After the Plague

XVI. Escape!

I’m dead and deserved to be treated as such. 

Francis’s mind had turned and churned in the hours he had been kept pent up Plague. 

I was wrong to think I was ever worth something. A messiah and a beggar dress in the same clothes. I had been so sure. How cruel the world is, to give me such ambitions. 

When he had been much younger, even before his rise to power in the government, he had stumbled upon a store room in the senate house where old music was kept. CDs, records, and countless mp3s were all stored in towers in a large warehouse, completely forbidden from ever being listened to again. At first his youthful attitude had simply been fascinated by the obsolete forms of data collection, but soon he had acquired an mp3 player from one of the receptionists and listened to it. 

And what bliss.

At times he could still hear the notes as they graced his ears. He spent hours listening to the music.

Nothing made in the modern era compares. This is inspiration.

Those hours had driven him to fully formulate his plan and reach the power that he had.

It wasn’t until those pigs found out. Power is not for the weak.

Even then, the music soothed him, until he had been displaced and forced to hide. 

I don’t deserve it. 

The worst was the fact that he remembered who he had once been. Cunning, full of energy, people liked me. I was a leader, they always said that. A natural. How cruel this world is. I have failed.

He closed his eyes and waited.

Creeeeeeeek.

The door slide open, disturbing the angel of death’s descent.

Please be the executioner. 

He had lost all sense of time. Morning and night seemed like just words to him. 

“Francis,” a female voice hissed at him.

He kept his eyes closed, ready for the bullet to strike.

“Francis, get up,” she whispered. “You’re leaving here.”

A public execution, how fitting. 

“Francis!” she said louder, forcibly turning him over onto his back. He slowly opened his, and the woman blurred into focus.

Joanna. 

Energy suddenly filled his body, and he crawled backward to the other end of the cell. “What do you want?”

“We’re leaving,” she said calmly. 

“So they sent their dog? The king doesn’t have the gall to pull the trigger himself?”

“I’m not killing you, I’m letting you out.”

“And they don’t even have the integrity to tell the truth? Where is a sense of honor these days?”

Joanna groaned and knelt down to him. “Listen, I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done, do you hear that? I’m not who you think I am.”

“I have no allies.”

“I didn’t say you did. My name isn’t Joanna. It’s Kira Blackwell, and I’m from Genesis City. I was behind the Gateway until just a few weeks ago. I’m not with the king.”

Francis looked straight into her face. He had lied enough to see that there was truth in the unlikely circumstances of her words. “Giving you all the more reason to end my life.”