A picture might tell a thousand words, but it doesn’t always tell the whole story. There are key details not captured in the moment that are necessary to fill in the blanks the picture leaves behind.

Take the incident before the Red Light District blew up; the one that helped shape me into the vengeful man I am today. What kind of story do you think that tells?

If you’re on the outside looking in, you’d probably think that I was just another drug peddler from the Slums that should’ve gotten his just desserts when that level blew up. Same with Drexl’s men and that stripper they tortured in front of my very eyes.

You’d be right on the surface level, but there’s often far more to the story than just basic observations.

If you just took what you saw as the gospel truth, then you’d be leaving out why I became a hustler and who that stripper meant to me. You see, I was taking odd jobs around the level to get my mother, the stripper, out of Drexl’s contract.

Every night, she would let grimy men ogle her, or worse, so she could give her son a chance at a better life. Maybe I squandered that by encroaching on that motherfucker’s business, but I was just trying to do the right thing by buying her out.

However, if you’re just watching the footage back through the security camera like Nero does, then you won’t be able to understand the circumstances behind the torture scene I was forced to watch.

People like him just see another component of the system they want to destroy getting exactly what they deserve. They probably think it’s a gotcha that I used to be a boy named Peter that slung dope to other Slum dwellers.

But like I said before, a picture doesn’t always tell the whole story.

From your security cameras, on the outside looking in, you just got a baseline understanding of what I did and what they did to me. You see a tree and assume you’ve seen the entire Groves, but at the end of the day, that’s just one part of a whole you haven’t experienced.

I know the whole story because I lived through it. I was the one tied down to the chair watching his mother get brutalized for trying to do the right thing, not you.

All you have on me is surface level shit, not the reality of the situation once you dig below the surface. What kind of liberator are you if you don’t understand just what it is that you’re liberating people from?

Well I’m not looking for liberation. I don’t need your handouts or your definition of justice. I’m just looking for vengeance.

Unfortunately for you, you’ve been placed in front of me. You’re no longer on the outside looking in.

You’re about to get the full story with all the dark details.

Darkness comes before the dawn… and I am the Night.