[ WP ] You get a deep cut for the first time in your life , instead of bone or muscle , you see wires .

I live alone, inside a box. 
 By some small grace it's not a cardboard one out on the street, but then again I was never very good at counting my blessings. I think somewhere down the line I just ran out and did n't notice. Squandered them. 
 I deserve to be in this box. It was my choices, my decisions that trapped me here. 
 Most of the homeless I met had this sense of camaraderie and tenacity about them - they had to. Animals that do n't run with the herd make for easy targets. I learned that lesson young. 
 It's true no matter where you stand. 
 Ca n't waste energy and time making new enemies just to stick your neck out for the one you know you already have. 
 The city pays top dollar for exterminators. 
 
 That's my job. 
 
 So I find myself spending another night inside the stale air of my little room, walls resonating with the endless rain. 
 I lie in my warm cot and envy the man freezing to death in the cardboard box. 
 
.................. 
 It was too easy, at first. Studying was second nature. I read voraciously, and when they took my books away I read them again in my head. The Educators thought I was cheating. They tried to tear me down with unfair tests and questions past the grade level. It came to outright accusations, nasty threats on what happened to to the academically dishonest. But then the Administrators arrived. I showed them. They were impressed, and therefore impressed with the school. Extra funding was in order. Suddenly I was a feather in their cap. Educators that had tried to make my life hell had nothing but praise - for me and their `` advanced teaching methods''. 
 
 This was when the other children taught me about not running with the herd. About making yourself a target. Their reasons may have been petty, but those bullies were a mercy compared to what would've awaited me in adulthood. 
 So I stopped. Smart, but never the smartest. Strong, but never the strongest. Safe, secure, average. 
 The pursuit of happiness is easy. People can find it on flashing screens or inside a bottle. 
 The pursuit of contentedness? That's elusive. That's worth chasing. 
 And so I tried to be content. At the end of high school, when the career exam spat out `` Enforcer'' I did n't bother to argue. 
 
 I liked the job well enough, or more appropriately did n't have an opinion about it. I just did it. Crime was at record lows. My career was spent patrolling in the rain re-reading in my mind, trying not to be nearby when anything serious happened. But I made mistakes. 
 I had never cared about the money, so I did n't take bribes. 
 I never cared enough to get violent, so I did n't commit brutality even when the Judges usually looked the other way. My unremarkable record got noticed for being so unremarkable. I got promoted into task force F013, nicknamed `` The Street Sweepers''. 
 They gave us a booklet. It outlined protocol, tactics, and appropriate terminology. We had to say exterminated, not murdered. They lived in nests or hives, not homes. We would travel deep into the city, always a step ahead of the Gentry to burn the land clean for them. 
 I could n't feign incompetence anymore. They fought to the death, especially when cornered. Every time I had to shoot I shot to kill. I became famous for efficiency. They started sending me on missions alone, partly to limit cost and partly for more propaganda. I forgot my books. Began to remember faces. 
 
 I was making more money than I ever needed, money that I could n't bring myself to spend. I gave it away, in secret. There was a woman, a struggling artist. All artists struggled in this city. She specialized in portraits, photo-realistic paintings of the Gentry and their children. We met when my boss commissioned my picture in full regalia as a `` reward''. She was miserable. 
 Every time she looked up from her work I would see it in her eyes. But getting to see her every day was a better reward than my aweful visage. After I wanted to commission pieces of my own. Paint whatever she wanted, whatever she felt like as long as she showed it to me. At first she thought I was trying to trick her, to label her as Degenerate to arrest and do with as I willed. I had to beg. It was the first time in my life I was brought to tears. I think she saw that I was miserable too, and pitied me. 
 They were spectacular, surreal. Combinations of every color, lines and shapes stabbed across the canvas. She had to burn them after, but I promised her I would remember. They helped me with the faces. 
 
 One day a squad was organized to destroy an underground brothel. I found her there. She had been using the money to support her friends, who had resorted to prostitution in desperation. I raced to shoot her in the head first. Some of the Enforcers preferred electricity. They liked to laugh at the expressions of people spasming on the ground in a pool of their own filth. She was too proud for that, I could n't let them do that to her. 
 I stared into the inferno until it was nothing but embers. Somewhere among them was her ashes. 
 
 I remembered every painting. 
 
........... 
 
 I left my cot and tore open the window. The wind and rain comes screaming in, but the box is still suffocates me. The city stretches out before me, countless tiny spires with thousands of twinkling lights that shamed the stars into hiding. The empty street is flooded with water reflecting the orange glow of the lamps, twisting as it flows. The fire bursts into my mind, and grows larger and larger and - 
 I hit the ground. I expect darkness but there's only the faces of the lamps and the faces of the people in my mind gazing down on me. My body is broken and bent, but somehow I'm not allowed to die. I manage to turn my head to see my severed arm resting in a pool of blood being cleaned away by the rain. Exposed wires spark and sizzle where they meet water. 
 
 `` Oh, look at what you've gone and done to yourself Cain.'' 
 A man steps out onto the street. 
 `` I'm disappointed in you. Perhaps the revolution must wait for a decade or two... but ah - this is what alpha testing is for.'' 
 
 He picks me up by my shattered torso like I weigh nothing, cradling me in his arms like a child. 
 
 `` I'm glad to see you at least feel remorse, Cain. But I ca n't let you go just yet. After all -'' he pauses and gestures to the alleyway. A doll is standing there, some strange metal mannequin. 
 I remember her eyes. 
 
 `` We both have mistakes to correct''
