My Brother Paid Me $200k A Year To Forget What He Did To Our Sister On Sub-Level 4
👉 Previous Decision: Marcus was incapacitated by the electrical surge and wheeled away on a gurney.
The following month, the linoleum-tiled hallway of St. Jude’s Care Facility in South Chicago stretched before me, quiet and sterile. The air hung heavy, tinged with the scent of disinfectant and faint despair. Through the window at the end of the hall, a gray, smog-choked railyard sprawled, freight trains clashing in the distance, a mournful rhythm to the city’s ceaseless hum.
I walked slowly, my footsteps echoing in the silence, to a small room at the end of the corridor. Inside, two beds stood side by side.
I pulled a vinyl chair between them and sat down. On my left, Maya. Her eyes were open, staring blankly at the wall, unable to speak, unable to acknowledge my presence. Her hand, when I took it, was soft and unresponsive. Her younger sister, lost to a brother’s ambition.
On my right, Marcus. He was frail now, his once-commanding presence reduced to a silent, hollow shell. His eyes, vacant and unseeing, stared into nothingness. He didn’t recognize me, didn’t recognize the room, didn’t recognize anything of the empire he had built or the crimes he had committed. He was, in a terrible irony, a permanent resident of Sub-Level 4, without the facility.
I carefully set a small wooden clock on the nightstand between them, its soft ticking the only sound breaking the heavy silence. I had won my freedom. I had brought down OmniTech and exposed the syndicate’s front.
But as I looked at my brother and my sister, two empty vessels in matching white rooms, I realized some silences last forever.
THE END – TRUE ENDING
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