He was born into a humble family in a small town far from the big cities. His father worked at a gas station, tending the store and occasionally taking care of mechanical repairs. His mother, a devout Christian, dedicated most of her life to her home and church, although she occasionally got sewing jobs thanks to her connections in the congregation. She was extremely skilled with a needle and thread and proud of her old electric sewing machine, her most prized possession.

  Adam was the eldest of four children, the only son. His mother chose the name in honor of the first man in the Bible, and to no one's surprise, his first sister ended up being named Eve. From childhood, he displayed an uncommon intelligence; not at the level of a gifted genius, but sharp enough to learn quickly and stay ahead of most others. By the age of three he was already speaking with absolute clarity, and soon showed that he was capable of learning things even on his own.

  Unfortunately, his parents never knew how to channel his precocious mind. His mother was deeply involved in religious commitments, and his father, a confirmed alcoholic, spent his free time drunk in front of the television. Adam learned to make his own way, taking refuge in books when he barely learned to read in school. His fascination with mechanics and electricity grew into an obsession that kept him up late, dismantling old radios or improvising experiments with wires and batteries.

  Then came the event that would define his life. He was barely ten years old when, during a heated argument with his mother, his drunken father threw a glass bottle into the house. The bottle struck Adam squarely in the face as he was protecting his sisters. The glass shattered, leaving deep cuts on his mouth and one of his cheeks.

  The wound wasn't serious, but the scars that remained were indelible. His upper lip healed unevenly, leaving a visible deformity. Another huge scar on his left cheek, stretching from his eye to his chin, was a reminder of what everyone called an accident. Those scars defined his later life, much more than anyone could have imagined.

  Adam never really cared much about his appearance. But others did care in some ways. The children at school and in the neighborhood turned his scars into a source of ridicule, cruel nicknames that followed him day after day. At first, he tried to ignore them, but the constant repetition eventually eroded his self-esteem. His personality, which was always somewhat introverted, soon led him to isolate himself from all his peers.

  His father, far from being supportive, made things worse, never showing remorse for what had happened. More than once, drunk, he even mocked him in front of the others, calling him "ugly" and predicting he would never have a girlfriend. Those words cut much deeper than the insults of the other children, and little by little they carved a scab of silent resentment around Adam.

  By the time he entered high school, his transformation was complete. Adam had stopped having friends; no one, except his sisters, could get a kind word out of him. They were his only emotional refuge, the only ones who seemed to truly understand him. This closeness made him fiercely protective of them, especially his youngest, whom he cared for as if his life depended on it.

  But that protective instinct turned into pure violence. Any insinuation, any threatening gesture toward his sisters, was met with Adam's fists. He soon gained a reputation at school as a troublemaker. His scars, combined with his explosive temper, made him even more feared. Thus was born the nickname that would follow him throughout his teenage years: Scarface.

  The next turning point in Adam's life came through his sister Eve. She had inherited her mother's gentle beauty and soon attracted the wrong kind of attention. A group of upperclassmen soccer players began harassing her at school, insistently inviting her to their parties. Everyone knew what went on at these gatherings: alcohol, drugs, and girls being dragged against their will. Eve, of course, wasn't interested, but they didn't stop.

  The leader of that group, a boy with a handsome face and an arrogant smile, was also one of those who most enjoyed teasing Adam. And one day, in a crowded hallway, that same boy dared to touch Eve inappropriately. She burst into tears, humiliated, while the laughter of some echoed like a cruel echo.

  Anyone would expect Adam to explode in a violent outburst, as he had so often done. But that didn't happen. That day, instead of uncontrolled fury, what emerged was an icy silence. Adam hugged his sister and calmed her down as best he could, resorting to leaving school for the day rather than report the incident. Everyone knew that the perpetrator always had the unconditional support of the principal.

  He wasn't naive enough to throw himself at a group of bigger, stronger boys with the entire school on their side. Instead, he began to observe. With almost inhuman patience, he studied their movements, their habits, the places where they hung out. He soon discovered that every Friday or Saturday, after games, they would gather in an old cabin on the outskirts of town to drink and get high without any adult interference.

  A complete map began to form in his mind: who arrived first, who stayed late, how much they usually drank, which routes they took back home. Adam didn't acknowledge it out loud, but the activity filled him with immense emotion, as if it were something too natural for him.

