by Bō Jinn
* * *
He was in a small, grey room. A smell of rigorous sanitation was in the air. Building surveillance watched him from all four corners. A black and everlasting sky was beyond the glazed wall and not a light below it for miles.
It had been a three-hour trip and there had been no windows in the back of the security vehicle that brought him there. He had no idea where he was, but by the palpable change in the atmosphere he knew that he must have been somewhere on the border with the martial world. He rubbed the marks in his wrists from the shackles that had been removed from him by the escort of armed men in blue gear.
He looked up from his sore wrists at the steel-eyed figure sitting across from him, who he had met only once before. It had been more than a year ago, but he was wearing the same suit, and the same hollow gaze anatomised him from behind the glare in the round lenses of his pince-nez. There were many Commissioners with whom he had become acquainted since, but this man was the only one he remembered.
There was an almost ascetic silence. No formalities had been exchanged and after a few seconds of the gravest silence, the commissioner took out a file marked with the insignia of the UMC and an air of content surfaced in his grave feature as the file gently slid across the table-top, past the unusual cubic device in the middle.
He looked from the commissioner to the file and eyed it a moment before reaching out with peculiar hesitation.
“What is this?”
“This is you,” said the commissioner. “The new you.”
He picked up the file, opened it and the silence quickly fell again as he browsed through the contents. The pages contained a long list of personal data: a martial identification number, addresses, bank accounts, PMC sponsorships, martial insurance details and a list of names which he presumed to be commissioners.
“Do you like your new name?” asked Pope.
“I never cared much for Vincent.”
“Vincent no longer exists.”
“Good,” The file closed and was laid back down on the desk. “Then, this is it.”
“Yes,” Pope nodded. “You have officially been released from civil jurisdiction. Once you are cleaned, you will be reborn, a child of martial order.”
“The highest caste?”
“But of course,” smiled Pope. “You will be denied nothing. As long as you live, we are your committed servants. It will be our pleasure and privilege to fulfil the debt our world owes you – and a great debt it is. It is a shame your celebrity must be lost forever. Are you at all lethargic?”
“No … I think I have had enough fame for one decade.”
“They have made you a villain … We will make you a hero.”
“It is all relative.”
“Quite,” Pope hummed and the smile enlarged eerily. “As long as we are agreed that you are here because you belong with us, that is all that matters.”
“What do you mean?”
The commissioner was silent and his smile softened. “Let us say, simply, that we insist upon freedom,” he said. “We do not want you to feel as though you have been driven to us against your will.”
“War is all I have ever known.”
“And now, all you will ever need to know.”
Silence fell again.
From outside the door came the sound of heavy, marching footfalls.
He expected the doors to open at any moment, and for the blue-geared men to enter and escort him away. But his anticipation faded with the sound of the footfalls as they carried on down the outer corridor. And then he was left wondering why he was still there.
“Is there something else?” he asked, his suspicion roused anew.
“A small formality,” Pope answered with a dismissive air. “You must understand that after you walk through those doors, you will remember nothing. Nothing at all.”
“That is what I want.”
“I know. The problem is that you will not even remember why you did not want to remember. And there may come a point where we will have to remind you.”
He paused for deliberation.
“What do you need from me?”
“Simple,” said Pope. “Just answer the questions as I ask them.”
He studied the commissioner fixedly through narrowed eyes. Somehow, he had the sense that it would not be as simple as he made it out to be. He put his hands over the armrests and straightened up in his seat.
Pope delayed before he spoke.
“First question,” he said: “What caused you come to us? I’ll rephrase that.” A smile twitched in the corners of his mouth. “What is it that you want more than anything?”
The answer to both questions was the same.
“Freedom,” he replied without hesitation.
“Freedom from what?” asked Pope. “Imprisonment? Monotony? Mediocrity?”
“The past.”
“The past…”
“Yes.”
“What past, Vincent?”
The question roused a spark of ire.
“You know what past.”
“You have to be the one to say it.”
“Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answers?”
“I could waste your time explaining my reasons. Or you can just trust that I am not the sort of man who would waste his time on something if it were not of the utmost importance.”
He lowered his head and gazed into the bleak, bespectacled eyes over a knotted brow.
“What past, Vincent?” Pope asked a second time.
He paused and took a deep breath. His hands released their tight grip on the rests. He lifted his head and exhaled.
“I killed my family.”
“More specific.”
The flash of ire went through him again.
“My wife,” he strained. “And … my daughter.”
“How long ago?”
“Eight years, four months and seventeen days.”
“The reason?”
“My wife had a lover.”
The wrath began to shoot through his arms in jolts.
“Who was her lover?” asked Pope.
“Senator John Clarke Jones.”
Pope bowed his head with approval at each answered question.
“How did you kill them?”
“Why is that important?” The blood suddenly beat up hot inside him.
Pope waited for his temper to allay.
“It’s alright,” he replied, calmly. “You may be brief.”
Without realising, his hand had tightened into a fist and his appearance transfigured, becoming instantly feral.
“They feared me,” he began in a low, pleading voice. “By then, everyone feared us.” He stilled his breaths and lowered his eyes, and proceeded to recount point by point: “It was after an assignment in Angola. I came home and found my wife gone … I went to the senator’s residence … I killed the guards … I broke into the house … I found them together.” He started to tremble. “I killed them … together.”
“And your daughter?”
“No!” His voice changed extraordinarily. Long, juddering lungfuls of air rushed in and out of his nostrils.
“You have to,” said Pope, with consistent equanimity. “I promise you: a few hours from now, none of this will matter anymore.”
A long and nervous silence proceeded during which his mien shifted swiftly from raw anger to a kind of fearful sorrow, and the fever of fury tempered breath by slowing breath. His fist loosened and his fingers started to tremble. He lowered his eyes and his jaw hung loose and quivered.
“I …”he faltered. “I … did not know that she was there.”
He stopped.
“There is nothing more to tell,” he replied. “All I remember was the look in her eyes when she saw her mother’s blood on my hands. Everything after is a blur.”
“Why did you kill her?”
“I do not know.”
“Yes, you do,” Pope persisted daringly. “You have already told me.”
“I was not thinking.” He grappled with his memory as though his mind were reaching for fire. “She … she tried to run away,” he said.
“And you did not let her.”
“No,” he said. “No, I could not.”
“Why not?”
He paused on the question, mustering the pride he needed to look up and give the same answer he had given every time the same question had been asked of him before:
“Because I knew I could not live in the same world with her.”
“You wanted to … erase her,” Pope surmised with a murmur, “like the past?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.” There was a disturbing note of exultation in Pope’s whisper and the tiny black points in the middle of the bright blue orbs enlarged.
“I cannot change what I am.”
“No,” Pope nodded and the eerie simper returned. “But we can, Vincent. We can.”
