Breaking Point
Posted on May 30th, 2005 by Adam Drake

Adam Drake with Jet Grey

Things were all falling into place – as they should. Adam had boxed all his worldly possessions and stashed them elegantly in one corner. The barren nature of his room was overwhelming, but he pressed on. The words that he created as he tapped that infernal PADD were slowly making sense. Finishing off the third note, he spliced it to three PADDs and moved the windows of his quarters to stare out at the infinitesimal stars looking back at him.

He missed the simpler days. Those days when the only thing that mattered was the textbook and the teacher’s lectures, the multitude of notes and the late night study sessions; those were the times where he truly felt at ease. He had to be honest with himself, in that moment, he was never prepared to be a warring soldier. Adam wished he had a desk job.

Hearing the chime, he twisted on his heel and back-pedaled to the door. He had called his for closest friend and confidant to join him. Marine Captain Michael Jeddin, soon to be Lieutenant Major Michael Jeddin when Adam put in a good word for his promotion, would be the bearer of bad news to the people of Atlantis. Who would miss him anyway? “Come in.” Clad in his dress uniform, he took a deep breath. It was a first step down a dead-end road.

The doors wisped open and Michael looked up. Immediately he noticed Adamn dressed rather too formal for a mere visit. Michael didn’t point it out and instead step through the threshold where he was used to stripping formality. It didn’t feel that way as Adam hadn’t said a word. Instead, his Betazoid friend just stood there and Michael glanced at him, only to notice Adam’s personal belongings packed neatly. Perking an eyebrow as he looked back at his friend, Michael spoke up, “What’s going on here, Adam?”

“I really don’t have time, or the want, to explain it. I just have some things I need you to do for me.” Adam handed Michael three PADDs and pointed to an open container that contained all of glimmering awards. “In one hour I want you to deliver that box and the top bad to Vice Admiral Blackthorne. The second PADD gets read to the Engineering staff. That last one goes to my parents.”

Michael merely skimmed the PADD, but it didn’t take the contents to tell him what Adam was about to do. Instinctively, Michael shook his head and tossed the PADD onto the glass table. The last PADD skid across the fragile glass and the metal made a high scratching sound that raised the nerves of both of them. Michael’s eyes only showed outraged. Careful, released anger, “Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not about to deliver your death letters. Least of all your parents. No fucking way, Adam!”

“Michael,” Adam turned away, knowing full well that what he was asking was a heavy burden to carry. “You know the story. All those troops, all those men who looked to me for help and assistance, they are dead. I should be there too. Counsel me all you want and tell me the usual post-traumatic stress disorder spiel, but you know as well as I that I’m right.”

“It’s not that. You’re alive aren’t you? You still have a life and a career, and you’re pissing it away. Well, I’m not about to let this go, Adam.” Michael just shook his head as he balled his fists, “This is not going to happen. You understand me? It’s not.”

He turned, determination and remorse lining the outlines of his face, “Please, I have to do this.”

The space between them were suddenly closed as hands grabbed on Adam’s shoulders and Michael shook him a little. The frowns on his eyebrows went deeper as Michael looked into deadened eyes, “I can’t help you with this. Don’t you get it? I can’t see my best friend commit suidcide. How the hell do I cope with this later? What about your family? Don’t do this, please. Anything but this.”

“How do you cope? How do you cope?” Adam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. On instinct he brushed Michael’s hands off his shoulders and pushed the Captain away from him. “Tell that to the hundreds, if not thousands, of people that were affected by people dying because I didn’t do my duty. Those letters home to my parents should’ve been delivered long ago. No, I took the coward’s way out. Seems only fitting to do the same thing now.”

The frustration showed right through as Michael brushed his hair and tried finding a way to tell Adam what he was really thinking. “And all those people you served, and saved, and given commendations for, those mean nothing?” He took a breath, counting mentally as he reopened his eyes, “Look. Just… please… don’t do this.”

Adam’s rage surged and he grabbed the nearest award and hurled it against the wall. It shattered into oblivion and the pieces dispersing in an array of disorganization. “Those people mean everything! Those lives cannot be replaced! Fuck, Michael, th-those people deserve the awards. Not me. Not. Me.”

