It’s an old nightmare of mine, chains dragging me down to the depths of a dark ocean.
Drowning, my lungs burn with every gulp of salt water I swallow, my body convulses with the relentless shock of the tide.
Each wave serves an incessant throbbing pain, a phantom limb reaching out into the void.
Water’s all around me, inside of me, and it’s a relentless killer, making death into an artform.
In vain, I scream out “no more!”
But I’ve been drowning for a long time, haven’t I?
As a kid, I drowned in the shadow cast by my brother.
I drowned under a father who wanted a son who danced from only his strings.
As a police officer, trying to be a hero while I drowned with guilt that the thin blue line turned yellow.
Death row was no different.
Every transgression was a chain. Each link was a false prophet ensnaring me with their ‘wisdom,’ whispering that through them I’d find salvation.
They told me I was nobody without them.
But you know what? I’ve met Nobody. That son of a bitch drowned me too.
I’ve always kept my head down, tried to let others dictate my destiny.
No more.
It’s time for me to look the fuck up. Cause up there, above the water…
…all I see is light, a golden ring of opportunity.
Of dreams.
Of freedom.
My whole life, I’ve been a lamb walking to an inevitable slaughter.
Maybe I’d die in the line of duty.
From a deal gone wrong.
From death fucking row.
From friendship with the wrong guy.
No more.
I make my own name, my own destiny.
I’m no longer little Joey Cade. I’m not the thin blue line. I’m not on Death Row anymore.
I’m C.J. Thorpe. I spit in Zeus’s face, and I am alive, goddamnit!
I’m not just some guy in the Uprising.
I am the fucking Uprising!
Suddenly, the world around me goes in-focus. The thrash of the water, the twisted links of my chains.
I hear the pounding of my heart, see the light looming above the water.
Harold Attano. He holds the gold. He held me once.
No more.
With a roar that bubbles from my throat to defy the ocean, I pull, yanking the shackles against their rusted, stubborn hold on me.
One by one, the weights lift.
Friends. Family. The law. Arcadia.
Fuck ‘em all.
I’m their slave no more.
I’m my own man, my own fucking savior.
I’m the Chainbreaker, the dream maker, the man who’ll spit in your eye as I take what’s mine.
Each one of these twenty cunts, they’re just another chain, another weight trying to ferry me back down into the depths.
But I’m done with the fucking water. I will drown no more.
Each one of them is a link, and I’ll break ‘em all. I’ll break ‘em until there’s nothing left but me, standing tall, standing free.
Standing in that ring of dreams.
Not because I was chosen. Not because I was given a chance.
But because I decided to make my own destiny.
Because I said no fucking more!