• He never wanted to hear the voices.

    Butcher...demon...killer...

    They hissed and cried out to him far too often at home, after Shilo was asleep.

    Assassin, murderer, monster

    Nathan Wallace rested wearily against a wall in his basement workroom. He had just finished with the evening's work, and would be bringing a fresh, unscathed stomach, liver, and kidneys back to GeneCo. Nathan wanted nothing more than to strip off his heavy coat and rise it clean of blood...when one voice rose above the others.

    "Hello...Nathan."

    He froze. Nathan had, until now, brushed the voices aside as the effect of a guilty conscience, but nothing had ever addressed him directly. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and removed his bloodied gloves, not paying the new voice any attention.

    "Don't ignore me, Nathan. How's Shilo, today?"

    A quiet "...what?" escaped Nathan's lips as the voice chuckled.

    "Hahaha. Now I have your attention."

    He placed a hand on his scalpel, seeking comfort in the touch of the familiar tool. "Who are you? What is this?"

    "You know me, Nathan. You see me in the eyes of your victims, you hear me in their cries for mercy. And you feel me...you feel me when you dig your hands into their pulsing, glistening organs."

    Nathan muttered "No...just another hallucination..."

    "You can't hallucinate the shadow of your own mind, Nathan. And you can't keep ignoring me."

    He bent over the sink to splash some water on his face and clear his head. When he looked in the mirror, his face was covered by the helmet he had taken off just minutes before. Shaken, he tried to remove the helmet...but only touched the sides of his head. Confused, he looked up to see his helmet resting on the cold, metal shelf, right where he left it as soon as he came inside. "Oh, God..."

    "Now do you see? I'm the monster, Nathan."

    His Repoman coat felt like lead draped across his shoulders. Nathan struggled to get it off, his normally deft fingers fumbling with the buckles and clasps.

    "I'm the villian."

    Nathan wiped a hand down his face. "No...no, it's just work."

    "And oh, how we love our work!"

    Nathan closed his eyes, head tilted back slightly, as his mind's eye was assailed with images of all the delinquent payments he had handled. These weren't people, they were accounts. Files. Prey. He recalled his victims looking up at him in terror, running, screaming. He dwelled on the feeling of the kill, blood poundng in his ears. So clean, so precise. And when he removed GeneCo's property from the corpse's gleaming red viscera, it felt so good.

    "And without all that, just imagine what poor Shilo would think."

    "Shilo will never know.", Nathan replied, his thoughts drifting to his precious daughter upstairs. He stood up straight, removing his coat and hanging it up to clean. He would protect his daughter, from everything. From the world, from the truth, and from himself. The voice of the Repoman sank back into his mind with laugh.

    "Very good, legal assassin."

    Nathan smiled at his helmet, and went upstairs to check on Shilo.