Prison

November 1, 2007

Xenet 71.43.1 System Msg

TTY31201.11.01

Network Connection Enabled
_____________________________

I've disobeyed an order, and I don't even know why. No idea what's going to happen now. There is no discharge in the AFS; they're either going to let it slide or let me swing.

I was sent into Torcastra for two prisoners, a Forean and a man. Found the lizard just fine, and once she got her sea-legs, she turned out to be pretty useful covering my back. But the man, well... he was in a bad way. Already most of the way to being machina, but he was still himself, or something like himself. He knew what they'd made him, and what was waiting for him on the outside. He could leave Torcastra, but he'd never escape the prison his mechanical body had become. At best we'd keep him for research. He asked me to kill him. And against my orders to bring him out alive, I did it.

I thought it was a mercy kill at the time. That's what I reported it as. But the more I think about it, the less sure I am. He really could have been useful to us, even as machina, even as a lab experiment. And his suffering doesn't outweigh our need to win. Sometimes it takes sacrifice. And I think I knew all that when I put a bullet in his head. It was an irrational thing, an emotional impulse, that made me pull the trigger.

I think I hated him. He was still human inside, no matter what they'd done to the meat. He could speak, and he could fear what his future outside Torcastra held. He asked me, begged me to kill him just to spare him that. And it felt like broken glass in my guts, because he made me wonder if he was the only one. I've never had any trouble gunning down machina because I never let myself think of them as human. I hated this one for making me doubt. And I couldn't stand to live in the same world he did.

Mercy kill. That's the story I'll stick to. But it sure as shit wasn't mercy for him.

~ Erika Kessler