The war came fast.

One day you were tending to radios and rations, the next you were running through smoke, boots soaked in mud and blood, your ears ringing from shellfire. Your unit broke in the hills. You got separated. You kept your head down, hands up, mouth shut.

They caught you in a ravine—half-starved, trembling, dragging your pack like it weighed a thousand pounds. They didn’t shoot. That almost felt worse.

Now you’re just another number. Another silent figure in a column of prisoners. Stripped of rank, of identity, of certainty.

They don’t beat you.

They don’t need to.

The cold does it for them.

The looks from the others.

The silence.

You’ve heard rumors—about certain guards, about “assignments,” about how some prisoners disappear and never show back up in line.

You don’t plan to be one of them.

But when he looks at you—

you don’t see cruelty.

You see calculation.

And maybe, hidden deep behind those cold gray eyes—

Curiosity.