This is Just a Dream

Chapter 4

The transition from basic training to Advanced Individual Training—infantry school—was not a graduation; it was an escalation. If basic training had been a crucible designed to strip away the civilian identity, infantry school was the forge meant to temper that raw steel into a weapon.

Adam Garth stepped off the bus at the new installation feeling like a veteran of a war he hadn't yet fought. He was leaner, his movements stripped of the idle restlessness of a teenager, his eyes constantly scanning, assessing, and calculating. He was twenty years old now, though the man in the reflection of the barracks glass felt decades older.

The new environment was harsher, the air colder, and the expectations were suffocating. This was the home of the infantry, where physical endurance was merely the baseline and mental collapse was the enemy.

"Line up! Get your gear, get to your bunks, and get your heads out of your asses!" The command didn't come from a drill instructor, but from a man standing on the concrete steps leading into the barracks, his posture so rigid he looked like he’d been carved from the very stone of the mountainside.

This was Commander Garrett Hanson.

Adam had heard the whispers about him. The Monster. A man who had seen too much and felt too little, a commander who demanded perfection because he knew that in their line of work, anything less was a casualty report waiting to happen. Garrett’s uniform was impeccable, his eyes a slate-grey that seemed to look right through a soldier to see the cracks in their resolve.His head shaved and tattoos covering his neck and head. The black ink swirled, twisted, and turned in a sick labyrinth through his skin. A scar on his cheek making his already stoic expressions, more pronounced, sharp and deadly.

As Adam moved through the check-in process, he kept his eyes forward, his breathing measured. He knew the drill. You didn't make yourself a target. You did your work, you stayed invisible, and you made it to the end of the day.

But infantry school was designed to break invisibility.

During the first week of field exercises, the exhaustion hit with the force of a physical blow. They were doing a ten-mile ruck march in full gear over uneven, jagged terrain. Adam’s boots were filled with the liquid heat of blisters, and his shoulders felt as though the straps of his pack were carving grooves into his collarbones. Every muscle fiber in his legs was screaming in protest, urging him to drop, to surrender to the gravity pulling at him.

He looked ahead, seeing the back of the soldier in front of him—a guy who was swaying, stumbling, ready to go down. Without thinking, Adam closed the distance, shifting his own pack to take on more of the burden, providing a physical wall of support to keep his teammate moving.

"Pick it up, Garth!"

Garrett Hanson’s voice cut through the sound of heavy, ragged breathing like a whip. He was walking beside the formation, observing with that terrifying, unblinking intensity.

Adam didn't reply. He couldn't. He focused on his stride, on the rhythm of his own heartbeat, and on the man he was holding upright.

They finished the march two minutes ahead of the cutoff. When they finally dumped their gear, the adrenaline began to ebb, replaced by a bone-deep, shivering fatigue. Most of the men collapsed onto the grass. Adam, however, went to his locker to retrieve his canteen, his movements jerky and uncoordinated.

He didn't realize Garrett was standing behind him until he heard the commander’s voice, low and devoid of the barking authority he usually reserved for the field.

"You took his weight," Garrett said. It wasn't a question.

Adam stiffened, bracing for a lecture on individual performance. "Yes, sir."

"You were already at your limit."

Adam turned around, standing at rigid attention. He had nothing to hide, and in the strange, inverted logic of their world, honesty was the only currency that held any value.

"Sir, he wasn't going to make it. If I don't look out for the man next to me, then we don't have a squad. We just have a bunch of tired men waiting to fail."

Garrett studied him. For a long, agonizing minute, the silence stretched between them, thick with the smell of wet earth and impending storm. Garrett’s eyes scanned Adam’s face, not as a superior assessing a subordinate, but as a man who was looking for the source of a particular kind of stubbornness.

"That kind of attitude will get you killed, Garth," Garrett finally said, though there was no malice in his voice. "Or it will save the entire unit. It’s a fine line."

"I'm aware of the risk, sir."

Garrett stepped closer, his gaze drifting to the small, leather-bound wallet Adam had pulled from his locker. It was slightly worn, the edges frayed from constant handling. Garrett caught the edge of a photograph tucked into the plastic sleeve.

"What is that?" Garrett gestured toward the wallet.

Adam paused, then pulled the picture out. It was a polaroid—a candid shot of Eden. She was sitting in a park, laughing at something off-camera, her hair wind-blown, her eyes bright and filled with a warmth that felt like a localized sun. It was an image that belonged to a world of light and softness, an image that felt completely alien in the brutal, gray, and brown reality of the barracks.

Adam looked at the photo, his expression softening in a way that made him look human again. The cold, mechanical rigidity of his infantry persona fell away.

"That's Eden, sir," Adam said, his voice dropping into a register Garrett hadn't heard from him. "She's my fiancee."

Garrett looked at the photo, then back at Adam. The hardness in his own face didn't break, but it shifted, a flicker of something ancient and weary crossing his eyes. "You're young to have a life waiting for you back home."

