I am a professional rule breaker. [Final]

I am a professional rule breaker. I get paid to break rules to save lives.
But not this time. This time I'm doing it for free.
I have always known that ACME's been involved in some shady ****. I mean, there isn't a multi billion dollar corporation out there that hasn't broken the law wherever it's been. Flouting environmental regulations, bribing politicians, exploiting labour in developing countries - these are all things that I had come to expect from the company, and chose to ignore it all whenever I encountered anything of the sort - both because I felt I had little to no power to take a stand against it, and because I believed in the morality of my job. Even with all the things that were wrong with ACME, I strongly felt that my line of work was one avenue where the company had acted unambiguously as a force of good. One path that wasn't paved with the blood and suffering of innocents and that ultimately led to something more meaningful than greed.
That veil was lifted from my eyes - quite brutally at that - when I saw the video of the Lady of the village being captured and carted off to a secret company facility. I had watched that thing kill children, learnt how it terrorised a community for years, and the company lied to me. They told me they had killed her, freed the people from her clutches when in fact they just took her to further their own monstrous ambitions.
For the first time in my life I began questioning the motives of the company. And try as I might, I couldn't think of an explanation that made sense. At least nothing that didn't support Liam's claims. The more evidence I looked at - the nigh imperceptible trail of bodies the company left behind, the destroyed towns- the more it angered and saddened me. To think that they were trying to unleash literal hell on earth sickened me. Maybe it would have been easier if my entire existence wasn't inextricably tied to the company. But it was. And that fact filled me with an explosive rage. That anger made my decision easier.
I went through an existential crisis and chose a path for my future in less than an hour. Switching my loyalties and going up against everything I had ever known in life sent a tingling sensation crackling throughout my body. But it wasn't just that I was betraying ACME, but that I was doing that at PlainTown, a case I had already had terrifying premonitions about back at little flower valley. My clammy hands trembled with nerves and anxiety as I introduced myself to Liam's people. There were less than a dozen of them. We spent the day strategising.
And so it is that come nightfall I'm sitting in a green army jeep next to Murtaza with a rifle in hand, driving down a dirt road towards PlainTown. Thick clouds of dust kicked up by the tyres of the jeep are shimmering under the moonlight.
"Do you think we have enough people?" I ask, as the middle aged man next to me chews his lip in concentration.
"Huh? What's that?"
I repeat myself.
"Quality over quantity." He replies, as he turns left. We're circling back to where we had begun. Some weird ritual that opens up a path to the town. "Besides, haven't we talked about this already?"
"Yeah... Just nerves is all."
"Seems like repetition is the word of that day." He says as he pulls up on the highway again, and turns back. The other jeeps in the convoy follow suit. "It makes sense to have fewer people, makes a precision strike all that much more feasible. In and out in a flash. Liam and I have pulled this off many times before. No worries."
"They'll be prepared too." I remind him. "If it's something ACME has been preparing for - for years, then it makes sense they'll have prepared for all eventualities."
"But they don't know we're coming for them." He remarks with a grin. "We've made sure to cover our tracks really well. We'll end it before they have a chance to get their bearings."
I nod and continue to watch the road in silence. Murtaza's words don't give me much encouragement. I know ACME. I know how ruthless they can be, and I can't help but feel queasy about the future.
My train of thought gets cut off by the crackling of the radio. "Do you see it?" Liam's distorted voice fills up the car.
"Yep." Murtaza replies into the handset.
I do too. We've come up on the gas station. Its immediate surroundings are lit up by the neon lights of its signboard, but the inside is dark and empty, the contrast creeping me out.
"Hold on. We've got this." Liam says, and I watch in the rearview mirror as Maddy climbs out of the car and trots towards the store with her rifle drawn.
"It's the same gas station, isn't it?" I ask. "The one from the files?" Murtaza nods. Some time back a man had received emails from his brother about coming to PlainTown. He had come across this exact same gas station and the owner here had taken him into town. The man was of course never seen again. Neither was his brother who received his emails. Guess he followed his sibling all the way to ACME's doorway to the other side.
Muzzle flashes light up the dark windows of the store, immediately followed by muffled thumps. Maddy then rushes out of the store and gets back into the car with Liam.
I try not to think about what she had shot in the dark.
"Alright boys. Time to split up." Liam's voice blares through the radio. "Maintain radio contact."
"Roger." Murtaza replies, and so do the other cars.
The convoy splits up, and we all head in different directions. The plan involves surrounding the town and infiltrating it from four directions.
