He, of tired green eyes and shotgun blasts. Of damp canals and metallic spaces.
He's been out too long in the cold of the unfamiliar city. But you do not see that in his step. One, two, one, two, one, two; he's walking with the careful precision of a soldier and yet the agility of a fox. Once trained for menial calculations, (what if three and three don't make six, and the like), he has become a machine of death. And he carries on yet.
A lesser man than himself would shout to the heavens the glory of his reaping. A lesser man would stomp and roar and claim his territory with vicious, visceral growls. But this man, this simple man, cares not for the fanfare of the victory parade. He only takes down what is ahead of him, bang bang bang, and then on he goes. The shells hitting the floor are a grim reminder of how far he has come, and how he cannot turn back.
Distances he has come, from the clean white halls of measured and graduated cleanliness, to the plains of unknown holy hell. Once ruled by his mind and the hard-and-fast rules of postulates and equations, the gut instinct reigns supreme now. And further yet he ventures, driven by an unknowable motive.
This unassuming hero knows that good only triumphs over evil if good is careful and willing to outwit the antagonist for the greater good. So he takes in a friend, a smiling, benevolent soul who, just like him, got swept up in the ever-sounding sonata of the dystopian symphony that reverberates on repeat in the air around them.
After all, who has not fallen victim to the similar failings of society?
But he knows the only friend who will stay by your side interminably has no name but a serial number, and with that, he girds his heart. It's the only way to survive, much less live. Losses are losses, he decides, and refrains from becoming too attached to his smiling friend. A pity, but oh so true in the bare light of the bleak morning.
What a figure he cuts, slender frame silhouetted, lenses agleam, shoulders and straight and strong beneath the weight of it all. God would only know his inner mind; if He existed here.
Here, there is nothing. No God, no hope. Only fear.
And the Free Man.