Something's wrong with me. I accidentally touched the stove while it was on, but it didn't hurt. Yesterday, I lit my closet on fire.
-Christopher Dawes, the first recorded Altered individual, December 2nd, 2002 CE
FIELD HOSPITALS WERE the worst kind of boring, Peter Bridge decided. After his grisly shoulder wound was no longer life-threatening, he was forced to hear the moans and wails of his comrades injured in the line of duty on Pil II. Some of their shouts continued well into the night, and some stopped abruptly, the sudden silence only serving to make Peter more uncomfortable.
When he slept, he dreamed of lightning storms where each and every one of the thunderbolts struck his body, and the dark-haired Remnant boy's face became the heavy clouds. Peter always screamed, but the wind and the rain and the ceaseless lightning drowned him out, nothing but a whisper in the dark.