[SYSTEM STATUS: CULTURAL DELETION]
[LOCATION: THE STATUE OF HAPPINESS - LIBERTY CITY (REMOTE FEED TO LOS SANTOS)]
[VIRAL METER: NEGATIVE — THE DEATH OF HOPE]
The Statue of Happiness, once the bronze idol of the American ethos, no longer held a tablet of law or a torch of enlightenment. Dante Vane had retrofitted it. The torch was now a massive, omni-directional surveillance eye, a burning red iris that scanned the ruins of Liberty City. The tablet had been replaced by a digital ticker displaying the current "Value of a Human Life" in real-time, fluctuating like a stock based on caloric intake and labor output.
Dante stood at the base of the statue, the wind howling off the Atlantic, carrying the stench of a decaying empire. He was not alone. Kneeling before him were the leaders of the "True Patriot" Resistance—Sarah Vance (former CIA Cyber-Warfare Division) and David Cohen (ex-Mossad Kidon Unit).
They had spent six months planning this infiltration. They had sacrificed hundreds of men to reach the island. They thought they were the heroes of a spy thriller, coming to cut the head off the snake.
Dante looked down at them with the pity one reserves for a dog that keeps running into a glass door.
"You look tired, Sarah," Dante said, his voice amplified by the drones circling above. "You look like someone who is carrying the weight of a ghost."
"We are here to restore the Republic!" Sarah screamed, her face bloodied but her eyes burning with the fanaticism of the old world. "We are here to bring back the Constitution! To bring back Freedom!"
Dante laughed. It was a dry, hollow sound that seemed to suck the oxygen out of the air.
The Autopsy of the American Dream
"Freedom," Dante mused, pacing around them. "Let us dissect this corpse you love so much. What was American Freedom, truly? Was it the freedom to think? No. You were educated by algorithms designed to sell you toothpaste and anxiety medication. Was it the freedom to choose? No. You chose between two senile men funded by the same banks."
He stopped in front of David, the Mossad agent.
"And you... the defender of democracy. You killed for a government that toppled regimes in South America and the Middle East just to keep the price of bananas and oil low. You didn't fight for freedom, David. You fought for comfort. You fought so the average American could sit on a couch, eating corn syrup, watching reality TV, pretending the bombs falling on children halfway across the world were 'necessary for security'."
Dante leaned in, his eyes black voids of Critical Deconstruction.
"I am not the villain here. I am the Mirror. I am simply doing to you openly what your 'democracy' did to you in secret for a hundred years. I am the honest tyrant. And you hate me because I stripped away the lie that made you feel noble."
The Machiavellian Twist: Controlled Opposition
"You're a monster," David spat. "The people will rise. The Resistance is growing. We have cells in every city!"
Dante smiled. He pulled out a tablet and turned it toward them.
On the screen was a bank transfer log. It showed a stream of cryptocurrency funding the "True Patriot" Resistance. It showed the purchase orders for their weapons, their food, their encrypted radios.
The source of the funds was Vane-Corp.
"I am the Resistance, David," Dante whispered.
The color drained from Sarah's face. "No... that's impossible..."
"Did you really think a ragtag group of spies could breach my perimeter?" Dante asked, his voice dripping with Machiavellian contempt. "I funded you. I armed you. I gave you the maps. Why? because 'Hope' is a pressure valve. If I didn't give the people a false hero to believe in, they might have actually rebelled. I gathered all of you—the brave, the foolish, the 'patriots'—in one place so I could crush you all at once. You aren't martyrs. You are employees."
This was the ultimate humiliation. Dante hadn't just defeated them; he had owned their rebellion. He had monetized their defiance.
The Ritual of Disgrace
Dante signaled to his guards. They dragged a large, heavy trunk forward. It was an antique, covered in the dust of history. Dante kicked it open.
Inside was the original Constitution of the United States, stolen from the National Archives during the chaos of Chapter 4.
"This is your holy book," Dante said, picking up the fragile parchment. "We the People... in order to form a more perfect Union."
He looked at the camera drone, speaking directly to the millions of Americans watching on their mandatory screens.
"This document was written by men who owned other human beings. It was signed in ink bought with the profits of empire. It promised liberty, but it delivered a credit score. It promised justice, but it delivered a prison industrial complex."
Dante pulled out a gold Zippo lighter.
"You feel guilt right now," Dante said to the camera. "You feel angry. Good. That guilt is the realization that you never actually cared about these words. You only cared about the lifestyle they afforded you. You sold your birthright for cheap gas and faster internet."
He flicked the lighter.
"Sarah," Dante commanded. "Burn it."
"No!" she screamed.
"If you burn it," Dante said softly, using the Devil's Bargain, "I will let the five thousand people in the holding cells live. If you don't... I will execute them all, and then I will burn it anyway. What is your 'paper' worth compared to flesh, patriot?"
Sarah trembled. She looked at the parchment—the symbol of everything she had fought for—and then at the live feed of the prisoners. The Moral Dilemma broke her. She realized that the symbol was dead, and preserving it was vanity.
Weeping, she took the lighter. With a shaking hand, she set the corner of the Constitution on fire.
The world watched as "We the People" turned into ash and smoke.
The Erasure of Identity
As the flames died down, Dante stepped onto the podium.
"The United States of America is dead," he declared. "Not because I killed it. But because it was a ghost story you told yourselves to sleep at night. There is no more 'American'. There is no more 'Patriot'. There is only Survivor."
He gestured to the skyline of Liberty City, which was now plunging into darkness as he cut the power remotely.
"Tonight, you will sit in the dark. You will be cold. You will be hungry. And for the first time in your lives, you will be innocent. Because you will no longer be living off the blood of the world. You will be living off your own suffering. I have absolved you of your privilege."
Dante walked away from the sobbing resistance leaders, leaving them alive in the shadow of the statue.
"Leave them," he told his guards. "Let them live with the knowledge that they burned their own god to save a few rats. That shame will do more damage than any bullet."
[VIRAL METER: DELETED]
[IDENTITY: NULL]
[STATUS: THE EMPIRE OF ASH]