The SECRETS in SHADOWS

Francis walked toward Allen, his boots crunching against the cold, blood-slicked floor. He knelt beside him, exhaling slowly, the weight of his next words hanging between them like a noose. His voice was eerily soft, almost sorrowful.

"I'm sorry, kid," he murmured. "But this is what must be done. Decisions like this… they have to be made. This is the reason SECRETS was formed in the first place."

SECRETS—an elite intelligence unit, the unseen hand of the Republic. Operating in the shadows, they safeguarded the nation from internal threats and foreign adversaries alike. Their influence stretched beyond borders—spying, manipulating, eliminating obstacles before they could become crises. Cloaked in secrecy, their agents were ghosts, their existence known only to a select few. Unlike any other branch of the Republic, SECRETS answered to no governing authority.

Allen, his body wracked with pain, let out a bitter laugh that was more a gasp. Blood dripped from his lips, but his glare burned with unfiltered rage. "Bullshit," he spat. "Protect? Who the fuck are you protecting? You just commit crimes in the name of 'saving people.' Call it what it is, Francis—you're just another executioner."

Francis sighed, rubbing his temples like a man who had heard this argument a hundred times before. His expression darkened, and for the first time that night, there was something almost… haunted in his eyes.

"Sovitaire, 2010 A disease broke out," Francis began, his voice hollow, like he was speaking from the depths of a grave. "Airborne, highly infectious. At first, it was just a few cases. Then hundreds. Then thousands. By 2011, the entire region was a graveyard. Families torn apart, streets lined with the dying, hospitals overflowing with bodies they didn't have the staff to bury. The Republic watched in horror as the death toll climbed."

His fingers twitched, memories clawing their way to the surface.

"It took three years to bring it under control," he continued. "Publicly, the epidemic 'ended' in 2014. But that's a lie. It didn't end naturally, Allen. The Republic ended it."

Allen's breath hitched. His pain was momentarily forgotten as a different kind of dread wrapped around his throat. "W…What do you mean?" he asked, though deep down, he already feared the answer.

Francis tilted his head, his expression unreadable. "The final cluster of infected—eighty-seven people, to be exact. Men, women, children. Infants. They were quarantined, kept in isolation, treated like living biohazards." He let out a humorless chuckle. "But they weren't getting better. The virus lingered in them, festering. The Republic had already hemorrhaged billions fighting the epidemic. They knew if it resurfaced, it would spiral out of control again. The world was watching. Their pockets were empty. There was only one solution left."

Allen's fingers dug into the floor, nails scraping against the tile.

Francis met his gaze. There was no bravado in his voice now, only something cold. Something real.

"They killed them, Allen. Every last one of them."

Allen's breath came in short gasps, his mind struggling to process the horror.

"Infants, ripped from their mothers' arms," Francis continued. "Teenagers who had their whole lives ahead of them. Grandparents clutching rosaries, whispering final prayers. Gunned down. Burned alive. Suffocated in sealed chambers like fucking rats in an experiment." His voice was steady, but there was something in his eyes, something that had been hollowed out long ago.

Allen was trembling. His stomach lurched, bile rising in his throat.

Francis leaned in slightly, lowering his voice to almost a whisper.

"And you know what the worst part is?" he said. "It worked."

A silence fell over them, heavy and suffocating.

Francis stood up, brushing the dust from his coat. "So you see, kid," he said, voice empty, "sometimes, mercy is the greater cruelty."

"When this happened, I wasn't the Head of SECRETS," Francis said, his voice devoid of warmth. "I was just a normal agent. A cog in the machine. But I witnessed everything."

Allen stared at him, his breath shallow, his body screaming in pain. Despite that, despite everything, he found himself hanging onto Francis' every word.

Francis took a slow drag from his cigarette, exhaled, and then said, "Do you know what I felt when I watched those people die?"

He let the silence stretch, suffocating and cold. Then, in a voice as lifeless as a corpse, he said, "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

Allen flinched.

Francis' face remained eerily blank, his tone not shifting even a fraction. "That day, I realized something was wrong with me. I had always wanted to be a good citizen. A man who would actually help people. A rare government official who wasn't corrupt, who would do the right thing. But how can a man like that exist," he tilted his head slightly, eyes dark and unreadable, "when he doesn't feel anything watching innocent people die?"

"But I didn't want to accept that," Francis continued, his voice steady, almost eerily calm. "I wasn't some villain, and I was sure as hell not one of those corrupt fat fuckers sitting at the top of the Republic, treating lives like numbers on a balance sheet."

His eyes darkened, the weight of years pressing down on his words. "So I made a decision. I would be the necessary evil in the system. The man who takes the hard decisions no one else dares to. The one who does what needs to be done, no matter the cost." He let the cigarette dangle between his fingers, watching Allen with an almost pitying gaze. "I became the man who sacrifices people for the greater good."

He let that sink in.

"And now, I'm doing the same with you."