Cedrick couldn’t remember the day, not really. Something had been said to him, he had said something back. The specifics hadn’t mattered. All he knew was that one moment he had been in the fancy meeting room, gazing out the ceiling height windows with the little offering of wine in his hands and then the next he was surrounded by debris. Three city blocks had been destroyed, they said. Burned, razed, crushed. But he saw something there under the debris that mattered so much more. The familiar face of Vick, a long time friend, and one of the heroes of the city. He had cried, then. When they came for his capture he did not resist.

“What happened?” was his first question, in a room filled with white suits.

“You did.” said the lead suit. A tall man, hair swept backwards and with sunglasses to hide behind. “All of that, it was you.”

Later the images returned. The steel bending before him, concrete shattering and glass blowing out. Vick and many others had tried to stop him, but they all shared a similar fate.

“Why did you do it?” he was asked so many times. He never had an answer. “How do we know you won’t do it again?” He wished that he knew.

The white walls, the stale lights, locked rooms and constant surveillance became almost comforting. Maybe here, with all of this effort into his containment he would be safe. Safe from again seeing the faces of his friends, crushed and bloodied by his own hands. But that was not true. He knew that there was little to keep him from walking out, tomorrow, if he so wished. And that was what scared him most of all.

One day, or night, for it was hard to tell, the lead suit returned. His business was simple, “We could use your skills.” he had said. “If you earn our trust, eventually you could leave this prison.”

Little sounded less appealing to Cedrick. His answer was a simple refusal.

Again the suit had tried, “Surely you would like to see the sun? The stars? Feel the wind? You were as free as a bird, you could have that again.”

No, he could not. He was returned to his cell, trailed by a bit of bitter annoyance and disappointment.

That was how the days went. Boredom and fear, proposals and refusals. Never again would he leave, he determined. Never again would he kill.

Some time, the true amount entirely inconsequential to Cedrick, had passed when he felt something new. It was as if a pressure filled the air, made it crackle and stretch with a sense of menace. Something big was coming. Those who spoke to him, the ones that strove to read his thoughts and others who strove to influence them did not seem to notice. The itch burned at him. The sense, the itch grew until he knew that it could not be ignored. It was here.

Cedrick burst from the facility, every alarm blaring, the discord fueled by panicked cries and shouts. It was up there, somewhere. He jumped into the air, and soared on the winds. At once he felt the guilt. There were stars above, the dark mass of earth below, a shimmer of a lake far beyond. Sights vowed to never be seen by his eyes again. But whatever had called could not be denied.

The threat made itself clear soon enough. Adorned in the sky was a constellation that did not belong, pinpricks arranged in a circle to indicate a craft superior and alien to any made on Earth. Cedrick waited until it struck at last, beams of destruction raining upon a suitably large populace. For a moment he found his thoughts pondering why, and then no more came and he lost consciousness once again.

At dawn the first of the light glinted across metal and ruin, what remained of the craft sent and so lost across the vastness of space. Among the crumpled metal Cedrick awoke.

“You did well.” the man’s face was now familiar, his stark white suit only mildly marred by the night of warfare. His arms raised, a gesture at the destruction. “This great victory was only possible because of you. You saved countless lives.”

Cedrick looked at his hands. They were bad hands, hands that had killed, had destroyed.

“You are great, Cedrick. With tonight, you have redeemed yourself.”

“No.” spoke Cedrick at last. “I have only failed once again.”