Master Chris
03-21-2004, 01:59 AM
The government chose me. Me, out of hundreds of thousands of people.
Why?
I was a suitable specimen. Intelligent, strong, fast, determined, and more importantly: Loyal.
They needed someone to do their dirty work, to kill without question, commit unspeakable, unforgiveable deeds upon the few in order to preserve the future of the many. I was their man.
I was the perfect agent. I was willing to sacrifice me own life for the betterment of mankind. I was willing to have my friends and family die if it was necessary. I thought I could even have let Sarah die, too. That was what they taught me:
The End Justifies the Means.
For years I had performed my grim duty, where other men shirked in the face of great but necessary sacrifice I was required to finish the job.
Remember the Florida nuclear reactor disaster of 2012? Officially the reactor accidentily went haywire and blew its top, frying a couple of thousand people in the process. Truthfully, a biological weapon had been released by terrorists at the plant. I was sent in to overload the reactor, which prevented the infected technicians from spreading the virus unchecked by literally burning the virus and its hosts into extinction as well as a few suburbs full of people too close to the reactor. I stopped a potentially nation-wide lethal epidemic at the cost of a few thousand lives.
They meant nothing to me. They were all going to die eventually and it was better that they went to their graves without passing on the virus. The numbers don't lie.
Most people saw it as a tragedy, but they didn't know the whole truth.
Me? To me, it was another successful operation. Brutal but necessary.
The government drilled it into me time and time again. What I was doing may be questionable in some people's eyes but if I didn't act then more people would be harmed, more would suffer, and more would die. Morality isn't a luxury that a government, who must tend to the needs of millions, can afford in times like these.
Every time I would come home from an operation I would be greeted by my wife, Sarah. She didn't know. Not many people did. Everytime I looked into her innocent, unassuming eyes I knew I was doing the right thing. I loved Sarah, she was the reason I kept working for the government. I was fighting for the future. A safe future, one in which my children could live without fear. The government knew this, they know everything. They let me keep my wife, because they knew that without her I would stumble and fall. As long as I kept performing, kept killing without pause or question, the government allowed me a lot of freedom.
In some ways it felt wrong. One day I could be whispering sweet nothings into Sarah's ear while she giggled cheekily and the next I would be staring down the barrel of a silenced pistol at the face of a child, tears streaking her dirt covered face.
Yes, I've killed children. It never bothered me before, like with everything else, the government told me again and again that the people I kill were going to die sooner or later and that my intervention merely prevented the deaths of other people.
A Stitch in Time Saves Nine.
Things started to go wrong when my previous operations supervisor was replaced by Wentworth. Wentworth was a paranoid bastard who had backstabbed his way to his new job. Thinking himself a progressive and innovative thinker, Wentworth demanded that myself and my fellow agents be constantly watched and have our loyalty to the government tested frequently and harshly.
What that meant was my previous freedoms were removed. I wasn't even able to leave my own home without filling out a 'Liberty Requisition Form 104/B', submitting it, and waiting for authorisation from Wentworth himself. Wentworth wasn't one to give authorisation easily. It strained my marriage, Sarah found my reclusive activities disturbing and, in her concern for me, insisted that I leave the house more often, that made things worse. I couldn't tell her the real reason why I couldn't leave the house and so Sarah felt that I was hiding something from her. I hated Wentworth for that. His overzealous actions had generated serious friction between myself and Sarah, the one person I couldn't stand to see unhappy.
Wentworth pushed me even further by testing my loyalty at every corner. He ordered me to kill random people, people who didn't matter. I did so without question. Children, parents, the elderly, even a cherished family pet on one perverted assignment. Wentworth was pushing me, he wanted to find my breaking point. He wanted to see me fail; to have an excuse to retire me, and in my business retirement is a bullet in the back of the head while you're sleeping, your family too. I knew what the consequences were if I failed to comply so I kept killing. For my sake and more importantly:
Sarah's.
Wentworth, still determined to see me fail, pulled an ace out of his sleeve. He called me into his office one day. While I couldn't see it, I knew that he had deployed the bullet proof glass installed in his office between us. That smile on his face spoke volumes. He had found my weakness. The ever-so-slightly muffled sound of his voice passing through the glass met my ears:
"Agent 23. I have one final test of loyalty for you..."
