Quinn opened his eyes again, amazed at what he saw before him, but even more so at what had just occurred. Nine shots pierced the silence of the night and three of them hit their targets, although not exactly where they previously were intended. The body lay about five yards from him. A wisp of smoke, from the melted flesh, escaped the solitary cavity in the chest. Quinn just then realized the pain that came from his own two wounds. A hole was left through his right palm and his left calf oozed blood onto the rooftop.

Quinn was still quite surprised at the outcome. Although he had killed a number of people, Quinn had never before participated in a gunfight of this intensity. However, this was different, somebody obviously wanted him dead and they even went so far as to attempt his murder.

As Quinn was coming out of his apartment, he caught a glimpse of his assailant. The man was small, but physicality doesn't come into play when firearms are involved. Before he even realized what was happening, his would-be assassin quickly fired three shots from across the hall. The first and third narrowly missed, but the second went clear through his right hand, which caused Quinn to fall backwards into the nearby stairwell. He quickly scrambled to his feet and proceeded to run up the stairs towards the roof, drawing his own gun and returning two shots as he went. His assailant shot up the stairwell as Quinn ran through the door to the roof. As the assassin opened the door at the top, he shot twice, felling Quinn with a shot to the calf. As he fell, Quinn reflexively turned and fired. The bullet cut right through the man's heart, killing him instantly.

Quinn went over to look at the assassin and he searched the dead man's pockets. He found nothing. He was about to leave when he noticed his assailant's gun. Written on the butt of the handle was the word "Sodom." This shocked him even more so than the outcome itself. He had heard of this man from the resident street-trash; for Sodom was a professional killer for the local crimelords.

This puzzled Quinn. Why was this man sent after him and how did he miss those first few shots? Sodom was an expert in his field, yet he missed two clean shots at an unsuspecting target. This made absolutely no sense to him. He thought of a reason, any reason, to explain why he was targeted by this man, but none came to mind. Then it hit him, the suitcase; the one he had found earlier while scavenging through a dumpster.

He thought nothing much of it at the time of its discovery, but he took the suitcase with him nonetheless, hoping he could sell it for a meager price. Since it was locked and somewhat heavy, Quinn assumed that something might be in it, but he didn't expect anything useful. Now it quickly dawned on him that the suitcase might be the reason he was targeted. Maybe the suitcase was supposed to be left there and the dumpster might have been some sort of a pick-up point. He shook his head, thinking of this possible explanation. Quinn finally came to the conclusion that the assassin must have been after him for something that he had done in the past. Yes, that's it, something from past. For he knew that he had stepped on more than a few toes during the last couple of years.

By now, Quinn began to feel light-headed from the loss of blood. After he provisionally bandaged his wounds, he went back and climbed down the stairwell. Even though the building was condemned, he realized that someone might have heard the shots and Quinn knew that he had better get moving. Quinn went back to his apartment, the eleventh one on the second floor, and grabbed the suitcase, his only other tangible possession besides his gun, then left. He quickly walked out of the abandoned apartment complex and went to a nearby bridge. There, he climbed down and proceeded to hide in the darkness below.

As he sat down to rest, Quinn remembered the suitcase. He began to fiddle with the combination lock, trying to open it. He feared a gun shot might damage its contents, so he began going through the numbers one-by-one. He was beginning to feel faint from the loss of blood, and soon thereafter, he fell unconscious.

As he dreamt, Quinn had flashbacks of his life, the life before he became a petty thief. He remembered his childhood, the only joyful period of his life. But it was too brief and it was soon taken away from him, stolen by industrialized society and its major world corporations. The companies, with their ever-changing and brutal ways, constantly forced his family to move around the world, from one pit of hell to the next, cutting off and ruining the rest of Quinn's life, as he saw it anyway.

With his childhood destroyed and his life non-existent, Quinn turned to drugs. Drugs took away the pain of life and brought back his former glory, as pathetic as it was. However, his drug reservoir soon ran dry due mostly to the fact that he no longer had anything to exchange for them.

With his only friends hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles away, Quinn tried to piece his life back together as he entered secondary school. But little did he know that these would be the most depressing and horrible times of his life.

