Fifteen years later
Thorn washed his hands in the kitchen sink, stepped over the middle-aged body cooling on the checkered floor, and made sure he hadn’t stepped in any blood by lifting and glancing underneath his shoes before going out into the hallway. He lingered to watch the photos on the wall by the mirror for a second—three smiling children. Thorn sighed as he pulled his phone from his pocket. One of those kids had used their sanctioned kill to get their dad a one-way ticket out of this world.
Sometimes Thorn wondered if the government was right in their assessment. From his point of view, it was hard to see how giving everyone one authorized death kept the violence down. Life wasn’t pretty, and many people deserved to be terminated but, more often than not, it was a family member
