"War makes working as a courier like breathing in smoke – it's manageable, but every breath could be your last.
Kevlar always set off at the same time – when the front was falling asleep and the guards had the most blind spots in their routine. He carried the package as someone else would carry life – close, confident, with absolute silence in their movements.

The road was never straight.
There was no such thing as a "highway" – the route changed every few hours. The ruins could look different from the day before, because another shelling had shifted an entire floor of a building into the middle of the street. Kevlar didn't complain then – he stepped into the rubble, climbed the ruined stairs, walked through the interior of the building, only to emerge on the other side like a shadow.
Sometimes brick chips fell from above, and sometimes – completely unexpectedly – an old curtain from the window.
There were nights when he heard the footsteps of a patrol in the distance.
He didn't run away. He stood still, frozen,his lens closed the aperture slightly to avoid reflecting light.
The patrol passed two meters from him, and he felt their every step echoing in his metal skeleton.

The worst moments were when the clock in his system counted down to the expiration of a chance—whether for a transplant or to deliver an order.

Then he ran. Not like an ordinary robot, but like someone who believed that if he was late, that one person on the other side would never wake up again.

In the end, it was always the same: a quiet entrance, a quick handover of the package, a nod, and the return journey—back into the darkness, where any shadow could be an enemy."

I decided to show this sketch before it gets ruined by digital :3