I did not dream, this time.

In over ten years, I didn't experience that sickening, visceral sensation of falling. I didn't see my family, I didn't see those red, bloodthirsty coils that sprung from the air. I didn't dream anything. Only blackness. The dark space seemed to last forever like I was wading through the murky soup of a bog or swamp. 

As if I were a lone traveler in between the stars, I waded sluggishly through it all. All through the nothingness that teetered between consciousness and nonexistence. I wasn't scared. Quite the opposite. For the first time in those ten long, vexing years I felt relaxed. Calmed. Almost. . . peaceful.

But of course, it did not last long.

I awoke to the sound of muffled raised voices that seemed to come through a closed door.

I raised my head, but a sharp stabbing pain in my neck caused me to wince and groan. I blinked several times, trying to dispel the darkness that sought to creep in once again. After regaining my sight, I saw that I was in a dusky, poorly lit room. It was no larger than a pantry closet in the back of a store, and it had a single door that was the entrance standing right in front of me. Between me and the door was a metal table. 

I flexed my wrists, feeling the cold steel of handcuffs restraining me to the wooden chair I was slouched upon. I groaned once more, tilting my head side to side as if to get rid of the sound of the ocean that was still ringing in my ears. I felt sand and grit in my mouth and nose. The stabbing pain in my neck suddenly retreated down my spine and flared up in my abdominal region. 

I suddenly felt sick, and I felt bile beginning to rise in my throat. I dried my best not to vomit, but I only delayed the inevitable. It spilled across the front of my shirt. The smell and the taste washed over me which made me want to retch again, but there was nothing in my stomach left to expel. Regurgitated dinner stained my already bloodsoaked shirt. The mere thought of the mixing of bile and stomach juices with my gunshot wounds made my skin crawl.

"Hello?" My voice rang hollow in my head as I looked across at the door where the voices were coming from. The voices stopped for a second, and then continued, this time in a more hushed conversation. I listened and caught snatches like "He's just a kid" and "He'll talk eventually".

I called out again. "Is anyone there? Hello?"

The voices paused again. Then there was a sound of a lock being disengaged, the door clanked and it swung open. Light pervaded every corner in the small dingy room. The image of a man's silhouette burned itself into the back of my eyes and I had to blink hard to get rid of it. I squinted at the man, who stepped forward and reached up, pulling on a cord. 

The room lit up, the source of the light hanging from the middle of the ceiling. A solitary lightbulb swung lazily around and around from the yank the man had issued to it. Harshly shadowed by the singular light source above, the man's expression was riddled with pockmarks of black and red around his cheeks and forehead as if a firework had gone off in front of his face. 

Behind the man's scars was a gaze that shot out like a beam from a lighthouse. He turned it on me, looking down at my slumped form. He retrieved a chair from the far corner of the room and took a seat on his side of the table. The man was wearing a formal dark blue uniform without the seven-point police cap. 

He certainly wasn't a Night Watchman; not enough black or gray apparel. In his hands, the man held a file. He flopped it on the metal table. It landed softly on the table in front of him.

The man rifled through the first few pages, then peered up at me, at the front of my shirt, then back up at me.

He said. "Excuse me if I don't get up and shake your hand." 

The man's voice was higher in pitch than I had expected as if his lungs were still the size of a child's. He flipped through more of his small folder, and then set it down again on the table. He folded his hands and sighed, tilting his head, the bones in his neck cracking softly.

"I am Officer Michael Dantino, but I don't really care what you call me. What you should really care about is how you are going to survive in the next few days. Or years, for that matter."

I said nothing. I only looked down at the dark patches on my black shirt. My blood. My blood on my shirt. But I didn't feel like I was shot. No obvious pain when I moved, no stabbing sensation when I twisted.

Officer Dantino eyed me for a brief second, gauging my reaction, then continued.

"It's lucky that we found you the way we did. Hopefully, the doctors didn't give you too much morphine so we can have a decently comprehensive discussion." Michael paused, staring at me for a second, then stated. "Mr. Jacob Everett Emerson. Born 1902 to a family of three. You were the oldest child, your mother and father were well off. As history would have it, your father also had ties to Freedom's Cause; he was a generous donator and demonstrator."

Michael looked down at the file, then flicked his gaze back up to me.

I said nothing.

He continued again. But now, his voice grew quiet and took on a softer tone. Not soft like a mother coddling her child, but soft like the whisper of the wind before a violent storm. He shrugged his shoulders, stretching his arms out and yawning.

