Rough hands pushed the man into the chair. Immediately his handcuffed wrists were fastened awkwardly over the low back of his char to the wall, and manacles on his feet were hooked to the floor in front of him. Then the interrogator, who had been moving with the frantic energy and speed of five men, stepped back out of the single ray of light in the room.
The man in the char groaned, peering into the lamp. His eyes flicked through the darkness, searching, trying to see his foe. Then the man closed his eyes and took in a deep breath and chanted, as if he had done so countless times before. But before he finished he faltered, and went silent. Then he drooped.
The man illuminated by the light had a face that could once have been handsome, but now was marred in its beauty by years of pain and torment. Two jagged scars traced their way down the right side of his face like cruel lightning during a storm, lightly running over pallid skin. His dark hair was still neatly combed on one side of his head, but the other was disarrayed wildly and matted with dark red.
A click.
“On this day, November 17, 2170, the criminal and mass murderer who calls himself Oracle was apprehended in Terre Field, approximately ten miles from the Peacekeeper Headquarters.” A guttural, echoing voice, masked by a scrambler, spoke out for the recorder.
Oracle looked up from his chair, eyes glazed. He said nothing.
The inhuman voice continued from the darkness. But this time it was directed to the man in the chair, to Oracle. “You will now tell us everything- either of your free will, or by force. I advise you to speak clearly and to start from the beginning.”
A dazed laughing sound. Oracle was laughing. Laughing, with his face twisted up in a resentful, but at the same time tired and miserable sneer. He lifted his head once again to search the darkness for the source of the voice, and made no attempt to get out of the chair.
“No need for threats, officer,” Oracle said softly. “You and the rest of your Faceless friends in the masks will find out my story, soon enough. Don’t worry. I will tell all.”
His eyes landed on the slowly blinking light of the recording device. It was to this which he spoke.
“So from where it all began? Fine. I will start. It all started when the Peacekeepers took my parents, dragged them away and killed them in the street, in front of my eyes.”
There was a muted clanking noise, as if somebody in full metal body armor had rose from behind a table, but Oracle had already paused, eyes thoughtful and cold.
“No,” he said slowly. “I misspoke. That was not the very beginning. No, I suppose it went back farther. Yes. Back to… when I first got my gift. The day before. The gift that made me who I am now, today. The reason why I killed, killed, killed. Yes…
“My gift.” Oracle shifted around slightly in his chair. “I was given a gift when I was a young boy. Nobody knows how people get these gifts, but they always are gifts of power. Mine granted me foresight- limited foresight, somewhat into the future. Being able to see possibilities of what could happen. Sometimes it helped me. I could evade trouble, see what things to avoid, what not to do, what would bring about the best outcome. I knew that twenty steps to the right could have me hit by an oncoming speeding truck without having to hear or see it coming. I knew that stealing that pencil that belonged to Harold Matthews could end up with me being suspended from school. In a fight, I not only knew that I could win. I could see my opponent’s punches before they came, eons before they came. I could step through his attacks as easily as walking down a street.”
His face grew dark. “Maybe word of that went out. Maybe that was why they came for my parents.”
Oracle went silent, brooding and dark for about a minute and a half. During that uncomfortable silence neither predator nor prey moved. The only sounds heard in the room was the tinkling of some faint, far-off glass shattering and the steady whirr of the recorder.
Then Oracle started again.
“I went to the Academy. That part of the rumors is true. I graduated at the top of my class, better than everybody else by an unimaginable margin. I could always foretell what my opponent was doing. That means whether in a chess game or during a boxing match, I always won. Always. As soon as I graduated I was showered with offers of promotions. I could have become the greatest military general in the world. Or the most powerful Peacekeeper chief in decades. But that night, when I stumbled out of the party a little early, just before midnight, I saw the writing on the wall.
“Hah!” Oracle savagely burst out. “Writing on the wall. More like images. The images in my mind that I used to see past the curtain of present time. That was how I could tell that this would become true. There it was, on the side of the building, behind the pillars. In the darkness of night, I saw myself older, gaunter, killing people one by one, murdering, slaughtering. I was horrified. I retreated into my dorm and locked the door.
“I left the next morning with memories of my dead parents in my head. If it was my future, I could not avoid it. So I went along, and instead of becoming great, I went along the path of assassin, mercenary, rouge and murderer. I fell down the ladder of society and did the dirty work for the foulest of the world. I dirtied my hands over and over again. And because of my gift, my curse, I never died. I never got caught. And I always succeeded. Perhaps that was why people called me Oracle- because I used my gift of seeing to become so formidable an enemy. That frightened them- that I knew what they were doing before even they knew it.”
Oracle looked up with soulless eyes.
“I didn’t go quite insane. No. Somebody helped me through all my times. A girl that I had grown up with in the Academy. She helped me, counseled me, convinced me time after time not to take my life and end this miserable madness. She was my best friend.” Oracle shook his head, violently. “No. Not just a friend. I lie. I loved her. She was beautiful and perfect. Not just a friend after all. And she promised to protect me.”