It takes about 15 minutes for us to come up on PlainTown. Murtaza parks the jeep at the edge of a small cliff that overlooks the town and we climb out of the car. The entire town has been swathed in darkness, with there being some brief flashes of light here and there from flickering streetlights. I can hear dogs howling mournfully in the distance.
"Where is it?" Murtaza mutters to himself. "Should be around here somewhere." The crescent shaped tattoo on his forehead begins to throb, like a beacon. He heads off into the woods to our left, and I follow.
I switch on the flashlight mounted beneath my gun to light up the way as we head deeper into the tree cover, but I needn't have done so. The way ahead is illuminated by a bright greenish light coming from the ground. "Hah. Found you!" Murtaza exclaims and marches towards the light.
We find the source of the illumination in the middle of a small clearing in the woods. A circle has been carved into the rocky surface with an axe or something, and the shape is circumscribing odd symbols. Trying to understand what these symbols are is quite disorienting, and not just because of the bright green flames shooting up and out of the grooves on the ground, rising about 3 feet in height. I shake my head to fight off the dizziness.
Murtaza takes out his radio. "Found ours. What about you guys?"
The others begin to respond one by one, affirming that they too had found their own flaming circles.
"So we were right." Murtaza says with a sigh. "4 points surrounding the town. There must be one in the town itself, probably somewhere in the centre."
"And we have to get to that one to stop it?" I ask.
He nods and scratches his balding head. "It's like taking out the drain plug of a bathtub to empty it. Can only be done from the centre, which is probably the townhall. These points here are just the anchors, not where the veil is going to be torn open."
Even after experiencing all sorts of strange **** in my life, there are still things out there that I have absolutely no clue about. Mysteries of the occult, strange phenomena that leave me breathless with fear and wonder. I can't help but feel glad that I'm with people who seem to know more than me.
Murtaza takes out a camera and snaps off a couple of pictures of the fire, and instructs the other teams to do the same through the radio. Soon his phone begins to ding as the others send their pictures.
"Are you done?" I ask. He nods. "Alright. Let's go then." I begin heading back when he stops me. "We proceed on foot from here onwards." He then takes out a syringe from his pocket and stabs himself in the leg with it.
"What's that?" I ask.
"Performance enhancing drugs." He grins. "Can't have you folks leaving me behind in the dust, can I?"
"Whatever... Let's move."
Leaving the strange fire burning, we head towards PlainTown. We stay off the road and descend down the treacherous path that spits us out near the Sheriff's office. Murtaza rips out the chain link fence surrounding the place with his bare hands and we enter the town. Almost immediately I'm hit with an intense wave of nausea, my stomach turns and my knees begin to wobble.
"What the ****?" I whisper.
"We're at the edge of the world, Brian." Murtaza remarks bitterly. "Hold onto your seat or you might just fall over to the other side."
I don't bother asking whether he was just joking about the last part. We take a couple of seconds to centre ourselves . Then, aiming down the barrel of our guns, we move through the streets, coming across various oddities of the town. There is an old woman standing under the only working streetlight we come across, laughing hysterically as if it's a live performance and she's under a spotlight on the stage. She turns and looks at us. Her face is blank. Like a mannequin. We move left, ignoring her.
I see televisions blaring static in dark houses as families stand motionless in front of them. I see a man cleaning the exact same spot on the road with a broom. A child circling a lamppost. All faceless. Every single one of them.
"What is happening to the people here?" I wonder out loud.
"The world around them is changing." Murtaza replies. "Why should they be unaffected? Poor bastards aren't even sentient anymore."
We hear noises up ahead. Loud laughter and amiable conversation. In context, it's extremely jarring. We hug the walls to the sides and proceed with caution.
It's the townhall, and in front of it sits a truck. Standing around it are about 5 men, smoking and chatting away as if the world around them isn't literally going to hell.
"ACME's people." I remark and Murtaza shuts off his radio.
"Should we take them out?" I whisper and he shakes his head. "Can't. Who even knows if a bullet to the head would be enough to put these ****ers down."
I don't recognise any of them, but that doesn't mean that they aren't genetically enhanced. Maybe the company had another batch of people like me and they skipped the extensive moral education we were put through. We wait in tense silence, watching the seconds tick by, knowing that we were fast running out of time.
"**** it." Murtaza says and takes aim. My heart beats in my chest as I do the same. I quickly begin formulating a plan of action - I see myself firing the gun and rushing forward with my knife drawn to decapitate them before they can potentially regenerate. I pick my target. Exhale. My finger nears the trigger.
