking things." " Everybody hates us." "Well, what the fuck do they see?" "Huh?" "The fucking civs, when they look at a roach, what do they see?" "What you see now." "They hate all the same because it's what they've been told." "Ten years ago, it began." "Post-war." "First, the screening programme, the DNA checks, then the register, the emergency measures." "And soon everyone calls us creatures." "Filthy creatures." "Every voice." "The TV." "The computer." "Say we have... we have sickness in us." "We have weakness." "It's in our blood." "They say that our blood cannot go on." "That we cannot go on." "My name was Catarina." "He was Alec." "Now we're just roach." "But now..." "Now you see me." "Now you see me." "Rai?" "Rai, no!" "Tell me I shouldn't kill you." " None of it's true, Rai." " What the fuck got you?" "None of it's true." "Fuck you." "Get up." "Back against the wall." "Get up!" "You want me to come in there?" "It's all right." "I can just talk to him." "Thank you, Briley." "Stripe." "We owe you an apology." "We didn't spot the fault in your Mass." "I got you a coffee." "The device you found in the farmhouse, you mentioned it to the doctor." "Is this the thing?" "We found it on an old block that you and Raiman were searching." "Looks like they reverse engineered it from some of our drone parts and so on." "The light here transmits a code." "It's like a virus." "It burrows into your Mass, trying to shut it down from within." "I tell you, those roaches are getting more ingenious than we give them credit for." "The whole thing is a lie." "I understand why you'd say that, yeah." "Roaches." "They look just like us." "Of course they do." "That's why they're so dangerous." "Humans." "You know, we give ourselves a bad rap, but we're genuinely empathetic as a species." "I mean, we don't actually really want to kill each other." "Which is a good thing." "Until your future depends on wiping out the enemy." "Come on, sit down." "I don't know how much history you studied in school." "Many years ago, I'm talking early 20th century, most soldiers didn't even fire their weapons." "Or if they did, they would just aim over the heads of the enemies." "They did it on purpose." "British Army." "World War I." "The brigadier, he'd walk the line with a stick and he'd whack his men in order to get them to shoot." "Even in World War II, in a firefight, only 15%, 20% of the men would pull the trigger." "The fate of the world at stake and only 15% of them fired." "Now what does that tell you?" "It tells me that that war would have been over a whole lot quicker had the military got its shit together." "So we adapted." "Better training." "Better conditioning." "Then comes the Vietnam War, and the shooting percentage goes up to 85." "Lot of bullets flying." "The kills were still low." "Plus the guys who did get a kill, well, most of them came back all messed up in the head." "And that's pretty much how things stayed until Mass came along." "You see, Mass..." "Well, that's the ultimate military weapon." "It helps you with your intel." "Your targeting." "Your comms." "Your conditioning." "It's a lot easier to pull the trigger when you're aiming at the bogeyman, hmm?" "It's not just your eyes, though." "Takes care of your other senses, too." "You don't hear the shrieks." "You don't smell the blood and the shit." "They're human beings." "Do you have any idea the amount of shit that's in their DNA?" "Higher rates of cancer." "Muscular dystrophy." "MS. SLS." "Substandard IQ." "Criminal tendencies." "Sexual deviances." "It's all there." "The screening shows it." "Is that what you want for the next generation?" "Don't feel bad about doing your job." "The villagers won't do it." "The folks back home won't do it." "They don't have Mass." "Mass lets you do it." "You." "You're protecting the bloodline." "And that, my friend, is an honour." "There's no honour here." "It's just killing." " Lying and killing." " No one lied to you." "You knew all of this." "All along." "What are you talking about?" "You agreed to have your Mass implant put in." "Set up." "Every soldier does." "We can't just embed it and feed you a dream." "Your mind would reject it." "You have to accept it." "Willingly." "It's exactly what you did." "So you see the terms and conditions there?" "Yeah, that's like a whole essay, man." "What is that?" "That's your consent video." "From when you signed up six months ago." "Basically, it says you agree to Mass implant activation." " I didn't do this." " Yes, you did." " Works kind of like hypnosis." " Yeah, all right." "Part of what you're agreeing to is not realising you've been put in this state." "If you follow me." "You won't recall this conversation." "That's kind of funny, man." "Turn it off." " So for you to register consent..." " Turn it off, man." "I'm gonna need your thumbprint there." " Right here?" " Yes, please." "That's dope." "I didn't do that!" " I don't remember that!" " Just like the man said." " I know you're upset." " Fuck you!" " What's happening?" " We control what you see, Stripe." " I can't see nothing." " Because we control it." "Give me my fucking eyes back." " Let me lay out your options." " Give me my fucking eyes back, man!" "Let me lay out your options!" "Option one, you agree to have your Mass reset." "All the recollections of the past few days, including this conversation, erased." "No way." "Option two's incarceration." " I'd advise you to consider." " Fuck you!" "Mass is a friend." "Without it, you will remember everything that you did." "I ain't having this Mass shit." "No more." "No way." "Okay." "Well..." "Maybe you should see what life would be like without it." "What's happening?" "Where am I?" "Heidekker's ranch." "Three days ago." "I have it all logged, Stripe." "We can feed you everything that you did." "Hey, no, no, no." "No." "Please!" "Please don't shoot." "Please!" "Please!" "Please don't shoot." " Please!" "Please!" " No!" "No!" "No." "Make it stop." "No!" "Please." "Make it stop!" "Please!" "No!" "No!" "No!" "Fuck off!" "Stop it!" "No!" "You'll see and smell and feel it all." "Is this what you want?" "On a loop?" "In a cell all alone?" "We can make that go away." "This conversation goes away too." "All of it." "But you gotta say the word." "Just say the word, Stripe." "And it all goes away." "Just say the word."