Quinn tried to start over, by staying clean from drugs and adjusting his attitude. However, he failed; for he couldn't adapt and was thus doomed to suffer. He thought of suicide constantly and wanted death to end his miserable existence. However, life wouldn't allow him the satisfaction, this one pleasure that he so sought and desired. Quinn welcomed death, but it would not come. He was an outcast of society: friendless, hopeless, and on the brink of insanity and suicide, yet he managed to go on simply because he could find no other way out.

These experiences made him even more bitter and he hated everything: the world, its people, society, and especially the hypocritical religions that despised him, damned him, and watched his fall without taking a moment to help him. For most of his life, Quinn was a devoted theist, not quite to the degree of most of his peers, but a theist nonetheless. However, as time trudged on, and his life got more and more intolerable, Quinn found his religious faith to be quickly diminishing. As he rapidly lost faith in his religious beliefs, Quinn converted from theism to deism, then to agnosticism, and finally to full-fledged atheism; for Quinn could never believe in a God that could be this cruel. Nevertheless, to the world, he was but a lost cause, a failure in this game called life.

The world, in all its cruelty, forgot his past. When he was a child, he was considered extremely gifted and the future appeared bright to him. However, the world went back on its promises and lied to him. For the future was not shining to him, instead it was darker than death itself and even more painful. He wished for death in every waking moment, not just his own, but that of others, as well. In addition to his misery, his own family chided him and made his life even more despicable.

Finally, after several years, relocations, and learning institutions, Quinn was finished with his secondary schooling. All he wanted was to leave this place, and all the others like it, never to return. Instead, he wanted to return to where he was originally from, the place that brought him his only joys, and thus he left for there.

Quinn attended an institution of higher learning to escape from his then current predicament and return to his former life, a life that was so far forgotten that even he couldn't remember it. He was finally going to be re-united with his past and the ones whom he had previously acknowledged as his friends.

All went well for a few months and the first session ended. After the final testings were completed, his friends and him went out to celebrate. All four of them got intoxicated and Quinn was chosen to drive them back. On that fateful night, tragedy struck yet once again, and once again Quinn was a victim of its onslaught. On the way back to their housing complex, another drunken driver collided head-on with Quinn's vehicle and total chaos reigned supreme in the aftermath. All were dead in the crash except for Quinn, who was partially protected by the vehicle's protective devices.

Quinn was as close to death as he had ever been, dozens of his bones were shattered and he was temporarily paralyzed from his neck down. However, even after all of this, death would not welcome nor relieve him, and thus he was forced to suffer through life, yet once again. Only after several months of intense therapy was he able to break the curse of paralysis. Finally, with over a year removed from the accident, Quinn was able to leave the hospital.

Of course, it was not over for Quinn. Law enforcement officers waited for him outside the hospital and immediately took him into custody. Since he was registered as being officially inebriated at the time of the accident, Quinn was tried and prosecuted for four counts of involuntary manslaughter. Even though it was not entirely his own fault, the prosecutors wanted to make an example out of him, and they succeeded. Quinn was convicted and sentenced to forty-two months at a distant maximum security correctional facility specially reserved for the bottom-feeders of society.

There, he did nothing but think and hope that he would someday escape from this nightmare. He blamed and hated himself for the accident. He wished that he could have been one of the fortunate passengers that met his end that tragic night and not the one chosen to drive, but he knew that nothing could change what had happened. Now, his only friends in the world were dead, and officially, he was to blame for their deaths. In addition, Quinn often received hate and anger, in written and spoken form, from the parents and relatives of his dead friends. These people, who he had known only too well, now hated him. These same people, who had welcomed him as one of their own, now despised him and longed for his death, as did Quinn himself.

However, the most upsetting aspect of this whole ordeal occurred to him when he learned that he was betrayed by his own family. Not a single member of his family visited him at the hospital, during the trial, or even at his new residence. After trying for months to contact them, he finally learned the truth. Quinn's family not only refused to respond to him, but they also virtually denied his existence altogether.

