What Must Be Done
Hand me the component please. No, not that one, the one with the spiral top. Ah yes, that one.
As I was saying, Washington-needs some more sealent, the extra powerful type-Washington has betrayed me you see. They believed that they could silence me, one of their finest minds and one of their finest men, in one bold stroke. Tsk, tsk, tsk, that is not the case for me. I will not go quietly into my grave; I'll take as many of those thrice damned Verbenschwa Purge Squad soldiers and their handlers, and as many governmental figures as I can before I die. I did what I had to do, made a good living doing it even though what I was doing was morally wrong and hideously horrible, but I went along with it anyways. They told me what to do with the subjects that they gave me, and I did what they told me to do, exceeded even their highest expectations in the experiments. You read the files on the computer didn't you? They may be just a little tedious, but they are highly informative on what we did if you are interested.
No, no, no, don't move it just yet. It needs to settle a little bit before me move it. If we move it around too much, the sealent will crack and we will have to start all over from the very beginning. Not something I am interested in doing you no doubt know.
Washington... it's become sick to the core, but considering the other major cities that I've been in, it's a golden apple by far. Moscow, Taurium, many others, trust me, they are worse than Washington if that's possible. That doesn't mean I sanction what we did though all those times... I despised it more than you can imagine. More than you can possibly imagine.
I had hoped to get a little group of people that thought the same like me, and I was working on doing that until I was warned off about the incoming Verbenschwa dispatched to dispose of me. How despicable, the bastards. They would have needed almost two hundred men to take me down, no less, and I would have killed so many of them it would have been a pyrrhic victory. Not that it matters any more. The men and women I was talking too to work something out with are all dead now, and only I remain.
There we go, it's settled down right where we need it to. Careful with it, otherwise you won't have your hands after that.
You see, I was born a Deutschlander. Don't look at me with that expression or that look, it's not a crime to admit it. Though I did live near the border and have an accent much like that of the standard American person, I can speak German as well. Lovely language all things considered... Berlin was horrible though. Hated it, all of the Reich nonsense that went on over there. I defected of course, but now I wonder if that was a good idea in the first place.
Not that Washington was much better... people ask themselves why such evil things go on in the world like they do, but I know the answer. It is men's nature isn't it to harm their fellow man, otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here right now putting this device of mine together right now. But this needs to be done... I can die at any time and if I don't finish what I planned to do, and do what must be done, then I will have lived and died in vain when so many of my cohorts and friends died where they were.
We have lived a lie you see all this time. The State, the State, the State, oh we are all supposed to love and serve the State as long as we live. That's not living, that's not excelling in life. That's following a straight path until we drop off the edge of a cliff and into our graves. Why should we do that when our own government orders killings of people that threaten the State and the Republic as a whole? It's all a farce, all of this supposed democracy we have. If you notice, the People's Parliament does not have a whole lot of power in the State now do they? Shake your head all you want, but you know that it is true; they hold about as much power over what the president and the military general's will do like a daisy has control over what the sun does. But I am thoroughly convinced that they know all about the killings, the executions, what's happened to the people who speak up and speak out against what we do in the government. They know, otherwise they would open up their mouths as well.
When I first found out, I couldn't comprehend the scope of what we were doing. You just can't once you first find out-
Dammit! Careful with that right there unless you wish to blow up everything within twelve city blocs of us!
Thank god that didn't fall. Where was I again? Ah yes.
You no doubt remember the Lai-Zhou Rebellion right? That promising young Chinese man who had been ready to topple the world? Charismatic, young, handsome, born organizer and leader, he could convince a starving pit bull not to eat a freshly cooked steak laid down in front of him. He had a promising career in the Bailev Party he did, but he threw it all away when he found out what the government had been doing. Then he gathered up about five hundred thousand people in the countryside and holed up in the mountains, launching occasional missile strikes at cities and towns and fending off the army... Nobody knew that but a select few, and they were still spreading the word of what had been going on. The agent program, the goals of the Verbenschwa, what the State was working on...
Didn't do Lai a bit of good when they dropped a bunker buster on him. Killed him instantly, and most of the people that knew what he knew. In effect, the State had eliminated their biggest rival, in a fashion that strongly hinted at a rat within the organization that Lai had built up in the rebellion. Didn't do the rat a bit of good though when the railguns started raining down hyperkinetic shells down on the mountains and blasted out all of the rebels. All of the survivors were either gunned down or taken to "special facilities" out far away. I'm not even sure Washington has records on them anymore, not that many of the people there would truly care about what had happened.
