For the barest instant, as the lock slid home and the bars slammed into place, the prisoner looked out past the bars, past the guard (past the stricken look in the guards' eyes, gods save him from the eyes of those who thought he was more than this, who thought there should be more to this story), past the bricks and mortar and stars, and out into the blackest, deepest depth of space and into the complete and utter vacuum left of his life.

There should have been some rage in him, he heard the whispers later, among themselves when they thought he couldn't hear; some spark in his eyes, some recognition of the vast injustice--a revolt against the mindlessness, against the cruelty, against...whatever had happened that had brought the nation's best to nothing.

Yes, he thought, these considerations slow and remote against the wheel of black void behind his eyes, there really should have been, but others carried his rage and the need for justice now, and he never had seen the sense in doing a job twice.