worst case scenario - Chapter 1

They are going to make my execution public, at the park in the middle of the city, under those great buildings. Roads were closed for this moment, with both common and extraordinary people paying good seats to get as close as possible to my inevitable place of death. They clamored, they cried, and made a sound akin to that of a single wave, brought together by their fear and their supposed triumph over evil. This was truly a joyous moment for them.

I did not have a trial so much as they had a propaganda party, those bigwig city masters. High up in comfortable chairs they sat, watching me with abject disgust, which was precisely what I expected from them. They insulted me and my duty, calling me a madman, a liar, a murderer.

I don't think I am mad. I don't think I am a liar either, but truth is selective, and truth can be covered. I chose the truths I decided to say, and hid others. I smiled, I persuaded, I encouraged, hiding under an opaque veil of confidence. I guess I crumbled in the end, and I only have myself to blame for my fate.

I was a murderer though. I will admit that. I ordered a small but diligent army of exemplary men and women, overseeing assassinations of corrupt politicians and the police which we endearingly called the neo gestapo. It's been a while since I have actually done any of the missions myself, but I know our death toll. Forty major bureaucrats. Forty, a biblical number. The number of days Jesus wailed in the desert, the number of days I spent in a prison that did not abide by human rights laws. They did terrible things to me there, confirming my knowledge that there are many things worse than death.

After forty days they led me out of my cell and into a truck. I had not eaten in a week, which was a small mercy- I did not want to die and lose the contents of my bowels as soon as my muscles relaxed in post mortem indignity. I felt the hum of the road below the metal of my cage. I felt regret. I felt many things that I had not ever felt in so long.

They led me out into the street, makeshift barrier fences separating me from my audience. The sheep, the sheep we tried our best to save, who followed and were spoon-fed what they wished to hear. Anything to get rid of the fright they felt at night. Anything to give them some hallucinatory security. They were cheering.

It was almost like a grand procession through a long red carpet, with endearing fans screaming out short gasps of admiration, only mine was a little more somber and violent. They had no pity for me, these men and women and children that I - no, we - had tried so hard to save. And now they were going to die for their ignorance, from the monster I had warned about for years, a plea that fell on deaf ears and closed eyes.

We are entombed under the ground, and the sky is a lie, a colossal row of plasma screens that displayed ersatz clouds. We have very little plants here, and rely on oxygen recycling machines that stand like formidable skeletal towers. They were in serious disrepair, and were due to malfunction soon enough.

Of course they did not listen to me.

I was not shackled. They did not need me to be shackled, since the area was surrounded by guards with guns that would fire at the audience should I even try to lose myself in the crowd. I walked past them, in the little strip of empty road and dirt, to a plain wooden seat at the center of the park, where the men, those powerful, frightened men, sat. The best seats in the house. I knew how I looked to them, with my unwavering insolence, stubborn to the end, not granting them the joy of seeing me break in half.

I sat, much like a rejected king, my expression blank, my mouth shut. They asked if I had any parting words. I shook my head. The crowd watched all the while, a crowd who has never seen my face before I was caught, now long used to my visage after seeing it plastered all over television. I think they will display my dead body as well. Shame my imagination is working still.

They had a needle waiting for me, and I knew the liquid inside. It shot great indescribable pain all over the body, a pain that would last for as long as a half hour before killing the victim. I knew I would be unable to keep my silence then. They were going to get what they wanted from me.

My hands did not shake as I rolled up my sleeve for them, nor did I say a word when they pushed the needle into my skin. I felt, at first, very little but a tingling under flesh. They held their breath, and so did I. My eyes closed, and I set with the heavy task of digging under layers of memories, cloistering myself in them in an attempt to hide from the eventual pain.

It came like a rush of icy water that woke me up and tore me from thoughts of mother and father and humanity and delusions of martyrdom. I opened my mouth, every fiber of my body feeling the pain of a million glass shards. No, I thought, I cannot scream. I will not scream.

But I am screaming now, wailing, weeping, breathing frantically like a drowning fish in dry land. Inside, I hear my mother, laughing tenderly, the warm smiles of my men, the one woman who I loved and could not love due to my own selfish wish to keep feeling away.

"I'm sorry," I say to her, who is probably watching this and feeling her heart cave in under weight. They will misconstrue these words, the people, thinking me repentant all too late. I do not care. It is too late to care anymore.

I want to say "I love you," but my mouth no longer obeys me, letting out searing feral cries of pain instead. I want so many things. I want her to know I loved her.

She might not know, and that is my greatest regret.