In the ruins of Paris, a medic works by drone light and machine guard to save a soldier torn apart by insurgent code and shrapnel. As blood flows and AI shadows loom, war in 2045 is fought with scalpels, circuits, and seconds.

The night sky above Paris, now a war-torn megacity, was a battlefield of its own. Autonomous drones—some friendly, some hostile—moved in predatory silence, scanning for movement, for heat signatures, for life. The once-thriving city was now a labyrinth of collapsed towers and flooded metro tunnels, a perfect hunting ground for the Red Dawn Insurgency. Their cybernetically enhanced soldiers and AI-driven warfare had turned the European Defence Coalition (EDC) into a reactive force, always one step behind. And now, another soldier was dying.

A massive explosion had torn through an EDC reconnaissance patrol, leaving one man crumpled in the wreckage of a bombed-out shopping arcade.

His biomonitor pulsed with flashing red warnings

A sleek, quadrupedal Autonomous Battlefield Evacuation Unit (ABEU) slithered through the ruins, its matte-black frame absorbing the dim glow of distant fires. It emitted no signals, no comms—the enemy was always listening. It moved on silent, adaptive limbs, weaving through rubble and collapsed steel beams before arriving at the casualty. Its mechanical arms deployed with unsettling precision, securing the soldier onto its reinforced platform. Then it vanished underground, swallowed by the catacombs beneath the city.

Beneath the streets of Paris, deep in the sealed-off metro tunnels, Captain Eli Carter, a 26-year-old General Duties Medical Officer (GDMO), stood in the eerie blue glow of his Hololens AI. Around him, the makeshift trauma station pulsed with quiet urgency—medics in low-light goggles worked by touch and instinct, voices hushed to avoid drawing attention. Every system, every power source, was shielded. One mistake, one stray signal, and the enemy would find them.

The ABEU arrived, unfolding its cargo. The soldier was in bad shape—his abdomen a crater of torn flesh, pulse barely registering on the monitors. Eli’s hands trembled for a moment. He had trained in sterile hospitals, in pristine surgical suites. This was different. But his Hololens was already calculating, scanning the wound, guiding him through every motion with cold, machine-like precision.

"Inject recombinant Factor X-9," the AI instructed, a highlighted overlay appearing on the soldier’s arm.

Eli obeyed, pressing the syringe to skin. The clotting agent surged through the bloodstream, amplifying the body's natural haemostasis. Almost instantly, the bleeding slowed. It was working.

Next step: transfusion. A combat medic handed Eli a temperature-stable synthetic blood unit, the deep red liquid swirling with oxygen carriers and plasma substitutes. The days of blood shortages were long gone—this was warrior’s blood, designed for the battlefield. The AI-guided his hands, adjusting the flow rate, monitoring the infusion. The soldier’s vitals started to stabilize.

For now.

Above them, the war continued. The Red Dawn insurgents controlled the airspace, their drones sniffing for heat, scanning for signals. That was why casualties were only moved at night. The trauma station operated in complete secrecy, its power grid hidden, its emissions controlled down to the milliwatt.

Eli checked the Hololens feed. The AI had made battlefield medicine more efficient, faster, better. But there was a truth that no machine could erase—mistakes were still made. A medic looked at him. “Casualty’s stable. Next move?”

Eli inhaled, waiting for the AI's decision

For a moment, he let himself wonder—had they traded one kind of war for another? They no longer fought for ground, for politics. Now, they fought to keep up with the machines they had created.

He shook the thought away. War had changed. Medicine had changed.

The only thing left was to survive.