23 YEARS OLD

HUMAN

REBEL

MALE

HITMAN

N/A

character overview

positive traits

✔ loyal
✔ adaptable
✔ selfless
✔ "righteous"
✔ resolute
✔ independent

negative traits

✘ obsessive
✘ gullible
✘ vengeful
✘ paranoid
✘ unintelligent
✘ hostile

things they like

❤️ fire arms
❤️ star wars
❤️ soda pop
❤️ nickleback
❤️ motorcycles
❤️ mary, mostly

things they dislike

💔 hospitals, nurses, doctors...
💔 political & religious leaders
💔 crowds of people
💔 rainstorms
💔 drug dealers
💔 greed

character description

i walk around in circles, i'm up all night

It's never his fault. Of every strength and flaw that's packaged haphazardly into the human being known as Nicklaus Strauss, perhaps the most important to note is that it's never his fault. He may pull the trigger of the gun, but it was only at someone else's whim, someone else's order. He can spit verbal poison at someone all day, but that was only become another person still fed him those words and the abused party begging to be put in his place. When he trips, it is not his own clumsiness that causes the fall but a malfunction in the gravity around him. When he cannot answer a question properly, it is not because he is not smart enough, but because the person asking has phrased it all wrong. In all honesty, he could slam a palm into the face of another, only to turn around and claim himself innocent. Responsibility is lost on him, poor parenting and a crowd of figures always pointing the finger at someone else burning in his mind the idea that, so long as he, too, has a finger to point, there is never consequence for the things he does wrong. (Unfortunately, it is the things he does not do that tear him apart from the inside and the out.)

Similarly to how the end result cannot be blamed on him, nor can the initial push. Nikki lacks drive. He cannot set goals for himself, cannot do things without the pressure of another thought, another opinion on his shoulders. He will win a marathon – as literally as it is metaphorical, should the situation call for it – but he won't get his legs pumping until somebody else is demanding he do it. In addition to that, he is quick to answer any call that may be thrown his way, a combination of a crippling need to be needed and being flat out gullible. One can ask of him a variety of things, and so long as he has reason to not immediately had them, he will follow commands as ordered. When in a group, should his opinion differ from those of others, he's much more likely to conform without regret than stand by his own ideas, and his own beliefs and morals can change at the drop of a hat. In that sense, one could call him rather volatile, the Nikki met one day able to be quite different from the one met the next.

One firm belief that he has stayed behind for some years now is the evil to be found in religion and politics. It's a “guilty until proven innocent” mindset that he takes on in regards to political leaders and any pastor, preacher, or priest who dare come across his path. One could be a literal saint, but should they fall under such categories, they will be met with scorn, and sometimes the barrel of his favorite sort of weapon. The government, as well, is what he likes to blame for his problems the most, and any sort of trouble he has with the law is because of corrupt law enforcement. Wealthy individuals also get the sharp of his sword, and if he is aware of how well off someone is, he's likely to rob them for his own benefit. Having come from a world that he believed was ruled by the richest one percent of America, after all, he has no sympathy for those who are well financially, especially when using that to get what they desire.

The hit-man's existence is not entirely based on hatred. It is true that, upon first contact, he is unlikely to care for any individual: quick to answer commands, but not quick to put his faith in the one giving them. Seeing as only real bonds he'd ever formed backfired on him terribly (his love for Mary tearing him away from what was important, his adoration of Doctor X making the older man's betrayal that much worse), he finds it difficult to let himself form more in their wake. Repetitive encounters and friendly words are not enough to breech numerous layers of shields, and most attempts at friendship will be responded to with confusion and, truly, a bit of hurt. However, once someone has managed to get to him enough for him to let them in, he is about as loyal as they come. Perhaps he can change his mind one hundred and one times in a day should someone else tell him to, but he was able to throw away his work, his passion, his world-saving mission in order to protect that which he cared for (although, the consequences of these actions were what he believes to be the equivalent of dying one thousand deaths), and he's likely to go to such extremes for people who he can allow himself to let in. In terms of appreciation, he won't be able to give too many signs – he won't smile at them much, and he definitely won't throw himself at their feet to do typical friend stuff – but where it counts, he'll have their back.

Lastly, it's important to note that Nikki is still very unstable. As a migrant, he was ripped from his world – the same world, thirty years prior to his arrival post-Demon Tide – while undergoing treatment at the state hospital, his mind shattered and struggling to rebuild itself after his exploits with Operation: Mindcrime. While he has gotten a little better over his time spent in the city, having been able to secure a place of residence and not going on crazed fits of screaming through the streets again, one could still label him as rather unstable. If anything, one could almost call him depressed. He is most certainly a shell of the defiant young man who dreamed of saving the world from political and religious corruption.

wish there was something in my life that turned out right

Nikki is painfully human in a world ruled by gifted. He doesn't harbor any particular distaste for the more powerful race, but it certainly puts him at a disadvantage in almost every aspect of his new survival-based life. For a human, however, he boasts incredibly stealth and precision, one of the most deadly assassins of his time who could have easily gotten away with his crimes had it not been for one easily avoidable slip-up. He can wield a variety of arms, and once the bullets made his mark, can be gone before anyone knows he was even there.

In addition to that, the after effects of brainwashing some years prior have made it so any mention of the word "mindcrime" makes him a docile puppet, an unthinking slave who will do whatever is requested of him by any who may take advantage of him in this state. He'll wake up roughly an hour later with no memory of his actions, so it's rather easy to exploit this glaring flaw... should you be able to come across it.

character biography

i used to think only america's way was right

Nikki had never had anything worth fighting for.

His past goes by in a blur, nearly two decades of useless parental rebellion, an apathy toward what everyone else thought was so important, and more than his fair share of run-ins with the law. He leaves school a year before anyone else, takes up odd jobs, and slams the front door home one last time with a middle finger raised high in the air when his mother and father can't stand to put up with him anymore. He drinks, he smokes, he picks fights. Throw enough money his way, and he'll do just about anything. It isn't until someone's shoving a gun into his hands that things pick up into a crescendo of panic: what had been years of playful oblivion toward anything and everything has suddenly become very real. The prelude means nothing, after all. Everything before this moment means nothing: the moment when he first hears the name Doctor X.

