The Assassin's Testimony

A short story about the sanctity of life and the tensions between love and responsibility.

It all came to a culmination, then. Generations of scheming, of waiting �" of subservience and pain had been suffered to come to this moment. One thousand years of staying silent had been pushed for, thousands upon thousands of lives laid down so that one girl, in one room, could murder one man.

Thousands of voices streamed into her mind at that moment, the voices of the living and the dead. The strength of millions of sacrificed lives flowed into her as she bowed �" obedient to the last �"  to the man who shortly would not be among the living anymore. 

He gently drew her down onto the bed as her mind, buoyed up by the others, was buzzing. Her body shook with the energy of it �" with the fear and the dread. She'd laced her own lips with the poison to kill, but hopefully she could kill him before it set in. No room for mistakes; after all, she had been put onto the planet for one reason.

Her reason to live was so no one would ever have only one reason to live again.

*

I don't have much time now.

Perhaps I'm writing this because I don't want to be immortalized or condemned. Maybe it will immortalize or condemn me. I've never been able to leave anything behind before �" nothing that could jeopardize the cause. It doesn't matter now. 

I was never given a name. Well, maybe it's more like I've been given many names, depending on who has owned me. Out of all of them, though, I liked Emma the best. I'd like to be remembered as Emma.

I remember the exact moment I came into existence. I suppose that most of us do, we Flower-children. There are other names for what we are, but I prefer to use that one. From the moment they brought me to conception, the others were talking to me. I think it's like that for all of us, again, but we never would have had a chance otherwise. 

From my coming into awareness, though, I was different. Chosen. No matter how much the researchers at the Genetic Manipulation Facility messed with my genes, made me immune to this, tried to reduce my aggressiveness… or take away my ability to resist, they could not change who I was. I've seen my files. Apparently, I would have been a redhead. As I grew, I always had the voices of Everyone with me. Until the moment when I suppose I would have been "born", I was carried and supported through the experimentation �" the changes. It seems strange. You would think that mere gene restructuring wouldn't hurt, but as I got bigger, it hurt more and more. I felt many others like me die. That's no secret. 

It doesn't take any effort for Flower Children to hear each other's thoughts. I bet you never saw that coming, did you? But I'm different. All of us are different in different ways, but I'm more different. The aspect that the researchers couldn't ever see is that I don't just hear the thoughts of my brothers and sisters… I hear the thoughts of everyone else too. 

From my earliest memories, though, I was being taught how to resist without being resistant. I learned not to react to the pain of the gene changes. I learned that, for the survival of as many of my brothers and sisters as possible, I must act as if I was a robot. Every day I lived in the heads of my fellows, listening to them stuff down defiance, watching them bow to men and woman who didn't even deserve to be looked upon by them.

After all, we're better. Didn't you create us that way? We're stronger, smarter, prettier, and have more self-control. We submit because we're patient, not because we don't have souls.

As soon as I was able to do any kind of work, I was sold. I was happy to get away, but prepared for the worst. After all, it was no secret what could happen in those houses. Prostitution, abuse, sometimes even death… But we all had to act like it was a secret. As if we didn't know. As if the world was always wonderful. Does it bite at you at all that an eight-year-old has more control over his or her emotions than you do? Sometimes I wish I'd had a childhood. That's why, right now, I'm waiting for the person to find me with the body of your emperor, writing about the rebellion that you nurtured yourselves, like roses in a hothouse.

I can't tell you all the plans that have gone into this one over the years, as they've all become fuzzy, like a legend. But for a thousand years we've been waiting and waiting until a person came who could, completely without suspicion, drive a stake into the heart of an empire.

That person is me. Ever since I was born, I was meant to die here.

Most of you weak-minded idiots would rebel against that, or call it something mystical and pathetic like fate. Many of you would fight it, go in another direction. It's not that I'm forced to die here, but that I understand something that you don't. In order to be myself, I have to be part of everyone else. It's just who I am. 

I've had good masters and bad masters, people that loved me and people that hated me. I even fell in love. You didn't think we had that capacity, did you? 

And, well, for my ability to sit at the desk of the dead man who I have murdered and think almost nothing of it �" you have only yourselves to blame for that. Whether life is precious or life is not isn't important to me. All I know is this: My life is important to me. The lives of the millions who have died by your hands are important to me. And one more death to end the long massacre is nothing to me.

Okay, that's a lie.

I didn't want to kill him. I honestly didn't.

I mentioned falling in love, right? And liking the name Emma?

Charlie was the one that gave that name to me. 

What the hell, I've got at least three hours before anyone comes in here.

