Prologue

"It's ready now."

His hands were utterly numb. Adrenaline and blood rushed aggressively through his veins at rocket speed. He felt his throat tighten, as if he were forcefully being strangled by a snake, unable to breathe steadily. His eyes were widened. His jaws were shut firmly. Beads of sweat trickled down his forehead and slowly dripped to his chin. His restless legs barely supported his weight and it felt like he was going to collapse at any given moment like the gravity of the room had just suddenly increased. Silence befell the room, and the only noise was the tense awkward clicks of the clock. Tick. Tock. Tick.

His grip grew slippery as he held the remote, with yellow and black striped tape around its edges and a red button waiting to be pressed. This was not an ordinary button, such that you would find in an elevator. It would release hell's hounds loose from the gates of scorching purgatory. Chaos would break free from its everlasting chains from the very depths of the underworld to disrupt the peace. He looked out the window, only to see a quiet and tranquil world; the birds chirped out symphonies and wind whistled gently through the fingers of the trees. Everything looked ordinary at first glance, but he knew it was all fake and spurious. He could easily see through nature's façade, behind its deceiving mask, to find a disorganized and tarnished world, where crime ran rampant like rabid dogs without their leashes, and sins were committed all too frequently. It was a world where people could not make up their own minds and were too indecisive and hesitant; it was a world where the only solution was sought through war and "victory", with the prize being only the brutal demises of thousands upon thousands; it was a world where the conscience of society was blinded and smeared by violence like a misty pair of glasses and where the flame of hope in humanity had dwindled into nothing but a tiny splint. But the vision of the pathway to a brighter better future was just in sight just across the horizon, in reach of his fingertips, and he was the only one who could grasp it. Only he had the power to save this dying and decaying world. Suddenly, the sky, as if to conveniently fit the mood, turned gloomy grey, erupting an intense vile groan. Clouds barricaded the very last beam of sunlight upon the world and now shrouded it in tenebrosity.

Drop. The first globule of rain trickled tragically down the window. Drip. Drop. Drip. Soon pitters became patters until a constant barrage of rain started to collide onto the window furiously, begging to be let in, like tears of millions streaming down in front of his uncaring eyes. A strained and unsteady sigh was let out, one combined with indecisiveness and certainty. One side of the coin whispered in his ear him to flip the lives of billions upside down and the other telling him to keep things the way they were. Lips were bitten and breaths were held, and dread filled the room to the brim, anticipating nervously what final decision would be reached. A feeling of vulnerability loomed over each worker, knowing that there was nothing they could do to stop him. Do I really have to do this? This was the question he pondered about for so long, repeating and looping through his head like a catchy lyric of a song. One that kept him up at the depths of night and at the height of day. At this place and time, he held the key to either the gates of heaven or hell. No, there was no time for that now. No time at all to look back and regret; he was already too far in to stop now.

And with the sudden swift contraction of a single muscle, he pushed the button. Beep. The sound of fate echoed throughout the room.

At first, there was nothing, except for hearts jammed in the throats of the spectators as well as the feeling of extreme trepidation. It was a moment of intense quiet except for the hands of the clock, still stuttering clumsily. Tick. Tock. Tick. The workers were trying to absorb and comprehend what just occurred. Subtle murmurs of disbelief and shock exponentially spread across the room like an uncontrollable wildfire. The whispers gradually became louder, louder, louder to a point where they reached a crescendo and the room was soon filled with a chaotic mixture of confusion and agitation, every single syllable inaudible.

But the man still stood there emptily, looking through the pane of glass. However, he could also see his reflection, a dead and ominous glare staring back at him. Those emotionless eyes gazed back into his very soul. The still expression looking down on him condescendingly. It was impossible to grasp how he felt, during that moment of seeming grace. Was it relief? Or was it anticipation and patience? Or was it unbearable regret and sorrow he felt from being unable to come to terms with his resolution?

Immediately, a deafening and turbulent reverb was felt throughout the entire building, followed by a vexatious wave of screams and cries as well as a series of chaotic scatters of wheelchairs. The petrified workers hastily shuffled and attempted to conceal themselves under their office desks, unaware of the detrimental consequences occurring just outside. Soon after, another forceful impact came down, this time feeling unnervingly closer than before. The pitter patters of rain had now quickly transitioned into the destructive pummels of nuclear bombs within just moments. Consternation evolved into disarray and mayhem. Violent explosions released its fatal flares across the landscape, completely obliterating and consuming anything in its path and leaving nothing but ashes behind in a blink of an eye from a distance. Across the globe, humanity soon began to realise what was happening.

But it was too late to stop it.

The atmosphere had almost changed at once. Instant blinding light had completely vaporised what were once people, some of which did not even have the time to register their swift but agonising deaths, thinking it was just another normal day. With each second passing, thousands to millions of lives were being lost like a collapsing set of dominoes, regardless of whether they were men, women, or children. Running away was futile. Populations were engulfed by the ever-hungry wave of the blinding crimson clouds, erupting like numerous volcanoes setting off all at once.

Crowds and mobs of citizens begged the police, security, or soldiers to do something about it and protect their worthless lives, as if they were expecting them to save humanity from this inevitable doom. But they did nothing and stood silent. That was until one of them released a striking and earsplitting bullet into the chest of an individual. Soon after, rains of rapid blaring ammunition were fired at the crowds, in which people panickily trampled over each other trying to extend the few valuable seconds they had left. People fell over like stone idols, leaving pools of red sacred life leaking out of them. Cries and bloodcurdling shrieks were heard all over continents, to only be cut short moments later. Bodies continued to pile up at accelerating rates until mountains of corpses began to form. The panicked innocent continued to be cut down like the harvesting of crops, as they were forcefully oppressed by the people they had once trusted.

Hell was now undoubtedly on Earth, as it released its demons and fiends as if to punish all of those who had committed unthinkable wrongdoings. Society had now reached the day where they had to learn their lesson of being unable to change their senseless ways for the last few millennia and continued to be ignorant creatures God never intended them to be. Karma had finally caught up with humanity in this never-ending race. The screeching sounds of windows breaking exploded and echoed throughout cities and the shattered glass flew out all at once in one quick motion like a flock of black birds. The serene orange sky of dusk was now smothered in black smoke and transformed into an ugly alerting red. Aromatic sweet air was replaced by the repulsive stench of corpses that whiffed throughout the world. The rain that fell now was now the flooding tears of those who had to go through this abrupt and unprecedented suffering.

The man watched the top floor of the corporate building, towering over the turmoil and horrors below. But it was all necessary, he thought. Sometimes, starting from scratch was the best way to build something that was better than it was before. Even if it did involve the genocide of half of all humanity. It was all necessary. Wasn't it? A brief faint voice cried out in the back his head before fading into the blackness of his consciousness, but he could not make out the words. He stood there, still as a statue, with the privilege of not having to experience the unimaginable terrors of the purge he himself had caused.