At this point, Quinn's mind was in a state of disrepair. Quinn occasionally noticed that he began to forget things that were so common to him, and he only remembered some of these memories after great effort had been taken to do so. He realized that this memory loss was probably due to the drugs he had used, as well as the ones the correctional facility regularly forced upon him. Quinn was often in such a state of disillusion that he did not even know who he was, let alone what was going on in the outside world. While Quinn didn't know what was happening to him, he did know that he didn't like it at all, and he wanted it, and everything, to end.

Quinn actually attempted suicide on numerous occasions, and with various techniques. But all of his efforts were done so in vain, for Quinn could never take that final step, that ultimate plunge into death itself. He could not change this unfortunate flaw in his character. No matter how hard Quinn tried to enter the world of the dead and step out of the realm of the living, some force beyond his immediate control, be it subconscious reason, intuition, or something else yet unknown to him, always kept him from reaching this final state of closure to his, other-wise, unwanted existence.

The system did not care that Quinn was growing mentally ill, all it cared about was making sure that he was doing his time. Time itself was now Quinn's enemy: its seconds, minutes, hours, and days, seeming to slow down to maximize his suffering. He counted the seconds, hoping that someday he would be free. But he realized that his life could never go on as he had once planned. He was now a convicted murderer and any chance that he previously had had of having a normal life, was now eliminated. Sitting there in his cell, thinking about his life, Quinn realized what he was to be. He now hated this world he called home. He decided that the only way to end the chaos, was to join it.

When the prison doors finally opened to him, he was allowed to pass through them. But the system hadn't kept its end of the bargain; for he was not rehabilitated, he was not cured. Instead, he was even more unstable than before. He was a time bomb, waiting to explode, waiting to cause pain and misery to all that walked this celestial sphere. However, the system had succeeded. For Quinn had served his time, and the system had taken a criminal and changed his ways. The system did not care that Quinn really wasn't a criminal to begin with, nor did it occur to it that he wasn't nearly as corrupt when he first entered the institution. However, his ways were now definitely changed and that's all the system cared about; only now they were the complete opposite of what it had intended.

He was awakened by a footstep, faint but still audible. Before he opened his eyes, he heard a quiet noise followed by a click. It repeated, and once again, before Quinn realized what was going on. Quickly he reached for his gun as his eyes were adjusting to their new-found source of light. They saw what he had vaguely expected: a man fiddling with the suitcase's combination lock. Reflexively, Quinn fired twice before the would-be thief even realized that he had awakened.

Quinn walked over to the suitcase and pushed off the man that was now lying upon it. As the man turned over, he happened to notice one of the man's many tattoos. This particular one was located directly upon his forehead and despite being somewhat interrupted by two oozing bullet holes, the tattoo was still legible. "211" read the tattoo, which probably stood for the crime which it represents, a crime that the man must have been fairly proud of in order to have had it placed upon his head.

However, the number "211" had a much deeper meaning to Quinn; for he was born two hours and eleven minutes into the eleventh day of the second month of a year some three odd decades ago. He always had a fixation on this number, but it gradually grew into an obsession. Whenever possible, Quinn would use this number in his daily routines, from picking a room number, to choosing a time in which to begin his "work."

But the number that held his fascination did not provide him hope in a traditional sense, instead, it brought him the hope of death. Since he realized that he came into being with this number so prevalent in his life, he had a strange belief, in his perverse state, that it might be able to help him put an end to his current method of existence, one way or another.

Quinn wiped off the blood that dripped on the suitcase with the dead man's tattered garments. Once that was complete, he lifted the suitcase and walked away. As he walked, he felt a pain coming from his left calf. He remembered what had happened the night before and he checked his wounds. They had stopped bleeding, but a crude hole remained through his right hand. Luckily for him, Quinn was a south-paw. He was not quite as concerned about this death; for the authorities undoubtedly cared little for the victim. So he didn't take haste in his escape.

After Quinn had walked several miles, he finally rested in an abandoned building. He knew that few people came around this building, especially recently. Ever since it was raided by the authorities, the drug-pushers have thought twice before using it again. After he found and entered the room labeled "211," and sat down, Quinn once again began to go to work on the suitcase. He started at sixty-one, where he had stopped the previous evening, and went up one-by-one. As he flipped through the numbers, making sure to press the press the release switch after each one, he began to doze off.