On my count pull that cap off and jam the wires in there. You have ten seconds to do that, and an additional five seconds just in case if one wire is in the right spot. If you smell something bad, you will be plastered to the ceiling shortly. The smell should warn you when something is going wrong.
Well, that and the fact I'll be scraping what is left of you off of the ceiling as well.
.....Alright. Go.
See? Didn't take too long at all! You almost pissed yourself though, I bet.
Like I may have mentioned earlier, I didn't believe what I was doing was wrong. I had a sharp mind, three high level degrees, and a drive to exceed at what I could do. It was amazing what I could do when I put my mind to it, and I showed off quite a bit when I was assigned whatever tasks I was given. What took others minutes took me seconds. What took teams hours, I needed merely minutes. Days for others was about the length of a lunch break for myself, and I could tell that others feared me, hated me, and indeed even wanted to be me. Some tried to work with me, but I trusted no one except for my special subordinates. I never fully dictated any of my assignments or tasks I had just to my assistants, which is why I'm helping out with this right now.
They came to me, asked me to design a better version of the spice through biological mutations and genetic engineering. The Blue Spice they had back then for the agent program was a horrendous peace of work. It had a seventy percent likelihood of working, caused intense burns in the mouth and throat of user, and was linked to multiple counts of cancer. Essentially, it was pathetic and needed to be replaced. It took me weeks of researching, mathematical formulas, tests and experiments as well as a large amount of coffee before I finally came up with the best version; the Black Spice. It could not be manufactured in large quantities at first, and indeed today they have trouble with it, and I was commissioned to make a similar but cheaper version of the Black Spice. Barely three days later and the Red Spice was formed and prepared for mass production.
I was good at that job and that task, which is why they assigned me other tasks similar to that. I had to develop a truth serum of a powerful variety, one that is still used today in the interrogation dungeons in New York, a powerful hallucination inducing drug used to lull prisoners into a false sense of security and used in the Bastard's Legion Corps. So many different ones I can't even name them off the top of my head.
Careful with that. Did I not tell you how I got the grafts on the back of my hand?
I did tasks similar to that for nearly a decade, developing more potent and dangerous forms of drugs that the State could use for a variety of reasons and causes. I got bitter over time though, thought that my talent was being wasted on these useless tasks. I was reaching a breaking over time as well; marriage came apart, divorce was long and ugly, kids despised me. I bought a Sarkov shotgun one night, loaded it up with a cartridge of twenty shells, stood by the door and donned my jacket, got into the car and was prepared to go. That's when I got the call.
It was my old supervisor, excuse me, my late supervisor calling me for a question. Would I be interested in working on a bioweapons program for the Agent corps, and the Verbenschwa as well?
Hell yes, I said. What's the payout though?
He told me about four hundred million dollars or so. I'd have a budge of fifty billion to work with, unlimited test subjects as well. Mostly political prisoners and enemies of the State. Great labs, facilities, located somewhere near Cassius Array.
I asked him if he could send a hit squad to kill my wife, her new boyfriend as well. He asked me if I wanted any of my children dead as well. No, I said.
He told me I could kill her myself and I wouldn't receive any penalty whatsoever. He hung up and left me to ponder to myself what I could do.
I arrived at the facility late the next day. Tossed my bloody coat in the incinerator and started up at work. Those twelve murders never were solved after all, case went cold.
Don't give me that look, pay attention to what your'e doing or you will be losing fingers.
So for five years I worked on creating a plausible bioweapons project that would earn me respect and honor. I worked nonstop, worked as hard as I could, did what needed to be done. Collapsed from exhaustion quite a bit of times, but I consumed Black Spice to give me more energy to keep going, keep working. You could call me a workaholic I guess, doesn't really matter to me.
One day though something changed. The failure of a recently created hybrid had me frustrated, so I ordered the next deceased subject killed by agents as part of a revenge plot centered on the leakege of information outside of the government.
It turned out that man was my brother.
Don't say you are sorry, keep working here. Yes he was my brother, a good man and a general. He got wrapped up in what he should not have wrapped up in, and he got killed for it. His fort was ransacked, burned out, though he had a surprise for the agents inside; he'd wired the entire place to blow apart. They escaped though and burned a pancake house down for good measure.
And then.... I started sabotaging my work. They found out of course, and I was warned off a variety of times. Multiple events occurred and I ended up escaping by cutting my way through sixty or so security guards.
Yes, wire that right there. Careful now.
What?
Yes, I am fully prepared to do this.
Stop arguing and hand me the damn detonators.
I'll start with the Parliament. The government. Everything.
I won't need mercy from god. All of the others will.
Long live the State.
. There will be plenty more of Dacha and Tarlin to come.
.
First thing i saw in my mind:
