"You have officially been charged with seventeen counts of murder, the murder of a law enforcement officer, evading arrest…"
The prosecutor's voice washed over the courtroom, dull and lifeless, as she read down a long list of convicted charges.
'Well-dressed, middle-aged, but no ring. She's either divorced or never got married, the type to choose work over everything else,' Orion observed calmly as he tried to make eye contact with her.
He sat in the defendant's chair, hands cuffed in front of him, posture relaxed. Too relaxed. Like he was waiting for routine bloodwork rather than the verdict of his life.
'Just look at those greys and wrinkles. Stress kills much more than I ever could.'
A faint twitch pulled at the corner of his mouth as he suppressed a laugh.
Every time he shifted ever so slightly or looked around the courtroom, the guards beside him stiffened. Their grips tightened as they prepared for action. One even gulped nervously.
'Am I really that terrifying?' Orion wondered. 'I used to be called charming and friendly. Now, I'm suddenly a monster. I mean, they're not wrong, but it's interesting how quickly perception can change.'
'People really are worse than sheep.'
Orion didn't bow his head or pretend to be remorseful; if anything, he seemed disinterested, as if this wasn't even his case.
Fear was for people who still had something left.
Friends.
Family.
A future.
He had lost that all long before he was dragged into this courtroom.
'And only seventeen?' he noted internally. 'They really are bad at their jobs. That's not even half.'
Finally, the prosecutor finished speaking, and silence crashed down.
It was heavy and suffocating.
Orion lifted his eyes and looked around.
Hatred greeted him.
Families of his victims stared as if they wanted to tear him apart with their bare hands. Journalists leaned forward, eyes gleaming, fingers itching over recorders and cameras. Police officers sat rigid, rage carved into their expressions.
And then there were the others.
The curious ones.
The people who had come to see a monster in the flesh.
So many eyes burning into him.
Yet inside, there was nothing.
The judge cleared their throat, and all attention went to them.
"Dr Orion Stone. You hid among us. You abused your profession to conceal your crimes. You believed yourself entitled to decide who deserved to live, guided by your own twisted sense of morality. But when you murdered a law enforcement officer, you crossed a line even you cannot justify."
'I didn't want to kill him,' Orion thought. 'He just refused to stop digging.'
'As for the others, well, I'd kill them all again if I could.'
Not that he said anything aloud - there was no point.
The judge continued, voice swelling with rehearsed bravado. "You are hereby sentenced to death by lethal injection."
Bang!
The gavel came down.
Immediately, two guards grabbed his arms.
"Get up," one instructed.
"Sick freak," the other muttered under his breath.
Orion heard him clearly. He simply smiled and stood, allowing himself to be led away.
'Words are wasted on people like them,' he thought. 'They'd never understand, nor do I need to explain myself to anyone.'
And besides, this outcome had always been waiting for him.
'The killer getting killed, it's only right.'
Cameras exploded the moment he was dragged out of the courtroom and into the hallway.
Flash after flash assaulted his vision as the guards tried to weave through the crowd.
"Do you regret it?"
"Why did you do it?"
"Anything to say to the families?"
Orion turned his head just enough for the cameras to catch his face.
"Here," he said casually. "Let me help."
He smiled and winked as he was dragged away.
The internet devoured it within minutes - it was the least he could do to keep his name alive.
Dr Orion Stone.
The Fallen Angel of Medicine.
The Devil with a Stethoscope.
A charming monster with an empty heart.
'I don't really like the spotlight, but who gives a fuck now? Might as well make some content for those true crime podcasts I used to listen to.'
-
The days before his execution blurred together.
Interrogations ended quickly once the authorities realised he wouldn't break, nor would he confess to any additional crimes.
The only thing they gained from questioning him was frustration.
Orion remained smug and relaxed, treating the sessions less like interrogations and more like a way to pass the time. He toyed with the detectives, turning their questions back on them, studying their reactions, using them as little more than entertainment.
Their methods were wasted on him. Good cop, bad cop. Emotional appeals. Manufactured sympathy. He had studied those tactics long before he ever sat on the other side of the table.
And with the death penalty already issued, there was little incentive to push further. He was receiving the maximum punishment available. Whatever else he had done could be uncovered long after he was gone.
So Orion was left alone.
His world shrank to a stone cell barely long enough to lie down in. The walls pressed in, cold and unmoving. A narrow slit of a window allowed no sunlight, only a dull grey reminder that the outside world still existed without him.
Meals arrived twice a day.
It was flavourless grey sludge, but that wasn't even the worst part.
Surprisingly, it was the lack of human interaction.
He never expected that.
