Sometimes, when Harrison caught his reflection in a window, or heaven forbid, a mirror, he couldn’t recognise himself. The blue eyes and curly hair remained the same, but the rest… He wasn’t the man he had been, just a few short years ago, and there were days he wasn’t sure who or what he was anymore. The life he had to live now, the things he had to do, not just for his own survival but for Suzanne and Debi, even for Kincaid…

Weariness dragged at him. He was so tired of having to fight all the time, against the aliens that most people weren’t even aware of, against humans who would take what little he had even to the point of killing him for it if they could, against a world gone insane where everything necessary for continued survival was in short supply… This wasn’t a life, it was scarcely an existence, and yet to stop, to give up, would be infinitely worse.

He had to believe things would get better, that the aliens, the Morthren, could be defeated, and that one day the sun would rise with the light of hope for the future. Surely civilisation couldn’t have crumbled so far that there could be no way back. Once the alien threat was in the past, society could be rebuilt. If he didn’t believe that, he wouldn’t still be fighting against incalculable odds; he would have simply gone away somewhere and let the aliens have the planet.

He paused, staring into dusty glass at a tall, bearded figure bundled against the cold in drab clothes that had seen better days, and wondered, when this was all over, whether he could ever shed what the war against the aliens had turned him into, be the man he’d been before.


The End