The men and women on the streets speak of the “man with a cure” in hushed tones, words laced with fear and a sort of respect. They push a gun into his hands and point his eyes at the television, and suddenly this world – the world that had not mattered, everything in it that had all been a joke under a haze of depressants and indifference – becomes so much more clear. They speak of the corruption in politics, how those with money are the ones with true power, and the fear of communism is nothing but a blanket over the evil that is the capitalism that runs rampant in the country he'd once thought right. The way people step on one another, throw away lives like candy wrappers if only for fame or for fortune makes him more sick than a dozens shots of alcohol, and so when someone shoves a gun of all things into his hands for the second time, he finds his fingers clenched around the handle and his mouth begging for an address, a name, anything that'll get him to the man hiding behind the alias of a letter.

He had never had anything worth fighting for until then. But now he could see all of the corruption in this insane world, and his ears were open to the revolution calling.

make something of your life, boy, let me into your mind

It takes him days, weeks, months to track down what he'd been told of not long ago. They issue him a series of tests, code names, and passwords before they even think of letting him anywhere near their secret base of operations, stretching the wait to meet the man who'd become his ideal, his idol even further, still. The day finally comes when that hard metal door comes swinging open for his entry, though. The day finally comes, and he thinks he has never felt more excited and terrified all at once in his entire life. They brief him on his way through a labyrinth of corridors: lead by the Doctor, a demagogue, the grossly simplified plan is to eliminate prominent political and religious figures throughout the city, both fueling the corruption in the society they all suffer from. Once their home territory is cleansed, they would be free to sprawl outward, striking fear in the untruthful leaders of the country and adding the educated masses into their revolution until the White House is nothing more than a domino for them to knock over with a mere breath.

And they want him – a nobody, an invisible young man with more potential than any other of his kind – to be their hit-man.

(At least, this is what they tell him.)

Doctor X is everything that Nikki could have ever hoped for and more. When they first encounter one another, the high school dropout is greeted with a smile (warm, genuine) and a clap on the shoulder. The Doctor thanks him for his cooperation, feeds the growing buds of hatred for the society around him, and promises to mold him into the most terrifying hit-man the Western Hemisphere has ever seen. He learns to wield more arms than he even knew existed – masters them with terrifying speed. They teach him stealth, how to arrive at the scene and leave without any trace of him ever being there. They give him a home, a tiny place beyond the eyes of the law, and offer him an array of illegal goods that with satisfy his fix for as long as he serves the cause. It is with the enthusiasm of a puppy dog that he promises that he will serve for as long as he is needed, and well beyond that if they will have him.

His idol can only chuckle, low voice as smooth as melted caramel, and when the Doctor calls him a death machine in the making, Nikki thinks that “death machine” will be a title he'll wear with pride.

the system we learn says we're equal under law

They start him off small. A rising politician, only just starting to appeal to one of the parties across the town, but not quite reaching beyond city limits. To the revolutionist, it doesn't matter which side has his back, or what sort of phony “solutions” he promises to dish out: all that matters is his history of hypocrisy and the orders that come from above. Nikki's but a pawn, and when the Operation calls for him to fire a well-aimed bullet through the skull of just another corrupt man, he's happy to oblige. Needless to say, the first plot goes by flawlessly. They celebrate with needles through their skin and calls for world reform swimming through the air around them. The next goes the same way: he goes in, aims, fires, and leaves as if nothing had happened. Modern technology cannot decipher DNA when they leave no DNA to retrieve, and the detectives can't hope to follow leads that don't seem to begin in the first place. He puts a bullet in the head of one of the city's pastors, coming back to be proclaimed the new messiah, and Nikki thinks that there isn't possibly anything that can go wrong.

But something does.

He gets messy, and one gets away. Nearly catches sight of his face, nearly is able to identify him, nearly gets him caught. Nearly jeopardizes the whole operation.

Doctor X isn't nearly as furious as the young man had feared he'd be. What with the own guilty and self-hating storm blowing through his head, it's hard to face the smile (warm, genuine) that accompanies his idol when he returns to the main base of operations some days later. When he says that he has failed as an assassin, the Doctor tells him that it was, indeed, a slip-up, but there'd always been a backup plan in case things were ever to go astray. The next thing to come from the older man's mouth is as confusing as it is short: Mindcrime. Immediately, the world slams its doors on his vision, and as his body stops taking his commands, all he can wonder is, who turned out the lights? That's all he can wonder, that is, until he's waking up somewhere else, pistol in hand, clothes splattered with blood (who's blood, why blood?), and then he can wonder a whole plethora of other things.

It's not the only time it happens. It's the first, but definitely not the last. Five black outs later, and its with sad eyes and regret that he's so sure is real that Doctor X informs him that they'd been using a variety of brainwashing techniques on the operation's workers. Since he had always been so loyal to the cause, the Doctor had assumed he would not be too terribly torn up over the revelation.

They've only known one another for a short while, but already, his boss knows him so well.

fighting fires with empty words

The moment Father William makes his presence known in the building is the moment that Nikki knows, absolutely knows that he does not like him. Beyond the fact that this man is one of the enemy – a priest, for goodness sake! A priest, and one manipulates his own followers for personal gain. How can the Doctor trust him, much less let him into their safe haven? – is the fact that an entire day has not even passed before he settles in and starts barking orders at the hit-man and his coworkers, acting as though he's been crowned king of the whole ordeal. Goodness only knows what he's getting out of the operation in return for the information he knows; regardless of what it is, all the younger male can do is pray he gets it soon and is on his way.

