Up in Smoke

I’m going to keep this entry brief.  Yes, I am responsible for last night’s bombing of the Konig Inc. warehouse in downtown L.A.  And yes, this is the same warehouse where Uroboros staged his now-infamous Mason International protest.  I blew the building straight to hell because, as much as I disagreed with his methods, I believe that Uroboros was right about the illegal experiments that were going on inside, and about their connection to Mason International.  I know I said after the Mason Tower fiasco that I would re-evaluate my use of explosives due to the high probably of collateral damage, but this was a calculated risk.  I’m hoping that after Uroboros managed to hack into the Mason International mainframe, Damian Durand was cautious enough to delete any electronic evidence of their illegal experiments, meaning the only extant notes on said experiments were the hard copies at the lab site that I obliterated last night.  And since Uroboros eliminated Dr. Marcus Alrand, the head researcher on the project, fingers crossed whatever human-augmentation procedures Alrand devised went to the grave with him.  And I guarantee you no innocents were harmed in the making of this carnage, I made sure the building was completely devoid of human life before I instigated my little unscheduled demolition.  As you were.

Fury of Solace
Doing evil so you don’t have to
Somewhere in Los Angeles

Do as I Say, Not as I do

You may have noticed I’ve been conspicuously silent regarding the Uroboros phenomenon up until now.  I assure you, I had good reason for that.  It was imperative that I allow him to think I was a potential ally, so that in the event extreme sanctions became necessary, he’d let me get close enough to shove the knife in his back.  Now that he is dead, let me say in no uncertain terms that his methods were a perversion of everything I stand for.

His indiscriminate attacks resulted in the loss of dozens of innocent lives.  And before some smartass accuses me of calling the kettle black, you’ll all recall I did everything within my power to evacuate Mason Tower before the detonation; the collateral damage in that case could not have been foreseen.  But Uroboros made no effort to curtail civilian casualties.  Honestly, whether he was willing to admit it or not, I think he saw that as a bonus.  This Jared Nadir was clearly a loner and an outcast to begin with, and he cried wolf so many times that people stopped listening.  It’s a shame, too, because before he lost it completely, it appears he was some sort of conspiracy savant.  Now that I’ve had the chance to study his blog in detail, I’ve found that, peppered amidst the pages and pages of psychotic ramblings, there are startling moments of brilliant clarity, inroads to Mason’s web of corruption and tantalizing glimpses into L.A.’s criminal underground.  Make no mistake, I mean to exploit this unexpected source of enemy intel to its fullest.  Some good may yet come of this tragedy.

Some have said that I am to blame for the rise of Uroboros.  While I believe that to be a bit simplistic, there is no denying that, for better or for worse, my actions had a great deal of impact on that sad, little man, and for that, I am mired in regret.  The fact that he considered me his ally turned out to be delusions of grandeur, but maybe, under the right circumstances, I could have been the comrade in arms he always hoped for.  But he crossed a line from which there was no turning back.  I was fully prepared to track Uroboros down and execute him myself, but Mason’s security goons beat me to the punch (which I find profoundly surprising, since their ineptitude is well documented).

So let me leave you today with a message to all of my followers: your support for my cause means more to me than I can say.  But if you mean to walk in my shoes, tread carefully; if and when you stop being part of the solution, I will not hesitate for one second to put you down.   When in doubt, don’t do as I say; just stay out of my way.

Some Folks Are Born Made to Wave the Flag

War is hell, but for a little while, it was my hell.  And I can’t rewrite history and pretend that, for that little while at least, I wasn’t enamored by the prospect of “being all that I could be” and “being a part of something bigger than myself.”  Living under my father’s roof, it was difficult not to inherit his star-spangled eyes.  And don’t get me wrong: I still believe in this country.  But I also believe it has gone astray.

I have the utmost respect for the men and women I served with, but at a certain point, a military is only as good as its top brass, and as my time in the service dragged on, it became increasingly apparent that the people at the top of that food chain are nothing but war criminals and war profiteers.  I quickly tired of fighting the right wars for the wrong reasons.  Just because I’m a killer doesn’t mean I don’t value human life.  Quite the contrary: I only kill to make the world a better place for those who deserve to live it.  And all of the lives I took on the battlefield felt empty: they weren’t dying for some lofty, nationalistic ideals, they were dying to line someone’s pockets, to feed our country’s military-industrial complex.  No, if my time in the military taught me anything, it was this: When it comes to murder, I believe in quality over quantity.

Why do I do what I do?  Because someone has to, and no one else will.  Believe it or not, I am not as single-minded or remorseless as I make myself out to be.   Not a day goes by that I don’t consider hanging up my spurs, but every time I do, before I can say Oscar Mike, something happens to remind me how indispensable my service to this world really is.