That day I left the office in total despair. While the sun merrily danced along the brilliant blue sky all I could see was a dull grey mist hanging over the world.
Wentworth had found my breaking point.
When I arrived home Sarah immediately sensed my depression. She wrapped her arms around my head and smothered my face in her bosom. For the first time since I was a child, I cried. I had never shed a tear for the people I had mercilessly butchered previously but my final test was nigh unbearable.
Hours later I found myself still cradled in my wife's embrace. I looked up into her face and found, to my shock, that her eyes were red from crying also. Sarah loved me so much that my own sorrow had affected her greatly. At that point I tried to tell her everything, from my secret employment with the government, my hatred of Wentworth and my final, impossible test. All I could accomplish was a string of gibberish frequently interrupted by the wheezing gasps for air I took as I tried to keep talking. Sarah just shook her head slowly and comforted me, still entirely unaware of both her fate and mine.
Somehow, we both made it to the bedroom and took to slumber. Though, I found myself wide awake by midnight. I desperately tried to come up with a way out. Always it came back to the mantra drilled into my mind by the government:
A single human life is precious, thus, two lives are doubly precious. When faced with a dilemma; sacrifice the few to save the many.
I didn't care about sacrificing the few in order to save the many anymore. In a way, I was the few, the minority sacrificed for the greater good.
It was at that point, in the middle of the night, I came to my conclusion:
Wentworth had ordered me to kill my own wife. He knew that she was the one person I would never kill. Yet, I also knew that failure to do so would result in my death as well as hers. Refusing to kill Sarah did nothing, she would be dead by morning whether by my hand or that of another man's. By some twisted logic I decided that it was better that I did it than someone else. Then I would kill myself, I knew I couldn't live with myself if I did this.
Slipping out of bed I quietly padded down to the garage, where I had kept a silenced weapon for emergencies. I took a magazine and emptied all bar two bullets.
One for Sarah. One for me.
Quickly, unwilling to pause and think about what I was doing, I returned to Sarah. In the moonlight she looked more beautiful than I ever recalled. That was the closest I ever got to refusing to kill my own wife.
I levelled the weapon and pulled the trigger. She barely even moved. Blood, as dark as ebony in the moonlight, trickled from her chest and pooled on the bedsheets. That done I turned the pistol on myself, no sense in wasting time....
A loud crack exploded in my ears, which I thought to be the sound of my pistol going off.
I was dazzled by a glaring bright light, was this death?
No. Fate had a grand surprise in store for me.
As the light dimmed and the buzzing in my ears went away I found myself lying on the floor, a great weight resting upon me. I looked up and found myself staring into the face of Wentworth. He seemed pleased, he spoke:
"Well done, 23. You passed your final loyalty test. Of course, we knew you would do it and then probably do yourself in as well. That's why Agent 17 is currently pinning you to the ground."
He paused, smirking with obvious pride while Agent 17 released me, and then continued:
"Now, let me explain everything. We've known for a long time that your wife is your weakspot-"
My keen mind spotted the fact that he had said 'is' as opposed to 'was' with respect to my recently departed loved one.
"-I knew that to test you properly you'd have to be ordered to kill her. So, while I distracted you with meaningless and unrelated murders I prepared your final test. First, I constructed a perfect replica of your home, which we are currently residing within. An exact replica, detailed down to the location of your emergency pistol. Then, I had you and your wife gassed into unconsciousness while you two were weeping into each others arms. While asleep I had you and your wife moved to the replica home, here. Of course, you just assumed when you woke up that you were still in your home..."
In a perverted way, it all made sense. Yet, the worst was yet to come...
"You performed exactly as we thought you would, Agent 23. Although, our psychologist predicted that you would take a little longer than you did to get around to the job. Good show, seems we trained you better than even we knew. Anyway, you took your gun and killed your wife, as ordered. At least, as you thought."
Only moments before he actually said it did I finally realise what he was getting at...
"For you see, we took a DNA sample of your wife and grew a clone some weeks ago. We groomed it the same way as your wife and put the clone into bed with you. You see Agent 23, your wife is alive and well, though still unconscious. You passed the test and may continue to operate as you once did. Congratulations, Agent 23."