It certainly doesn't help cool his anger when all of the attention he'd gotten from his idol was suddenly stolen away, taken from a scruffy-looking boy hardly in his twenty and plopped into the hands of a well-dressed religious figure. All of the smiles (so warm, so genuine) are being flashed at someone else, and maybe it's a little crazy, but he's starting to miss hearing the word “mindcrime” and having all the assassination work done for him, if only because it was coming from X's mouth. Truly a godsend until the end, though, the Doctor offers him a so-called “plaything” to help him pass the time while relations with the priest are high. Of all the things that had flashed through his mind at the term “plaything,” he is fairly certain a nun was not one of them.

While Father William is about as detestable as they come, Sister Mary is everything he'd wanted in life without ever having known it.

She comes from a past much like his own – fled home at the tender age of sixteen, sold herself away in order to survive on the streets, was only spared by a bout of kindness from the priest himself and was granted salvation through him – but where he is hard, stained in the blood of the corrupt, she is soft, smooth hands a comfort as they lay atop his own and words as sweet as the honey he's not had since he was a child. He finds himself staring at her as she leaves, shoulder grabbed too harshly by Father to possibly be necessary. When he turns to face his employer, he is met by a knowing look and a noticeable lack of a smile. He's warned not to lose track of what's important, and at the time, he wonders what he has done to ever make his idol think that he'd do anything less than dedicate every fiber of his being to the cause.

The days tick by, though, and a dozen more visits with the first person he can honestly call a friend come and go. Nikki realizes that the Doctor seems to know him better than he knows himself.

i'll hide away in here, the law will never find me

He lights a candle in the middle of his empty hideaway, watches the flame light the room with a haphazard blaze. His single chair has a shadow triple it's size, and the white bedsheets on the only other piece of furniture in the room are kissed golden. The rain patters against the window, and the sound of thunder crescendos and decrescendos in the distance. Something unexpected has happened: where there was a joy in bringing down another enemy, there is now only an empty hollowness. Out there in the rainy city, they will have a funeral. Three days from now, they will lower the politician's body in a casket into the ground, bury him in dirt, and forget him more and more with each passing day. But tonight, oh, tonight, Nikki lights a candle, and all he can see in the dying shades of red and orange is the face of a man he has snuffed out well before his time.

It's impossible to speak with his boss about this. If he were to let his goal, his idol know that he was starting to have regrets about bloodying his hands so much, it could be mistaken as treason toward the cause. It's not that, he swears! Surely the pain will go away as soon as it arrived, so he doesn't dare mention his new nightly ritual to the man he so looks up to. But there's an ache that just won't go away, that has been eating him inside for days, and if he doesn't tell someone, he's afraid it's going to destroy him from the inside out.

So he turns to Mary.

He's never been the religious sort – his parents never really identified as anything specific, and his apathy did not miss out on such beliefs and practices – but when she offers to “wash his sins away” in hopes that it will help put his mind at ease, how can he possibly say no? Any solution is one he'd like to try, and he's finding it increasingly hard to turn his friend down. The practice seems drawn out and over the top to him, but the way she smiles at him afterward and tells him that he is forgiven in the eyes of the god she worships is enough to have a smile gracing his own lips. She encourages him to continue lighting candles, that it is an odd, but healthy way of dealing with the grief of such constant slaughter. In time, she even joins him to light a few of them, herself. What started as a single candle in the center of his room has multiplied into an army of small wax figures that prevent him from entering his own home: each one a separate story, but all with the same ending. He does not touch the ones that have burned to their limit, leaves the pool of cooled wax on his floor to remember. And he does remember. He remembers every last one.

He takes to sleeping at the the base, unable to get to his own bed anymore, and his friend begins visiting between the times Father William arrives to meet the Doctor. He confides in her his worry, his pain, and she runs gentle fingers through unkempt hair to sooth him of his anxiety. And as he says to himself in a mantra that his mission has changed the world, is changing the world, Operation: Mindcrime will save the whole bloody world, he thinks -

- he thinks he might be in love.

we're being used and fed like rats in experiments

When it had started, he'd thought he would be singing praises the day Father William stepped out of the building once and for all. He'd thought that he would be overjoyed at the prospect of having the Doctor's attention all to himself again, that he'd be able to go back to being a loyal pawn and everything would be good and rosy from there. When the priest has had his fill, though, he takes away Sister Mary, pulling her by the hair down the halls and out into the street, and when his boss looks at him, the older man's no longer all smiles. His face is stoic, eyes unreadable, and Nikki wonders if the reluctance to go back to the way things were is mutual between you both. He's barking orders at the other workers, then, agitation suddenly clear in the way his hands clench and unclench, and even though he gives his hit-man a day free from bloodshed, the pawn can't help but wonder what sort of pedestal he'd been putting him up on all this time. The idea of overthrowing the government is no less desirable than it has been since he began this whole fiasco, but the one behind it all suddenly seems much less so than he'd been before.

He isn't assigned any missions the next day, either, or the day after that, or after that still. Not even rallying jobs – going out on the streets, spreading the world, opening the eyes of civilians to the heinous nature of the leaders claiming to be protecting them – are assigned to him, and he's honestly terrified that his employer has no more use for him. It feels like a miracle when there's finally a tap on his shoulder and a smile (so, so warm, so, so genuine) being flashed his way. He's led to a car, instructed to sit in the rear as the Doctor takes the passenger's side and a faceless driver starts on a drive to a predetermined location. X is surprisingly vocal, commending him for all of his work well done and apologizing for having to cut what he calls a “much needed reprieve from work” short in order to complete this "one tiny mission". There's a snide comment about the priest and his nun laced in there, but the stab of annoyance at his lack of respect for the woman Nikki has fallen madly in love with is buried under a sense of foreboding. He's never spoken, much less praised him this much. It's only when the slick black vehicle has slid to a halt and the hit-man's stepping outside into the pouring rain that it all suddenly becomes clear.

“Kill her. That's all you have to do.”