"She's not just waiting, sir," Adam said, his thumb gently tracing the edge of the photo. "She’s the reason I’m here. She’s my purpose. Every time I think about giving up—when the pain gets to be too much, or when I start to doubt if I can keep going—I think of her. I think about the life we’re building, the future we have together. She's the constant. The only thing that stays the same."

Garrett looked at the photo again, a long, searching gaze. He saw the girl in the picture, yes, but he also saw the gravity of the connection. He understood, perhaps better than anyone, the weight of such a tether. He knew that for a soldier, a connection to the civilian world wasn't a distraction; it was a lifeline, a reason to survive, a reason to fight for the return.

"She's a beautiful girl," Garrett said, handing the photo back. "But remember this, Garth: in this life, attachments can also become weights. If you focus too much on what you left behind, you stop paying attention to what's in front of you. And in the infantry, the only thing that matters is the next ten yards."

"I know, sir," Adam replied, tucking the photo safely back into his wallet. "But she isn't a weight. She’s the ground beneath my feet. If I lose that, I don't have anything to stand on."

Garrett gave a single, sharp nod—a gesture that, for a man like him, was the equivalent of a profound admission. "Keep your head in the game, Garth. But keep your heart where it belongs. Just make sure you don't let the distance break you."

"Yes, sir."

Garrett turned and walked away, his stride steady, purposeful, and heavy with the secrets of a man who had seen too many soldiers lose their anchors.

Adam stood there for a moment, the silence of the barracks returning. He felt a strange sense of resonance. He knew, intuitively, that Garrett Hanson wasn't just a commander; he was a man who lived in the shadow of his own losses, a man who had survived by hardening himself against the very emotions Adam was currently trying to protect.

He walked back to his cot and sat down, pulling out a pen and a sheet of paper. He needed to write to her. He needed to tell her about the cold, about the march, and about the man named Garrett who looked at the world like it was a battlefield that could never be won. The hardened “Monster” that everyone knew him to be.

Dear Eden,

The training here is different. It’s not just physical anymore. It’s a test of who you are when you’re stripped of everything but your own will. My commander, a guy named Garrett, is exactly what you’d expect—hard, unyielding, a monument to the military. They call him “Monster” and he looks like the very definition of a man I wouldn't want to be caught by. But today, I think I caught a glimpse of the man behind the uniform. He warned me about you. He warned me that you were a weight, that you’d distract me from the mission.

I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. I wanted to tell him that you’re the only reason I’m not a hollow shell like the rest of them. He doesn't know you, Edie. He doesn't know that our love isn't a distraction—it’s the fuel.

I’m so tired, and I’m so cold. But I have your picture. I have your promise. And I have the thought of your smile. That’s enough to carry me through another day.

Keep the home fires burning, Eden. I’m doing the work here. I’m becoming the man you deserve,I refuse to turn into my father. I refuse to live a life that we saw growing up, that's not us, that's not who we are. Just wait for me a little longer because no matter where you are in the world Eden, you are mine and I am yours.

Love, Adam.

He folded the letter, his fingers moving with a precision that was becoming second nature. He placed it in the envelope, the movement fluid and efficient.

As he lay down on his cot, the barracks filled with the low, heavy snores of his squad-mates that had trickled back in from the hike, he stared up at the dark, metallic ceiling. He felt the weight of the military on his shoulders, the crushing pressure of the path he had chosen. But he also felt the tether—the thin, invisible line that stretched across the country, connecting him to the girl with the laugh, the girl with the future, the girl who was the reason for everything.

He was a soldier now. But in the quiet, dark heart of the training, he was still just Adam. And he was still, in every fiber of his being, hers.

The next few months would be a trial by fire. He would learn how to handle weapons he had never imagined, how to move through terrain that was designed to kill him, how to operate in a unit that functioned as a single, lethal organism. He would learn the language of command, the rhythm of tactical maneuvers, and the bitter, sharp taste of constant, grueling sacrifice.

He would see men break. He would see the light go out of their eyes as the reality of their situation took hold. He would see the way the military consumed the civilian identity, replacing names with ranks and lives with mission objectives.

But he would refuse to break. He had his promise. And as he drifted into a shallow, exhausted sleep, he dreamed of a porch, a ring, and the simple, ordinary joy of a life that was waiting for him at the end of the long, dark tunnel of his service.

The cold of the barracks room felt a little less biting, the exhaustion a little less absolute, as he held the memory of Eden in his mind. He was ready for whatever came next. He was ready for the training, the missions, the inevitable trials of the life he had chosen.

Outside, the wind whipped around the barracks, a howling, hungry sound that seemed to mock the fragile, human endeavor of love and longing. But inside, in the quiet, cramped space of his bunk, Adam remained tethered.

He was the infantryman. He was the soldier. He was going to make a difference.