The tip of my pen traced the name Marcus Thorne, like a scalpel seeking the best place to cut on a virtual anatomical diagram. The "optimization plan" W had provided echoed deep in my mind like a venomous whisper. Those intricate financial loopholes, flaws in his character, international connections... they formed a blueprint for a more efficient, less demanding death.
But I refused to accept it wholesale.
My "writing" had to remain mine. That was my last defense against losing myself completely.
I began building a script of my own. I drew on the core ideas of "chain reactions" and "symbolic significance" in W's plan, but discarded the overly elaborate details that depended on precise timing and cooperation from others. My script was more brutal, more direct, more like a judgment delivered by an unseen fate.
I set Thorne's death during an overseas live military exercise he had meticulously planned to show off his strength. He would die neither by assassination nor by accident, but from a "logic error" in the cold machinery of war that had made his name. A smart missile manufactured by the military-industrial consortium he controlled, and personally approved by him for deployment, would veer off its predetermined course during the final stage of the exercise and strike the viewing platform where he stood-a location considered absolutely safe-with pinpoint accuracy.
Death would come from the creation he took the greatest pride in. Irony was the negligible measure of personal will I injected into this "operation."
As I wrote, the mental strain surged over me like a tangible tide. I could clearly feel subtle aspects of my emotional understanding of "fear" crumbling like sandcastles in the surf, washing away. The price had been paid, but compared with the severe drain of gathering information and devising scripts entirely