For a few moments I was ecstatic. All was well! An elaborate hoax, indeed! I got to my feet, brushed myself off and offered my hand to Wentworth as a way of saying 'no harm done'.
Then it all came flooding back to me. Whether or not it was a clone I had killed, it was my wife I had been thinking of when I pulled the trigger. I pulled my hand back. Wentworth went from looking smug to confused. He stared into my face, trying to work out why I wasn't going to shake hands with him. I unblinkingly stared back, that cold and empty feeling returning. I remembered the pistol. My gaze dropped to the floor, looking for it. Wentworth followed my gaze and realised what I was doing. He stepped back in horror and yelled at Agent 17:
"Stop him! STOP HIM!"
My fellow agent lunged towards me, intending to tackle me to the ground once more. I whipped my hand around and smashed 17's face and he dropped onto the floor. I snatched up my pistol and pointed it at Wentworth. Always I had killed in cold blood, at the command of other men but that day I killed in anger, at my own whim. Wentworth calmly said:
"You've only one bullet left, 23. Kill me and you're defenceless against the kill team on their way now."
It was true, Wentworth's failsafe team was coming, I could hear them. I had only moments before they burst in and gunned me down. I didn't care, Wentworth had sapped away the last of my humanity. Sarah was the only thing that had kept me going and I had betrayed her. I was nothing now, empty. Wentworth, realising that his rational words meant nothing to me spoke what turned out to be his final words:
"Please, Agent 23....Paul...Please Paul. Don't do it. Paul?"
It was the first time anyone from the government had ever used my real name. I paused a moment, only a moment, Wentworth's final ploy didn't work. I killed him. I killed him and I enjoyed it.
That's about when the kill-team swarmed into my pseudo-home. Interestingly enough, they didn't kill me on the spot, I posed no threat to them. I was captured without a struggle. I didn't have the energy nor the inclination to fight them, it didn't matter what happened to me anymore.
That just about sums up what happened until now. I've been in this cell for some time now, how long I can't say. They're keeping me well fed and looked after. Several times I've been interveiwed, each time the same questions; they always want to know what happened that night. I have questions for them, also. I want to know what they are going to do to me and more importantly:
What was going to happen to my wife, Sarah?
Why?
I was a suitable specimen. Intelligent, strong, fast, determined, and more importantly: Loyal.
They needed someone to do their dirty work, to kill without question, commit unspeakable, unforgiveable deeds upon the few in order to preserve the future of the many. I was their man.
I was the perfect agent. I was willing to sacrifice me own life for the betterment of mankind. I was willing to have my friends and family die if it was necessary. I thought I could even have let Sarah die, too. That was what they taught me:
The End Justifies the Means.
For years I had performed my grim duty, where other men shirked in the face of great but necessary sacrifice I was required to finish the job.
Remember the Florida nuclear reactor disaster of 2012? Officially the reactor accidentily went haywire and blew its top, frying a couple of thousand people in the process. Truthfully, a biological weapon had been released by terrorists at the plant. I was sent in to overload the reactor, which prevented the infected technicians from spreading the virus unchecked by literally burning the virus and its hosts into extinction as well as a few suburbs full of people too close to the reactor. I stopped a potentially nation-wide lethal epidemic at the cost of a few thousand lives.
They meant nothing to me. They were all going to die eventually and it was better that they went to their graves without passing on the virus. The numbers don't lie.
Most people saw it as a tragedy, but they didn't know the whole truth.
Me? To me, it was another successful operation. Brutal but necessary.
The government drilled it into me time and time again. What I was doing may be questionable in some people's eyes but if I didn't act then more people would be harmed, more would suffer, and more would die. Morality isn't a luxury that a government, who must tend to the needs of millions, can afford in times like these.
Every time I would come home from an operation I would be greeted by my wife, Sarah. She didn't know. Not many people did. Everytime I looked into her innocent, unassuming eyes I knew I was doing the right thing. I loved Sarah, she was the reason I kept working for the government. I was fighting for the future. A safe future, one in which my children could live without fear. The government knew this, they know everything. They let me keep my wife, because they knew that without her I would stumble and fall. As long as I kept performing, kept killing without pause or question, the government allowed me a lot of freedom.
