We were all good men.  We always told each other that, ourselves that.  Our wives at home looked at us like we were still children, still pure.  Our job was hard, we all accepted that.   But we had to know we were good men, had to believe that what were doing was right.

I had only been a member of the Special Forces team for a few months when I was selected.  It was just a short letter in my locker at the end of a day in training, asking me to wait around.  Wait for a van to pick me up.  My naive mind at once flew into wild fantasies about secret promotions and reward.  I didn’t expect what was confronted me the moment I walked through those doors, the red and black banners, the ardent imagery of fascism.  It was everything that I had been brought up to hate and fear.  It was everything I was thought to push away and despise.

They told me that it was new program, one that they wanted me for, for my behaviour.  They said I had potential, that they could help me unlock it.  Before I knew what was happening I was strapped to tables and surrounded by doctors, there was no pain but I the first shock of touching that cold metallic thing in my neck will stay with me the rest of my life.  That sick feeling of being violated by machine and by those I trusted.

“Are you ready?”

I looked up from my journal; my left hand edging forward and smudging the ink as I stood up.  I looked into a pair of unblinking grey eyes.  The man was wearing a shiny leather suit with an insignia of two blades on the right of his chest.

“Yes.  Where are we going?  What’s going on?”

I wiped the ink stained hand against the leather trousers I had been given, the ink remained.

“There is not much time.  Take a rifle and a helmet and join us in the corridor.”

The man disappeared, striding purposefully from the room.  Not knowing what else to do I did as I was told, picking up one of the black helmets and a rifle and making my way out into the corridor.  The corridor lead into an open concrete space, in the centre was a large reticulated truck.  I was beckoned into the trailer at the back and sat beside another ten silent black clad and helmeted strangers.

One of the helmets turned to me.

“Put your helmet on.”

The helmet then turned away robotically, I slotted the heavy helmet on and heard nothing more from my companions.  The door to the trailer was shut and the engine of the truck roared to life, vibrating the metal seat underneath me.

I gripped my rifle as we were all thrown back, the truck was muscling forward now, pulling us with it, on its way to place unknown.  I could barely make out my gloved hand in front my face through the thick tinged visor of my helmet.  The truck roared for an age, dragging us for an elasticised eternity.  It did, finally, come to a stop.

Something buzzed inside of my helmet, a tinny radio coming to life.

“Prepare to engage Fascix system.”

I looked around, mouthing my question to myself in silence.

“What is Fascix.”

It began then, the next beat from my heart was tighter than the last, more violent.  They grew gradually until I felt something would burst inside of me.  My head swelled and my fists tightened.  I grunted and flexed in the darkness along with my silent brothers.

There was a twinge in my neck, the freshly torn skin around the metallic implant stung sharply.  There was a brief jolt of pain and I clawed at my helmet for a moment, trying to eject the invader but it quickly passed and was replaced with a dark euphoria.  I was breathing heavily, my mind was focused but blank, utterly blank.  I growled as the radio once again came to life.

“You have been selected for a secret program, a trial run of the Fascix system.  Your body has been prepped via a robotic implant.  It has injected you with adrenaline and other performance enhancing solutions.”

If they had asked I would have said no, there was no way I would have let them but as the drugs coursed through my veins I did not feel the slightest bit wronged.  The voice continued, picking up in urgency.

“There is an oligarch in the building you are about to enter.  He has been responsible for countless murderous and destructive crimes against the country and its people.  His money lets him live beyond the reach of the law, bribing or assassinating anyone who tried to oppose his activities.  But, no more.  You are the vengeance of the people; you are the silver fist of redemption.  You are the surgeon’s blade that will cut this cancer out.  Go now.  Kill.”

The radio cut out as the entire trailer shuddered.  The door swung open, letting light shine in, those nearest the door seized their rifles and leaped out, screaming like devils.  I followed.

We spilled out into a space in front of a large mansion and, in a haze of hate and rage we stormed it, finally breeching one of the windows.  The house was full of armed men but we shot everyone we say before they could react.  Eventually we found them cowering, broken by our screams.  We didn’t leave anyone alive.  Somewhere in the pile of dead could have been the oligarch that had been mentioned, none of us would have recognised him.

