Morgan's room looked more like a military intelligence office than a bedroom. There were papers everywhere, some taped to the walls in neat groups and others spread out on the floor in ways that only he could understand.
The desk lamp was the only source of light, and the harsh shadows it cast made the room feel smaller and more cramped than it really was. The air tasted stale because I had been breathing the same oxygen for hours while the rest of the house slept.
He sat on the floor with his legs crossed, surrounded by notebooks full of his small handwriting, timelines drawn in different colors of ink, and maps with places marked that didn't mean anything yet but would mean everything in the months to come. This is what planning mass murder looked like when you did it right, like you would for any other military operation.
Morgan took one of the notebooks and turned to a new page. The title he wrote at the top was clear and damning: "David Chen."
He started writing down what Chen would do below, using the same steady hand he had used for mission reports in his previous life. The pen moved across the paper with perfect mechanical accuracy, writing down terrible things that only he remembered from a future that no longer existed except in one person's mind.
The Eastern Purges happened in the third month. Chen would take charge of the settlements east of the river, set up checkpoints, and come up with a way to figure out who was worthy of Murphy's protection and who wasn't. The standards would change based on Chen's mood, how closely someone's face matched his idea of a faithful person, and other random things that had nothing to do with actual devotion or character.
They killed two hundred and seventeen people over the course of six weeks. Morgan remembered the mass graves they found later and how they helped identify bodies that had been left to rot in unmarked pits.
Somehow, Chen's method made things worse. He maintained meticulous records, ensured adherence to the schedules, and approached each execution as a professional undertaking. He didn't kill out of anger or hatred because he was just doing his job like someone who was processing paperwork.
Morgan wrote down specific events and facts that showed he wasn't making up this nightmare. The father was judged unworthy at checkpoint seven because he questioned Chen's authority.
The mother and children were killed anyway because it would have been "inefficient" to let them live. The worthiness tests involved reciting Murphy's sermons from memory, where a single wrong word could mean death. Chen shot a teenage boy because he smiled at the wrong time during a prayer.
For a moment, the pen stopped moving. Morgan's jaw got tight, and the muscle under his skin jumped.
He made himself breathe normally and kept writing. This paperwork was important. It was the only proof he had, even if it was only in notebooks that no one else would believe.
He turned the page. "Sister Margaret."
Her descent into violence was different from Chen's clinical approach. Margaret was completely sure that she was doing holy work, that fire cleansed, and that burning away corruption was an act of love.
The burnings in the settlement happened in the fifth month. Over the course of three weeks, seven refugee camps were destroyed. Each camp had between fifty and three hundred people living there.
Morgan remembered how the flames lit up her face and how calm she looked while hundreds of people burned to death. She would stand close enough to feel the heat on her skin, close enough that the floating embers would burn her robes, and she would smile like someone watching a beautiful sunset.
"God's work," she would say, her voice full of quiet confidence that made the horror worse. "Cleaning up with fire. In the next life, they will have another chance."
Eight hundred and forty-three people died as a direct result of what Margaret did. The number didn't include the people who died later from injuries they got in the fires, the kids who starved after losing their parents, or any of the other people who died as a result of the fires.
Morgan wrote it all down, and his handwriting got smaller and more cramped, as if he could make the words take up less space. It was as if making the text harder to read would somehow make the truth less terrible.
The other eight council members got their own pages, which were their own careful records of future crimes. Thomas Reeves, the teacher, would poison a water supply in month seven, saying that only the faithful would survive the contamination as proof of God's favor. That one action caused four hundred and fifty-two deaths, most of them children because they didn't pay as much attention to what they drank.
Linda Morris, the shopkeeper, would run the Children's Crusade in month nine, taking orphans' and refugees' children and turning them into weapons. She would send them into dangerous areas first, use them as shields and disposable soldiers, and say that every death was a necessary sacrifice for the greater good. When you counted all the kids who died while she was in charge, the death toll from her actions was in the thousands.
Patricia Huang, a former nurse, would set up a medical hierarchy based on faith. She would deny care to anyone she thought wasn't devoted enough and would only give medicine and treatment to people who Murphy liked better than those who needed it. Three hundred and seventeen people died because they didn't get medical care, but Morgan thought the real number was higher because not everyone who died alone at home was recorded.
Morgan kept going down the list, writing down each council member's area of expertise in horror. Richard Torres was responsible for establishing the labor camps during the sixth month.
Samantha Cole, who would start the breeding program in the eighth month. The man responsible for devising the punishment rituals was James Patterson.
Morgan paid close attention to each one, noting down details, dates, locations, and victim counts that added up to a number he could barely understand. "I really need a good plan to accomplish all of this..."
He got to the last page of math and neatly wrote out the numbers in columns. The math was straightforward, brutal, and impossible to argue with. Twelve lives now, hundreds of thousands later.
Chen was responsible for enough deaths to fill a small town. The number of people Margaret killed was almost as high as some genocides in history. Over the course of three years, the twelve council members would kill or help kill about 250,000 people.
Morgan leaned back against his bed and stared at the numbers as if they could change into something less bad. His phone buzzed on the desk, which made him stop thinking about the math. He automatically reached for it, thinking it was an emergency alert or news update about the changes that were happening.
He saw Claire's name on the screen instead. When the message loaded, Morgan's breath caught in his throat, and the world seemed to shrink down to those few words glowing in the dark.
"Murphy asked me to join the Council."
"Should I say yes?"