The Rising Dawn

Chapter Twenty-Four - One Day to Murder

Nika sat with her knees under her chin, lost in thought. It was silent on this rooftop, the horizon hidden in haze. Sometimes you forgot how dirty the world was until you stood up high and looked over all of it, and then looked up at the vast, clean dome of sky above you.

 It made Nika feel unclean and contaminated. It made her feel grounded and trapped. It made her feel stronger.

 As you grow older, you forget how to be simple. You get so caught up in being fair and just, in seeing both sides of the argument, in understanding other people, that you forget that right and wrong are two clear and simple things.

  Nika sat and tried to work it out. Once upon a time, it had all been easy. This is right. This is wrong. This is black. This is white. She hadn’t been ignorant or naïve then. She had been far smarter than she was now, far less complicated.

 She had to find the place where there was no grey area. She was walking foreign country, far beyond what she knew. She knew about small crimes and street skirmishes and executions. She knew about little lives and little pains.

 Nika knew nothing about big worlds and big things becoming real. She had no experience with changing the world, with leading people to disaster, with doing things that nobody thought it was possible to do.

 She was lost and the only way to find an anchor again was to remember what was right and what was wrong. She had to remember her conscience. It was the strangest thing to lose but she had lost it, buried it.

 Nika was scared. She was a coward. She had hidden that fact, crushed it beneath layers of lies and stories, pretended so hard that even she forgot. She lied well enough to change the truth. But now it was all surfacing again, all that panic, all that fear.

 Murder was wrong. That was what she had to remember. No hiding behind lies and justification. No excuses. No shifting of the blame, no adjusting of perspective, no obscuring the facts. It was wrong to kill.

 Nika found it. The world straightened out with all the complex creases of an adult world realigning. This was right. This was wrong. This was black. This was white. Such simple things. Good, bad. Happy, sad.

“One big moment,” Nika murmured. “One shot. We call in everyone and we take out everything in one blow. We die doing it, or we live with the consequences.”

Nika stood up and walked away from the rooftops feeling more confident than she had done in days. The world was where it had always been.

“We’re taking them down,” Nika announced, marching inside.

“Well, that’s a surprise,” Aono raised an eyebrow. “The old Nika is back.”

“We’re taking them down,” Nika repeated. “But we need a time and a place. As soon as possible. Anyone?”

“If we publically advance,” the Raven considered, “they’ll send guards to meet us. We can shoot it out on the streets.”

“We’ll catch civilians in the crossfire,” Nika shook her head. “Nothing doing.”

“Who cares about civilians?” the Raven demanded. “This is for the greater good.”

Nika flew at him across the room, knife drawn.

“Never, ever forget,” she hissed. “Never forget that this is a crime! That this is murder! That what we are doing is wrong!”

“Then why are we doing it?” the Raven roared.

“Because someone must! Because bad things must be done in the name of good things! Because sometimes you have to make the choice to be evil where no one else will! Because we know and they do not.”