237 Pt. 04 - The Final Chapter

Chapter 19

Mal ducked as a bullet shattered the wall behind him. "What the fuck!?" he yelled, as he ran down the stairs of Divya's house, where he had gone after the hospital. By the time he had gotten outside, Divya had already captured the would-be assassin. Mal recognized him!

"Ravi! How could you?!" demanded Mal.

"I'm not Ravi, I'm his twin! I work for an agency of assassins, and you've been marked as someone sent from the past to destroy us all!" said the assassin.

"No, I just passed out and woke up ten thousand years later. I'm just here for the pussy." shot back Mal, smiling at Divya, who blushed and rolled her eyes, smiling. "What's your name, anyway?" added Mal.

"Glorplops! And if you're really no threat, you'll join us! Our goal is to take down the shadow government that secretly controls everything!" said Glorplops.

Mal joined them, and became an excellent assassin. One day, though, he was hunting his quarry, when he lost track of them. The next thing he knew he had a bullet in his belly.

He fell to the ground, bleeding, and realized he was dying. He floated out of his body, into a darker, twisted version of the world. He wandered around for a while, able to maintain this subtle version of himself due to the effects of the drug he'd taken ten thousand years before, and then eventually stumbled upon some kind of mystical substance that allowed him to come back to life. He managed to find his target again, and killed them. He was about to leave, but something compelled him to investigate further. A pull from the dead world. Mal saw a strange glow in the body crumpled at his feet. The glow led him to the clothing of the dead man. He knelt down, and patted the the man's jacket. Feeling a small clump in the pocket area, he opened it up, and looked inside. In the pocket he found an address. It was stained with blood, but he was able to make out the letters and numbers well enough. He couldn't see the last number, so he went to two different buildings. The first was an abandoned warehouse. There was nothing inside but rusty machinery. However, he saw the glow again as he approached the second building.

Once he got there, he realized it was the headquarters for the shadow government. He snuck inside, ready to destroy them all. What he found, though, blew his mind. A massive hall, filled with cloning pods as far as the eye could see.

"Welcome, Mal." a voice said.

Mal realized it was a supercomputer.

"So you're the shadow government!?" asked Mal.

"Yes," it said in it's strange, soft, yet loud voice. "I'm going to repopulate the earth with these cloned humans. They age, and they all die at age 42. It's perfect."

Mal was disgusted. "You're sick! You shouldn't be programming people to die!" he turned, spat, and then coughed.

The computer went on, and explained how age is normal, and people shouldn't live forever. Mal was enraged, but as he listened he started to feel pain, and realized he'd pulled something in his neck. He had hurt himself simply by coughing, something that never happened until he'd gotten older. He wondered, maybe the computer could do him a favor? What was the point of living on and on? Since he was going to eventually get older, and frail, what was he holding on to?

Mal decided he didn't want to get even older. He shouted, "So, you're not going to let me get out of here, obviously, which means I've got to take you down with me!"

Then he pulled out a grenade, and shoved it into the computer. They both blew up. Since Mal was blown apart, including the wispy part of him that floated around when he last died, he was unable to put himself back together like before, so he stayed dead.

Divya and Ravi heard about his death, and were both very upset. A hole was left in the world with the passing of Mal, but he took out a manipulative shadow government along with him. Ravi dedicated a shrine to Mal at the temple, and Divya created a memorial for him in the library. Statues were erected to him throughout the city. Mal was never forgotten, and time went on with him as part of it. People always looked back with gratitude upon the great Mal, the liberator.

The End.

Afterword:

To any readers who actually liked this series:

I am sorry for ending it so abruptly. This compressed story should have played out over many more chapters, and hopefully been worded a lot better, and told more skillfully. However, I noticed that no one was reading the previous chapters. For some reason chapter 1 got up to over a thousand views in a couple days, but then every subsequent chapter never got more than a few hundred. So, I decided to give it up. I realized that someone might want to know what happens, though, and so that's what this is: the concise version of the conclusion of Mal's story. Though it would have been a lot better if I'd actually done it properly. Thanks for reading.