Introduction
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In a society where everyone is guilty
the only crime is getting caught.﴿
I call myself Crime because that's all everyone ever sees when they look at me now; I've spent more than my fair share of time behind bars and being whipped while in handcuffs, all over stolen food to keep me from starving to death and the nerve to talk back to the man trying to kill me for it. I've seen minds and bodies broken while shoved through a system devoid of justice, devoid of reason, and devoid of mercy. I've seen them leave here only to always remain a prisoner, always marked as a criminal with these damned collars around their necks and a brand on their shoulders, same as mine; they always return, usually on purpose, because there's no use trying to live a normal life once you've fallen here. Everyone shuns them, spits in their direction, and considers them worth less than the bullet it would take to kill them.
They sob because they're no longer worth anything to the Imperium or the society that they've created. They weep because they're now the outcasts of the galaxy, the hated and the scorned. They seek some sort of pity, some sort of sympathy and understanding, but they'll never receive any of that from me. Because before all of this, before they were ever thrown into a cage for the first time or burned with the iron marking them forever, I lived this life every day.
They were free from sin once, given the benefit of living among all the other races regardless of what planet they were from without worrying if someone would try to stab them without a cause. They slept well at night without worrying if someone would set their home ablaze because "they wouldn't die from it anyway". They only lost all of this because of a mistake they made at some point in their lives, but I was never free from it. I've always carried this burden, even long before I ever committed a single crime. I never stole a thing, never broke a single rule, and kept my head down and my voice soft, and they still hated the very fact that I breathed. The same people that now seek friendship from me in our "current state of rejection" once spat in my face if I so much as asked for the time.
Why? Because I am from the planet Aphelion, the dangerous wasteland of the galaxy, and because I am Zrenien. I am different, somehow, from all the other races from all the other planets and am nothing more than a "savage", a monster hunter, some beast to enslave or a dog to kick. They fear the way I look, act, speak...because they don't want anything to do with me and would rather see me and all my kin dead than let us dare to breathe the same air as they do.
Oh no, I don't pity any of them. I am a criminal, same as they are, but I am also a Zrenien criminal, a monster hunter, and an escapee. The Imperium would love nothing more than to see my head delivered to them on a silver platter, not that it's ever going to happen. But I do envy them, sometimes. Not because they once had some sort of acceptance from society but because I've seen them find peace behind bars. I've seen them lose their sanity and fall into blissful madness, I've seen them escape and go rogue like I have, and I've seen them perish at the hands of the executioner. I've watched their life leave their eyes on the order of the law and in those last dying moments their collars fall off and their lips manage to curl up into a smile; it is only then that a prisoner can truly be free. They are free from the persecution, the hate and the malice, and from the cage that they are branded to always remain in regardless of whether or not they physically wear the ball and chain.
Someday, I too will be free. Finally, blissfully and mercifully free. But not before they pay for what they've done to me, not before they pay for what they've done to anyone like me. I may not know much about my heritage, my kin, or the planet I was born on but they can't be evil enough to deserve this. No one could be...
