This Is How You Lose the Time War

Red, a protagonist, stands on a battlefield surrounded by mechanical corpses. She has conducted a mission on behalf of her organization to ensure two armies destroy each other to secure a particular timeline. This is Red’s job: to move, as an agent through time to guarantee the success of her side. She identifies as a woman, but she is also capable of morphing into different forms due to her technology. She muses that it’s easier to kill with practice but killing still eats away at her in a way that it doesn’t her fellow agents. This positions Red as something of an outsider. She senses someone watching or playing with her—one of the Garden’s players the other faction in the time war. She feels a tremor and finds a pristine piece of paper on the ground where it doesn’t belong. Written on the paper is an instruction: “burn before reading” (3). Red knows that this could be a trap from the Garden and that she should walk away. However, she is curious about the message and sets the paper alight, revealing the words of a letter. After reading the letter, Red goes home.