The Definition of Dysania (A Collection of Short Trepidations)

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I killed someone today. It was mercy, but it feels wrong all the same. They told me that I should be proud of my accomplishments. How could anyone ever be proud that another is gone? Executed least humanely, for the crime of not being human. I'm not human either, but They don't know that, do they?

I survive by deceiving those I have learned to love and killing those with whom I share blood. They are calling the wrong beings monsters. I don't care if they find me anymore; I deserve it anyways, don't I? I will never be able to forget it.

***

Today's temperature was almost 100 degrees. My suit was clinging to my body with sweat, and my gun was slipping from my fingers as my team bolted through the city.
Hair was somehow stuck in my mouth and I had to move my head in separate ways to keep it out of my eye—an irritating inconvenience that still happened even though I cut my hair short.

The concrete seemed like it was evaporating by how much steam was coming off it. The weather is broken—the streets were flooded a couple of hours ago from rain, and now they are completely dry.

My feet already had blisters, and it wasn't even an hour in patrols yet. To examine our assigned quarter of the city, it usually took us about four hours—and due to the absolute rarity of anything happening, we only actively worked for around three.

I had given up trying to pay attention to the Comms, a thought wave processor for silent communication embedded in my mask, so it was reduced to a faded staticky jumble in the back of my consciousness.

I looked up at the deserted buildings, the sun was bouncing off the windows to create a near-blinding glare and I had to squint. Everything looked like the people just stepped out for a moment, or had yet to wake up.

What a sad lie it tells itself every day. The people aren't coming back.

I was jerked from my thoughts when a blurry shape darted out in front of me, I almost crashed into it, but I managed to stop in time.

I blinked and the shape came into clarity, it was my patrol mate. I gave them an annoyed glare through the mask that, at present, only served to amplify the heat.
The mask covered my mouth and my left eye.

As I paused I noticed my surroundings more specifically this time, we were in the middle of an intersection, with towering office buildings surrounding us except for a quaint café at one corner.

I looked around for the rest of my patrol and saw them waiting for me at a turn that I would have run right past.

I flicked my hair out of my face and gave a grateful head nod to the one who caught me and they huffed in impatience. We deftly followed the group as I ran alongside.

***

I asked once, about why we couldn't go off on our own to cover more ground, as we only needed two of us to take one of them down, and in my case, I could do it by myself.

They answered that if we got into trouble with a stronger one, then it would be suicide to go out in pairs, much less on our own.

It's irritating, but I have learned to keep my abilities in check. I would hate to have to slaughter them all, enslaved by pure survival instincts. It would only prove them right.

***

I tune back into the comms if only to avoid the path my mind is currently spiraling down.
"...signal that one is right down this street."
Just in time, I guess.

My silver eyes scan the block. Nothing looks out of the ordinary, but if you truly thought that then you would be dead in the next ten minutes.

They are invisible, but I can see them.
The humans use the cameras in their masks, and I turned that function off.
I am visible to them because I choose to be.  

As the humans are hunting them down, they have not encountered a willingly visible member of my kind.

If they did, then they would know; we look exactly like each other.

***

My stomach twists in the flimsy armor. I don't like this part.

"Nightingale and Mockingbird, go around back. Bluejay and I will take the front and we will close in through there." Said the team captain; they're known as Kestrel.

I am known in the field as Nightingale.

It is unclear why we don't use our real names though; perhaps it is so we don't seem so human, as it is their nature to become easily attached, but no one can afford that anymore.
Maybe it is to mock us; shove the world that we lost into our faces and pour more salt in the wound.
In either scenario, the rancid smell of hypocrisy is omnipresent.

***

We all nod and get in our positions.

I and my partner patiently wait for the signal in the back alleyway.
Our target is in a bright building with lots of translucent windows—it looks semi-upscale and like a place for coders, based on the cubicles and computers that seem to have only been touched by dust recently.

We crouch in the shadows and make an effort to be as still as possible—as if it will save us.

The ping from Kestrel gets to us as the back door bursts open in a flurry of sound and movement.
Sooner than expected; I assume it wanted to flee right when it sensed us.

My partner probably only saw a blur—he was moving very quickly—but I could get the details.

He looked like a boy, no more than 13 years old.

He smelled like sweat and fear and was wearing dirty clothes a bit too large for his size. Likely scavenged from a random apartment.
He saw us and paused for a second before deciding to run for it, and like the traitor I am, I followed him to kill him.

Careful not to seem too fast, I left my teammate in the dust and trailed the kid down a few blocks, until, thinking he was safe, he partially relaxed in an alleyway.

He didn't notice I was behind him until the last second when I had the gun to the back of his head.

I saw the boy tense up, then start sobbing. He was trying to speak, but it was incoherent.

I heard my team's footsteps a block away, an ominous echo in otherwise silence, and I knew I had to do something swiftly.

They would have tracked me with the tech we all wear—they would have seen that I stopped.

It would raise a lot of questions if I said he got away—we are told never to let our targets get away.
They believe my kind is destructive—that they will only cause chaos if allowed to roam free.

I flick the safety of the gun off.

The boy collapsed on his knees onto the concrete slab of ground.

He begged for mercy through his tears.

I will give him mercy from this life.

I shot him.

I lowered my gun, mechanically.

No matter how different they see us, we both always bleed red.

***

My teammates caught up to my location and saw my atrocity.

'Congratulations!' They said.

I felt like I was turned into ice, and shattered. The pieces of myself scattered among the alley instead of the boy's blood.

I will never understand their pride in this.
I pivot and walk away as if I can just turn my back on it and pretend it never happened.

The rest of the patrol goes by in a blur, we didn't encounter anyone else.

***

My 'victory' was quietly celebrated within my unit.

I smiled at them.