R-09 and I walked past R-84 and headed to the hallway to the right of the waiting room, which was just a few feet away next to the bathrooms, maintaining the formation we had taken when we had headed to the bathrooms. R-84 maintained his position at the entrance to the hallway, and R-09 and I took charge of clearing the rooms that flanked the hallway to the left and right. I would take charge of clearing the rooms that lined to the right, and R-09 would take charge of the rooms that lined to the left.
Opening the door of the first room, what I found at the back of it was a woman who was about to pick up a baby that was lying on a stretcher. When she sensed my presence, she quickly grabbed the baby and brought him close to her chest, protecting him.
“Please, no!”
Seeing that I had raised my gun in her direction, the woman let out a scream that tore at her throat, causing the baby in her arms to begin crying. Like a judge's gavel righting the chaos of a courtroom, the sound of my gunshot suppressed the screams of the woman and baby when the bullet pierced the baby's skull and the woman's heart. The last echoes of their lives, still resonating in my mind, were drowned out by the sound of the bullet shell that jingled on the floor.
They're just resources, I reminded myself.
However, as I looked at the corpses I had just created with my own hands, a disturbing thought began to bear fruit deep in my mind.
Even though my Internal System evaluates these actions as a logical process, for some reason it doesn't seem correct to me.
As long as I can remember, this was the first time that something deep within me questioned the logical nature of my Internal System. Without realizing it, the sight of these corpses produced a psychic pain that I couldn’t decipher.
After observing the corpses for a few more seconds, I left the room. As I did so, I saw R-09 come out of the front room.
“Clear. (Haah)” he said as he made his way through the hallway toward his next target.
“Two victims confirmed. (Haargh),” I replied, generating a report of my raid while watching his back.
Due to the new conflicts in my subconscious, I now evaluated the executions we were carrying out differently.
When R-09 opened the door of his next room, a patient who was waiting for him from inside, next to the door, positioned in his blind spot, attacked him.
“Ghh!” the patient gasped.
R-09 stepped back to the center of the hallway. With his left hand, he moved the rifle that the patient was trying to snatch from him towards his back and altered the physical universe as he placed his right hand on the patient's head.
Releasing a black mist wrapped in red sparks of light from his right hand, R-09 generated a high-frequency electrical discharge, strong enough to completely nullify the electrochemical activity of the patient's brain, killing him instantly. Tears of blood flowed from the patient's eyes when his brain exploded from the inside. The lifeless body was pushed to the ground a second later, falling next to the entrance of the room. R-09 had just used a tool available to all Skulls Paladins, which, in this mission, had been discarded by us. A ranged weapon would bring a quicker kill than a weapon that was only effective if we got close and made physical contact with our targets. And time was the most important parameter in achieving the success of our current mission.
“One kill confirmed. (Haargh)” R-09 generated the record of his kill and entered the room. A woman's pleading cries could be heard, silenced by two shots from R-09.
I entered the next room.
Scanning it, I found four beds occupied by patients hooked up to medical machines. One of them was staring at me in terror, an older man, maybe 60 or so, unable to get out of his bed, perhaps unable to move his feet, since his trembling arms rose in surrender as soon as he saw me enter. The other three patients seemed to be unconscious, since they were still asleep despite the shots we had fired until now.
“One kill confirmed. (Haagh)” As I raised my rifle and aimed it at the awake patient, I heard R-09's voice reporting the results of his raid from the hallway just behind me.
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I pulled the trigger.
I walked to the center of the room and observed the three remaining patients for a few seconds.
They don’t meet the requirements to become witnesses, I thought after a few seconds. The deaths of the woman and the baby in the previous room prompted me to make further assessments before carrying out my executions. However, hearing an irregular sound, I slowly approached the middle patient, moving between the space between his stretcher and that of the third patient on my right.
