The words echo through my head with the beating of a drum in my ears. My old teachers had drilled them into my head, I had drilled them into my own students head, I had believed, but I had not lived them. My oath was to the code, and the code said for the great good no matter the cost. I had been told to never let the cost grow to great, to never let someone get so close that I would question a choice. But I had, and I had taken another oath.

The wedding band feels tight on my finger even though I know it shouldn't. My suit, molded to my body and as familiar as breathing, is heavy. It's as if I'm on another planet and the gravity is thrice the normal. I can't even try to take a step. Why did I do it, why did I let myself get close. Slowly I steal a glance behind me. She is still there, she is still asleep against a concrete wall, and she is still beautiful. Inspite of the moment the twinge of a smile touches my lips, how could I not have gotten closer, how could have I not loved her.

I turned back around. It didn't matter what I could or couldn't have done, all that mattered was that I had an impossible choice to make. Before me is 10,000 men, all of whom want her dead. Behind me is her. Easiness is not the factor, I could mow down all of those men perhaps a minute and a half, but they didn't deserve that. They were just soldiers, good people who were trying to do what they thought was right and just, or rather, what they were told.

In a past life my wife had done some horrible, horrible things but she had changed. A fight with a superhero, a headshot from some powerful ray, she couldn't remember anything. When she landed in the ocean and did not come back up they thought she had drown, and in a way she had. Her old self was still in the ocean when she crawled ashore on some Mexican beach. Naturally a strange 20 something lady with residual powers and amnesia attracted the leagues attention, but no one ever connected the dots. At least until today.

Some kind of new scan had showed the rays damage, and only one woman had ever been struck by it and remained unaccounted for. The governments of the world soon ordered her captured but she escaped from the leagues initial ambush, I had called in all of my favors to keep them at bay since. But the military I had no such sway over and they had run her down, her strongest powers lost with her mind she didn't stand a chance. Somehow she had managed to get a message to me, I still wasn't sure how, and I had found her asleep here. Before I could wake her though the sounds of tanks and helicopters had surrounded the parking garage we were hidden in.

I don't know how long I stood there, listening, waiting, thinking. But eventually a General shouted through a bull horn, "Thansverse, we don't want anyone to get hurt but we have to take your wife into custody, she has to face trial. Dranco, if you can hear me and you truly are not evil like you say, you will come out peacefully.".

Dranco, Dranco. The scale in my mind had been so finally balanced that the single grain of sand that was a name was enough to tilt it. Behind me I could hear her stir, she would try to stop me, she would give herself up, because she was a hero. It's a shame that I am not anymore. "Her name is Misses Quil", were the last words 10,000 men ever heard.