I opened my eyes slowly and had to adjust to the light, which became more abrasive due to my blurry vision. I tried to sit up, but it stung right in my gut. That's when I recalled. Maria stormed in from the kitchen, finding me with tears in my eyes trying desperately to sit up despite the pain. She rushed over to me, and I could barely make out the worry in her face before she was right there and put me on my back.
"Stay down, Rob. You've been shot, if you remember."
"I remember." I squeezed out.
"Okay. I've cleansed, stitched and patched the wound up. You'll survive, and you'll heal. We might need to get you a blood transfusion, but I don't know how much you lost."
"Think I covered the wound with my hand while I was waiting."
She shook her head.
"Usually not enough."
"How long has it been?"
"Two hours."
"Drive me home, Maria."
"No. You're staying here and healing up. Gab is asleep right now and didn't pick up the phone, so we'll have to wait until morning to tell him what happened."
"That's the problem, Maria. Gab isn't asleep. He's dead."
Maria's eyes widened, and she began stammering something through the shock and rage I saw on her face before I cut in.
"The execution squad. They killed my family."
"The... the kids too?"
"That's what Russels said."
Maria clenched her fist and nodded.
"Sure. I'll take you home."
"Thank you."
I tried to stand up, but it hurt too much. Maria rolled me out on an ironing board, brought me to the garage and put me on my back in the back seat of her car again. She sat down, squeezed the steering wheel until her knuckles whitened and then punched the gas.
We arrived maybe fifteen minutes later. Maria carried me to the elevator and brought me up. I could barely even hear my own thoughts through the ringing in my ears that the pain of being slightly folded over caused. Once we were inside she put me down and pulled out her gun. The inside of the cramped apartment I called home was dark. Silent. Void. It was like a void. Maria slowly but surely secured the location and searched it for any camera equipment or whatever that would reveal our location, but she found nothing. She did, however, find the bodies. They were in the kids' room. Gab was in his wheelchair, bent backwards and covered in still-fresh blood. His handsome face was blown away, leaving only a gaping void in its place. I could only stare for a while, in disbelief.
He was innocent. More than innocent.
I then looked down at the kids' corpses on the floor. David, whose pale face was tearstained and had its lower jaw blown clean off, was clutching his T-rex figure in his tiny little hands. Erica wasn't holding anything, but her eyes were still wide in horror. The bullet hole was through her chest. There was probably nothing of her big heart left now.
But, then again, that's what the company does, isn't it?
I, despite the pain, fell to my knees. The blur in the lower half of my vision and the droplets streaming down my face told my numb mind that I was crying. Maria stepped up behind me and held me, rocked me back and forth for what felt like hours while I clutched her hands closely to my chest.
Why did this happen? Did I do anything wrong, really? Does that even matter?
I looked at the bloody scene before me. Tilted my head, startling Maria a little. Through the blazing, white-hot inferno in my head and in my chest and in my veins and in my throat and in my stomach and in my soul I could still feel this one doubt. Was this my fault?
I did lots of things wrong, because I could only do wrong things. If I didn't work for a company in this country, I would not earn any money and my family would starve, and starting something of my own isn't a good option nowadays. Now, since I did work for a company, I would only have had to follow regulations and do as I was told and my family would have been safe. But that would have left nearly a quarter million starving people scammed and leeched off of, which wouldn't have been moral of me. But I should have known they would end me, end my family, if I didn't do it anyway. There was never any winning, I can never win. We can never win. Only lose, only suffer. But by God, I will make them lose, and I will make them suffer. If it is the last thing I ever do, that is what I will do.
"Maria," I said, "I want to end them. I want to end them all. Are you in?"
She looked at me as I tilted my head up to meet her gaze, and while wiping away her tears she nodded.
"I know some people. I can make it happen. Don't worry. We'll make every single one of them pay."
I took a good, long look at the corpses before me. They were the product of the void that permeates through this world, the lack of anything human or moral or hopeful, the antithesis of all that we hold dear. They were the product of the void that I hate, and the product of me. I made the wrong choices, and they died. Hundreds of thousands of people are still lacking power and are getting scammed regardless. They died for nothing. Their deaths merely became a part of the void, of the nothingness that I always hated, and my foolishness drove them there. No more. I wished to never feed the void again, but to part these skies upon a tower of the corpses of those who do. No, I swore it.