In some ways it felt wrong. One day I could be whispering sweet nothings into Sarah's ear while she giggled cheekily and the next I would be staring down the barrel of a silenced pistol at the face of a child, tears streaking her dirt covered face.
Yes, I've killed children. It never bothered me before, like with everything else, the government told me again and again that the people I kill were going to die sooner or later and that my intervention merely prevented the deaths of other people.
A Stitch in Time Saves Nine.
Things started to go wrong when my previous operations supervisor was replaced by Wentworth. Wentworth was a paranoid bastard who had backstabbed his way to his new job. Thinking himself a progressive and innovative thinker, Wentworth demanded that myself and my fellow agents be constantly watched and have our loyalty to the government tested frequently and harshly.
What that meant was my previous freedoms were removed. I wasn't even able to leave my own home without filling out a 'Liberty Requisition Form 104/B', submitting it, and waiting for authorisation from Wentworth himself. Wentworth wasn't one to give authorisation easily. It strained my marriage, Sarah found my reclusive activities disturbing and, in her concern for me, insisted that I leave the house more often, that made things worse. I couldn't tell her the real reason why I couldn't leave the house and so Sarah felt that I was hiding something from her. I hated Wentworth for that. His overzealous actions had generated serious friction between myself and Sarah, the one person I couldn't stand to see unhappy.
Wentworth pushed me even further by testing my loyalty at every corner. He ordered me to kill random people, people who didn't matter. I did so without question. Children, parents, the elderly, even a cherished family pet on one perverted assignment. Wentworth was pushing me, he wanted to find my breaking point. He wanted to see me fail; to have an excuse to retire me, and in my business retirement is a bullet in the back of the head while you're sleeping, your family too. I knew what the consequences were if I failed to comply so I kept killing. For my sake and more importantly:
Sarah's.
Wentworth, still determined to see me fail, pulled an ace out of his sleeve. He called me into his office one day. While I couldn't see it, I knew that he had deployed the bullet proof glass installed in his office between us. That smile on his face spoke volumes. He had found my weakness. The ever-so-slightly muffled sound of his voice passing through the glass met my ears:
"Agent 23. I have one final test of loyalty for you..."
That day I left the office in total despair. While the sun merrily danced along the brilliant blue sky all I could see was a dull grey mist hanging over the world.
Wentworth had found my breaking point.
When I arrived home Sarah immediately sensed my depression. She wrapped her arms around my head and smothered my face in her bosom. For the first time since I was a child, I cried. I had never shed a tear for the people I had mercilessly butchered previously but my final test was nigh unbearable.
Hours later I found myself still cradled in my wife's embrace. I looked up into her face and found, to my shock, that her eyes were red from crying also. Sarah loved me so much that my own sorrow had affected her greatly. At that point I tried to tell her everything, from my secret employment with the government, my hatred of Wentworth and my final, impossible test. All I could accomplish was a string of gibberish frequently interrupted by the wheezing gasps for air I took as I tried to keep talking. Sarah just shook her head slowly and comforted me, still entirely unaware of both her fate and mine.
Somehow, we both made it to the bedroom and took to slumber. Though, I found myself wide awake by midnight. I desperately tried to come up with a way out. Always it came back to the mantra drilled into my mind by the government:
A single human life is precious, thus, two lives are doubly precious. When faced with a dilemma; sacrifice the few to save the many.
I didn't care about sacrificing the few in order to save the many anymore. In a way, I was the few, the minority sacrificed for the greater good.
It was at that point, in the middle of the night, I came to my conclusion:
Wentworth had ordered me to kill my own wife. He knew that she was the one person I would never kill. Yet, I also knew that failure to do so would result in my death as well as hers. Refusing to kill Sarah did nothing, she would be dead by morning whether by my hand or that of another man's. By some twisted logic I decided that it was better that I did it than someone else. Then I would kill myself, I knew I couldn't live with myself if I did this.
Slipping out of bed I quietly padded down to the garage, where I had kept a silenced weapon for emergencies. I took a magazine and emptied all bar two bullets.
One for Sarah. One for me.
Quickly, unwilling to pause and think about what I was doing, I returned to Sarah. In the moonlight she looked more beautiful than I ever recalled. That was the closest I ever got to refusing to kill my own wife.
