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Trinity RPG - Losing Faith


Matt

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<H1>Losing Faith</H1><H3><A HREF="mailto:kevint@modempool.com">By Kevin Taylor</A></H3><HR>

<H3><BLINK>NOTE:</BLINK> This fiction is based on the adventure<A HREF="../scenarios/scen0001.html">"Welcome to Sky City,"</A> by Steven Otte. If you intend to play that scenario, do not read this story, as it contains major spoilers.</H3><HR>


"Things change. I learned that recently. Your beliefs, your core being, anything for that matter can change. Some big, some little, but all for a reason.

"Someone once told me that change was natural and necessary. That without change, everything we knew would cease to be. Sometimes though, that very change can cause everything you know to cease to be.

"It was a simple mission, a basic investigation really. Compared to Aberrants or Chromatics, investigating the Doyo cult seemed easy, hell, we already knew some of them. So Sky City seemed like a cakewalk. I needed a simple run for once.

"Too bad I did not get one.

"The investigation had problems from the start. ISRA letting a Newsday reporter go along, recruiting a new EK that I thought had joined willingly... The things we learn change us.

"It really started going wrong at the crash site.

"We did the old school investigation first. Checking blast patterns, looking at wreckage spread. Managed to determine that the pilot that had shot down the civilian ship had been playing with them. An evil bastard. I picked up an L-K Personal Protector that survived the crash, no serial numbers. Then I did the psychometric scan.

"Fourteen children had died in that crash.

"I'm not a violent man by nature. I'm a glorified cop, and a Catholic. But that fact, it made me...

"Into something I'm not."

Christian stopped in his narrative here, took a drink of coffee. This report had to be the hardest he'd done. I know how he feels about children. He was an orphan, due to violence, he hated violence being inflicted on children. He passed me another data file, let me load it. A visual recording and rundown of the mission from his vision recorder.

<IMG SRC="../scenarios/skycitys.jpg" ALIGN=RIGHT>"That is the details of the mission, if you didn't have a spotter on us for once. The station itself went down rather smoothly. Doc and I got Dupre, easy. Not a mark on him except for the bruise from my flash grenade. Got the hostages out, and Jean. Even shut down their other ships till we wanted them to leave. Then he got in the way.

"Marc Simeon. He was Dupre's second, the other one lost in the cult. In the end it didn't save him. He tried to stop us, we laughed at him really, and his guards were not up to the training we've had. Kerima could have taken them without Telepathy. Then Marc told us we wouldn't get away, because he shot down one ship already, and he'd shoot us down too.

"I asked him if he was flying that ship. He said yes.

"And in an act I never thought I'd do, I pulled out the L-K laser and shot him coldly, clean between the eyes."

Christian was trying not to break down; I motioned for him to pause. He took another drink of coffee. Then he continued.

"I had never killed in cold blood before. Sure, I'd killed during a mission, but in self-defense, or it was an Aberrant. But this, I felt... wrong. It was a cold feeling, like something I knew I should not do, but it felt good... He should have died for his sins... God could not fault me, could he?

"But I knew I'd crossed a line I could never go back over. There was no turning back now."

He stopped, confessing his sin to me, and I imagined the priest before me. I set the recorder down, looked across my desk at one of my youngest Al-Alif. Christian Wraith was a cop, and a Catholic, and he had killed a man in a moment of passion. He had broken the law; he should have brought him in for the courts.

I looked over the files. Dupre was going down on 13 counts of conspiracy to commit murder, two counts of murder, and 21 counts of medical malpractice. In Chinese courts, the man was as good as dead.

Before me was a man that had broken the law of man, but had he broken the law of God?

"Christian, I'm going to recommend you take a vacation. Use that Brazilian citizenship you have and get some sun. Maybe take Kerima out dancing."

"Um, sir, I don't get it... Isn't there some regulation... some..."

I cut him off, waving my hand as I deleted the memory file of Wraith killing Simeon. "What regulation? Against someone resisting arrest? Come on Christian, this is the ISRA, not the COM."

"Um, ok." He stood. I remembered being that young once, that idealistic. I was not going to let violence destroy this man's faith as it had mine. "But I don't get..."

"Paid. That's what you don't get. Is that really going to make a difference?"

He finally got what I was doing, and just nodded.

"Christian, you are going to find that some things are hard to cope with, and that sometimes your emotions can cause you to break your own code. But as long as you feel remorse, as long as you know you didn't do right, you are still human. I'm sure God will forgive. Go relax a bit."

He nodded, and without another word left my office.

I turned to the files before me. I could lie to the Chinese, but not to the Old Man. However, I figured that God's chosen would understand as well. I burned the data disk with a lighter I kept from my days in the army, and turned to look out my office window. I picked up the recorder.

"Case file 2748, Sky City. Agent in field, Christian Wraith, Abbas Kastami filing report...."
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