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The burden she carried was heavy and in full view of everyone; the responsibility was immense, while the glory seemed minuscule. Her reward, if she managed to achieve such an impossible feat, would be nothing more than an awkwardly omitted name or just another villain in the pages of history.
Certainly, she didn’t mind.
She knew well what her purpose was and what it would bring to this world once achieved, as well as what she would have to endure along the way.
Accepting all that, having fully digested it, was what allowed her to go on.
She knew all too well that she brought only lament and pestilence, a consuming and selfish plague that devoured everything, even her own creator.
She had brought death upon many by her own hand and couldn’t imagine how many more indirectly.
But it wouldn’t be this way forever; this wouldn’t be her entire legacy.
She knew death intimately, being as much a healer as a killer, bearer of an unforgivable sin to be paid with death, yet not even an introduction to the horrors she had inflicted.
She shared the same nature as The Great Adversary, against whom she had sworn vengeance and war, but because of that same nature, they fought on equal terms.
She remembered then, long ago, when our ancient compounds, solutions, and chemicals meant to protect us from the touch of plague failed and were defeated by agents of mortality. That was when she understood we could only be governed by the laws of our enemies.
No more, no less.
Now there are others, more efficient ones—new sciences and technologies that arrived too late, hindered by bureaucratic shackles and legal formalities.
The sick masses cried out to the heavens for help, but the help that should have arrived never came. Why?
Because it was too costly. Because it was dangerous.
Because it threatened the pharmaceutical market.
Over 150 million people perished because what should have been done wasn’t done when it was needed.
By the hands of those rulers, legislators, and businessmen, there runs as much, if not more, innocent blood than by her own.
“At least this time it won’t be in vain,” she tells herself.
She knows that each atrocity, no matter how it weighs on her soul, is another blow against The Great Adversary, another step toward our emancipation from natural decay.
Her arm burns; she glances at it and once again sees swollen skin, throbbing veins.
She knows that if she touches the skin, it will peel away like moss.
This is a small penance; in the flagellation, she finds comfort, knowing she suffers as much as her test subjects.
She murmurs a prayer to one of her parents’ saints.
—"You brought hope to the downcast.
Cover those who are troubled and anxious, and may peace be firmly rooted in our hearts and in our world.
Inspire us to act justly and to reverence all God has made."—She finishes with a long sigh. Whenever she feels her spirit collapse, she finds some peace in prayers to this Saint.
She knows they’re not there, that there’s no god, no saints, no angels, but it comforts her nonetheless to feel a little cleaner.
Or perhaps she, the angels, and god do exist, and her punishment awaits her in the afterlife, in the lake of fire where the worm does not die, feared so deeply by her parents and their parents before them.
But she does not fear; she knows she belongs there, and if she must go to a hell when she dies, so be it.
She doesn’t intend to escape death no matter what’s on the other side, even if she discovers the secret to immortality.
That immortality doesn’t belong to her; it isn’t hers. It was forged in the blood, pain, and laments of hundreds of innocents who went through great martyrdom, and to alleviate the blood, pain, and laments of other billions of innocents, it must go.
She will die along with her two monsters, who, like young devils, will seem lost at the death of their master; they have been designed this way.
Someone is sobbing; someone is always sobbing, the sound seeping in from everywhere, flooding everything.
Poor souls! Losing their own bodies, their essence torn apart as their organs stretch and struggle to repair themselves, their bodies suffer but can they endure it? Can they hold on?
And they, along with their bodies, fight to maintain stability, to remain themselves, driven mad by pain, transformed into monsters, devouring themselves, their bodies spread across the entire surface of a room.
If god is merciful, he will grant her great torment and allow them to walk the golden streets.
Even after her death, she will be a martyr.
It is her duty.