Sixty seconds into the chase, and then he died.

Ironic that a cop should die in the thrill of the chase, right? After all, shouldn’t he be the one responsible for the death of the perpetrator’s freedom? How could the cop let himself go so terribly wrong in bringing upon himself what he should have brought onto someone else?

Was he paying a price for virtue?

Don’t tell me that virtue doesn’t come with a price. In a world that runs under the eyes of vice, virtue must endure the devil’s gusts in marching forward. Virtue has to stand up on its own two legs and fight the ways of nature. Nature has no place for goodness. It merely welcomes the adaptable.

And the cop didn’t know how to adapt to the ways of nature. He could only do what he was taught. Bring justice to the oppressed and punishment to the oppressors. Whatever made sense to him, he did Everyone deserved their fair share of happiness, right? If he knew how good virtue and justice and happiness felt, then why wouldn’t he wish all of these things for anyone else? Why wouldn’t he want to live his dreams through millions of other people?

The cop had learned from the wisdom of all generations past that giving others what one would give himself was the best thing a man could ever do. And service, in the eyes of the cop, stood for so much more than the pretty words sprawled over brochures and school banners. It stood for universal law.

But the world had no place for virtue. Maybe his obedience to past generations was his biggest crime, his only crime. He stood for something larger than himself, and alas, nature didn’t want to hear him brim with purpose.

Rather, the natural world just snapped him shut and imposed on him the consequences that came with illusion. The illusion that the universe even came with law. Thrill breeds the kill, and haste breeds the taste of love. These were not necessarily laws, but rather consequences. He but had to pay the price.