It's a fruitless endeavour, because the moment we get ready to start firing, more men come running out of the building carrying black bags. The group quickly jumps into the truck which tears off down the road, the tyres screeching as they burn the asphalt.
"Move." Says Murtaza. And we do, but we're halted by gunfire in the distance. The sound echoes all throughout the town. Murtaza's radio crackles.
"We've made contact!" Liam's panicked voice erupts from the radio. "We're going to get bogged down."
"Nothing we can do." Murtaza says and continues pushing towards the townhall. The building's been constructed keeping Victorian style of architecture in mind - arched windows, pointed roof and all. Ignoring the vicious firefight going on near us, we cut across the grassy lawn and walk into the townhall. We see the fire just past the lobby, in the centre of the hall, its fiery greenishness overwhelming in its brightness. Wooden desks and chairs that were placed in the hall lie in the corners, their broken pieces stacked on top of each other to clear space for the hellish flames.
"Alright." Murtaza says, his movements turning frantic. "Alright. Alright." He dashes towards the reception counter at the lobby and pulls out a register. "Alright." He takes the register and runs towards the fire. I follow. "Alright." His voice echoes in the bizzarely empty townhall. He snaps a picture of the symbols in the fire. "Alright."
"Alright what?" I ask, frustrated.
He blinks, as if he's been woken from a very deep and realistic dream. "Brian." He says. "Brian. I need you to lock this building down. Don't let anyone enter, got it?"
"Understood. What are you gonna do?"
"I need some time to figure this out. Need to see how to break the flow, to redirect it?" He goes down on his knees and begins drawing the symbols on the register. His hands fly on the page in a manic frenzy, and I leave him to his own devices and start scoping out the building. I look at every door, every window that can be used as an entry point and think how I can block them off. Dragging the broken pieces of furniture from the hall, I begin stacking them up against all the doors and windows. All through this, Liam and others are locked in a desperate life and death battle just a couple of blocks away.
My muscles are aching. I'm dragging one of the last pieces of furniture to the backdoor when Murtaza's radio barks.
"They're retreating." Liam screams. "They're hauling ass."
"Not surprising." Murtaza replies. "Nothing they can do here anymore." I look at him, and notice the flames have gotten stronger and higher, brushing against the ceiling, splashing it with their dazzling greenish brilliance. The sound of gunfire dies down. The only things I can now hear are the crackling of the flames, the sound of my breathing and the scratching of Murtaza's pen on paper.
"It can't be?" He mumbles. "It's impossible. It's ****ing impossible."
"What?" I shout. "Do you know how to stop it?"
He shakes his head. "It's too late. It's too ****ing late."
It's the radio again. This time it's Maddy. "Holy ****. Are you guys seeing this?"
"What are you talking?" Liam begins to say. "Oh my god."
I bolt towards the front door and using the tiny gaps between mangled chairs shoved on top of each other, I peek outside, and my heart begins to sink in my chest. As far as my eyes can see, I notice doors of the houses in the town swinging open, and the residents come stumbling out, rage etched clear upon their faceless faces.
"They're coming for you." Liam screams. "Murtaza, Brian. They're coming for you!"
"****." I whisper, and run back towards Murtaza to grab his gun and ammunition. He's hunched over his notes and diagrams, and I can sense utter dread emanating from him.
"Someone must have noticed." He says, more to himself than to me. "Someone? No. Something on the other side muse have noticed that the veil is about to be torn to shreds."
"You think they're controlling the townspeople?" I ask , instinctively already knowing the answer. He nods absent-mindedly.
"Hey." I snap. He looks up at me. "Don't quit now. It's not over yet. Okay? It's not ****ing over yet."
"Right." He answers, his eyes brightening with resolve. "Not ****ing over yet." He attacks his notes and diagrams with renewed vigour and I rush back towards the front door after taking his radio.
"They're everywhere." Liam roars. "They're surrounding you Brian. We'll help the best we can from the outside, but you're going to have to fight your heart out."
I peer outside and sure enough they're coming towards the townhall, men, women, children, naked, clothed, their limbs contorting weirdly as they run. Screaming. Faceless, yet somehow snarling and screaming.
A sharp crack whips through the air and the head of the one closest to me explodes. He stumbles, and falls. Then more of them begin to collapse as Liam and the others open fire on them. Still they continue to press on. I rest the gun on the shattered arm of a chair and squeeze the trigger, spraying the faceless residents right outside with bullets. And they still continue to come, slamming into the stacked furniture and climbing up on top of each other like maggots.
