I fired once. Resting the butt of my assault rifle against my shoulder, I pulled the trigger again.
The sensors on the sides of my helmet tracked the target as it closed in on me. Red triangles and circles crowded my heads-up display.
When the target did not stop, I fired for the third time. The pads absorbed the massive recoil, as a stream of projectiles burst forth from the barrel of my rifle.
Finally, the target stumbled, tripping over itself as it fell, dead, to the bloodstained ground, its body sinking slowly into the mud. My heads-up display reported a total of fourteen direct hits.
More and more targets were tracked, until a sea of red geometrical patterns filled the screen.
I did not know which to shoot at first. They were all coming, moving at breakneck speed. Their thunderous footsteps pounded in my head. Even the audio dampeners did not block them out completely.
Bursts of gunfire erupted all around me. A cluster of missiles cruised over my head, racing towards an enormous figure in the distance.
The missiles struck its limbs and exploded, causing the great mechanical beast to stagger.
More of the machines soared above me, raining bombs down on the battlefield, never knowing nor caring who, or what, they hit.
I dropped instinctively to the ground, and found myself lying amidst the unrecognizable corpses of my fellow soldiers, who, mere seconds ago, were standing beside me, fighting like I did.
A tear began to form at the corner of my eye, growing bigger, and then trickling down my sweat-covered face.
This is it, I thought to myself. This is the end.
Fear- indescribable fear- gripped my heart and choked my mind.
Raising my rifle once more, I set it to automatic firing mode, slamming a new cartridge into the weapon. It was my last.
I knew I could never kill them all alone. There were thousands of the machines.
There was a flash of white light to my right. I turned to look, and immediately wished I hadn’t done so. A machine had its cold, metallic hand wrapped around a soldier’s neck, as they stood in the heart of a blazing inferno of flame and fire.
The flesh and blood of the screaming man burned away, turning to ash, leaving a grinning skull and a charred skeleton to join the countless others on the ground.
I could do nothing for the man, so I fired repeatedly at the machine. The bullets tore into its synthetic form, ripping its mechanisms apart and shredding its circuitry. I released the trigger only when the machine crumbled to the ground, still twitching as its automated systems struggled to control it.
The first wave of the machine army was only a hundred meters away. I could already see the red dots on the horizon- electronic eyes that scanned their surroundings and marked targets to kill with terrifying precision.
Mechanical legs moved in tandem with thousands of others. Artificial intelligences worked, calculated and devised new strategies a trillion times a second.
There was a deafening sound. Glancing over my shoulder, my mind screamed, and my lips parted in a silent cry of despair. 30 million lives were lost in an instant as a nuclear warhead detonated in the heart of the city- the last bastion of Humanity- behind me.
The skeletal remnants of once-proud skyscrapers were all that were left standing. The shockwave slammed into me, but even though my combat armor absorbed a large amount of the force, I was still thrust deep into the soft ground. My visor shattered and the heads-up display vanished. The core systems in my armor began shutting down. My armor now served no purpose.
I was the last soldier still fighting. All around me, the gunfire on our side had ceased abruptly. Black smoke darkened the polluted sky. The carcasses of tanks, combat vehicles and the machines dotted the battlefield like tombstones in a graveyard.
I was alone. I was fighting. I was running out of ammunition.
The machines were almost onto me now. I could hear the clicking, whirring and groaning sounds of their gears and mechanisms.
I continued shooting, and the ammunition meter counted down quickly to zero.
Finally, I released the trigger. I was down to my last bullet. The machines were staring at me now, raising their weapons to destroy me. In a few seconds, a thousand bullets would rip into my flesh-and-blood body and cut it up into bloody shreds.
I would not die at the hands of the machines. I did the only logical thing to ensure that would not happen.
Removing my helmet, I raised my rifle and pointed it at my head.
As the mechanical abominations reached me, I pulled the trigger for the last time. Then, the darkness engulfed me in its cold, wretched grip.