Evil

What is evil?

Some people say that evil is a person’s selfish deeds. Others say that it’s something immoral or entirely wicked. People have even gone as far as saying that anything that wasn’t directly “good” is evil. I disagreed. I didn’t believe in good or evil. If the deed was necessary, then it wasn’t evil, because evil didn’t exist. At least, that’s what I believed.

Maybe that’s why I, among the half a dozen of other agents in training, was the only one to accept the mission. We’d all seen jobs like this before, where the suspect in question was a lunatic, and the agent would often have to face the choice of either killing or getting killed. This scared the other agents. They didn’t want to become “evil murderers” just because of some mission. Maybe that’s why I volunteered myself for the job.

I listened carefully as one of the older agents explained the task to me - I needed to capture the masked murderer that had been running rampant for months, killing petty criminals and leaving behind clues as to where the next slaughter would take place, and I could only kill if it was absolutely necessary. If I managed to succeed, then I’d be able to graduate from training. I nodded along, filing the information into my mind, not missing a single word as a plan already started to form. The set date was three days from now, but the 72 hours flew by in the blink of an eye, and before I knew it, I was in the supply room getting ready for the mission.

“You sure you’re up for it, Themis?” Dawson, the agent in charge of the weapon stock, asked me as I clipped two handguns onto my belt and snuck a small blade into each of my boots, along with one more into the sleeve of my uniform. “It's not too late to give the job to one of the other agents.”

“I’ll be fine,” I replied, waving him off. With a quick goodbye and one final check-up with the other agents, I hopped into one of the unmarked FBI cars, started it up, and typed the coordinates into a GPS. I drove like I was on autopilot, not quite focusing all of my attention on the road as the doubts started to flood my mind. Maybe I should’ve let the more experienced agents handle this. Evil or not, I didn’t want to kill someone. I shook my head slightly. Either way, it was too late to turn back now.

The next thing I knew, I was parking the car a mere one hundred meters away from the coordinates that the murderer had left for us. Then again, maybe the research team made a mistake while deciphering the code that the murderer left behind, and there wouldn’t be any psychopath waiting for me there. I steeled my nerves and forced myself out of the car, more than thankful for the cover of the dark. The sun had already begun to set, casting long shadows that reached and clawed at me from every direction.

I warily crept through the ruins of abandoned building sites, feeling uneasy to be so out in the open, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. The field was covered in half-built houses that were never finished because of a lack of funding, with a single towering apartment building looming in the middle of it all - it was the only structure that had actually been completed before the building company had run out of money. The air was damp, heavy, and reeking of chemicals as I got closer and closer to the apartment, and although the smell burned my nostrils, I stayed low to the ground, with a handgun at the ready.

I ducked behind the wall of an unfinished house and stared up at the apartment building - if the intel was correct, the masked murderer should be on the third floor, in plain sight for anyone to see. Sure enough, I saw the silhouette of a person standing near a window, and as they moved in the dim light, I made out the black and white mask that the entire agency has been chasing for months. This was it. I steadied myself, taking slow deep breaths as I held the gun out with both hands, the cool familiar feeling of the blade in my sleeve helped me keep calm. A shot in the shoulder should immobilize them for long enough for me to properly restrain them. Slowly and carefully, I started to bring my finger down on the trigger, taking my time to aim well.

The figure turned around, and I could’ve sworn they looked me right in the eyes. I almost dropped the gun in shock - they shouldn’t have been able to see me. I’d worn an all-black uniform and I was still hidden among the rubble of construction. There was no way they could’ve seen me from the third floor, right? In a panic that I’d been discovered, my eyes must’ve slipped off of them for a second, because when I looked at the window again, they were gone. I frantically searched for the silhouette, gun at the ready - I didn’t have the luxury of a careful shot anymore, but I needed to take them down.

It was only when they appeared right in front of me, knocking the gun out of my hand, that I realized they’d left the apartment, and I was looking in the wrong place for them. They moved at an inhuman speed, a knife flashing in their hand as they jabbed and slashed at me. I barely had time to dodge the attacks, much less get my own blade down from my sleeve. They wielded their knife with such expertise that even with my years of training, I was almost impaled several times. This was a killer. A cold-blooded killer. If evil existed, then it was them.