I levelled the weapon and pulled the trigger. She barely even moved. Blood, as dark as ebony in the moonlight, trickled from her chest and pooled on the bedsheets. That done I turned the pistol on myself, no sense in wasting time....
A loud crack exploded in my ears, which I thought to be the sound of my pistol going off.
I was dazzled by a glaring bright light, was this death?
No. Fate had a grand surprise in store for me.
As the light dimmed and the buzzing in my ears went away I found myself lying on the floor, a great weight resting upon me. I looked up and found myself staring into the face of Wentworth. He seemed pleased, he spoke:
"Well done, 23. You passed your final loyalty test. Of course, we knew you would do it and then probably do yourself in as well. That's why Agent 17 is currently pinning you to the ground."
He paused, smirking with obvious pride while Agent 17 released me, and then continued:
"Now, let me explain everything. We've known for a long time that your wife is your weakspot-"
My keen mind spotted the fact that he had said 'is' as opposed to 'was' with respect to my recently departed loved one.
"-I knew that to test you properly you'd have to be ordered to kill her. So, while I distracted you with meaningless and unrelated murders I prepared your final test. First, I constructed a perfect replica of your home, which we are currently residing within. An exact replica, detailed down to the location of your emergency pistol. Then, I had you and your wife gassed into unconsciousness while you two were weeping into each others arms. While asleep I had you and your wife moved to the replica home, here. Of course, you just assumed when you woke up that you were still in your home..."
In a perverted way, it all made sense. Yet, the worst was yet to come...
"You performed exactly as we thought you would, Agent 23. Although, our psychologist predicted that you would take a little longer than you did to get around to the job. Good show, seems we trained you better than even we knew. Anyway, you took your gun and killed your wife, as ordered. At least, as you thought."
Only moments before he actually said it did I finally realise what he was getting at...
"For you see, we took a DNA sample of your wife and grew a clone some weeks ago. We groomed it the same way as your wife and put the clone into bed with you. You see Agent 23, your wife is alive and well, though still unconscious. You passed the test and may continue to operate as you once did. Congratulations, Agent 23."
For a few moments I was ecstatic. All was well! An elaborate hoax, indeed! I got to my feet, brushed myself off and offered my hand to Wentworth as a way of saying 'no harm done'.
Then it all came flooding back to me. Whether or not it was a clone I had killed, it was my wife I had been thinking of when I pulled the trigger. I pulled my hand back. Wentworth went from looking smug to confused. He stared into my face, trying to work out why I wasn't going to shake hands with him. I unblinkingly stared back, that cold and empty feeling returning. I remembered the pistol. My gaze dropped to the floor, looking for it. Wentworth followed my gaze and realised what I was doing. He stepped back in horror and yelled at Agent 17:
"Stop him! STOP HIM!"
My fellow agent lunged towards me, intending to tackle me to the ground once more. I whipped my hand around and smashed 17's face and he dropped onto the floor. I snatched up my pistol and pointed it at Wentworth. Always I had killed in cold blood, at the command of other men but that day I killed in anger, at my own whim. Wentworth calmly said:
"You've only one bullet left, 23. Kill me and you're defenceless against the kill team on their way now."
It was true, Wentworth's failsafe team was coming, I could hear them. I had only moments before they burst in and gunned me down. I didn't care, Wentworth had sapped away the last of my humanity. Sarah was the only thing that had kept me going and I had betrayed her. I was nothing now, empty. Wentworth, realising that his rational words meant nothing to me spoke what turned out to be his final words:
"Please, Agent 23....Paul...Please Paul. Don't do it. Paul?"
It was the first time anyone from the government had ever used my real name. I paused a moment, only a moment, Wentworth's final ploy didn't work. I killed him. I killed him and I enjoyed it.
That's about when the kill-team swarmed into my pseudo-home. Interestingly enough, they didn't kill me on the spot, I posed no threat to them. I was captured without a struggle. I didn't have the energy nor the inclination to fight them, it didn't matter what happened to me anymore.
That just about sums up what happened until now. I've been in this cell for some time now, how long I can't say. They're keeping me well fed and looked after. Several times I've been interveiwed, each time the same questions; they always want to know what happened that night. I have questions for them, also. I want to know what they are going to do to me and more importantly:
What was going to happen to my wife, Sarah?