Oracle laughed again, the same colorless and humorless laugh that could have also been a snarl or a sob. “And what does it matter? I lost my gift, and ironically never saw it coming. She was shot trying to protect me, me, the miserable scum that I am. She was on the floor, bleeding and dead, I blind and unable to see the future. I was caught six days later, ten miles from here in a lonely little misty field. That much you know. I managed to kill many of you Faceless, even your leader General Hawthorne, but in the end you brought me in.”
“She was dead?”
Oracle reacted as if he had been slapped, at the shock of those three, sparse words spoken by a mechanical voice more lifeless than his own.
“Yes,” he said, the reply torn out of his mouth against his own will. “I saw it. The bullet went clean through the center of her heart, and grazed me in the shoulder. See,” Oracle wriggled his shoulder a little until the shredded button-down shirt relented and slid down to reveal a bloody scar. “She’s dead. I lost my gift, didn’t see the bullet, didn’t avoid the trap. She said she would protect me”
Another silence. But this one lasted longer, and was sparsely punctuated by a soft weeping. Oracle looked down, tears running down his nose and slashing on his manacled feet.
“I don’t care anymore,” he finally said. “I hope what they say about Peacekeepers is true. I hope you do kill them right after the interrogation. Because for me, there’s no point anymore in living. My poor Rose is dead, she died saving me with my name on her lips. The only thing that I ask of you, Peacekeeper, is that you kill me as Oracle. Don’t dig up my past.” Oracle looked up with frenzied and red eyes. “I deserve not to die under my past name. I deserve to die as the monster that I am, the man named Oracle who killed hundreds of people. Who unwittingly also killed his Rose, led her into a trap. I am a miserable soul,” he suddenly screamed, “The most pitiful one in the world!”
He now cried in earnest, body racked with sobs. “And at the very least,” Oracle finally said, “She will be in heaven, and I in hell. So she does not meet her murderer in the afterlife.”
Another pause. Then a slow, loud, crunching sound of plastic under an armored gauntlet. Oracle didn’t seem to hear it, nor did he notice that the hum of the recording device was suddenly gone. The figure in the darkness walked around its desk and stood just out of sight, regarding Oracle without a word.
Then a sharp movement, and a needle was frisked into view, held aloft by a metal glove. The figure slowly came into view, and this Oracle noticed, as he looked up and saw the glistening end of the syringe. “Ah, a poison,” he said. “Thank god. Finally! To be free of this madness!”
Then the Peacekeeper stopped. The needle hovered.
“Why do you hesitate?” Oracle asked, bewildered. “Free me! End me!”
Then the Peacekeeper bent down into the light, and Oracle saw the black tinted visor that he had so quickly grown to fear and hate. He wondered if there would be some last word, some angry decrial before his execution.
Then the visor slowly slid open. A voice, unfiltered by a scrambler, so familiar, so sweet, drifted out in a whisper.
“Henry,” she gently said, “Be free.”
Oracle’s eyes widened in shock, and his mouth opened. Then the needle plunged into the side of his neck and true blackness fell.
He woke up alone, sitting in an apartment, in a cozy little chair. The fire danced cheerfully in the grate, and a letter was open in his hand. Oracle looked around. It was his dorm in the Academy.
There was a knock, and the door opened. Oracle turned around in his chair, ready to fight, to launch himself off of the chair and to grasp it by its back and to throw-
“Henry?”
A young woman, innocent eyes, wearing an Academy uniform, looked at him quizzically. “Are you all right?”
The words tumbled out of his mouth. “I’m fine… Just another night, I fell asleep by the fire.”
Rose studied him. “No, what am I saying. You’re obviously not all right. This looks worse than normal.” She walked across the room, taking the letter out of Oracle’s slack hand. “Dear Sir,” she read softly, “I am glad to inform you that there has been a recent vacancy in my staff, and I am looking for a suitable replacement. Please respond back by Friday. Signed, General Hawthorne.” She turned the letter over. “To, Henry Syght- the amazing oracle! From the Department of Security and Peacekeeping.” Rose looked up. “Henry, this is incredible! Another offer? You must have reached about a thousand by now! Now there’s no question about what you’re going to be doing for your future.”
Oracle looked at the mirror that he instinctively knew was on the back of the door. Behind Rose, he could just see himself, his youthful self from back at the Academy. Confident, mostly untarnished. Innocent still.
He reached over to take the letter Rose had been holding. “To Henry Syght- the amazing oracle.” He read the back of the envelope once again. Then he laughed. It started as a soft giggle. Then he was earnestly laughing, laughing at the irony of it all.
Rose looked nonplussed. “What is it? Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” Henry said. “You said something right. You told me to be free. I love you for that.” He hugged Rose, who stiffed slightly in shock. Then Rose relaxed and hugged Henry back.
“I love you too,” she replied into his shoulder.
As Henry hugged Rose, he realized something. He realized that although his gift of foresight was a curse, it also was a gift. He could see what would happen. He could see the future.
He could change it.
“Come on, Rose,” Henry said, breaking the embrace. “Help me write the reply.”