From the moment I entered this room, various cacophonies welcomed me. I had been aware of their existence for some time, but the death of the patient made me more aware of their presence. These were the electrocardiographs that recorded the electrical activity of the hearts of the patients in this room. When I executed the first patient, the constant frequency of his heartbeats was replaced by a static tone. And now, the calm, continuous melodies emitted by the hearts of the remaining patients were being interrupted by the erratic, accelerated beats of the patient in the middle.
When I stood at the foot of the center patient's bed, I activated the safety of my assault rifle and moved it to my left. I drew my pistol with my right hand and smoothly slid the charging handle to the back until stop it before the round of the breech was ejected. Then, I released the charging handle hard in order to make as much noise as possible. Just as I expected, with the sound, the patient's body jumped slightly.
The chaotic frequency at which this patient's electrocardiograph emitted its sounds became slightly faster. However, as the seconds passed, the slight trembling of his body faded away.
He seemed to have accepted his fate, but he refused to open his eyes to see the appearance of his executioner. Perhaps he had already seen me when I entered the room. Or perhaps the temptation of the odds still forced him to cling to the hope of survival.
Everyone struggles to postpone the unavoidable, but no force can resist causality and its whims of a premature death, I thought as I raised my gun and pointed it at his skull. Then I shot.
I walked back to the center of the room and silently observed the two remaining patients while listening to their beats in an attempt to detect any abnormalities. After a couple of seconds, I noticed that both patients' heartbeats had accelerated slightly. A logical reaction to the unexpected sound of gunfire. However, I considered the possibility that their reaction had been involuntary. Because unlike the previous patient, their bodies were not shaking, but were perfectly rigid. And unlike the previous patient, their eyes were open and their faces were contorted almost imperceptibly.
Apparently, they are in a vegetative state. The previous patient wasn’t able to maintain a realistic act, since a vegetative mental state doesn’t deprive the body of the automatic reactions it has with the environment. Therefore, the fact that he didn’t open his eyes after hearing the shots is illogical, as he reacted when he heard the charging handle of my gun. Of course, these two patients may still be faking it. In that case…
Having decided on a new course of action to determine the truth, I turned off the safety of my rifle and approached the patient on the left, a man in his 30s. I picked up my pistol and placed the grip of the gun between the fingers of his left hand. The patient grabbed the grip of the pistol. An involuntary movement that even a baby could perform. However, the way he gripped the gun was clumsy, since his fingers didn’t grip the trigger guard and instead held the grip, just below it.
A person in this state is capable of making involuntary movements, but cannot follow instructions or make decisions.
I leaned slightly. With my right hand, I carefully took the gun that the patient was holding and placed the barrel between my eyes. Then I took my rifle with my left hand and, in the same way, placed the barrel on the patient's forehead. Maintaining this position, I spoke.
“Your life is in danger. (Raargh) Whoever shoots first, lives. (Haaargh)”
Even if he shoots, the bullet won’t be able to penetrate the armature surrounding my skull. I won’t fall unconscious, I thought as I waited for some reaction from him.
His grip was weak. His unfocused eyes were directed towards his own hand extended in the air.
In a situation where his life was being threatened, salvation was within the reach of his hand.
However, his body only limited itself to stimulating his tear glands. Perhaps a part of his brain knew that his life was about to end, but he could do nothing to prevent that fate.
Another 20 seconds passed and the patient did nothing but cry. He chose not to act even when I moved my rifle away while he kept his gun pointed at my head.
If he regains consciousness in the future, he won’t be able to remember this moment. He can’t become a witness, I thought, trying to trick my Internal System about the reason why I didn’t kill this person. I snatched my gun from the patient and walked away from him. I looked at the last patient, the one furthest from the entrance.
There's only one more left.
After performing more tests on the last patient, I left the room in order to head to the next one. Once in the hallway, I reported the results of my raid.
“Two victims confirmed (Haaargh).”
As I walked through the hallway to the next room, I saw R-09 leaving the room located in front of the room I was about to check.
“Clear (Haargh)” R-09 reported.