They're parked no more than three blocks from the church that Father William preaches at, the elegant building standing out amongst a sea of cookie-cutter buildings preceding it. Nikki stares at it, the high columns reaching into the black, black sky. He then stares at the shadow that's cast across the demagogue's face, not even bothering to mask the horror and disbelief in his own visible eyes.

“Kill Mary?”

“She's a risk,” he says as if it is the most simple thing in the world. The mouth, barely visible through the open car window, is nothing more than a straight line. Not warm. Not genuine. Where is the chess master's love for his pawn? “And get the priest, as well.”

A thousand words of protest use his mind as a race track, but not a single one has the time to fall from his lips before the window on the passenger's side is being rolled up and the driver is on his way. He's left there, mouth open, rain plastering strands of hair to his forehead and making his trench coat twice as heavy as it would have been otherwise. Kill her? Kill Mary? But – why? Mary had done nothing wrong, and whatever Father William had done to earn a place on the “off list” certainly couldn't put her life in jeopardy, as well, could it? He suddenly wonders if it was his involvement with her, his friendship and absolute trust in her that had caused the order to be given, but he kills it as soon as it arrives. No. No, it wasn't his fault. Nothing was ever his fault. Maybe she'd been lying, maybe she was a traitor, maybe she'd fallen prey to the enemy and started using her position for her own personal gain -

- but that wasn't the Mary he knew at all.

Someone brushes past him, nearly toppling him over into the forming rain puddles, and the hit-man knows he's not going to get anywhere by standing in the cold while panicking. Off the priest? He could do that. With gusto, in fact. And Mary – well, there had to be a reason, and if he was going to change the world... if he and the rest of Operation: Mindcrime were going to save the whole wide world, he couldn't mule over the “if”s and the “but”s, could he?

Father is sifting through dollar bills when Nikki finds him (the irony of it all), and there isn't a trace of guilt when one of the many warning shots fired makes contact with and rips through his elder's arm. Immediately, the latter is writhing with pain, hand to the wound as crimson dyes the clothe around it. It's with a barrel aimed at his head and a spat command that the priest lowers himself down to his knees; surprisingly enough, there is no plea for mercy. In fact, the last two words to break their tense silence before a rain of bullets invades the scum's chest are: thank you. It's with numbness in his mind, numbness in his heart that he watches the body collapse backward, holy water splashing up and into the air and the remains already starting to turn red. One down. One to go. He thinks he's okay, truly, as he stares at the corpse floating near comically before him, half submerged and as far from graceful as he's ever seen. All he needs to do is go in, fire a shot through her head, and get out; it doesn't matter what he feels for her, so long as the mission is complete.

He knocks on the main entry way once, twice – can hear her singing in the main hall, words of praise to a god he could never hold any love for – and one look at her face is all he needs to falter.

“What are you doing out in the rain?” she asks with a smile, leading him by the hand inside and out from the pour. “I've been waiting for you you – come in.”

Waiting for him? But he hadn't contacted - … Oh. It must have been the Doctor. Had she not been here along with the priest, the whole mission would have been ruined; the murder of Father William would have startled her, but if she was in a state of oblivion, it would be so much easier to do away with her. How long had his boss been planning this, he wonders, as the only real friend he's ever had fetches him a towel to dry his hair off with? She even strides over and starts him off for for him, flailing the white article back and forth and laughing happily as she does so. It's not often he visits her at the church, after all. It's simply too bad that he has to... That this will be the last time that he...

He throws the blood-splattered gun on the ground, a sob he just can't hold crawling up his throat and into the open air, and Mary stares at the weapon as if the floor had ripped itself open and was spewing lava at them both.

Nikki tells her everything then. He tells her how he'd just wanted to feel needed, how they'd shown him everything wrong with the world and how he'd thought he'd wanted nothing more than to help rise up to the challenge and fix the plethora of things that had led society into a downward spiral. He tells her of his dependency on the revolution, how he's an addict and only they have what he needs; how when he just doesn't do a good enough job at what he does, the Doctor only needs to utter a single word and he's nothing but a lifeless puppet to pull the strings of. He tells her that he was sent here to kill her – has already killed Father – but can't, because he is hopelessly and madly in love with her, and when he closes that distance between them both, oh goodness, she responds, and Heaven may or may not exist out there, but it certainly exists in her arms.

They decide to run away. She owes William her life, but his foul treatment of her in the years after her initial salvation made it hard for her to mourn his death. They'll find another church, another city. They'll get him help for his addiction, and maybe the world isn't all okay, but the revolution doesn't need him or her specially. There will always be someone else. She casts away her title then, a love that would have been restricted by religious rules and practices suddenly a reality, and all of the horror at that initial command has been swept away in a tide of passion and happiness.

He never needed Doctor X, anyway.

carved my cure with a blade that left me in scars

“I've had enough, and I want out!”

He articulates his words with a chair thrown violently at the wall, and the way his former-idol doesn't so much as flinch as wood splits and shatters into the air has the aggravation boiling hotter in him still. Up until that point, the Doctor had always been one step ahead, had already known what Nikki would do and think before he could foresee it himself, and the way the older man is acting now screams that he doesn't think this act of rebellion will last. There's a smile plastered on his face (cold, feigned) as he informs his favorite little mind slave that he's the only one who can provide for him what he needs most. It's been days since he's had an injection – the poor boy will be crawling back before the week is over, demanding what only the demagogue can give.

“You can't walk away now,” he says, and the laugh that resounds off the base's walls is enough to push the hit-man over the edge. He takes his bag, his meager belongings, and throws the door open with more force than necessary for door opening. Not nearly enough force for anger displacement. As he leaves, feet stomping down a labyrinth of corridors, all he can hear is the cry of caramel-smooth tones telling him: you'll never get away.

Five days before departure.