A tinny order echoed in my helmet.

“Return to the truck, hurry.”

We all mounted the truck and were gone as we had come.  I was sweating profusely in the hot leather uniform and gasping for breath.  Most of all, I felt empty.  Content and empty.  The truck eventually had us back to the base.  Back to the hall of black and Red banners.

First thing they did was line us up order us to take off our helmets.  I looked around at the faces of fellow young officers, some I even recognized through my drug descending haze.  One of the men among us made his way up to the end of the hall and climbed a podium; there, he was framed on both sides by the hanging banners, each with the red sword emblem etched on it.

“That was your first taste.”

The man’s voice boomed in the concrete hall gripping our attention.

“You were all officers with something extra.  It might have been something that stood out in your behaviour analysis, or a criminal that you couldn’t stand to let walk free but you have all shown an aspect to us.  You hate, you have that burning force inside you, one that drives you further than your peers.  One that separates you from them.  You all have your own laws that just happen to correspond with ours, we understand that.

This is project Fascix, developed to use that fire inside you.  We have been given a list of men and women, each lies safe from conventional law enforcement but has been verified countless times to be guilty as hell, they infect our world.  So we have called on you, to go beyond red tape.  To go beyond understanding and law.”

The soldiers and I exchanged glances, naturally distrustful and afraid of manipulation.

“The names I have been given are, Sergei Dhankov, Melissa Freicke, David Notroike.  You will all recognise them.  You should also realise that it was Dhankov’s mansion you were at today, many of you would have seen it at one time or another.”

I recognised them.  I won’t go into what Dhankov had done, what we all knew he was doing.  He was a monster and we all knew it.  It was true I often wanted to knock down his door, wanted to kill him.  I had joked about it before with fellow trainees; I guess somebody had been listening.  The other two were just as bad, Melissa was an infamous human trafficker, Notroike was one of the worst drug dealers.  The names swept on my ears like a cold wind.

But it seemed Dhankov was dead already.

“If any of you wish to leave now.  You may do so.”

Again we all looked at each other.  None of us wanted to be first to leave, and most of us felt this was right, had liked what they had experienced and were ready for more.  There was silence as nobody took the speaker up on his offer.

“Good.  From this point on your Fascix module will be active.  I will see you all on the other side.”

The man rejoined our formation; once he had disappeared into our group I felt a familiar tingle in my neck.  The Fascix module was stirring to life, filling my bloodstream with its payload.

Another man had taken the podium now.  He had a shock of greying hair and a scowl on his face.

“I’m glad each of you chose to stay.  Our next target is Melissa Freicke; most of you would know her record.  She is a monster of the darkest order, bringing countless lost souls into a life of slavery and addiction.   She has escaped no less than fifteen charges of crimes against our country and against the human race.  We can spend another fifteen years trying to get charges to stick, or she could die tonight.  Which should it be?”

“Die tonight.”

One of us screamed the words.  Involuntarily, almost, I started to chant with the others.

“Die tonight.  Die tonight.”

The man nodded to us approvingly.

“The truck is waiting.  It will deliver you to her apartment.  Have no mercy.”

On my way to the truck I felt a sting a different sort.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, it was an impulse to stay back, to not go any further.  It was so distant however, and so faint that I just marched along with my comrades, excited at the prospect of coming mayhem.

When we burst out of the truck this time it was more forceful, something had switched inside of us, we threw ourselves into that new role.  We stormed up the stairs to the woman’s apartment.  Anybody in our way was pushed aside or received a rifle butt to their face.  I had the honour knocking her door down, propelling myself through the splintering wood.

She screamed when she saw me but I did not look at her straight away.  My eyes were drawn to a long mirror she had on her mantelpiece, pointed at the door.  I saw myself in it, clad in black and faceless.  I was no longer a man, I was something more.