Emotions turn, and Michael suddenly felt fighting Adam about this was going to be useless. Knowing Adam, the man would do it, with or without Michael to carry out his last wishes. Looking at the man, seeing him breathing hard and fighting turmoil greater than he knew, Michael wanted to retract his entire fight with him. But, it was too hard to do that, he’d rather see his best friend live and fight everyday of his life.

But it wasn’t his battle. It wasn’t his life, and it wasn’t his despair. The facial features of the Marine Captain changed as his pupils drew back, his jaw muscles tightened and his throat felt as if it was suffocating the very air he needed: Michael just nodded. Adam was psychic enough to pick up Michael’s thoughts.

His knees gave out and he found himself kneeling on the floor. Adam stared at his hands, they were quivering with nervousness and other factors he was sure, but he just couldn’t stop them. “Look at me, Michael. Look at what this has done to me. It has consumed my very soul and now the only thing I can do is live with that menacing cloud or do something for redemption. It’s the only way out of it.” When his eyes finally met Michael’s they were fill with fear, compassion, and loneliness.

“If you’re going to do it…” Michael shook his thoughts that nearly spat out fighting words again, he continued, “…how are you doing this?”

“Let me handle that.”

Michael nodded, as he offered his hand and pulled Adam back to his feet. If he was going to die, he was going to die on his feet and not on his knees. Taking the three PADDs on the table, Michael took them with cold dead hand, feeling the sharp loss of Adam already. He closed his eyes again, trying to shun his own emotions out and lowered his head for a moment and failing as he felt tears fall out of his tightly shut eyelids, “I’ll get them to where you want.”

Adam wrapped his friend in a hug, “You’ve always been my closest friend, Mike. You were always there to listen and offer a good word. I know it isn’t fair for me to put you in this position, but it’s time. It’s vital that you don’t tell anyone you knew before hand that I told you about what I was doing. Just wait an hour and pretend you came by to say hello.”

Michael hugged him tighter, “Alright.” Letting go of Adam, Michael took a last look at his best friend. Out of instinct and and old academy habit he picked up, Michael brushed off the top of Adam’s shoulders and made sure the insignias were in place. “Another life, Adam.”

“You can count on it.”

**********

The holodeck doors opened with their mechanical strain and Adam entered silently. He had drawn a couple odd looks as he waltzed down the corridor in full dress. He didn’t care; hell, in a couple of minutes it wouldn’t matter anymore anyway – to anyone. As the doors sealed themselves behind him he triggered the computer console.

“Computer, bring up tactical reconstruction of Penga’Ra during the Dominion War. Restrict detail to the scenery only and open up narrative parameter files.” Adam tapped the console next to the door a couple of times until the environment flickered into existence. His last battlefield awaited him. For the first time in a while, he wasn’t afraid.

“Narrative parameters are opened.”

He took a breath, “Find and access all troop deployments for the following locations during my time stationed at each encampment: Penga’Ra, Pandria Four, and Tadaus Prime.” His lip quivered slightly as the thoughts flooded back to him. “Enter the holographic parameters of the personnel and set them up in standard battalion and company attention formation.”

The sizzle of photons readjusted led to Adam standing before what seemed like a million troops. Suddenly self-conscious (or ashamed, he couldn’t be sure which one it was), he turned away and lowered his head. He was unsure of how to proceed with what he wanted to say. It was so much easier to talk to a group of people that he could turn off in an instant rather than those that could raise hell at a misplaced word.

Finally, somehow, he found the nerve to turn back and face his friends, his comrades, the souls on his conscience. He straightened his uniform as if it mattered and marched to the center of the group to address those that he had created. They weren’t those that had given their life for justice, freedom, and peace; but they were his best chance at a second opportunity for redemption.

They all stood at attention; rigid and unfeeling holograms of the people he once knew. Adam could’ve sworn that he heard a cough in the crowd, but he knew that they were programmed without auditory subroutines: silent as death, how ironic.