The shattered memories of his past filled his head and a chill ran down his spine as he recalled them. He thought about his current situation, his conscience bothering him somewhat about the recent deaths. He began to talk to himself, questioning himself about these killings, and the others, especially the others. He tried to settle this moral dilemma by giving excuses to justify the other killings, reasoning that the last two needed no further explanation. However, his excuses for the earlier murders were weak, and his mind made him acknowledge this fact. His mind also reminded him of the ones he didn't kill, the ones he only robbed, beat, raped, and maimed. He had nothing, save necessity, to adequately defend his actions, but his mind continued on with its persistent investigation.

Quinn soon grew tired of this self-interrogation, and he started to lose his temper. His mind was beyond repair and his sense of guilt began to fade as his anger swelled. He was totally oblivious to the outside world, but he was eventually broken from the trance by a slight, yet distinct, noise.

Quickly, he regained his senses. He looked at the suitcase and it was now unlocked. Quinn gently pressed down on the two latch release buttons so that the suitcase could be opened. Before he opened it, Quinn caught a glance of the combination: "211."

Immediately, Quinn felt a sharp pain in his head. Unable to overpower the pain, he fell backwards onto the ground, where his body began to shake uncontrollably. His vision began to blur, then fade, until it was nothing. Images began to surge through his mind, too fast to be recognizable. Memories of things forgotten began to overflow into his mind. But they vanished too quickly to be remembered, and were thus forgotten once again.

Quinn woke again, shivering and convulsing, and unable to move. He was stuck in this temporary paralysis for what seemed like an eternity. His vision was available, but his eyes would not move.

Gradually, he began to recover. Within half-an-hour, he was able to stand once again. He put his hands on the suitcase, but as afraid and nervous as he was, Quinn paused before he opened it. The worries soon left his mind and were replaced by hope. At the very worst, he thought, the suitcase would contain a bomb and would explode upon its opening. Then death would take him and his worries would be washed away, never to return again.

Excited by this thought, Quinn quickly opened the suitcase, hoping for something that would and could not come. When the lid opened, he saw something other than an explosion, which caused a slight disappointment. The suitcase was filled to the brim with stacks of green paper.

Confused at first, Quinn quickly remembered seeing these objects somewhere before. Then he remembered. Money, it was stacks of money. He was befuddled at his inability to remember the one thing that he had also wished for, second only to death itself. He opened and closed his eyes a couple of times, and slapped himself in the face, making sure that this wasn't just another one of his cruel dreams. Realizing that he was awake, he quickly gathered and examined his new-found possessions. There were thousands of these objects, all labeled with large numbers. As his fingers swam through the pool of bills, he felt something hard underneath the surface.

Quinn reached down and snatched it. At that moment, Quinn realized why the events of the last few days occurred, why he was attacked, and how he was found. The device was a small transmitter, emitting a silent signal along a frequency known only to one person: the one who was tracking him. Quinn knew now why he was attacked and why someone so desperately wanted the suitcase back. Thinking quickly, Quinn gathered the money and stuffed it back into the suitcase. He was about to smash the transmitter until an idea popped into his mind. He left the building and walked down the street. Finally after walking for quite some time, Quinn's search was over and he found what he was looking for.

He went into a parking lot and walked over to a vehicle. This vehicle, in particular, had one of its windows slightly open, undoubtedly to let the hot air out. After making sure that no one was watching him, Quinn quickly slipped the transmitter through the slit, and walked off.

As he walked, he went near the bridge where he had stayed the night before. Surprisingly, he didn't see the authorities there, but he did see a body. As he walked by the body, he stopped for a second to admire his handiwork. He looked down at the head and saw the two holes, which, by then, had released all the blood they ever would.

After looking for another moment, Quinn went on. However, a thought suddenly formed in his head. He quickly walked back and looked at the head of the body. On the forehead of the man lay a tattoo: two circles side-by-side, inter-weaving in an endless loop, and each containing a small, deep hole. Quinn had seen that symbol somewhere before. He searched his memory and after a moment, he remembered. It was a symbol commonly referred to as infinity.