Fury of Solace
Doing evil so you don’t have to
Somewhere in Los Angeles

Discretion and Valor

I’ve taken a lot of flak in the press for being an escape artist.  If you’re wondering why nine times out of ten I flee the scene instead of standing my ground, my answer would be simply this: it’s more important that I live to fight another day.

Moreover, though costumed do-gooders like The Orphan have what I’d deem questionable priorities, in truth, I have no ax to grind with them.  However misguided, I mean those self-appointed champions of justice no harm.  Despite rumblings to the contrary, I do actually have a code of honor.  This does not, however, mean that I believe in the concept of a fair fight.  You take up arms against me, I have no compunction about shooting you in the back.  You will not see the whites of my eyes.  And in a landscape where the major players are sporting super strength and can fly under their own power, I have to level the playing field any way I can.

Fury of Solace
Doing evil so you don’t have to
Somewhere in Los Angeles

Explosive Situation

As a Marine, I was trained in Explosive Ordnance Disposal: basically, they taught me how to dismantle bombs.  Of course, once you learn how to take a bomb apart, you also know how to put one together.  The problem is, wiring up Mason Tower wasn’t a tactical decision: it was about sending a message.  For me, it seems, the message has become as important as the murder.  I had Mason dead to rights, but it’s not enough that he just die.  People have to know it was me.  And they have to know why.

But my didacticism has made me sloppy.  Not only did my bombs fail to kill their intended target, but unbeknownst to me, they snuffed out the lives of about a dozen innocents.  Even though the number who have died in my pursuit of Mason pale in comparison to the number of lives he’s destroyed in pursuit of profit, the question remains: how many innocent lives is my message worth?

What almost no one knows is that the victims of the Mason Tower bombing were not the first innocent lives I brought to a sudden and premature end.  My first two kills aren’t on any books: Indeed, I had two notches on my belt before I enlisted.  And those two forfeited lives haunt me more than all of my combat kills combined.  I see their faces in my dreams, and I live in fear that my role in those deaths will yet come to light.

Fury of Solace
Doing evil so you don’t have to
Somewhere in Los Angeles

The Bodyguard

My recent trip to San Diego was informative to say the least. I had a brief but heated conversation with a woman named Sara Ward on the patio of a restaurant in the city’s Gas Lamp district. Ward was dining alone, but had made a reservation for two. Photographs place Max Mason in San Diego that weekend, and although Ward denied it, I have it on good authority that her dinner date was none other than Mason himself.

My campaign against Mason International has put the fear of God into the company’s president and CEO, and his security force has been woefully inadequate at keeping him safe from me. If not for the timely intervention of the Orphan, Mason would have perished in the Mason Tower explosion. Apparently, Mason has learned from his mistakes: why leave his safety to chance when Mason can hire a superhero of his own?

Though Mason was in San Diego on another pretense, I believe the true purpose of his trip was to interview candidates for his open bodyguard position. And I believe Sara Ward was the frontrunner. Before I could convince Ward to admit as much to me, she fled the interview, and took flight in front of dozens of witnesses.

The fact that she has the ability to fly under her own power is not what worries me: I’m much more concerned that no one has ever heard of her. I did a background check on the mysterious Ms. Ward, and the results were puzzling: her life to date has been patently uneventful. Perfectly perfect. In fact, up until now there hasn’t been anything remarkable about her at all.

What’s more, I haven’t been able to find another living soul who claims to have known the girl. For all intents and purposes, Sara Ward is a ghost. But who she is and where she comes from is ultimately irrelevant. Since Ward disappeared that day, she has yet to resurface. But Ms. Ward, if you are reading this, I urge you reconsider your personal and professional relationship with Mason International. And God help you if you get between me and Max Mason.

Fury of Solace
Doing evil so you don’t have to
Somewhere in Los Angeles

When Towers Fall

I wanted to take a moment to offer my condolences to the families of the men and women who lost their lives in the Mason Tower explosion. They were unfortunate casualties in a war they didn’t know they were fighting.

I am a soldier. And make no mistake, America is at war. A war between the haves and the have-nots. A war between you and me, and the money-grubbing captains of industry who threaten to tear this nation asunder with their greed. Max Mason’s reign of terror cannot be allowed to continue. And I will not rest until I make him pay.

Fury of Solace
Doing evil so you don’t have to
Somewhere in Los Angeles

 

Social Anxiety

Submitted for your approval: Max Mason, chairman and CEO of Mason International, hands down the largest Pharmaceutical company on the planet. Not much is known about the man, but the actions of his company are a matter of public record… and have earned him a prominent place in the annals of infamy.

