You can't remember the face of your mother or brother. The last time you saw them felt like an entire lifetime ago, you know you should remember. It wasn't really that long ago. But your mind had let it slip somehow. But one thing you will never forget were those eyes. Your father's eyes. Wide and bloodshot, bruised and bleeding. He had tried to stop them from taking you. You witnessed the madness and hate grow, all without blinking. As they led you away, through your own tears, through the window of the hastily leaving car. Until it consumed him and his legs gave out. The village men restraining him, the only thing keeping him up. And so with little fanfare and the gradual turn of an unpaved road they were gone.

They had come for you on your ninth birthday, like they had for every other youth from your village. Whatever that damned place was named you couldn't remember. But you remember the tests, you knew them oh too well. Synchro tests, Hi and Lo. Nerve response timings, neural latency, all that jazz. Luckily or unluckily you were the only potential applicant. Testing to find pilots for their alien machines, weapons they loosely claimed as their own. The Interior Ministry wouldn't let such a prize go to waste, like a greedy dog it gobbled you up and whisked you away from that snowy place. No matter how cold it got, you were always warm there.