The Sniper

The sun light was streaming through a dirty slotted window above the dusty, rusty pipes in the janitor's room. It took him a moment to realise where he was. He blinked, disoriented, as the gritty reality of his surroundings slowly dawned on him. The past 24 hours, a maelstrom of chaos and disbelief, clawed at his consciousness, refusing to be ignored. This wasn't some fevered dream; he was starkly, painfully awake. The world as he knew it had crumbled away just a day ago.

A wave of surreal realisation crashed over him. It wasn't fiction or a distant nightmare; it was his reality now. Time for reflection had been a luxury, snatched away by the relentless tide of survival. He recalled the adrenaline-fuelled days in Somalia, where commands were obeyed instinctively amid the hail of gunfire. There was no room for fear, only the imperative to act, to survive. Emotions were a burden to be dealt with later, if at all.