Lights over the Citadel

"Stop what are you doing and pay attention to what I am about to say. I will not repeat myself."

"As if you could stop me."

"Put that knife back."

"Why are you whispering now, as if you could stop me."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I haven't been careful."

"Why do you think it matters now? It's about a time you pay for all you have done to us. After all those years, still breathing and what about them? Is your life more important than them? I have to do it for their sake. To free them."

"If am going to die, you go with me!"

"Did you see that? What just happened? The fireworks in January, very unusual."

"I've seen or heard nothing, go back to sleep. Stop fibbing, please, I need to be fresh for tomorrow's execution. Of that monster, Tobias Cruden. I'm not gonna miss it, want to be in the first row. Tomorrow is just a beginning. They started to hunt them down, all 3 millions of them. Soon they will be disintegrated and blown into the space like the damn waste they, in fact, are."

"I don't recognize you, Mica. What you just said is scaring me. What it makes of us, if we found pleasure in torture and decimation of other human beings?"

"Don't you dare call them human beings! They are monsters! What they did to people of Citadel will never disappear. All that pain, all that loss and desperation. Until they are destroyed and turned into trash they are! You don't question Citadel's response, after all, you lost more than us."

"Mica, you should know me better. I am not renegade, I am not an avenger. I am just ol' bloke who put his faith on his hands and forgave them."

"Now, now, you have woken me up for something you thought you saw. Maybe your angels persecuted someone innocent again. You know that old saying of ours: Whenever the innocent soul is destroyed, the skies of Citadel burns with their pain. You might have forgotten what happened after they attacked Citadel one hundred years ago. There was no darkness for whole century. Now it's finally peaceful. No more lights beside stars."

"I have bad feeling about tomorrow, Mica. We shouldn't go."

"Oh, shut up! That's paranoid. We will buy some seaweed and you will munch them while hearing his desperate pleas."

"How old is he, anyway? Isn't it weird that they going to execute a senile grandad who probably already forgot what is his name?"

"I'm off to shower, no follow-up when I come back, am I clear?"

"Absolutely."

"What was that mumbling? Anyway, if you can't sleep, sing me a lullaby after I come back."

"Okay, Mica. I'll do."

"It's exciting!"

"It's ridiculous."

"It's truly horrible, they should let him go by old age, how much he was gonna live anyway? A half of a year, max."

"Mica, I don't want to stay here, please. I don't feel safe."

"Listen, I bought you snack and brushed your teeth in the morning. Don't make me mad. We are staying, period!"

"I want to go home, Mica. Please."

"Why did you bring him over, Mica, for real. That poor man lost his sanity long time ago. He's a troublemaker, we want this ceremony to run smoothly."

"I'll keep him close to me and shut his mouth with a bunch of seaweed."

"How can he eat something that disgusting?"

"You know he can hear you, Johnes? Stop talking about him like he is not here. And if he likes it, I'm more than happy to buy it for him to shut his mouth."

"I want to go home, Mica."

"You should listen to the old man, Mica. He wants to watch cartoons, not execution."

"Shut up, Johnes. We're staying. And you too. Look, they are coming to the execution pod. Shut up now, so we can actually hear it."

"Dear citizens, this day is a historical moment for Citadel. After centuries of torture and murders, the first member of Association of Humanity will be executed and publicly humiliated. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Tobias Cruden!"

"That's humiliating for our eyes, not for him! Look, that monster is laughing at us!"

"Well, with a body like this, I could do anything."

"Mica, you are disgusting, we are talking about the murderer. Not a model. Although, it's kind of satisfying to watch."

"Mica, I don't feel good."

"You should chew that seaweed, not swallowing it whole. Now you got cramps. That's reaction of you being careless, not premonition. Now watch the show and don't bother me."

"If I am going to die, you are going with me!"

"Sixty years ago, the Citadel burst into the light. Seven hundred of citizens died at the day of execution. Tobias Cruden was a ticking bomb. When they used disintegrating machine, it sparked and hit all of surrounded people as well. Only one man survived. As many times before. Man who went into hiding after the incident, as everyone wanted to know his secret. Secret of his survival."

"So what happened to him? Did he went mad? Did he became an avenger?

"No, children. This ol' bloke turned into a storyteller. Masked, crooked, he left the Citadel and its lights and hid in the mountains until someone approached him. And he told them the beginning of his story."

"Who was that man, and how did he survived?"

"That's a very good, mature, question, Bianca. And the answer? His name has been forgotten centuries ago. But this brave Citadel's citizen has something special within him. A faith. That faith helped him to survive."

"I don't understand."

"That's okay, Bianca. You will, soon. After I finish the story. The story of pain, betrayal and forgiveness."

"I am murderer, children. I killed them all. All three millions and one human being. Fellow people that once walked this earth. I killed them with my kindness. With a power of darkness that is living deep inside of me. Once I asked my good friend what it makes of us, hunting them and executing them. Those old men and women who once caused us great pain. He didn't has the answer. I did. We are the real monsters. We let them go without suffering,, switching their lives off without pain we felt all those centuries. And you, descendants of Association of Humanity, are my last victims."

"I don't want to die."

"It's not gonna hurt, Bianca. Trust me. You will not feel a thing."

"Please-"

"We die together here, last citizens of Citadel. Goodbye, Bianca. Goodbye, Thomas. Goodbye, Becca and Robin. Goodbye, all unnamed children of this world. This is the end of the story. You and me. My mission is completed. Now I can die."

"What's your name. Be it the last thing I hear in my life."

"So brave, Bianca. So brave. I will whisper it to your ear. You'll die with me, anyway."

"My name is-"