Quinn was confused, for he remembered seeing a different tattoo. He thought for a moment, but he couldn't recollect it. However, he knew something wasn't right and he grew enraged. As he looked at the tattoo, Quinn felt a sharp pain in his head. He began to convulse and his vision started to fade. He remembered this sensation and he didn't want to repeat it. Quickly, he pulled out his gun and fired directly at the tattoo. He kept firing until there was no tattoo left to be seen. Then the sensation passed, and he left.

Quinn didn't stop, he walked until he couldn't. He rested and then continued to walk again towards an unknown, unseen destination. After several weeks of this same routine, he finally stopped.

Years passed and Quinn was no longer living in seedy motels or abandoned buildings. He was now far away from his other world and even farther from the past that went with it. He was finally able to live as he wanted, with no fears or worries to hinder his actions. As his life began to transform, his mentality did likewise. He was no longer a slave to his emotions, nor did his bitterness emerge and show itself nearly as often. As his morbid thoughts began to disperse, his mind proceeded to recompensate him with more pleasant ones. The heavy load that lay upon his mind was removed and the insanity went with it. He no longer wished for death, not his own nor the ones of others. Quinn was a completely different person, yet still the same. He was fully capable of returning to his past, but there was no longer any need. Of course, he still carried his gun with him whenever possible, in case his past just happened to catch up with him. However, as the years crept by, his past continued to drift farther and farther away from him. His past was no longer a threat to others, nor himself. The exile of his past re-established order and stability into his, other-wise, crumbling world.

The boy looked around at his surroundings and was pleased at what he saw. For it was his tenth birthday and a cake, alit with ten candles, was brought before him. He blew once, but only nine candles went out. He quickly corrected the situation by blowing once again, and the stubborn candle was extinguished. However, a few seconds later, all ten candles were freshly alight and the rest of his family erupted into a wild string of laughter. Being somewhat frustrated and annoyed at the trick candles, which were used every year, and the laughter that resulted from their revival, the boy licked his finger and used it to take the lives of the unyielding flames. Satisfied, he once again surveyed the room.

As he was looking around, something caught his eye: a pile of presents. Without asking for permission, he quickly ran over to the gifts and began to rip away their outer coverings. After he had finished unwrapping them, one present, in particular, caught his attention. He opened its box quickly and removed a small, black pistol. Knowingly, he cocked the pistol and inserted the tiny, spherical ammunition, which came with the gun.

Wanting to try out his new toy, the boy immediately ran towards the front door. However, the boy, misjudging his strides, tripped on the single step that led to the front hallway. The gun flew out of his hands and hit the ground. The sudden impact of the pistol hitting the floor caused the sensitive trigger to depress, thus discharging it. The spring-projected missile hurled forward until it came in contact with something. The lone stain-glassed window of the house, which was located directly above the front door, burst into hundreds of pieces upon the impact of the tiny projectile. A horrible, shattering noise was heard from the collision, and the sound repeated itself when the falling glass came in contact with the tile floor below.

Upon hearing the sounds of crackling glass, Quinn awoke. He sat up, recollecting the dream for a couple seconds. Quinn was befuddled. He remembered the faces of the people and the incident itself, yet he couldn't place it in his memory. The faces were all too familiar, but they were strangely non-existent in his mind. They were of no one whom he knew or had known, and yet he still knew of them.

He recalled his own tenth birthday, but it was not the same. His recollection of that experience with the gun was clear, yet it never happened. Quinn remembered his tenth birthday well, and he knew that it didn't happen that way. He was staying with his grandfather that summer, and they alone celebrated his birthday. However, the celebration, like so many of his joyous occasions, was short-lived. For his grandfather died of a heart-attack while igniting the birthday candles. Quinn never did get a chance to blow them out.

As he was comparing these events, an all too familiar feeling passed through him. He felt a sharp pain in his head, one that he hadn't felt for years. The pain quickly took control of his body, forcing his mind to cut off the contact with his memories. His vision faded to black and he began to convulse. He staggered forward until his legs gave out, causing him to collide with the wall in front of him. After the collision, he crashed to the floor. Senseless, in great pain, and unable to move, Quinn fell unconscious.