My ears begin to ring with the echoing gunshots and the guttural screams of the faceless. I have to step back as the doorway begins to get overwhelmed. Some of them pop their heads out over and above the stacked furniture and I promptly shoot them back. The doorway is a ghastly sight of blood, bones and splintered wood, but we begin to push them back, bit by bit.
Murtaza's radio dashes any sense of relief that starts to creep up on me.
"The back!" Maddy yells. "They're massing at the back."
I bolt to the backdoor, running past Murtaza who's still fixated on the unsolvable puzzle before him as the fire continues to burn in front of him.
And so it is, that for what seems like hours I run around in the townhall, going from one point to the other, emptying the gun. The entrances are always on the verge of collapse. One arm snaking in through the bathroom window, one creature slipping in through a blind spot, but working together, we're able to stop them. Just barely. My nerves are fraying, exhaustion has set in and I'm ready to collapse.
And that's when Murtaza shouts in ecstasy. "I did it! I know how to stop it." He asks for the radio, and I toss it to him.
"Liam!" He exclaims. "I know how to end this."
"How?"
"We can't stop the veil from collapsing, but we can just knit it around the town."
"What the **** does that mean?"
He waves his hands around, trying to think of a proper explanation. "So uh. The veil will stay intact, but it will wrap over and around PlainTown. That is to say, this whole town will get slammed into the other side. But the world will be safe. Just need to redirect the flow a little?"
"? Could that really work?" Liam asks.
"Yes. Theoretically, yes."
"Theoretically?"
"I'm pretty ****ing sure it will."
"Alright then do it. Then we'll pull out."
"There's a problem." Murtaza adds. "I'll have to stay here and make sure it gets done."
"What?" Liam thunders. "No you can't ****ing do that! There's no way you're?"
Murtaza cuts him off. "It's the only way. I have to do this. Don't argue with me on this."
"Murtaza..."
"Liam. It's my choice. I'm staying. Time's running out. Don't act like a brat."
"Then I'm staying."
"No. You're not. Get everyone out of here. Go and lead the fight against ACME."
"Please? Don't." I can hear Liam's voice begin to crack. He's about to cry.
"Liam? Thak you. For everything. You were the little brother I never had." He shuts off the radio before Liam can reply.
He turns to me. "Alright Brian. I'm going to step into the flames now. You need to make a break for it. Go out and link up with the others and get the **** out."
"You are going to what?"
He doesn't reply, just takes a deep breath and walks into the fire. And screams, in utter agony, as if he's very soul is burning. The faceless break through the backdoor, having finally gathered up the numbers to do so. I take my pistol out, and escape through the front door, kicking and shooting and stabbing my way out.
Dark clouds roll in and the sky turns a deep shade of green as the flames burst through the roof and shoot up into the heavens. The other fires surrounding the town do the same, creating a ****ed up dome supported by five fiery pillars. I meet up with Liam's group at the end of the street. He's been crying, his cheeks caked with mud and tears. But he's in control of his emotions now and begins to lead us out of town. The townspeople begin to collapse one by one, the strain finally getting to them. Mountains of corpses surround the townhall. We aren't unaffected either. I can feel it in my chest, as if my heart is being crushed between two enormous weights. My skin is tingling, my arms are trembling and my eyes begin to bleed.
But we make it out, stealing cars and driving as fast as possible even as reality itself begins to bend. I look in the rear view mirror and see the houses stretch upwards like they're made of rubber gum, becoming three times their size, but thin as paper. The air begins to shimmer and I have to look away, else the sight drives me mad.
A tremendous earthquake rattles the ground. Then a bright ball of light emerges from the townhall, and begins to grow, consuming everything until the light is all it remains. We drive past the flaming pillar and the ever expanding dome of light stops right at the edge. And then disappears with a flash.
Everything is gone. All that's left behind is a town shaped crater, about a 100 metres deep. We stumble out of the car, coughing and throwing up. Our brush with the other side has really messed up our systems. The sky has cleared up, getting splashed with the comforting rays of moonlight as a cool breeze caresses my skin. Liam's radio lights up. It's Maddy.
"Everybody make it out okay?" She asks.
"Yeah." Liam replies as his chest gets wracked with heavy coughs.
"Thank **** it's over."
"... Oh, but it isn't." Liam says, gritting his teeth in barely contained rage. "It isn't ****ing over by a long shot? Not at all. They're going to pay. Every single ****ing one of them... I'm going to burn ACME down to the ****ing ground."
I glance at him, then at the massive crater in front of us and can't help but agree with him.
PlainTown
M


Source.