Short Story.
Clay Kaczmarek (Subject 16):
It was hard being Clay, all he was to Abstergo was a subject number, number 16, he was a bridge in which they would one day cross, leaving him behind, broken and battered.
So he set obstacles in their path, missing pieces, false trails, he tried his hardest to stop them from finding and crossing that bridge. They pushed back just as hard, pushed Clay closer and closer to the jagged precipice.
It wasn't long until it all started to blend together, memories upon memories bleeding into one another, hammering against his already cracked psyche, pushing his sanity to the limit.
He wasn't supposed to stay as long as he had, endured all that Abstergo had done, held on until the ground crumbled away and he fell into the obsidian abyss. However, they had been betrayed, Clay had been betrayed, abandoned, left to try and save himself.
And so he did, Clay tried, he tried so very hard but sometimes nothing can help, and the voices had risen in a crescendo, screaming at him as he watched age-old catastrophe's play out in front of his eyes, his tired, haunted, eyes. He had seen so much yet, at the same time, done so little, he had tried to save the world but the world had not extended the same courtesy.
It had all led up to that one summer's day, from inside his bar less prison Clay could see the world continue on without him, people going about their daily lives completely oblivious to the endless suffering that Clay was subjected to day after day. He had hoped to at least smell the fresh air, at least once more, before he executed his plan. A plan that would end his suffering and warn the next person at the same time.
His mind was in splinters now, a shadow of what it used to be.
Oh, how he wanted to breathe in the fresh summer air.
Standing in a patch of sun, Clay inhaled calmly a serene smile painted upon his face, with his exhale he raised a ball-point pen to his wrist.
The blood ran red as that calm summer day continued, his message to the next subject, the next number, the next victim, scrawled across nearly ever flat surface in red ink, he was but a memory now, nothing more than wisps in the wind.
After all, what is a man but the sum of memories? We are the stories we live. The tales we tell ourselves.
And that calm summer day continued on.