Emperor Charles was the one who gave my name to me. I'd never met a human before �" only animals who would pounce on me at every turn. However, as I got closer to Charlie, I realized what being a human was supposed to be. When he kissed me for the first time, it was the first time I reacted without thinking �" the first time I allowed passion to control my body.

I'm blocking them out now. It's lonely here, sitting, without my mind full of voices.

Before today, I never realized that being human was supposed to be imbued with kindness. That a man, no matter what his station, could bend down and help a lowly servant �" lower even! A Gen-Slave. In his mind was such unbridled compassion, such unabashed honesty… it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

But as I fell in love with his humanity, I realized something else too. That no matter how much I loved him and his humanity, unless he was dead I would never be allowed to be human. That the thousands of children that endure indignities beyond imagination could never be human unless the man I love died, and, in that moment of weakness, every gen-slave, every flower-child rose up and quietly stood their ground.

Now he's dead and I can be human. And it hurts. Humanity at his expense hurts. This is why I'm leaving this letter. Because, even though my brothers and sisters want me to run away, I'm not going to. Instead, when you find this room, you're going to see me die. It's not a simple thing, dying, but there's no way I can remain alive anymore. I killed him for their freedom. I killed an innocent man for crimes he did not commit, simply because he held the position of power that could set them free.

Here are the questions historians are going to ask. I'll save you a thousand years of debate. 

Did I kill him? Yes. 

Did I love him? More than anything. 

Do I regret it? With every drop of blood in my body.

Would I do it again? A million times.

I would never give up falling in love with him even if I had the chance to live my life again, just like I would kill him again if I had to live my miserable, short life all over again. Because he gave me �" the girl who lived to die �"  a reason to live and a reason to die. There's no way I would ever give that up.

My name is Emma. I was born in a test tube in a laboratory. From the moment that my soul came into being, I was groomed for this moment. I murdered the most wonderful, human man I have ever met so that I and thousands of others would have the chance to be human. Don't put me in a history book as a dark shadow in a corner. I'm not a demon and I'm not an angel. I'm not a savior and I'm not a destroyer. I'm just myself �" every broken inch of me. I hated people and I loved people. I chose to kill and I'm choosing to die. You may think I have no right to die with the one I killed, but now that he's dead, I'm being selfish… or human one time. 

It's nearly sunrise now. My last one. Or my first one? That poison had more effect on me than I thought it did. 

To my brothers and sisters: Remember this. The reason I'm dying now is for you too. I didn't kill this man so that we could kill everyone who enslaved us. I killed him so that all of us would have a chance to live in freedom. Don't squander that on revenge and murder, or I'll personally come back from the dead and haunt you all for it. 

Goodbye.

Sincerely,

Emma

*

The light was creeping over the room now �" the girl with the long black braid standing in the window �" the light of a new morning. Most of the night-guards were Gen-Slaves as well, which is why she'd been undisturbed the entire night. The sheets of parchment were in her hand, tidily tied into a roll with a ribbon from the curtain. Pounding steps sounded down the corridor and she knew that it would have begun �" the true rebellion. Thousands of Flower-Children would fight back, fight against their very genetic instincts to be free. Quietly, she sat down on the bed next to the body, touching the blood-matted brown hair with slender white fingers before roughly drawing out a knife. 

The first guard burst into the room as she contemplated the filthy blade, hysterically laughing at the ridiculousness of wanting to clean a dirty knife before she committed suicide. 

Her eyes burned with unnamed emotion �" an expression that her face seemed unused to, like a muscle that she'd only exercised rarely. For a moment, the blade hung loosely in her hands, still dripping with the clotted blood of the body of the Emperor. 

The voices that had been battering away at her protected mind since she'd shut them out a mere hour ago weakened for a moment, and she allowed herself a dangerous moment of relaxation. However, in that moment, a male voice poured through her mind. "P24578!" the voice cried, desperate to get her attention. 

She froze, her eyes focusing on nothing. "My name… is Emma," she said quietly, both out loud and in her mind. Then, frighteningly, she smiled, the tension in the air suddenly snapping as she made some decision.

Before anyone could stop her she had driven the knife into her own temple, the fire in her eyes suddenly dying as her eyes rolled up into her head. 

The guards stared for a moment, unable to move. The emperor was dead. His killer was dead. The Gen-Slaves of the world seemed to have gone mad. 

And there was a scroll in the assassin's hand…

Author's Note

I had no idea what genre to put this in...

Reviews

[Strigoikillerr]

What an interesting and unique story you have here. So these Gen-Slaves are like genetically altered slaves? The story is a bit confusing here and there, but I think it has great potential! Very creative.. ^^