The investigation over Father William's murder is as it's peak when he returns to his room full of candles (a tiny voice in the back of him begging for what he doesn't have already). He doesn't bother trying to light them all again for his latest victim – he does not care to mourn the death of someone as vile as the priest, but even if it had been another man or another woman, he would not have started up the ritual again. He lit these candles as a way to remember where other people would forget, but Mary has given him the second chance he hadn't known he'd needed. He would leave them here, and maybe if the police ever caught on, it would lead them to a room full of memories – and they could keep those memories. He'd no need for them anymore. Not when he had a future to look forward to filled with memories not weighted down the blood of the corrupt.

Four days before departure.

There's a sort of pain that kicks up in his head. He's cleared out the apartment the revolution gave him, his few belongings held close to home as he checks into a cheap hotel and plans his final days in the city. It's getting hard to focus on what the people are saying, though, sometimes. The woman behind the front counter has to snap at him multiple times before he can fully complete the room transaction, his mind wandering and a great need making itself known and ignorable. But it's fine. Four more days, and Mary will wash away this agony, as well.

Three days before departure.

The headaches are getting worse. It's getting harder to focus. I have never been addicted to anything, am I even writing this right. But he'll make it. He knows he'll make it. He's drenched this city in blood and left every man, woman, and child wondering, the police no closer to catching him than they were on day one. If he can do that, he can do anything.

Two days before departure.

He doesn't see the brick wall until he's slamming into it, forehead colliding with red stone and the back of his skull with gray concrete on his gravity-influenced trip down to the ground. He can't even remember why, exactly, he is here. Reason has been buried under desire. Thought buried under need. Maybe that was why he was here in the first place. As a child, this was where it had all began. He's been blacking out sometimes, forgetting where he's been or what he's done. At one point, he'd thought he'd bumped into his old employer, only to wake up somewhere entirely different.

The wall tells him not to trust the needle, begs him not to listen when it cries his name. It's full of lies, it says, just like the man who had given him those same needles not so long before. He's beginning to think that he can't do this.

One day before departure.

He drags the blade across his left wrist, and it is utter agony. Scarlet streaks over his tanned skin, filling in where the metal has left, and pain shoots through every nerve. Teeth grit against one another at the sensation, brows furrowing at the sight, and this was not what he wanted. Not what he wanted at all. It is, however, a necessary pain – it may feel like torture, and Mary may ask questions, but he can't go to be with her quite yet, and any solution, regardless of how drastic, is a solution to his problem all the same.

He needs his fix. There's no point in denying it. At night, he thinks of what the Doctor's face might look like if (when) he returns, and what might his own if (when) a syringe is being shoved through his delicate skin in return for the continued slaughter of political and religious figures. X was right to say that he couldn't get away, what with his addiction begging him to return, begging him to continue bloodying his hands until the end of time. X was right about a lot of things. But let the heavens strike him down where he stands if he doesn't do everything in his power to resist the monster's grip, and let him bleed a thousand times to the blade in his hand before he ever shows up on that man's doorstep.

The thing about this pain is that it is different from the indigenous sort. He's no power over the aching need inside him, but this, what bursts from his open wrists is all his doing. He controls when it hurts and when it doesn't. And when he focuses on the welts of red that bubble from the gashes, he thinks that the needle's call is just a little bit quieter.

Nikki can do this. It'll hurt like heck and it won't be pretty, but he can do this.

i want what you feel, believe me: turn the current on

Mary doesn't show up at their rendezvous place the day of departure.

The former hit-man hasn't known her long enough, hasn't made enough plans with her to know exactly how punctual she is. The priest, really, determined when they would come and go together, and the handful of times she came to visit by her lonesome where never regulated by any sort of time frame or schedule. Realizing that she may just have a poor sense of time, or was caught up in something else, he waits for her, all of his belongings packed into a single suitcase at his side and fingers twiddling as the minutes crawl by. It seems like a short eternity before those minutes, however, turn into hours, and as noon fades into the golden hued afternoon, he can't help but wonder if she has forgotten that today was the day or where they were supposed to be meeting. It's a struggle to remember where, exactly, she is staying in terms of an address, but once he has it solidified in his mind, he decides to drop by and see what the matter is.

It takes another hour or so of walking, and by the time he's made it to her apartment building, dusk is already upon them. He takes the elevator up, drags his luggage down a hallway, and... is shocked to find her door slightly ajar. Strange – weren't these the heavy sort that slammed if you didn't hold them open? He finds a dirty article of clothing on the floor, though, just barely propping the door open, and a bit of the anxiety subsides. He would have thought, though, that she would have gathered all of her laundry by now. Unless she really has forgotten that today was the day, in which case he would be happy to assist her. He pushes the door open slightly, sure that she would not be angry with him for coming in without knocking and makes his presence known with a call.

“Anybody home?”

But of course someone's home. She's home. The love of his life, the stars in his sky, the only one who can ease his sorrows. He can see a bit of her from around the corner, and a smile is already gracing his features, because this is when he gets his new start. This is when they both get their new start. This is when -

- he finds her dead, a single bullet wound through her forehead.

“... Mary?”

Nikki collapses to the floor beside her, hands reaching out for one of her own and shaking when he finds them as cold as the arctic. He knows dead bodies. He has murdered and he has observed, and she has been dead for at least a day. Perhaps two. Her face is twisted in shock in pain – horribly sad – as if some cruel prank had been played on her just moments before the weapon had done away with her. He'd always noticed how sad she looked whenever she was alone (so different from the way she smiled when he was by her side), and the lugubrious nature of the nun persisted even in death. He pulls her limp frame closer to him, helplessly checking for a pulse as if hoping that he is the one being pranked, and feels tears start to well in his eyes when he finds nothing but stillness.

“Don't leave me,” he begs quietly, lacing his fingers with her own and staring into the blue of her eyes, hoping, wishing, praying for some sort of sign. “Don't leave me here!”

Who could have done this? Who would have wanted her dead? There wasn't a sign of struggle, no sign of forced entry, from what he could tell. It had to be someone who she would have let in, and someone who had wanted her done away with. And then it all becomes clear: the Doctor. Of course she would have let him in; she probably imagined that there were still ties between he and his former employee. He'd wanted her done away with, and when he realized that his hit-man wouldn't be coming back, he took it into his own hands to get rid of the problem. Hatred burns deep inside of him as he plays the scene in his mind so vividly, and if he could bare to tear himself away from what remained of his only friend, he would hunt down the demagogue immediately and avenge her needless death.