"But then again, why tell you something you already know? What's the use of that? Does it really matter? As if, really? Did it really matter that your entire family died?"

Sitting there, with my regurgitated meal lying on my chest, I met Officer Dantino's gaze. I noticed that his eyes sparkled with a flare that could light a wet grass field. He stood, snatching the folder off from the metal table, making a lazy semi-circle around the table to the side of me. When he spoke, he kept his hushed voice, but his tone was twice as sharp.

Officer Dantino said. "It's a wonder how you turned out. Nice family, average family, really. Nice place in Brooklyn. Of course, it was a nice place until the mobs rose up and set fire to the whole borough. You know-" 

The officer knelt down, staring down at me like an eagle from his perch. I could feel his gaze bore into the side of my head. "-It's kind of like poetry. Freedom's Cause conspirators and agitators swell up all in one place. And what do they do? They burn down the whole damn place. Down to a cinder. Barely a shop that wasn't looted, nary a grocery that still had bread. It's a wonder that anyone lives there at all."

I swiveled my gaze at Officer Dantino and stared him square in the face.

I shouted, "That's because of you!"

I could feel the blood pumping through my veins, heating my entire body like a furnace. Officer Dantino did not flinch. He did not move. He only stared on, studying every detail on my face like a map.

"Because of me?" the officer's voice was still hushed, the faint hint of color rising in his cheeks. "That's an interesting claim. What else do you suppose people like me do?"

I growled. "You stand for everything that we're fighting against. You stand for fascism, the oppression of the American people."

"Oh, please," Officer Dantino mused. "The last time I checked, we were talking about you, not me. How about this, I'll be the one to posit you a question. What do you stand for? Correct me, if I'm mistaken, but weren't you the man who stabbed a Night Watchman on patrol thirty-seven times a two months ago?"

I said nothing. Officer Dantino shook his head, leaning back, straightening. He shook the folder in front of my face and said, "For a supposed assassin, you sure do leave a bloody trail. An intermittent, spasmodic trail, but a trail nonetheless. You're an interesting kid, Emerson. A sick, demented, lost little kid that doesn't know what he's done or what he's doing."

"I know exactly what I'm doing," I muttered. "I know what I've done."

"Ah, that's good you know." Officer Dantino chuckled, moving back to his seat on his opposite side of the table. "Because right now, only the two of us know about your abhorrent past. You see, what I have here-" 

The officer held up the file. It quivered in his hands. 

"This has everything I need to know about you. Everything you've done for the past five years since you've made your first kill. At least, your first recorded kill. This file determines what happens to you in the next four hours. I could release this and you wouldn't last two minutes out of this room. In fact, if it weren't for my presence, those two Night Watchmen out there would string you up for what you've done."

I said nothing, only staring ahead at the man in the seat across from me. His expression was nearly unreadable beneath the pitted scars littered across his face.

Officer Dantino said. "That's right. You're just a few pages away from never seeing the light of day again. Either being locked away forever or buried six feet under; whatever way you want to look at it. The way I see it, you're never going out on those streets again. But considering recent events, there is a clincher." The officer's expression shifted just a tad. I spotted a faint show of smugness behind his glowering. 

He continued, "We can make a deal, and maybe you might just be guaranteed a cell, instead of a death sentence."

I looked up to meet his gaze. Smiled. Then spat as far as I could from where I was sitting. The spittle flew through the air and landed on the file the officer held in his hand. Without missing a beat, the man looked down at the glob of phlegm, swept at it with an outstretched finger, and flicked it sideways. He wiped his finger on the front of his overcoat and chuckled.

He said. "I'd like to think I'm a man who can handle humor. I'm a sucker for comedy, you know. So when I see you people speak about the oppression of the lowly, fighting for equality, and the destruction of fascism, I laugh. I laugh and laugh and laugh, because I find it hilarious that you commit unspeakable acts of terror, tear down your own cities, and disrespect those around you all in the name of. . . what?"

"Freedom's Cause." I shot back hotly. I mustered every inch of defiance in my gaze as I leveled it on him. But Officer Dantino gave me a look wholly lacking interest.

He said plainly. "It baffles me at how blind you are."

"I'm not blind. My eyes were opened."

"Were they wide and open when you murdered twenty-seven men and women in cold blood?"

"They deserved it."

"Ten of these people weren't even Night Watchmen."

"They were on the wrong side of history."