Quinn looked around at the scenery as he walked down the sidewalk. He was feeling better now and was on his way to get something to eat; for it was his thirty-fourth birthday, and he planned to go to the best restaurant in town. He looked up; the sky was light blue and a few clouds were moving slowly across the horizon. The sun was out, but the scorching heat was offset by a cool breeze.

Quinn stopped for a few seconds and took a look at the people walking around him. All of them seemed to be happy, an emotion that he had just rediscovered in the last few years. The pleasant atmosphere made him feel even better; it was the complete opposite of his past environments. The people walked in an endless, almost mechanical, cycle. As some left his sight, others came into it.

As he watched the monotonous parade, Quinn thought about how different he was than these people. The incidents that he had been involved with, the hells in which he had lived, and the people whom he had killed, were never a part of their lives. He knew then, as he had always known, that he did not fit into this picture. Externally, he was normal, but on the inside, he was completely different. Few of these people had ever had the thoughts that he had had, and even fewer acted upon them. In reality, he was an outcast of society. However, Quinn never let anyone into his world, nor did he allow the other side of himself to show, anymore. These people knew nothing of his past, and he intended to keep it that way.

After a few moments, Quinn snapped out of the momentary trance and continued on his journey. Before he left, however, he glanced at his watch to check the time. It read "12:19." He planned on getting to the restaurant before one o'clock, and thus he had no reason to hurry. In a short time, he came to the street which he was looking for and he looked up at the street sign to confirm his suspicions.

The sign was labeled "Götterdämme Avenue," as he knew it would be. He remembered the address of the restaurant, "67 Götterdämme Avenue," and he continued his search. Quinn followed the numbered doors up to number "65," and then he saw what had to be the restaurant about fifty paces away.

As he walked towards it, he noticed that the restaurant was barren, with no signs, windows, or people. Confused, Quinn looked around. Around him, numerous people walked in endless convoys in both directions, failing to notice the battered building beside him. Some of the people broke free from the line and traveled across the street to a nearby bank.

After a moment of confusion, Quinn went up to the front door of the now-abandoned building. It was completely blank, except for a number: the building's address. "211," it read. Feeling odd, Quinn closed his eyes, hoping that the number would be "67" when he opened them again. Again, the door read "211."

He began to feel light-headed, aware of what was to come. He desperately turned around, looking for an escape, but only seeing the bank. He was about to run towards it when he noticed the digital display sign located above the bank.

As did the ones at several other banks, this sign told the current temperature and time. When Quinn looked up at the sign, he almost choked. The sign, like the restaurant door, read "2:11." Hopelessly, he glanced down at his own watch and to his horror, it also read "2:11." As he looked back at the sign, Quinn noticed the temperature gauge, which displayed "21.1" Immediately he began to feel cold, the gentle breeze had suddenly turned into chilling gusts of wind.

Quinn began to feel a now-familiar pain in his head, but it was now worse than ever before. He began to convulse and his hands shook uncontrollably. Memories and images began to race through his mind at an astounding rate, but unlike the previous ones, these thoughts remained. The pain was unbearable, and he fell backwards to the ground.

As waves of pain engulfed his body, Quinn looked skyward, noticing that the clouds were now moving across the sky at a blinding speed. He looked around and realized that no one even paid any attention to him; no one noticed what was happening to him, nor did anyone attempt to help. As the tempest continued, snow and hail began to fall toward the surface, while thunder and lightning filled the sky.

Seeking an exit to the pain, Quinn turned to his last resort. He reached down and grabbed his gun. He lifted it to his head and pulled down on the trigger. Nothing happened, for the trigger did not budge. Quinn tried as hard as he could, but his finger would not respond to his desire.

As he continuously tried to end his existence, thoughts began to fill his head, thoughts that he had no control over. He now realized what was going on and every second he was learning more. He realized that his body would not respond to his wishes, so Quinn took the gun away from his head. Instead, he aimed it at the nearby pedestrians. He fired, and again, and again, until the street was lined with bodies and stained with their blood. The surviving people did not take notice of his actions, and they continued on their endless, pointless journey. Quinn fired the gun until it was empty, and then he dropped it. Quinn felt no guilt for the murders that he had just committed, for he knew that it wouldn't matter now, nothing would.

