He was lying huddles in a corner, shivering. It wasn't from cold, it being the middle of the summer in Hawaii. The alley he was in was dark from the shadows of surrounding buildings. Rats scurried about and a homeless man lay sleeping in a card board box. He huddled in that corner as only a man who has just lost the little bit of a life that had been allotted to him. He was a man without hope, without anything left in his life that could make it worth living. He was a mere shadow of the lively man who I knew just an hour before. Now he knows that his friends are dead or wounded and captured. He knows that one of them was just trying to live out her college life and have fun with it, to have excitement. She got her excitement and it killed her. The other was another victim of tyranny, just trying to survive in a world that had turned against her. And the third, me, the third had been his friend for more years then he could count. And now the shivering man believed that the third was dead or soon to be dead.

And it was true.

The sniper lay on his stomach, scanning the ground through his scope. I lay on the ground around the center of the roof, bound with knots as tight as the big Staff Sergeant had been able to get them. The good thing about the knots is that they slowed the loss of blood from my leg. They hadn't given me a bandage to stop the bleeding with so all I could count on was a lack of circulation.

Kyle stood up from where he had been huddling. I could see the sniper moving his gun along the path Kyle walked. He stepped out from the alley he had been in and into the open street. The street was deserted because of the shootings. No one wanted to be in the way in case more shooting went on. When he was in the middle of the street, Kyle turned and looked straight down it in the direction of the ocean. He wasn't looking directly to where the sniper was, for he didn't know the location, but he did know the sniper was out there.

"You're clear for a shot. Take it when you think you've got a clean kill."

I wanted to cry out but Kyle was too distant and it would have done no good. They would just have taken a less perfect kill then they would've had anyways.

Kyle just stood there silently, not moving, as if he were waiting to get shot. It was as if he no longer valued the life for which he had fought so long and hard. He was going to die and he seemed to accept this rather then run the way he should've. I could see the sniper slowly begin to squeeze the trigger. The sniper's face was emotionless. He had been trained to kill without remorse and that was what he was doing now. The sniper rifle went off and the bullet leapt out of the gun barrel, on its way to pierce Kyle's flesh. I saw the bullet hit and Kyle's head literally exploded. He dropped to the ground, dead. Almost before I had time to register this, I felt the warmth leave my body as a sharp pain entered into the left side of my chest. In that moment, before all life left me, I knew that the tyranny of the world would live on despite good people's best efforts.

A/N: FINISHED! Thanks to all the people who have reviewed this story, it's been a great help to me in my writing. I hope all of you enjoyed this story, despite how short it was. I got bored so I tried to finish it up quickly. To all you beginner writers, I hope you stick with it because I know that since I came back to this sight a month ago, I've been really happy. Good luck to you all and if you want me to read your story, say so in your review or email me. I'll see what I can do.

~Militarynut32489