The Unpunished

Maya felt her phone vibrate in her pocket and pulled it out to find a message from an unknown number that simply read "I'm the operator they called in to replace the one who refused, and I'm standing outside the plaza right now looking at the line you've formed, and I need you to know that I've been doing this job for six years and I've confirmed three hundred and twelve kills and I thought I'd seen everything, but I've never had to walk through a corridor of people who spent the night proving that the names on my screen were daughters and sisters and strangers worth fighting for, and I'm trying to understand how I'm supposed to move through twenty faces that are going to ask me without words whether three hundred and twelve wasn't already enough, whether I really want to add your name to a count that's going to follow me until I end up like the man I can see standing in your line, and the Deputy Director told me this was just another processing, that the crowd was a distraction I should ignore, but standing here watching all of you breathe in the cold, I'm realizing that the only way I can walk through that line is if I stop seeing you as people, and I've spent six years teaching myself to do exactly that, and maybe that's why they called me, because I'm the operator who's already broken enough that twenty more faces shouldn't matter, but looking at you now—at your mother's arm around your shoulders, at the man holding his daughter's photograph, at everyone who chose to stand between you and the basement where I'm supposed to go—I'm not sure I'm as broken as the Deputy Director needs me to be, and I think that uncertainty, that moment of seeing all of you and wondering if I can actually do this, might be the first human thing I've felt in six years of clicking confirm."