It could have been him. No, goodness, it should have been him. Mary had been able to turn her life around! She had taken years of hate and suffering and dirty practices and turned it all around, dedicated her life to saving people in death. What had he done? Sent so many people too early to their maker, filled them with lead and lit a bloody candle, thinking that would make up for all of his sins and his crimes. He wanted it. He wanted to die. Goodness, even if it couldn't bring her back, even if it couldn't make up for all of the things he had done, at least he would get to see her again.

But then, suddenly, he's remembering the scars on his wrists. It occurs to him when he thinks of his own death, but it takes him back to just days prior, when the head pains were bad and his blackouts worse, and he hadn't (had) seen Doctor X in his broken stupor - … No. No. It just took a word. It just took one word from the Doctor's mouth, and Nikki bent in whatever way he wanted. He'd woken up somewhere else. He'd woken up somewhere else and couldn't remember how he'd gotten there. And then suddenly, it's not the chess master standing in Mary's apartment, gun pressed against the smooth surface at the top of her head. It's him. It's him unquestioningly following orders his conscious had not even heard, but his subconscious demanded he follow. It's him knocking on the door and his lover happily opening it for him, letting him in. It's him holding her, kissing her, and in a shocking twist, doing away with her. He doesn't know. He doesn't know. It might not have been him, but it might have, and this is what ultimately breaks him.

we could make all this wrong seem right

He takes to the streets, screams ripping through his throat and breaking the silence of the night around him. The red light district is full of all sorts of scum, but even the most terrifying have their limits, and the screeches of a man gone mad are enough to have them running on their tails. He calls for her - “Mary, Mary, why won't you answer me?” - and looks for her face in the neon lights, praying that this is all some horrible dream he can wake up. Maybe if he calls just a little bit louder, she'll hear him from wherever she's gone and come back to him. Maybe if he goes beyond that, he'll wake himself up and find her already by his side, asleep next to him in their new bed in a new city in their new life.

Someone must have called to police, because there are suddenly sirens and men in black trying to calm him down, trying to figure out what has him in such a frenzy. He thinks that they've come to take him away, too, take him off someplace far from the woman he loves, and he's panicking even worse than before. He pulls out his gun, aims it at them (he never intended to shoot), and suddenly realizes that he's still got the crimson streaks from his lover's wound on his hands, on his clothes... everywhere.

Someone tackles him to the ground, and he doesn't even struggle as they rip the pistol from his hand.

Doesn't struggle as they take the knife that helped him with another problem, one that now seems so insignificant and distant.

Doesn't struggle as they load him into their car and ship him away.

Mary, Mary. Why won't she answer?

i don't believe in love - i never have, i never will

“We know you did it.”

“Why'd you do it?”

“What made you do it?”

“... No. No. No!”

He wakes on impact, head slammed into a table and blunt fingers digging into his scalp. He can't remember where he is, how he got there; there's a haze in his mind that's messing with his vision, and all he can hear through the ringing in his ears is a chorus of accusations that haven't gone away since he found her lifeless in that lonely little apartment. There's a grumble of another voice – if he has to infer, it probably belongs to the one who's yanking on his hair – but he can't make out the words. There's a pause, and before he can wonder why, his head is being forced downward once more. Reality snaps into focus with the attack.

This is an interrogation room. There's a woman across the room, arms folded over her chest and a sickeningly condescending glint in her eyes. The hot breath spilling over him from behind must be her partner who, angered by the lack of response, decided to take it out on the helpless junkie before him. Nikki wonders why he's here, and why no one has stopped their brutal misuse of police power, but they're asking him if he's going to cooperate now, and he can't really mule on anything else too much, unless he'd like his skull to crack from repeated injury. He nods numbly and tries to focus more on what they're saying than his retreating and returning vision and the camera watching his every move from above.

They think he did it.

And perhaps he did. The gun may have very well been in his hands, and it could have been his index finger that pulled the trigger to end her existence in this word. But they don't understand, because even if it was his body, it definitely wasn't his mind, so it couldn't have been his fault. “I didn't do it,” he repeats in a mantra each time they ask if he was responsible for the murder of the nun, each time they ask who it was if he was not to blame. They question his possession of a gun. (He always has a gun on him, he wants to tell them, even if he doesn't plan to use it. No attacks a man who's armed and ready to kill.) “I didn't do it.” They wonder whose blood is all over him, as well as where it came from. (It's Mary's, it's all Mary's, because he wanted to hold her then, wanted to hold her like he'd never gotten to when he'd been just a slave to the underworld.) “I didn't do it.” They ask him if they know this woman. (Of course he does, that's a picture of Mary, his lover, the only person who truly cared about in this ruined world and the only one who cared for him in turn.) “I didn't do it.”

They go through different methods of coaxing out a confession. Coaxing out anything. At first, the hothead behind him continues trying to beat it out of him, but that only makes the hysteria worse. The atmosphere calms bit by bit, but even civil conversation cannot get anything else out. They try speaking to him like a baby, someone who cannot fathom normal human behavior, and as the monster inside unleashes a fit of rage, all his outer shell can do is continue denying his attachment to the crime.

Hours go by, and the two simply... leave him there. Unable to get a name, an address, anything from him, they've no hope but to wait for him to calm down, try again, and work with what they can. From Mary's death comes a domino effect of leads – from her, they draw a line to Father William's murder. From him, they can connect each one of his rivals that he'd ratted out to Doctor X. From what the ex-hit-man understands, it gets a little harder from there, but once they see a pattern in personalities and political methods, they're able to trace nearly every murder back to him. Him. Not the Doctor, not an underground revolution only known by the people on the streets and those directly involved with it. He wants to tell him that they're all wrong, that he's just the puppet and the puppet master's still out there, searching for another high school dropout who he can manipulate and twist to do his bidding, but the words aren't coming out right and the memories are growing fuzzy.