"On the wrong side of your history."

"Exactly."

Officer Dantino leaned back in his chair, rubbing his chin. The expression he wore wasn't perplexed. It wasn't muddled. He wasn't even fazed. I recognized the man's look as fascination. The same grim fascination George Garza had given me all those times. I gulped, feeling my throat constrict and my tongue swelling in my mouth.

I coughed. "What's this deal of yours? Or are you looking to talk me to death?"

Officer Dantino smiled. The expression of mirth did not suit his scarred features.

He said. "A few hours ago I had the pleasure of talking with an acquaintance of yours. I'm sure you know him. Quaid Jackson?"

I tried not to react to the name. I stayed as still as possible, looking down at the floor, at my shoes, at the table legs holding up the table. But I could sense the officer's grin grow an inch.

He continued. "We've known about your attack on the newly built ship the TRIUMPHANT for quite a while now. But thanks to Jackson, I've got all that we've got the go-ahead I've been waiting for."

The officer paused again, letting his words hang in the air. The lightbulb cast a harsh shadow down upon us, it was still quivering from its slowing orbit around and around in the air. Again, I tried not to react by continuing to stare down at my feet. 

I heard Dantino let out a short breath. He splayed his fingers on the file in front of him, whisking it back and forth. Back and forth. The swishing noise grated horribly on the dank metal surface as the officer raised an eyebrow.

Officer Dantino contemplated. "You know what, I am absolutely parched. That reminds me." Dantino stood, the chair rattling as his legs pushed it backwards. "Would you like something to drink? Water? Coffee?"

I said nothing.

"Water it is." Officer Dantino glanced down at the mess on my shirt and nodded. "And towel, too, I'm guessing."

I woke up to the sound of the holding room's door slamming shut. I jerked my head up, blinking my dreary eyes and staring ahead in the harsh lighting. It was Officer Dantino, and this time instead of a file crooked in his hand, there was a small white bar towel. Dantino was also out of his Night Watchman overcoat. 

He wore a simple white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. A shoulder holster gripped a pistol close to the officer's chest, the butt of his piece glinting in the light. Dantino's gaze seemed to be a bit darker than I had seen it last, and his tone of voice solidified his dour mood.

"Things aren't looking good for you, Emerson." He clicked his tongue, coming around the table and standing a foot in front of me. "You know what they're saying about you out there?"

I said nothing.

"They're saying all kinds of stuff," Officer Dantino knelt, brandishing the white towel and began mopping up the somewhat dried vomit on the front of my shirt. He continued, his voice low and grave. "They want to string you up. Commit you to a firing squad. But it looks like your friends already started doing that-" 

He pointed at my shirt. The two large splotches on my shirt where blood had soaked through. The vomit from earlier covered most of the blood, but I could still feel the wounds digging into my gut. Officer Dantino was still talking, his voice becoming softer and softer in my ears.

He was gesticulating at the door with a hand, his eyebrows raised. He said. "They even threatened to kill me, just to get into here and beat you until you couldn't stand anymore. But I let them know about our. . . you know-" Officer Dantino flicked his gaze up at me, stared me right in the eyes, and said, "The little deal of ours."

I tilted my head. It lolled far to the left, and I thought I would fall over. I mustered the strength to say. "We didn't make a deal."

Officer Dantino stopped dabbing at the blood and vomit on my shirt and frowned, a genuinely confused look on his face. He said, "But Emerson. We specifically agreed that if you help me, I can help you avoid a dark and grisly death. Right?"

I tilted my head to the side as if there was still some remaining seawater in my ears. The officer's voice sounded distant as if my ears were slowly being covered by cotton mittens. I raised an eyebrow, not sure of what Officer Dantino was saying. 

He cleared his throat and as he was patting my shirt, jabbed the cloth into my sternum. Hard. So hard, in fact, I began coughing. Dantino stood, sighing as he rolled up the towel into a ball and tossed it onto the metal table beside him.

He stated. "You do understand that you're betraying your Freedom's Cause by accepting our deal, right? A patriot to the end, huh?"

I looked up at him and into the officer's eyes. I wanted to shout, I wanted to scream 'What deal? What are you raving on about?'. But then I stopped. In that split second of making eye contact with the man, something clicked. As if a carpenter were fitting two pieces of wood together. Even though his expression was as dark as the shadows around us, his scarred face was as brooding as an owl's, his eyes were opened wide. 

