original work snippet
For most people, life doesn’t have any significant meaning. No one will tell you that, of course, but it’s true. Sometimes people are simply born to die.
That’s what I tell myself as I break the man’s neck. He slumps in my arms, a puppet with its strings abruptly severed, and I let him fall to the floor. When he hits the concrete, the noise his limp body makes as it connects is like a sack of potatoes splitting apart.
His eyes are still open, so I turn away.
The warehouse is quiet now. Serenko’s men are likely on their way by now; they’ll handle the shipment containers of children. Tagged and organized by age and gender, they were all to be shipped overseas and sold to pleasure camps. I’m not entirely familiar with the Eastern continents, so I don’t know exactly how the transactions would’ve occurred, but I do know that most of these kids—who range in age from ten to twenty-one—would never see the light of day again.
If you hadn’t interfered... I can hear Serenko’s voice now. It’s supposed to reassure me, let me know I’ve done the right thing. But sometimes I wonder: if I weren’t around, wouldn’t there be less crime? More than six hundred criminal subgroups have popped up in the four years Eirian’s known of my existence.
Perhaps the world would be better off without my dabbling, but running interference is what I do.
Dead bodies litter the warehouse floor. I step over and around them, careful to avoid puddles of blood and piss. The fluids are all still fresh. From beginning to end, the fight lasted no more than three minutes. Twenty dead, with an additional two I’ve knocked unconscious, bound in chains, and hooked to an old radiator. They’ll be useful for interrogation.
Serenko will try to get me out of it, but odds are I’ll be the one asking the questions.