I weaved around every attack, ducking under one and side-stepping from another, but I knew I had to end this soon. Close-range combat had never been my forte, and I didn’t know how long I could keep going for. I needed to get closer to them, to immobilize them for even a moment so that I could at least knock the knife from their hand. Their blade was the Grim Reaper, a death omen that I did my best to maneuver around, and yet, it still grazed against my cheek as I dodged out of the way. A trickle of blood started flowing down, and I could feel myself start to grow tired. I needed to end this now.

They lunged forward, the knife aimed straight for my heart, but I managed to grab their arm and redirect it away from me, sending them stumbling. In the brief opening, I slammed my hand into their wrist and sent their blade flying somewhere into the rubble. Instead of going after the knife, they whirled around and grabbed my arm, twisting it and using the momentum from the turn to throw me over their back. I crashed into the uneven ground, the wind knocked out of my lungs, and gasped out in pain from the sudden impact.

They didn’t give me a moment to even recover. They dove straight at me, locking their hands over my throat and squeezing with everything they had. I desperately tried to fight them off, kicking at their gut and peeling off their fingers, but it was useless. The black and white mask seemed to spin as I struggled for breath, the cold of the blade in my sleeve serving as a constant reminder that I still had one last resort if I needed it. My vision swam, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it - I couldn’t kill them. That would be… evil.

Their grip on my neck only tightened, and black spots started to appear as I could feel myself grow faint. I couldn’t die yet. I couldn’t let myself fade away at the hands of a dirty criminal that’s killed dozens of others before me. In one last desperate attempt to fight them off, I weakly swung my right hand forward, the knife sliding down from my sleeve as I sliced right through their own throat, and I could’ve sworn I heard a silent scream leave their lips as the blood spurted from the wound, completely drenching me. It was a clean cut, leaving them with no chance of survival, and I managed to roll out of the way as they collapsed, their hand reaching to stop the flow of the blood, but I knew it was too late. They’d already lost too much of it.

I shakily rose to my feet, taking in long deep breaths as I watched them bleed to their death below me. I just killed a person. It didn’t matter that they were a murderer, or that they were trying to kill me first. I killed a person. I thought evil didn’t exist, and yet, I’d become it. I became evil. Only when my breathing became stable once again did I lean down to check the pulse of the target. It was gone, but my fingers came up slick with blood. I shuddered in place, swallowing back the nausea, and stumbled across the construction site back to the car.

I didn’t know how, but I managed to climb into the driver’s seat. My hands automatically went to my phone, dialing the agency’s number. The line rang once, twice, and then I faintly heard someone’s voice ask about the mission, though it seemed so far away.

“Mission completed,” I whispered, my voice hoarse, and with shaky fingers, I pressed the red button to hang up. A bloody fingerprint appeared on the screen. I needed to get back to the agency. I needed to go back, and I needed to let the agency handle the clean-up, but for some reason, my body didn’t listen to me. Before I could stop myself, I was already sprinting out of the car and towards the body, stumbling over the rubble in my daze - I needed to at least know who it was that I’d killed. I needed to see under the mask.

I fell to the ground beside the body, landing into a pool of their blood, and frantically ripped the mask off them. I was going crazy now. There was no other explanation for it. Where I thought I’d find the face of the victim of my evil-doing, all I could see was myself. I’ve done it, I realized. I’ve murdered myself with that evil. I’ve killed whatever shred of innocence I had, and now I’m nothing but evil.

No, I tried to reassure myself, that wasn’t evil. They were a murderer, and they would’ve killed more people than I could ever know. That was necessary. And yet, as I sat there, drenched in their blood and uncontrollably shaking, I found it hard to believe. Surely that was evil, and yet, it was a good deed - with their death, dozens of others had been spared, so it couldn’t be evil. It confused me. I’d killed a person, and yet it wasn’t evil, so I was left with one question.

What is evil?