They had the faintest glint of an assuming nature in which would only be appropriate between two people who were sharing a joke or secret of some kind. My mouth was wide open, ready to spew all kinds of obscenities at his face, but the man's stare which had turned into a glare stopped me cold.

Without missing a beat, I followed up with. "Yes, yes that deal we made. I've considered it. Sorry, my mind was just a bit fuzzy. Couldn't think straight for a second."

Officer Dantino nodded slowly, and I could understand that he knew that I knew.

Both of us were in on the joke.

Dantino smiled and looked down at my shirt. "Oops. You still got some spittle there." 

He turned around and picked up the towel. Moving directly in front of me, he reached down with the towel, about to dab at my chest. I looked down. There wasn't much left to dab at. The officer had done an unusually exceptional job of cleaning up all the vomit I had previously expunged all over the front of my shirt. 

Despite how clean my shirt was, he reached down with the towel and tried to clean at it. But then Officer Dantino let the towel slip out of his grasp. It fell to the floor, off to the side near my left foot. Officer Dantino grunted, kneeling. And as he did so, he began to whisper. 

Even though his lips didn't move, I heard him say, "Once they put you in the cell, wait for me. Then we'll talk." 

And without missing a beat, Dantino straightened, towel in hand. He swiped at my shirt for extra measure and managed to sneak a small grin at me. It quickly vanished as he cleared his throat, and looked at something behind me.

I followed his gaze. Standing behind me was a window. It was blacked out, and I could see my reflection and Officer Dantino's reflection clearly in it. It was a one-way mirror. I had only heard about it once when Dianne had mentioned it briefly during our many conversations. 

But now looking at it, it was like staring right into the mouth of a giant predator, its maw wide open and ready to consume its prey. Behind that one-way mirror were men. Men with clipboards and glasses, frowning over notes. 

Men like Officer Dantino, dressed in Night Watchmen garb, fiddling with their suits. All of them, staring back at the two of us. Had they been staring the whole time I was asleep? Ever since I was put inside the room? Were they still watching now?

Officer Dantino started walking back around the table said over his shoulder. "Have fun in your cell. I hope your pillow is as hard as your head."

And then Dantino opened the metal door. Light immediately burst forth, revealing two figures at the door. They waited patiently for Officer Dantino to exit the holding chamber. Dantino nodded and disappeared into the hallway beyond. The two figures entered. They were Night Watchmen. Each of them in their black trench coats, black caps, and black boots. They even wore black leather gloves that glistened in the light as they cracked their knuckles. 

One of the Night Watchmen closed the door. As the door closed, I could see the silhouette of Officer Dantino turning around, his head looking back. I thought I could see a glimmer of worry and discern in his eyes, but he was quickly covered by the rapidly closing metal door. One of the men slammed it shut, then grabbed the metal chair on their side of the table. 

Bringing it to the door, the Night Watchman shoved the back of the chair underneath the doorknob. The two Night Watchmen rounded the table, approaching me from either end. The one on my right was a tall guy with an unkempt mustache that looked like a caterpillar. 

In a gruff voice, he said, "Time to take you to processing."

The Night Watchman on my left grunted in acknowledgment. I cleared my throat, feeling the temperature in the room rise by several degrees.

"But you already processed me," I contested, looking back and forth in between the two men. "You did that when I got here."

"This is a different kind of processing," the man on my left said. He was clean-shaven and had unblinking brown eyes. I could feel both of them staring down at me, the barest shred of a whisper could shatter the tension in the room. And then it broke, with a resounding chuckle from the man with the mustache.

He hissed. "Consider this a customized version of processing. A very customized version."

I began to struggle against the handcuffs binding me to the chair. I pulled and twisted, the jingling sounds of metal echoing inside the nearly empty chamber. The man on my left moved around behind me, and before I could duck or move my head, he grabbed at my hair and jerked it up. 

I yelped in pain, feeling the length of the man's arm come around my neck, tightening like an anaconda. It was as tight as a vice. I could feel my mouth opening and closing, gurgling sounds coming from the back of my throat. I kicked out with both feet, trying to rock back and forth, side to side, trying to get the man to relieve his hold around my neck. 

But he tightened it further and I gasped out, "Stop! Please for the love of God, stop!"

"Don't worry, no need to shout." The man with the mustache gave me a toothy grin, leaning down to meet my gaze. I could feel veins rippling across my forehead, my eyes felt like they were about to burst in their sockets. The Night Watchmen leaning down in front of me grabbed both of my kicking feet at the ankles, his grip incredibly strong. 