There were no words, just the scrape of metal and the clang of the hatch closing.
In the stillness, his thoughts turned inward.
Memories he thought he had long suppressed arose, especially the day the darkness within him was born.
From his father's drunken voice, slurring accusations.
To a knife slipping into flesh.
To warm and sticky blood coating his hands.
To his mother's desperate struggle as her strength faded.
To the silence afterwards...
That silence had shaped him.
Not into a hero.
Not into a victim.
But into someone who understood something most people never would.
Control.
It was what everyone sought, whether they realised it or not.
Some chased it within the home. Others sought it out in the wider world. Some used force through physical strength, wealth, or influence. Others were more subtle, wielding manipulation, pity, or deception instead.
Everyone wanted power in whatever form they could grasp.
Once that realisation settled in, his mask was created.
Pain never scared him after that. Death never disturbed him. Other people trembled before those things; Orion watched them with curiosity.
He'd diagnosed himself years ago, far more accurately than any psychologist ever could. Orion recognised the patterns early:
Superficial charm, the kind that let him slip into any room and make people think he belonged there.
Cold, calculated actions, every move weighed and measured without the nuisance of guilt.
A hollow space where empathy should have been, though he'd learned how to mimic it well enough to fool most.
Long-term deception that let him maintain whatever mask the moment required.
A taste for risk that pushed him into situations any sane person would've avoided.
There were overlapping tendencies, of course - traits people loved to bundle into tidy labels:
Disregard for rules.
Deceit sharpened into an art.
A touch of narcissism, though he'd always thought it was simply accuracy.
And that simmering edge of aggression, the kind that flared when provoked.
He certainly had psychopathic tendencies, and he would be an idiot not to see that.
But crazy?
No.
That word was lazy and thrown around by people who needed simple explanations for things that made them uncomfortable.
Orion didn't care what others thought of him.
It had never mattered.
'I'm not broken,' he often thought as he stared at the ceiling. 'This world is.'
-
The week crawled by.
He attempted to escape twice, mostly out of boredom.
First, a fake seizure meant to draw a guard close.
It ended with tasers.
The ache still lingered deep in his bones.
The second attempt was even more pathetic - trying to pry his toilet off the wall like he had seen done in movies.
After that, they placed him in solitary confinement.
A smaller cell. No sound. No vents. No illusions of escape.
Just him.
When the guard arrived with a clipboard, Orion looked up.
"Final request?"
"Cigarettes."
The guard snorted. "Not a chance."
"Then nothing," Orion replied. "Hunger's fine."
As the footsteps faded, Orion leaned back.
'It's funny,' he thought.
Granger used to smoke the cheapest cigarettes imaginable. The smell always bothered him.
Now, facing death, that was what his mind clung to.
Detective Granger.
The man who saw through his mask.
The man who ruined him.
The only kill that had been emotional, well, aside from his first.
'I guess I'll see you soon,' Orion thought.
Morning arrived cold.
The cuffs clicked shut around his wrists. The sound felt ceremonial.
They walked him down the 'Last Mile'.
Faces waited behind reinforced glass. Some cried. Some smiled. Some looked afraid.
"Any last words, Doctor?"
He hadn't planned to speak.
But the words came anyway.
"If there's a hell," Orion said calmly, "I'll crawl out of it, kill the devil himself, and come after every one of you next."
Gasps erupted. Shouts followed. Fear rippled through the room.
Seeing them shaken, despite him being shackled and moments from death, Orion couldn't help but be amused.
He laughed as they strapped him into the chair, staring directly into the camera across the glass.
'It's almost over. Might as well give them a show.'
The lights hummed overhead.
He'd declined prayers or clergy.
If God existed, which was a very logical possibility, they had long since forsaken Him. Either way, they would meet soon enough anyway.
Without any further warning, the needle was slid into his arm.
Cold spread through his veins.
His body grew heavy.
Breathing slowed.
Sight dimmed.
'So this is it,' he thought. 'Underwhelming.'
He'd walked beside death his entire life - saving people from it, dragging others into it.
Now that he stood at its threshold, it barely stirred him.
No regret.
No guilt.
Only a faint, instinctive fear buried deep within the human animal - the fear of the unknown.
Was there an afterlife?
Oblivion?
Rebirth?
There was no way to know without stepping through.
He accepted it without resistance.
No screaming.
No begging.
Just steady breaths until even that faded.
Darkness consumed everything.
For a moment, Orion thought it was over.
Finished.
Done.
Perhaps he could finally rest.
But death, it seemed, had other plans.
Because this wasn't the end for Orion Stone...
It was only the beginning.