I didn't have a choice

If you’re looking for a hero, take a left at the monument of failed ideals and keep walking until the gutter swallows your shoes. That’s where you’ll find me—what’s left when God stops listening and the Devil starts laughing.

And no, I’m not telling this from the comfort of a fireside chair. I’m bleeding out on a concrete floor, wrists raw from the cuffs, the air thick with mildew, regret, and forgotten confessions.

“I didn’t have a choice,” I mutter, blood sliding off my chin like it’s trying to escape before it hears the rest of the story.

But stories like this don’t start with the fall. They start with the first crack in the foundation.

---

It was Monday. Of course, it was.

New York smelled like overworked desperation and burned hotdog grease. People sprinted toward jobs they hated to afford apartments they resented. And me? I had the privilege of running late to my own damnation.

That’s when the old Nokia rang.

Yeah, that Nokia—the one that survives nuclear winters and emotional breakdowns. I kept it in a drawer labeled For Emergencies or When Everything Finally Goes to Hell.

One message. No sender.

“The Broker wants a word. Atlantic City. Midnight.”

You don’t ask who the Broker is. You don’t ask why. You just pray you’ve still got enough of a soul left to lose.

---

Atlantic City—the place where ambition goes to overdose in silk pajamas and last night’s lipstick.

The “Mirage of Fortune” hotel. Irony so thick you could drown in it.

Penthouse, of course. Because if you’re headed for Hell, you might as well enjoy the view on the way down.

The Broker was exactly what the worst rumors promised—utterly forgettable. A man who blended into every crowd and vanished from every memory. But his eyes… those cursed eyes. Black holes lined with something that looked like boredom but felt a hell of a lot more dangerous.

“Ethan Carter,” he said my name like he was chiseling it onto my gravestone.

“Can we pretend this isn’t happening? I’ll take the elevator down, and we’ll both agree this was just a fever dream.”

He smiled—thin as the razor’s edge I’d been walking for years.

Then the screen flickered to life.

Emily Blake.

Tied to a chair. Lip split. Cheek blossoming purple. And still, she held that look. That damn look. Like she was the one running the interrogation, daring them to try harder and already bored with their incompetence.

And just like that, my chest tightened.

I remembered the last time I saw her—standing in my apartment like she owned it, arms crossed, smirk painted across her lips. She’d hacked my smart lights to spell out “GET A LIFE, SOLDIER” across my living room wall. Then she drank my last beer and told me I was the most tragic thing she’d ever seen.

God, she was untouchable. Beautiful in a way that made you hate yourself a little. And I was already bleeding before I knew I’d been cut.

“You handing me instructions or just the USB and a cigarette for the execution?” I asked.

The Broker slid a black USB drive across the table. A small red LED pulsed like a dying heartbeat.

“Pandora’s Token,” he said. “Opens every door. Closes every life. You want out, Carter? This is your exit.”

I stared at the device.

Small. Harmless. Capable of ending entire empires—and me, right along with them.

“I’m not just playing with fire,” I muttered. “I am the goddamn fire.”

___

Nevada.

An abandoned military base—the kind of place where even ghosts develop PTSD.

I fought through a sandstorm that felt personal, like God Himself had finally shown up to collect on everything I owed. Three guards stood at the entrance—kids with rifles bigger than their futures.

They didn’t last long. Violence came easier than breathing these days. Quick, clean, and without remorse. That’s the thing about being good at killing—it becomes the only language you’re fluent in.

Inside, the base was a graveyard of bad ideas. Every step echoed with sins sealed behind classified files and forgotten oaths.

And there it was—Pandora’s Token.

That red light throbbed like it knew. Like it wanted me to make the wrong call.

I stared at it, fingers twitching. My mind ran back to those nights in the desert, sniper scope steady, every target just another blurred shadow against a burning horizon.

They called us heroes. And we swallowed that lie with whiskey and silence.

Click.

A footstep behind me.

Didn’t have to turn.

Ryan Blake.

My brother-in-arms. My personal ghost.

“You don’t have to do this, Ethan.”

I turned, slow and deliberate. His hands shook. His eyes told the whole damn story—fear, guilt, and that pathetic little hope I might save him from his own cowardice.

“You serious, Ryan? You’re standing there with a gun, playing saint? You?”

“Emily’s safe,” he lied. Badly.

“Safe?” I laughed, bitter and loud. “That the new term for tied to a chair and bleeding out? Jesus, Ryan You always were a shit liar.”

His hand trembled, finger on the trigger but heart nowhere near it.

“This isn’t our war, Ethan.”

I stepped closer, feeling every scar on my body scream against the weight of my own sins.

“Don’t you get it, Ryan? We are the war. Been carrying it since we first learned how to shoot straighter than we could say I’m sorry. And now you’re asking me to walk away?”

He couldn’t answer. Couldn’t even look at me.

So, I did what had to be done.

Pulled the trigger first.

No speeches. No hesitation.

Just blood. And blessed silence.

---

Later, I stood on the rooftop as the Broker’s helicopter lifted off, carrying Emily away.

She was alive.

Happiness? That’s a fantasy for people with cleaner hands.

Pandora’s Token sat heavy in my palm. One click, and it was all gone—debts, sins, even my own damn name.

But I didn’t click.

I crushed it.

Just a sharp crack and the sound of the Devil cursing somewhere far below.

Sirens howled in the distance. Dawn crept over the horizon like a bad joke I wasn’t ready to hear.

And I laughed.

The laugh of a man with nothing left to lose but the weight on his chest.

“I didn’t have a choice…” I whispered. “…but at least now, she does.”

And if anyone ever finds me,

Tell them I didn’t ask for mercy.

I asked for fire.