I struggled harder now, feeling the surge of panic and claustrophobia welling up inside me. My right leg managed to break free from the man's grasp. It wriggled and coiled back as I thrust my heel straight into Night Watchman's rib cage. The mustached man stumbled back a bit, the breath knocked clean from his lungs. 

He leaned over the metal table as I heard him wheezing and gasping for air. I could hear the sound of Officer Dantino's muffled voice as he shouted and banged on the outside of the metal door.

The man holding me growled in my ear, cinching his hold even tighter. "Try that again. Go on, try it."

"Help!" I croaked out. 

But it was like whispering in a dense crowd at a festival. My voice was drowned out by the sounds of our scuffling feet, the mustached man's hacking, and retching, and the noise Officer Dantino was making out in the hall. I gritted my teeth, sucking whatever mouthfuls of air that was able to pass through my constricted windpipe and down into my lungs. 

I watched helplessly as the man with the mustache clenched and unclenched his large hands. I kicked out as he approached, but he dodged each attack, gripping me by my ankles again. He yanked them back and forth, which caused me to be pulled in his direction, which tightened the hold on my neck. My eyes began to roll backward and darkness hit me, but I could still hear the men's voices.

"Hey, don't choke him out. We want him to be awake for this, you know?"

"Quit pulling him then."

"Oh yeah, you try and do this. He nearly kicked my teeth out!"

"It's not easy holding him like this, you know."

"Hey, kid. Look at me."

My vision cleared, the welcoming wispy haze of the void fleeing from my mind. I blinked hard, the twin image of the man with the mustache coming into view. He still wore his pie-eating grin, his teeth flashed in the grim lighting of the room. 

For some reason, I didn't have the strength to strike out with my feet anymore. The man was planting his heels on the insteps of my feet, all of his weight bearing down on my toes. I glanced back up at the leering man, his perfect white teeth flashing in the dim light.

"Just kill me already." I grunted out, staring daggers at the man with the mustache. 

He shook his head, then reached out with his hand and seized my hair in a tight grasp. He rocked my head back as he leaned down, right in my face. His horrid stench, the spittle that flew from his open mouth, everything about the man-made me recoil physically. 

The man gripping my hair in a meaty fist and chuckled, "We're not gonna kill ya. Can't do that now. Apparently, you've just been voted to 'valuable asset'."

"If it was up to us, you'd be dead long time ago," said the man holding me.

"Well?" I growled, knowing what was to come. "Let's get this over with, then."

The man with the mustache grinned darkly, "I thought you'd never ask."

Being beaten into a pulp isn't at all how one would think it would be. There's no rhyme. No reason. No real thinking involved at all. Just the incessant pummeling of one's fist into the other's jaw. Kicking and jabbing into the other's stomach and rib cage. Constant flailing, scrimmaging, wrestling. I wasn't fully conscious for most of it. 

They took their time. 

They knew not to mess with my head. 

Even one knock from the mustached man's brutish arms would send me into unconsciousness, and they were just getting started. They savored their few short minutes with me. They even took turns, switching out the chokehold for taking shots at my thighs, my knees, even my arms, and wrists. 

It was hard to think rationally during those fifteen minutes. With each second, in each punch, my mind circulated one singular thought: stay alive.

Stay alive.

With each jab thrown, each rib that cracked, I inwardly laughed at myself.

So this was it? After all these years with Freedom's Cause, I was to die to two men using me as a punching bag.

A fitting end for me, really.

I had imagined I would die for Freedom's Cause, on some contract mission in the line of the People's duty. And this was what I got in return.

And in a way, the voice inside me thought back, In a way, this was fitting.

But how could it be? After all those years of sacrifice and pain and. . .

Pain and sacrifice I brought upon other people. That's all I ever did. Bring misery and death wherever I went, and for what?

For Freedom's Cause, of course! For liberty, for the People!

Ah, yes. Freedom. And how many times did I contribute to the freedom of the people exactly?

By ridding fascism! Ending the slavery of the people; they have had enough!

Fascism? I suppose so. But do the people really want it? That old man, in the hallway. The one who fought to end real slavery. Did he share the same view?

Curse the old, they know nothing.

No, curse the young, they are inexperienced. The man had five decades under his belt, and us with nary two.

But they don't understand, they can't see. They are blind to what they don't want to see; they are blind!

Perhaps. But aren't we also?

Aren't we all blind?