Chapter 48: Chapter forty-seven

Two years ago.

 

Oblivion broke a man’s neck and wondered if he deserved it.

Four hundred, he thought absently, stepping past the man as his body crumpled to the ground. There was a time when this work had meant something to Oblivion. It hadn’t filled him with purpose exactly, as his relationship with his emotions meant he was never really filled with anything, but he had thought he was doing the right thing and been content with his place in the world. Now he wasn’t so sure.

Another man came at him with a knife.

Block. Strike. Grab. Twist.

The man’s arm came out of its socket and he hit the floor screaming. Oblivion put the knife through his skull as an afterthought.

Four hundred and one.

Oblivion kept moving but he walked as though through a fog. Men came at him with murderous intent and he put them down. But his heart wasn’t in it. He had noticed something strange in some of the missions he and the others had done for the Program, and once he had seen it, he couldn’t ignore it. It was a lot of little things, details that didn’t add up, but together they painted the picture that some of the jobs Smythe had his so-called “heroes” doing were for profit, rather than for the greater good.

Oblivion’s fist crunched into a man’s throat, crushing his windpipe and the man went down gagging for a breath that will never come.

You are reading story Oblivion at novel35.com

Four hundred and two.

Oblivion wasn’t naïve, he had always known Smythe was no saint, that the Program had expenses, and that they did more good than harm. But he had joined to be a superhero, not a private wet-work specialist. He had spent much of his life training for that and, though he was hardly a wide-eyed boy anymore, that was still what he wanted from life. He couldn’t stay with the Program.

Fortunately, after today he wouldn’t have to.

He reached the warlord he was meant to be neutralizing, and did just that.

Four hundred and three.

Then, with all the potential witnesses dead, he went to work. He knew he had to be quick, the Program had forensics techs and they would catch anything but the smallest inconsistencies in his planned disappearing act. He rigged up a powerful explosive charge using some RDX the warlord had to hand. He fashioned what looked like a dead man’s switch that the warlord could have been holding and put it in the dead man’s hand.

He thought he felt a flicker of amusement at that, though it was so distant and so brief that he wasn’t sure.

With the explosives ready to go, he set about mixing some of his own DNA with the mess he was about to create. He had been saving his own blood discreetly over the last few months while he waited for a mission where surveillance was limited. He spread enough of that blood around that he was confident someone from the Program would find his DNA amongst the wreckage and figure that there was at least a good chance he was dead. Then he took off his suit and covered it in more of his blood. He didn’t need to be wholly convincing, as he didn’t think the Program would look for him too hard so long as he didn’t give them a reason to, but he needed to tip the balance of probabilities towards his death being the most likely explanation. For that, a little blood wasn’t going to be enough.

So, with a sigh, Oblivion extracted two of his own teeth and—borrowing a clean-looking knife— took a sizeable piece of skin off his arm, and added them to his hero suit. That was about as convincing as he could be without completely maiming himself, so he set the explosives on a timer and left. With that, he walked away into the night, Oblivion no more, now just a man.

You can find story with these keywords: Oblivion, Read Oblivion, Oblivion novel, Oblivion book, Oblivion story, Oblivion full, Oblivion Latest Chapter