Seizing her throat I threw her to the floor.   As we started to fire her last look was one of utter terror.  We were fear, we were karma, we were what we would never have let ourselves become.  But what we had always dreamt of being.  We ended her life clinically, we were doctors, and we were medicine.

Notroike was no different.  We tore through his fantastic villa to find him cowering in his massive bathroom, I only heard the gunshot.  It seemed to echo forever against the marble and gold.  Killing had already become mundane; we shot everyone we encountered on the way out, armed or otherwise.

“I wonder who we’ll get next.”

“Are we allowed talk about it?”

We were getting more comfortable now and spoke of our mission while on the truck.  We bragged of our clean shots and brutal efficiency.  Even in my intensely drugged state I could see what happened to us.  We could be made kill anybody now, it didn’t matter to us.

“I had dreamed of killing that louse Notroike for so long.  It didn’t feel like I expected it…”

The man beside me slumped forward before he could finish the sentence.  I thought it might just have been extreme fatigue before the man beside me dropped down to and another, and another.  We were all falling forward, poison, I thought.  The tool had stopped being useful so had to be disposed of.  I instantly pulled my helmet off and pulled at the implant in my neck, I seemed to be the last one moving.

I tore it free and felt the numbed sensation of utter agony.  I winced, grateful I couldn’t feel it.  I pulled my glove off any put it to my neck, no blood.  I turned to look down at the implant in my hand, now free of my neck.  It consisted of a few thin hooks and three holes, each with a receded needle.  I threw it to the floor.

I checked the pulses of the others; they were all still alive, for now.  No amount of slapping their face woke them up however.  Not dead, but not too far from it.  Panicking, I pulled my helmet on and slumped forward as the truck came to a halt.

I heard the door slide open.

“It worked, they’re asleep.”

“Get the rifles.”

I heard shuffling around me as the rifles were pulled from our hands, I let mine go reluctantly.

“How long will they be out?”

“Around three hours.”

I didn’t think I could pretend to be asleep for that long.

“That one’s still awake.”

I opened my eyes, one of my former comrades was pointing at me with his gloved hand.  I immediately stood up, grabbing a rifle and pushing the man with the shock of greying hair over as I left the truck.

“Wait!”

I ran as fast as I could, though the tiredness was returning now.  The drugs were wearing off, and fatigue was setting in fast.   I hobbled around a corner and knelt down, propping myself up with the rifle.

“What’s going on?”

I shouted it around the corner.  There was silence for a few minutes.  Somebody was walking somewhere, I was sure I was being surrounded.

“There’s been a mistake.”

“Yeah, you’re right.  There has.”

“The program has ended, you should be asleep.”

“Well, I’m not.”

I rolled out with my last ounce of strength past the corner.  I shot the man in grey hair as he tried to roll behind the truck.  I couldn’t see anybody else.  I ran up to his prone body, bleeding and still.  He whimpered and twitched to attention as I pushed the rifle in his face.

“What’s going on?”

“You need to relax.  Please.”

I pushed the rifle against his forehead.

“Killing is meaningless to me, you know that.”

“That’s what we were afraid of.”

“What do you mean?”

The man with the greying hair looked up to me, with one hand he pulled the rifle away from his head and propped himself up with the other.

“You’ve become a monster, haven’t you?”

The drugs were almost gone now.  I nodded slowly, my neck exploding in pain with every movement of my head.

“Everyone on the program does.  It’s what we need our men to be, to get these people.  We begin with bright eyed trainees, who believe in something and end up with cold murderers.  It’s unavoidable.”

“So now you kill us all.”

“In fact, we intended to save you.”

“What?”

“That thing in the side of your neck wasn’t just there to enhance you.  It also has a serum designed to inhibit the parts of your brain that control long term memory.  The beauty of that device is that it lets you become the monster, but returns your humanity in the end.

“So what’s going to happen to me?  Mine didn’t work.”

I returned the rifle to the man’s head.

“What do you remember?”

“Everything.”

The man grimaced.

“Then there is nothing I can do to help you.”

I breathed deeply, felt the pain in my neck and looked into his helpless face.  Almost out of habit, I pulled the trigger.