Take everybody’s favorite social anxiety drug, Ataraxin: Mason International has bent, broken and wantonly ignored domestic and international law in every aspect of the drug’s development. Mason International’s rampant abuses in their drug trial procedures overseas makes one wonder if the company is even familiar with the term “informed consent.” India’s unwitting poor, for example, many of whom are illiterate and in some cases mentally ill, find themselves subjected to many and varied clinical trials on Mason International’s dime. Countless hundreds of India’s unsuspecting citizens found themselves on the wrong side of one of Mason International’s needles… and the results have been catastrophic. Ataraxin users, studies show, are almost 40% more likely to develop terminal heart disease.

If these facts alarm you, they should: Ataraxin was approved by the FDA earlier this year and quickly took the top spot as the number-one selling over-the-counter social anxiety medication in the country. Surely Mason International worked out all the kinks in its illegal, third-world drug trials before unleashing Ataraxin on the people of the United States, right?

Wrong. Mason International maintains that there exists no definitive link between Ataraxin and heart disease, and their lawyers discourage anyone from coming forward with evidence to the contrary. Nine months ago, one-time Mason International researcher Richard Crane tried to blow the whistle on his former employer. Crane claimed that he had found incontrovertible evidence of Ataraxin’s link to heart disease, and that his data was summarily ignored by Mason International. Crane resigned in protest, but Mason International’s lawyers put the fear of God into the would-be whistleblower, flaunting the confidentiality clause he’d signed when he first took the job. Ultimately, Crane could not let the deaths of so many people worldwide weigh on his conscience: he came forward, ready to tell his story to authorities. But before Crane could testify against Mason International in open court, he died of a drug overdose, which was ultimately ruled accidental. Interesting aside: The coroner who made the call is now on Mason International’s payroll.

But why, you ask, would Mason International allow a potentially deadly product to hit shelves and invite the wrath of the litigious bereaved? Because even if someone is able to definitively correlate Ataraxin and heart disease, the cost of settling the wrongful death cases out of court would still be cheaper than going back to the drawing board, and the money from the satisfied customers would still more than put Mason International in the black.

And the sad coda to the story? Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Mason International’s upstart competitor, was developing its own comparable social anxiety drug concurrently with Mason International’s illegal Ataraxin trials. Panacea’s drug proved to be at least as effective as Ataraxin, with only minor side effects. But thanks to the judicious application of the untold billions of dollars in Mason International’s coffers, it was Ataraxin that cornered the market, and Panacea’s far superior product remains tied up in red tape to this day.

Tragically, referring to this blog as an expose is a misnomer: most of this information is public and easily accessible. If even our lofty US of A turns a blind eye to these blatant human rights violations and questionable business practices, who can we turn to to hold Max Mason and his lackeys accountable for their crimes? This city’s so-called “heroes” may continue to fight the symptoms of a morally bankrupt society, but Fury of Solace pledges to take the fight to the source. Let it be known: Max Mason is now officially on notice. His day of reckoning is coming… and the world will be a better place after he’s gone.

Fury of Solace
Doing evil so you don’t have to
Somewhere in Los Angeles

Gut Feeling

I can’t believe there was a time when I ran 3 10k’s a week.  And if you saw what I see every day in the bathroom mirror, you wouldn’t be able to believe it either.  Don’t get me wrong, I do my best to stay in shape: my day-to-day demands it.  But I would be lying if I said that civilian life hadn’t made me soft.  I’ve got a beer belly for the first time in my life, and as abhorrent as that is to me, I’ve realized that getting back to my basic-training weight, at this stage of my life, would be a full time job.  And I’m sorry, but life’s too short to eat salads three times a day.  No, my days of washboard abs are over and done.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not still a force to be reckoned with.   And, honestly, if I have to tussle with heavy hitters like The Orphan, I could look like Gerard Butler from “300” and I’d still get my ass handed to me.  The only running I do these days is keeping two steps ahead of the police.  And trust me, I’m more than qualified to do that.

The Few, The Proud

When I was a boy, my mother told me I could be anything I wanted to be.  That was just one of the things she and my father argued about.  Don’t misunderstand, I don’t come from a broken home: far from it.  Growing up as a military brat, most people would’ve killed to lead the life I had.  Turned out, I had to kill to get out of it.

My father was career military, as was his father before him.  He always assumed I would follow in his footsteps.  I never could stand to disappoint my father, which was ironic because as it turned out, I was quite adept at it.  He didn’t say so in so many words.  In some ways, I wish he had.

I was an exceptional child.  Or so everyone but my father told me.  And when I did inevitably ship out for basic training, I learned something about myself I never would have guessed: in no area did I excel more than that of taking another human life.

My father was a true patriot.  I paid lip service to the red, white and blue for as long as I could stand it, but it didn’t take me long to realize that military was not my true calling.

Fury of Solace
Doing evil so you don’t have to
Somewhere in Los Angeles