SUBJECT 77: DOOM

The fluorescent light hummed, a dying insect trapped in the ceiling. The Warden sat alone, a bottle of scotch open on the desk. He wasn't drinking to celebrate. He was drinking to stop his hands from shaking.

He opened the file marked SUBJECT 77.

There was no name. The line for "Date of Birth" was stamped UNKNOWN. The line for "Next of Kin" was stamped DECEASED.

Attached to the file was a physical threat assessment card. It had one word typed in red ink: EXTINCTION.

The Warden read the intake summary for the thousandth time.

The Warden ran a finger over the photo. It wasn't a mugshot. It was a surveillance photo taken from a drone in the mountains of Kandahar, 2002. A man stood alone in a valley of dead bodies. He wasn't holding a gun. He was washing his hands in a stream.

"You're not a convict,"

the Warden whispered to the photo. "You're a burial ground."

The rain didn't wash the blood away. It just made it slick. Doom stood in the center of the interrogation room. He wasn't known as Doom then. He was Sergeant Major. The Asset. The Hammer.

On the floor lay three men. They were his superior officers. They weren't just dead; they were dismantled. Their necks were broken at unnatural angles. Their sidearms were still holstered.

Why? Because they had given an order. “Burn the school. No witnesses.”

They thought the Asset was a machine. They thought they could input coordinates and get a tragedy. They forgot that the machine had a soul. They forgot about Dharma.

The door burst open. A tactical extraction team stormed in, laser sights sweeping the gloom.

"Drop the weapon!" the team leader screamed.

Doom turned slowly. He held up his hands. They were empty. They were the size of shovels, stained with the sins of his commanders.

"I am the weapon,"

Doom rumbled. His voice was calm, vibrating with the low frequency of an earthquake. "And I am jamming."

He walked toward them. Twelve men with automatic rifles against one unarmed man. They fired. He didn't stop. He moved through the hail of bullets like he was walking through tall grass.

The cell was darkness absolute.

Doom sat on the concrete floor. He didn't use a mattress. Comfort was a distraction.

He breathed in. Four seconds.
He held it. Four seconds.
He exhaled. Four seconds.

His heart rate was 38 beats per minute. Reptilian. Efficient.

The scars on his chest throbbed in the damp air. Eighteen bullet wounds. Three knife punctures. One shrapnel tear from a mortar shell. Most men carried scars as reminders of pain. Doom carried them as receipts. He had paid for his survival in flesh.

He wasn't waiting for parole. There was no parole for a man who knew where the bodies were buried because he had buried half of them himself. He was sentenced to 800 years.

He picked up the book beside him. The Bhagavad Gita.

He ran a calloused thumb over the Sanskrit text. He read the lines he had memorized a lifetime ago.

"I am Time, the great destroyer of the world."

He closed the book.

The prison thought they were punishing him. They thought the isolation would break him. They didn't understand. They hadn't locked him in a cage to punish him. They had locked him in a vault to store him.

Doom closed his eyes. He wasn't sleeping. He was charging.

"Soon."