Finally, one day, they decide to ask him all sorts of things. Things about himself, rather than the girl or the religious and political figures. They ask him if he's ever been in love.

He tells them he doesn't believe in love.

when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them

He's a nameless face. A face they know well by now, the undeniable killer of dozens of seemingly innocent men and women, but they can't get anything out from him. No first name, no last name, not even the nickname he has gone by since leaving home. They can't trace his history, and they can't truly pinpoint his motives beyond a distaste for capitalism and corruption through religious practices. They could put him on trial, but he hasn't been able to say more than five coherent sentences in all of his time spent there, and one doesn't have to be a professional to know that he has gone completely off the deep end.

So they admit him to the state hospital, isolated from the other patients and put in a room where everything is white.

It reminds him of the home Doctor X had given him. They're about the same size, no more than a tiny block of a room accented with no colors and no features. The bed is a downgrade, however, and there isn't a chair that he can sit in to watch the seemingly never ending rain from outside. They don't let him light candles inside, either; after they saw the healing wounds on his wrists, they figured him to be suicidal. They'd be as crazy as he before they let him anywhere near fire, much less anything else he could use to hurt himself with. The candles would have certainly made his isolated abode more homely: a memento to days long passed when things were bad, but not as bad with someone to fall back on. A certain nun to catch him should he tumble.

Mary. He traces shapes in the white washed walls and thinks of her face in death. What could he have done to stop it? If he'd gone to see her sooner? If they'd run away together the moment the idea came to them? If he'd never gotten as close to her as he was? If he'd never joined Operation: Mindcrime at all?

Sleep eludes him. But that's fine. Every time his eyes droop, he can see a hundred faces pass him by – some he knows, some he doesn't – and he lays waste to each and every one, hands guided by the rough skin of the Doctor's palms. The actual assassinations begin to slip away, lost in the void to be replaced by white fog. He starts to forget his time with Mary, as well, the happy memories vanishing with each day that passes.

There's no one left, Nikki realizes. No one left to wash away his sins. No one left to clean his room, fix his meals. Be his friend.

and i raise my head and stare into the eyes of a stranger

It occurs to him, one dreary day, that he cannot remember anything.

There are names – Nikki, Mary, William, X – but they don't mean anything anymore. He figures the first to be his own, but no one calls him by anything but his assigned combination of numbers or any derogatory term they can throw his way without looking unprofessional, so it's getting harder to tell. Mary sometimes comes with a face, a beautiful girl with a rosary wrapped around her throat, but the images in his mind are fleeting glimpses to him. Perhaps William was a brother or a friend, and X the name of some sort of video game he'd loved as a child. Whoever they were, whatever they meant, though, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters at all, really. He's accepted the fate that he will never leave this hospital, and anything that held any significance outside of it will never hold the same meaning ever again.

The therapy won't work, because he can't remember anything. His doctor tries to get him to talk about his feelings, but all he feels is choking numbness and the embers of a hatred he's long forgotten. Stubbornness still comes down to an art with him, though, and he's lost the number of times his nurse has had to give him shots to get him to behave. The names she calls him under her breath are horrible, and he wonders what he ever did to make her hate him so, but she treats him well outside of that and he can't bring himself to get upset with her. Not when there is a haze covering up so many years, so many things, so many thoughts, so many feelings that weighs him down.

He looks in the mirror, sometimes, when they allow him out of solitary and into rooms that have them, transfixed on the image of a man who he assumes to be himself, but who doesn't quite feel like himself.

Deep down, he feels like he's looking into the eyes of a stranger.

There is one night where he's up past curfew, sitting on the edge of his bed as he listens to the radio they finally let him have. It's not that he enjoys listening to it. Truly, it's all pointless to him: exploits of a world he'll never be able to see with his own eyes again. What it does, however, is provides a distraction from falling asleep. He doesn't remember what he dreams of when he awakes (guns, blood, drugs, X, the church, bloody wrists, her lifeless body, the rosary wrapped around her throat), but he jerks from slumber violently in cold sweats, and the less sleep he can get, the better. The nurse is back, however, reprimanding him for breaking policies once again.

“It's ten minutes past curfew! Why are you still up?”

The news on the radio changes then, talk of musicians rising to fame fading into more grim talk. (In other news, the bizarre murders of political and religious leaders that have shocked this city over the last few months seem to have ended as suddenly as they began. No terrorist group has come forth claiming responsibility for the slaying, but police have a suspect in custody under observation at the state hospital. His identity is being withheld, ending further investigation. Sports and weather next.) Something moves in his chest, gears in his mind stirring, and the sound waves from the tiny black box begin to blow away the haze. The woman in the doorway, however, is none too please with your lack of response.

“Hello? Hello? Oh, perhaps you need another shot.” The young man is beginning to realize that she's stopped coming in without her syringe, always prepared to put him in his place when he's acting up. He doesn't even bother fighting back when she lifts his arm into the air, finds a vein, and presses the needle in. (It's almost familiar. Who had done this to him before?) He grunts at the pain, but she pretends she doesn't hear it. Pulling back, she smiles as she would at a job well done. “There: that's should do it!” She begins heading toward the door, and already drowsiness is starting to fall over him; but he fights it. He's on the verge of... of something, and he's not going to let his shot get in the way of it. “Sweet dreams! … You monster.”

She slams the door, and suddenly, there it is.

“... I remember now,” he breaths, voice raw from lack of use.

“I remember how it started. I can't remember yesterday. I just remember doing what they told me.”

i remember now

Nikki goes to sleep one night in the hospital, mind heavy under sedatives and heart wracked with guilt, and wakes up somewhere completely different.

