Every eye sees it's own special vision;
Every ear hears a most different song.
In each man's troubled heart, an incision
would reveal a unique, shameful wrong.
Stranger fiends hide here in human guise
then reside in the valleys of hell.
But goodness, kindness and love arise
in the heart of the beast, as well.
~The Book of Counted Sorrows
The Bad Place
When I was younger I used to think the bad place was where they sent you for being a bad soldier. Down into the basement with the nomies. Now I guess you could say I'm older and wiser because now I know I was wrong. There is a much worse place then there. You get sent to the bad place after you die if you were a bad soldier or you lost your fait in The Blue Lady. The faithless went to the bad place along with the weak and the deserters. The only thing saving me now is my faith. Faith in The Blue Lady. Faith in the soldiers doctrine. Faith. Loyalty. Duty. Discipline. Respect. Strength. Selfless Service. Honor. Integrity. Personal Courage. Above all the Mission. My mission was to avoid the bad place. By deserting Manticore the night of the escape I was already half way there. I didn't want to fall any further. Above all was the mission. My mission: To Keep The Faith.
Straight out of hell. I came to the conclusion one night while we were still in Manticore that there had to be a place worse then being locked in the basement with the nomies in those padded cells. This was because I knew that the nomies could die! I saw one of them on the dissecting tables as I wandered around the compound one night when I couldn't sleep, a very rare occasion for me. I had managed to get past the area that we were allowed to roam freely and I ended up on the floor where the infirmary was. Out on the table was the nomie we had seen when we were marching that one day through the basement corridors. X-2 0045D. Cut open and gut like a fish. A long incision from breastbone to groin and three separate ones running horizontality pins holding back the flaps of skin. If nomies could die then there had to be somewhere else that they went for being bad soldiers, somewhere other then the basement. This was what the bad place was.
The bad place. The place where you were never allowed to sleep and dream. Where they yell at you until your ears bleed and then keep on yelling. Hour after hour, day in, day out. They never stop reprimanding you for the sins you committed when you were alive, weather you could hear it or not. There is torture too, in the bad place. Torture worse then the Manticore doctors could ever dream up. Relentless pain, non-stop violence. This was where the truely evil dwelt and were sent. I only spoke of the good place to my siblings, I never wanted them to be afraid of the alternative. They were afraid enough of being sent down into the basement with the nomies. I had to protect them from learning the truth. In order to survive long enough to protect them always I knew I had to atone for my sins. So each time I hunted down and killed my facsimiles of X5-493 I was reconciled for one of my own sins. Always the perfect soldier following in Lydecker and Zack's footsteps. I didn't want to be sent to the bad place after I died. Dieing was always better then being sent back to Manticore, the first bad place I'd ever known of.