Father Of Death - The Protomen

What have I done?

Though I did not pull the trigger, I built the gun

That he holds in his hand

Last night I dreamed

I climbed to the top of a mountain of metal

For miles I could see the destruction of man

I will not be the father of death!

Darling Emily

Everything that I have done I have done for you

But it’s turned out all wrong

Can I take it back?

Can I turn off this machine

Before it destroys everything I’ve loved?

I will find a way to make this right!

I will find a way, Emily

I will not be the father of death!

Emily Stanton climbed the stairs to her beloved’s apartment, a folded letter in

her hand.

Tom had been so busy with his work these last few months,

they’d barely seen one another.

This, instead, was how they’d communicated.

The door at the top of the stairs was cracked open.

She called out to Tom as

she entered the darkened room.

A man was bent over the desk rummaging through

the drawers frantically.

It was Albert Wily.

He turned, startled,

and looked at Emily;

the hint of a smile crossed his face.

He motioned,

not at Emily, but at the figure standing in the shadows behind her.

The machine shut the door obediently

What are you doing here?

(Let me take you away.)

I’m not going anywhere

(He will be nothing when this runs its course)

He will be everything that a man is supposed to be

If the shadow blocks out the sun… there will be Light!

If it stays 'till the sun is set… there will be Light!

If the sun never shows its face again… there will be Light!

No matter how dark the city gets… there will be…

Albert Wily’s eyes grew cold as Emily’s rejection of him became clear.

He turned to the machine standing at the door and quickly slid his finger

across his own throat.

The robot moved silently towards Emily as Wily slid

through the window, onto the fire escape, and into the streets below.

Emily ran to the window, following his escape, but the machine was too quick.

Its cold hands caught the soft flesh of her arm.

She opened her mouth to

scream but the warm tearing of a cold blade across her neck aborted the sound

Even as Thomas Light climbed the stairs to his apartment, he sensed something

was wrong.

He opened the door, crossed through, and locked it behind him.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, the first thing he made out

was a red light pulsing slowly on the fire escape.

A moment passed as Light

tried to reconcile the image of a machine he’d just left at his workshop,

with the figure now towering outside his window.

His gaze drifted from the

shaded helmet of the machine to its hand and to the knife it gripped,

dripping deep crimson droplets onto the toe of its black boots.

The machine tossed the knife in through the window, and leapt to the ground

below.

Light’s eyes followed the arc of the blade to the floor, to Emily

Sirens approached in the distance

Thomas held his darling Emily in his arms, pulling her close to his chest.

Shaking silently

Footsteps rang out from the stairwell.

A fist rapped violently against the door.

Thomas didn’t notice.

He slowly brushed the hair from Emily’s face and kissed

her forehead.

A single tear falling from his own eyes to hers.

In her hand,

a folded letter with his name scrawled carelessly on the front

The sound of the door splintering finally shook Light from his mournful reverie.

He pocketed the note and lowered his love to the ground as he inched slowly to

the edge of the open window

His actions were met with the hollow click of rounds being loaded into chambers.

He began howling incoherently to the policemen about renegade robots and red

lights in blast shields.

The only responses he received were nervous faces and

fingers inching toward triggers.

In grief and desperation, Light turned and

threw himself from the window

Shots shattered the hush of the sleeping city

Light’s tumbling body flattened the roof of a car parked below.

The air was

thrust from his lungs.

His right arm was shattered, but he was alive.

He rolled from the car onto the shards of glass lying on the street below,

shredding his hands and knees.

Gasping for air and retching violently on the

pavement, for the first time in his life not thinking about the future,

Light scrambled to his feet and disappeared into the darkness