For a moment, it's all too similar, all too familiar for him to handle. He panics, checking himself for a weapon, making sure that he is not splattered with blood. Had the Doctor found him again? Used the word “Mindcrime” to simultaneously break him out of the hospital and return him to a life of bloodied hands and wasted revolution? However, he's unarmed. Has nothing on him, in fact, outside of the hospital uniform, which is every bit as blood-free as it is dull in fashion. He couldn't have been subjected to the brainwashing power the demagogue had over him, anyway; he'd fallen asleep by his own terms, and X would not dare step foot in a place run by the very people they both despised.

Instead, the former assassin finds himself on the outskirts of a very scary looking forest, the cries of rabid animals filling the symphony of nature and a brand new kind of terror filling his heart. This, of course, has to be a dream, because there was certainly no place like this inside or outside the city, and regardless of how ill-received he was with society, his was a broken mind, and they would not leave him out for the wolves... er, as literal as it was figurative in this sense, he worried. As such, he had two options: simply wait it out on the outskirts of the foreboding woods (as dull as it was worrisome), or follow through with the plot until he awoke in the morning. If anything, it was a nice reprieve from his guilty recounts of everywhere he'd gone wrong over the past year or so, and the wall in the distance certainly seemed like a better place to wait things out than where he'd initially woken.

It brings great surprise to him that, beyond the tall wall lies what they call a “safe haven,” and if he wants away from the forest, he's to past a variety of tests. Tests reminds him of his says in high school, and panic strikes him when he realizes that he's unlikely to pass whatever sort of quiz they may shoot his way. Instead of asking him questions, however, they determine whether or not he has contracted something they refer to as “the Taint”. Halfway through the medical exam, the surrealism of it all catches up to him, and he dares to ask: “Am I still in the hospital?” This, in turn, causes them to react, afraid that by hospital, he's referring to treatment for the same disease they'd been scanning him for. He doesn't bother to explain that he'd meant the mental hospital, especially when the results come back negative, and they allow him inside with a relieved wipe of the brow and a pat on the back.

It takes him back to days when Doctor X would do the same thing.

He shudders.

It fails to compare, however, to the anxiety that floods his heart when he falls asleep at the settlement center that night, and wakes up in that very same spot in that very same building the next morning.

This is no dream.

i remember how it started

He finds a tiny home in the District primarily comprised of humans, thought it can be argued whether or one could honestly call it a “home”. He finds a whole in the wall, a tiny little thing that can hardly accommodate the bed that he tries to keep inside, much less all of the other appliances people find necessary for basic living. The bed – and a chair that he picks up off the street; it was broken, but he saws off the uneven one and it works just as well – is all he really keeps in the hideaway, anyway, a reflecting of what he'd had at the hospital and his own place before that, still. He paints the walls black this time, though, because his therapist had told him that change comes in small steps, and going from white walls to black walls is the best he can think of. He has nothing to barter with for food and necessities, so he leaves the city limits to smuggle in goods he can trade. He starts by setting his sights on a pistol, and once he is comfortably armed, he moves toward earning food and water. With the weapon, he's able to rob the other humans (and if he's lucky, a smug gifted) around the district. True to his former beliefs, though, he does not take from those who have been given the short end of the stick, but rather those who are well off even in this horrible society. What he steals, he barters with, and before long, he has made a semi-comfortable living in his small little corner of Sanctum City.

As comfortable as he can be with Mary, that is.

They call him a Migrant. This world is definitely the one Nikki had lived in before – he's amazed to find records of his own crimes, grins in triumph when he learns the that his former-idol likely perished in what they call the Demon Tide – but too much time has passed for him to sleep through. Nearly thirty years have come and gone that he missed, sucked up through a worm hole of sorts and spat out into a world worse off than the one he'd tried to save. Apparently time travel is not the only thing these mysterious holes are capable of, however: people have been pulled from different worlds, even alternate universes. The idea that Mary, an alternate Mary, one who did not suffer at the hands of (the hands of who? Himself? Doctor X? Someone else?) has been saved of her fate by being sucked in through one such hole becomes his motivation. If she is there in the city, he will find her, and only then, he thinks, will he finally be happy again. Only then will he feel anything but this horrible numbness.

This is what he holds onto, that is, until a young boy looking much like himself in his youth accidentally breaks into his home, begging the ex-hit-man to hide him. An hour goes by before the presumed threat passes, the teenager never once moving from his spot (rifle lifted, gazing down his sights – the resemblance is becoming scarier by the second) until it does, and it's only then that he thanks his elder for “saving his butt”. It's from this young boy that he learns about the rebellion, a movement against the government held in Sanctum City. Corruption had been rampant when things were still a democracy (a concept not at all foreign to him), but a dictator had risen to power quickly and stamped out the rights of city civilians within a year's time. An address is given to him, a “go here if you're interested in learning more” sort of deal, before the young revolutionary is on his way and out of the tiny home.

Nikki stares long and hard at the address, a thousand memories replaying in his mind.

From the evils of capitalism to the tyranny of dictatorship – the world cannot fix itself, and only the operation knows what can truly remove the roots of corruption.

He knows what he must do.

there's a revolution calling

They're amazed at his skill when he steps before the rebellion. His stealth, his ways of getting knowledge, how he can cover up his tracks better than any other man he's known. Technology has advanced thirty years while he was gone, so there's still quite a bit to learn about the nifty new guns he has to wield and how to get around a more high tech police force – particularly one much more strict than what he is used to – but the Doctor always told him he was a fast learner. And, if there was one thing the detestable man was, it was honest. After all, in the end, one could argue that he had succeeded in making the Western Hemisphere's most dangerous assassin.

Nikki had never had anything worth fighting for before the streets had opened his eyes to the corruption in their government. He had never had anything worth fighting for until he swore to kill any man or woman who stood in the way of political and religious purity. He had never had anything worth fighting for until he shared a love with Sister Mary, whom he would fight a thousand battles for if the situation called for it. Now, he'd had one hundred and one things he'd sworn to fight for: this was just another chapter in the same book.

Two revolutions he has worked for.

Only, this time, he's doing it by his own terms.