Chapter 6:

I GAVE YOU POWER, HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW…

I GAVE YOU POWER

It was a sensation of true weightlessness.

The water was a shock of absolute cold. It swallowed the heat of my barrel instantly. I began to sink, the bubbles of my descent dancing around my sights like tiny, silver ghosts. Drifting further down, my life flashed before me. I saw their faces, my previous owners. Miller, Leo and Silas.

I hit the sandy bottom with a soft, muted thud.

The salt water began its slow, inevitable work on my steel. The rust would come soon, the final "chemical transformation." I lay there in the dark, a masterpiece of engineering resting in a grave of silt.

Finally quiet.

I’d learned noise since I was made. The loud kind that everyone fears. When they hear me, they couldn’t run fast enough. But in the river, silence took me without judgement.

Was this peace?

I doubt it, but it was close.

I didn’t have to be:

an improvement,

a partner,

disposable

a secret

evidence

a liability

or even death.

I was just another shape at the bottom of the world.

Time moved differently down here.

No hand had touched me. That four-pound pressure on my grip was a thing of the past. Replaced by muck and algae that wrapped around me gently, refusing to let go. I stayed where I fell, pointing nowhere in particular. My grip tightened thanks to rust that had collected around me. My safety lost its function, however, the firing pin remained patient.

My story wasn’t over.

The hook came without warning.

Metal attracting metal. A vibration sharp enough to wake my dormant soul. I shifted, pulled free of the algae stone that had kept me company. Breaking out the surface, I coughed out the river. The air was cleaner than I remembered. The sun, warmer, rejuvenating.

Then hands grabbed me.

Gloved ones.

They did not say my name. Humans rarely do. They called me that. They called me we found it.

I was back in the station that still smelled of stale coffee and industrial cleaner. Water dripped from me in a slow rhythmic confession. The woman with blue eyes lifted me using tools carefully peeling away what I had grown to love.

“Serial’s intact,” Sarah said.

Another voice, sharper. Younger. “You think it’s the one?”

They opened me carefully, my magazine slid free with a loud sound, ripping the remaining algae from me. after a couple of tests, the man said:

“Get the Sergeant. It’s a match.”

Minutes later, the door hissed open. A man in a suit entered, favoring his right arm, his stride marked by a permanent limp.

“Is that it?”

"Confirmed," Sarah replied. "Ballistics match the slugs from the Miller murder and the warehouse shootout. This is the one that killed your brother, Seargeant Barnes."

“Come on,” he said softly. “Just call me Giggs.”

I thought I had misheard it. His Goatee had grown into a full beard and his gut area was rounder than I remembered but it was him. And as I would learn, Giggs was the older brother of Miller, my first owner.
It is indeed a small world.

He read my serial number.

#400492

“Look at that,” Giggs said. "Book it in. Make sure the chain of custody is solid. This is it. We got him."

I was lifted into a fresh evidence bag and labelled, Exhibit A.

It was weeks later when I was carried into a courtroom that I understood what was happening. I was placed on a velvet cushion on the prosecutor’s table. Across the room, in front of a group of people sat Silas.

After all these years, he had not changed much, except for the thick beard that was on his face. He looked smaller without me in his hand or maybe I was imagining that.

The prosecutor laid it out cleanly.

During the three years I rested in the river, Silas had already been convicted of two counts of aggravated sexual assault, five armed robberies and one attempted murder. And plea deal, provided him with leniency from the state. Twenty-five years to life.

With good behaviour, Silas could have seen daylight again.

Silas seemed to know it too, judging by the way he sat. Relaxed. Smiling.

Until the prosecutor gestured toward me.

The smile became a frown.

The room leaned forward, hanging on every word the prosecutor uttered.

Softly, he spoke of my serial number. The striations in my barrel. The signatures found in my rounds. A perfect match with the defendant, he said.

Vance – that was the name that mattered or rather his death did. Without me, the case couldn’t move forward but now, it became murder in the first degree.

Silas’ defense tried to find any holes in his claims - chain of custody, corrosion, possibility of contamination. Every trick in their books but it didn’t work.

The judge slammed the gavel down.

Guilty.

Life without possibility of parole.

Silas said nothing.

On the right side of the room, Giggs stood and hugged a blonde woman tightly. The case was closed. As the bailiffs’ hauled Silas away, he exchanged a small look with me. I did not understand the look he gave me but I knew it was the first and last time I would ever see it.

The room began to empty, Sarah approached with a heavy metal case and plunged me into the darkness. I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen when the light returned.

Another owner?

Another label?

Or Would I be returned to the river? My peaceful place.

I was made right. At least that’s what I thought but what did that really mean?

In the hands of my owners, I performed my function to the best of my ability. When a finger pulled, I answered.

I did not choose my owners.

I did not choose my targets.

The labels they gave me, defined me for a while, then peeled away replaced by another. I had no power over anything.

That’s what I told myself anyway.

As I was carried out of the courtroom, we passed a window. For a brief second, the sun hit my slide through a small hole, reflecting a gleam that looked like the day I was fished out of the river.

It’s funny

If I disappeared tomorrow, they would make another one just like me.

If they melted me down, none would care.

But what If I was wrong about it all?

What if I held the power?

If so, then maybe I could finally choose.

Choose to be something else. Anything else.

A bridge where people walked by.

A playground where children played with balls instead of “secrets” like me.

I could be anywhere else besides in this moving metal case.

But you wouldn’t let me would you?

No, you wouldn’t.