Gut Check
The thing is, the man told himself, he thought he was better than this. Emotions that normal men felt should have been behind him. He prided himself on his facility for reason - never being led around by his baser impulses. He’d played the hero for so long…he didn’t expect the detachment that came with the role to disappear so fast.
Failure in hand, he stood there. He had no right to these emotions. He had no claim to these feelings. Yet there he stood, in the middle of the street, with his fists balled. He concentrated on the building in front of him. It was a twisted mass of steel and concrete. In parts, it had been patched with the skin of those who’d attempted to breach its walls before him. Even with their flesh stretched taut over the openings, he could make out the pain on their faces from their last moment alive.
Somewhere inside that fortress sat the machine that manipulated his emotions. Somewhere behind the bodies of the damned lay the cause for his madness. The man, who had been freed from the burden of heroism for the briefest moment, knew that he’d never have total control of his destiny until that machine was destroyed. So, against his better judgement, he took the mantle of the hero once more, and forced his way inside. Not to save the world or help the helpless, but to give himself peace.
Part of him knew he was wrong. Mostly, he didn’t care.
