Roy Villein's Arc

Chapter 1 of 11

Roy Villein crushed a clod of dirt in his weathered hand and watched it turn to dust. Twenty years of work, gone. ChemCorp's runoff had killed everything. Three years in court got him nowhere—judges turned a blind eye while executives bought yachts. Now he had a plan. The ChemCorp plant rose up ahead, all concrete walls and metal pipes. Drab orange and green smoke poured from the smokestack. Roy pulled his tan cap lower and walked toward the main gate. He'd spent months playing the broken farmer, the harmless old man who just wanted work. The executives had bought it—even offered him a cleanup job like they were doing him a favor. They expected gratitude. Instead, Roy had learned the layout of their offices. He knew their schedules. He'd made connections inside who could get him what he needed: their own chemicals. Justice wouldn't come from a courtroom. It would come from those pipes, that smoke, those barrels stored in the back lots. Roy passed the main building and headed toward the monitoring station at the back of the property. The small structure sat surrounded by chemical tanks, its grimy windows catching the morning light. He'd worked this area for two weeks now, mopping floors and emptying trash. Nobody paid attention to the old maintenance man. But Roy paid attention to everything—the flow meters, the discharge valves, the logs that showed exactly which chemicals went where. He'd traced it all back, found where the poison came from. The same stuff that killed his land sat in those tanks right now. His connections had promised him access tomorrow night when the shift supervisor took his usual break. Roy pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it with steady hands. Twenty years of growth, destroyed. Three months until bankruptcy finalized. One night to make it right. The cheap phone buzzed in his pocket during his lunch break. Roy pulled it out and checked the screen. A single message: "Thursday 11PM. Loading dock B. Bring container." He deleted the message and dropped the phone back in his pocket. His contact had come through. The executives would get their own medicine—literally. The same chemicals they'd dumped on his farm would find their way into their morning coffee, their bottled water, their lunch. Slow and quiet, just like the poison that had seeped into his soil. Roy finished his sandwich and walked back to his mop bucket. Tomorrow night he'd stop being the harmless old man. Tomorrow night the real work would begin.