Roy Villein's Arc

Chapter 10 of 11

Roy crouched in the executive parking garage at midnight, three glass bottles lined up beside the CEO's car. Each one held the same chemicals that killed his farm, stolen from ChemCorp's own supply shed. His hands didn't shake as he placed them under the engine block where the heat would do its work. Twenty years of soil, dead. Three years of rigged courts. One yacht named Clean Conscience. The executives had poisoned everything he built and walked away clean. Not anymore. Roy stood and checked his watch. The night shift changed in four minutes. He walked toward the drainage tunnel, his boots echoing once, then disappeared into the dark. Behind him, the bottles waited. Justice didn't need a courtroom. It just needed patience and the enemy's own poison turned back where it belonged. He surfaced three blocks away near the ChemCorp plant entrance. Dawn was still hours off. The monument to the chemical industry stood tall outside the gates—twisted metal shapes celebrating everything the company claimed to be. Progress. Innovation. Success. Roy walked past it without looking up. The glass-edged reflecting pool caught streetlight and threw it back at the building's walls. Pretty water to hide ugly truth. He kept moving toward the emergency shutoff valve he'd marked weeks ago during reconnaissance. The red lever jutted from its metal housing, bolted to concrete. One pull would stop the chemical flow through the main pipes. But Roy didn't touch it. He wanted the plant running. He wanted the executives to arrive tomorrow morning like always, walk to their cars like always, turn their keys like always. The bottles would ignite when the engines heated. Fast enough the men wouldn't suffer. Clean enough it would look like equipment failure. Roy had calculated the chemical reaction three times to be sure. The same poison that killed his farm would burn hot and quick. No trials. No lawyers. No bought judges letting guilty men walk free. Just ChemCorp's own product doing what it did best—destroying everything it touched. Roy crossed the empty street and headed for his truck. His hands smelled like chemicals even through the gloves he'd worn. He'd scrub them raw again when he got home, but the smell would stay. It always did. In six hours, the executives would die the same way his farm died—poisoned by the thing they trusted most. Roy climbed into his truck and started the engine. Twenty years of work was still dead. Three years of court battles were still lost. But the men who caused it wouldn't see another sunrise. He drove away as the first hint of gray touched the sky. It was done.