As the memories surged through him, his senses began to fade away. As Quinn analyzed the long-forgotten memories, memories older than his life itself, he hated himself even more than he did before. He grew angry and cursed himself, yet his lips would not utter the words. He now knew why he was forced to suffer, why he was chosen to undergo these horrible experiences. He knew how his mind had blocked out the past, the truth. He knew now that all this pain and suffering was self-inflicted, and that he had doomed himself to this life.

The blood, which began to pour from his ears and nose, soon formed into a puddle on the street under him. His eyes began to close and his vision faded. When it returned, he was looking down at his own body from above. The puddle of blood grew larger and his vision began to lose focus. As his vision faded, it began to zoom out, and his body was finally reduced to a speck, enshrouded by a sea of redness. Then his vision went out, and Quinn failed to exist.

Memories and thoughts surged through him, and he knew where and what he was. He was nothing, surrounded by nothing, yet he was everything, and the only thing that had or ever would be. His mental capacities were limitless and he knew all. He was flawed, yet perfect, able to do anything. He controlled everything, yet his own mind was so powerful snd so corrupt that it could not even control itself.

He had created universes, galaxies, worlds, lives, cultures, histories, languages, and sciences, and he had destroyed them in a fraction of a second. He was able to enter these worlds and participate in their game of life. And he could block off memories, so that he would not know who or what he was. However, his worlds were not flawless. For errors and unexplainable events happened often, but his mind always had ways of suppressing them, keeping them at a bare minimum. Sometimes, when his mind got too relaxed and careless, memories would accidentally return. But his mind quickly responded, and promptly erased them. His mind created circumstances to keep life interesting and challenging, yet he would not let himself die until his mind got bored with it.

Now, being inactive for a fraction of a second, his mind demanded another world and another life. Immediately, thoughts began to fill his mind and they began to create another universe, another life, and everything that went along with it.

His vision began to fade in, and his senses started to return. Quickly, Tarin remembered where he was and what was happening. For a moment, he thought that it could have been just another nightmare, but reality soon set in. As he looked up to the orange sky, he noticed the two suns above, which shone down upon the red earth around him. He could hear gunshots and explosions from a distance. He regretfully remembered that the war was just beginning, and that he was in the middle of it.

As his memories returned, he felt a pain coming from his head. He reached up and felt a gash, which, by now, had stopped bleeding. Now he recalled the explosion, which knocked him unconscious, and he thought of his squadron: the two-hundred and eleventh infantry. He stood up and looked around at the lupine carcasses at his feet. Heads, arms, legs, fingers, toes, torsos, intestines, and an occasional tuft of unburnt fur, enshrouded the crimson dirt. Pieces of his friends surrounded him, and his clothes and fur were drenched in their blood. He looked around for the rest of his platoon and he caught a glimpse of a bit of smoke, a few miles away. He remembered that that was where his platoon had camped the night before the battle. He began to walk towards the source of the smoke, recalling the details of the skirmish as he went.

Tarin hated this war and was angry that he was drafted into it. However, he was even angrier at Faradou and Ipithou: the gods of War and Peace, respectively. Tarin hated both of them: Faradou for starting the war and Ipithou for not preventing it. He was particularly displeased with Ipithou; for he should not have allowed Faradou to begin the war. Tarin, now enraged, cursed Ipithou, and showed his disgust towards him.

Immediately, Tarin began to repent his actions, for he knew the consequences. Despite his pleading, Tarin instantly felt a sharp pain in his head, and his body began to convulse. His legs buckled and then gave out. Tarin's vision began to fade as dark images flowed into his subconscious. Tarin knew not to challenge the Gods, and he cursed himself for doing so, again. As his vision faded to black, Tarin begged for mercy, for Ipithou was the God of Peace. However, even Tarin knew that Ipithou had a bad temper, and that he didn't take well to insults.