12 Liberty

12 Liberty

I had to go. I had to leave them behind. All of them. I know they did not understand why. Not even the Captain. But I know that he was not angry. Just confused. Sad.
               I had no choice. I could not contain myself any further. My mutation was just starting to show. The physical manifestations were slight at first. Noone noticed, but at the time I left I was not the same anymore. I was stronger and faster than ever. I saw things I could not understand at the time. I was craving.
               I needed to let go, to free myself. I was a caged beast. I could not stay with the humans, I was not one of them. And trying to change that, to be like them, was exhausting. To help them was pointless. It was crushing me. It made me pretend I was something else. It tied me to a world long gone. They lived in the past. In the present, they were only surviving. Hoping for a change that will never come.
               It was ironic. They put their hopes in me, the very worst thing the New World had created. I felt chained by their hopes. They believed I was the link between them and the New World. They thought I was partially human. And I tried to be. I tried very hard. For him.
               But it wasn't possible. The human leftover in me was just a shadow. An echo of a life long gone. It wasn't sustainable. If I killed the monster, there wouldn't be anything left. I couldn't do that. It was time to stop surviving. I needed to become fully alive again. To let go. To be free of it. Free of everything. Free to be whoever, whatever I was meant to be.

               I was drawn east. I crossed the continent so fast this time. Once New York. The epicenter of the Apocalypse. It was calling me. Whispering. Promising. New York. Freedom. The city of monsters. My city. My throne. My immortality. My Liberty.
               And she was beautiful. And mistreated. The first time I saw her, I was mesmerised. I fell in love with the statue. With her cold skin. With the way she refused to be anything else than the thing she was created for. They carried her far from the coast and burried her neck-deep in the ground. They wanted to use her as a warning sign. I didn't work with me. It didn't work for her either.
               Liberty Imprisoned. Old laws buried. Old fires put out. A goddess of the Old World. Diminished. Degraded. Humiliated. I hated that. I hated them for treating her like that. So I bowed and promised I will bring the world to her feet again. She will become Liberty Freed. She set me free and I intended to return the favour.

*     *     *

Time to live... and it's time to die... sometimes I feel things happen ahead of time... 
Live to forget...

Live to Forget, Firelake, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, 2009