“My friends,” he began, his voice quivering just a bit, “I stand before you today a tattered man. Strained and stretched so thin by the atrocities of war and the so-called peace that followed thereafter. I can recall each day, each battle, and each face that I see here before me: it is a blessing and it is a curse. I look at the medals that I was given each day with a dreadful feeling of remorse and guilt. Beguiled by the circumstances, Adam Drake stands as a hero.”

He prayed, in that pause to take a breath, that a laugh would come. Something, anything, that would prove that he was a fraud like he was trying to convey.

“I don’t want that title anymore. I haven’t earned it. You all standing here today deserve that commendation. Each of you deserves to be decorated a hero and brought before the people as saviors of humanity. I should be where you are right now. I should’ve been the one groveling before being brutally killed. I should’ve been the one asking for help. I should have been the one begging for help knowing it wouldn’t come.”

A single tear fell down his cheek.

“But, I’m alive. I pray that you’ll find this my redeeming moment. Standing in the face of imminent death and taking it like the Marine that I was trained to be. Looking life in the face and saying goodbye with the grace of dignity. In these final moments of my life, I want nothing to be expressed but the sincere apologies I have of turning my back on all of you.”

There was an awkward silence as if he was expecting an applause. Wiping a couple of tears off his face he turned and stood to attention – the thousands of troops around him mimicked him and their snapping to echoed briefly. “Computer, please place one Dominion soldier one hundred feet from my current location.”

The nasty-looking Dominion warrior appeared in a shimmer of displaced photons. The pronounced head horns were staring at him threateningly. Adam took a breath and swallowed hard in hopes that his fear and anxiety would go with it. The last moments of his life would be standing on a holodeck watching his own death run at him with amazing rage.

“Computer, equip Dominion soldier with standard close combat blade.” It shimmered in the daylight as it appeared in his hands. The instrument of death. “Computer, disengage safety protocols.”

“Warning! Deactivation of the – ”

“Override.” Swallowing again, and probably for the last time, he looked at his executioner. “Computer, activate program components.”

The Dominion soldier’s eyes flickered to life. It looked around for a moment and then locked eyes with Adam. Drake narrowed his eyes menacingly. The soldier almost smiled and took off in his direction, sword raised high and face full of anger. It was the worst and most horrifying sight that Adam had ever recalled seeing. The veins in the man’s neck popped in strain as he picked up speed.

This wasn’t the way it was suppose to be. The terror, the fear, the destructive means to a cowardly existence; it was suppose to be fast and painless. In theory, anyway. Adam found himself backing up, the dirt ruffled up by his freshly-polished dress shoes. He looked to his colleagues for help and found their battle-hardened faces frozen in observation.

He stumbled and fell backwards. The tromping of the Dominion soldier was closer than ever and the dust that had hit him stung his eyes. Raising his hands in defense at whatever death was coming from above, he knew that it would end soon – raising his arms simply was a reflect. The shimmering blade blazed through the brown fog of dirt and glimmered in the midday sun. Soon it would be over.

“Computer, freeze program!” Adam’s shaky voice emanated from his parched throat. He opened his eyes slowly and found himself staring at a blade just three inches or so from his face. Eyeing what should’ve been the final blow, Adam found himself on the verge of tears. Truth be told, he didn’t want to die. Some redeeming quality.

He scampered backwards on all fours, pushing himself away from the frozen killer. He burst into tears and they flowed freely down his cheeks. Even in that last attempted redemption he found himself bound to his courage-less ways. “Dear God…”

As he watched all those replicas of his friends staring at him, he figured it couldn’t have been worse if the people themselves had been there to witness the last act of cowardice. After running away from the problem for so many years Adam had finally attempted to find a little redemption in solace, and found more woe. He turned, deactivated the program, and strolled out of the holodeck.

Adam Drake was too much of a coward to take the coward’s way out of taking the coward’s way out because he took the coward’s way out the first three times. It was all too complex and in depth for him, but at the same time it was all so simple. Adam Drake, while still seemingly holding onto life, was dead inside.

All along, he was more like those people he left behind than he thought.