  Even Adam himself didn't know exactly what he was doing that night when he decided to act. It was early Saturday morning, and the heavy silence of the field enveloped him as he moved through the undergrowth. The distant echo of the cabin's music still vibrated in the air, but most of the attendees had long since left. Only three figures remained inside: the group's leader and his two closest friends.

  Adam carried a rusty machete he had taken from the shed at home, and on his back a bow with a handful of makeshift arrows. His heart was pounding, not so much from fear as from anticipation. The three boys were too drunk to notice his arrival; thick laughter and the sound of beer bottles and cans filled the place.

  He stopped at the entrance, adjusted the machete on his belt, and armed himself with his bow and an arrow ready on the string. His eyes didn't show unbridled fury, but rather a disturbing calm, almost unnatural for a teenager his age.

  When he peeked through an open window, Adam saw two of them still drinking from their cans, laughing in thick voices, while the leader lay asleep, his head on the table, his mouth half open.

  He didn't hesitate. He raised the bow, drew the string with bated breath, and fired. The first arrow pierced the back of the nearest boy; the impact was sharp, right in the heart, and his body collapsed with a brief groan that died in his throat. His companion turned his head slightly, confused, not understanding what had happened.

  Adam had already loaded another arrow. The second bullet flew straight and sank into the boy's abdomen, eliciting a heart-rending scream from him.

  The scream woke the leader, who looked up, his eyes glazed over, unable to comprehend the scene: his two friends on the ground, one bleeding and writhing, the other motionless.

  Then Adam burst into the hut, brandishing the machete above his head and lunging at his true target. The blow fell from above, with the force of his entire body, embedding itself in the leader's collarbone, severing muscle and locking into bone. The boy screamed and fell to the ground, gripped by pain and panic.

  Without pausing, Adam left the machete embedded in his victim and pulled a kitchen knife from his clothes. His face showed neither rage nor satisfaction, only a mask of ice. With clumsy but ruthless movements, he threw himself at the two wounded youths and stabbed them again and again, until their screams ceased and the ground turned red.

  The leader was still breathing. He tried to crawl, his eyes wide with terror. Adam looked at him for only a second before slashing his neck with a deep gash, enough to sever the jugular vein and draw a great jet of dark blood. The youth twitched for a few moments and then lay motionless, slowly bleeding out.

  The tranquility that followed was almost unreal. Only the sound of the music accompanied Adam's rapid breathing as he watched the grotesque spectacle he himself had created. In that moment, he realized he had crossed an invisible threshold. And he felt no guilt... only a strange calm.

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  Throughout the entire incident, Adam showed not a single emotion. And only when he was certain the three lay dead did reality fall upon him like an unbearable weight. But, far from panicking or regretting it, he simply smiled. A brief, crooked, almost imperceptible smile. Then he began to carefully erase every trace he might have left, like the criminals in movies and television series. Afterward, his gloves, clothes, bow, and machete would be burned or discarded without leaving the slightest trace.

  Only when his eyes fell on the leader's face, still handsome despite the grimace of agony, did something burn inside him. A hatred he'd never felt before, one that seemed to come from a place deep within his conflicted mind. Without hesitation, he took the knife and slid the blade across that face, cutting it again and again until it was unrecognizable. It wasn't necessary; he knew that. But he did it anyway, reveling in each cut, which looked like brushstrokes on a perfect canvas.

  When he finished, Adam breathed calmly, almost satisfied. He looked at the work his hands had created and understood, without needing words, that this act would define him forever.

  The brutal murder of the three soccer players quickly became a major scandal in the town, even attracting the national press. For weeks, everyone talked about it: terrified parents forbade their children from going out at night, teachers tried in vain to maintain calm in the classrooms, and every street seemed filled with an expectant silence.

  But Adam didn't show a shred of concern. At school, he perfectly feigned surprise when the news broke and even participated in some of the morbid conversations about what had happened, repeating rumors as if he, too, were confused and horrified. No one suspected the introverted boy who carried on with his routine as usual.

  The police questioned dozens of young people and adults, but found no concrete evidence against anyone in particular. As the months passed, the case stalled, and the sense of impunity left a scar on the community.

  For Adam, however, that was the beginning of an irreversible transformation. He discovered that killing hadn't left him with any mental scars, as the stories and movies would have you believe. On the contrary, it had given him an intense and lasting pleasure, a secret euphoria that continued every time he saw the consequences of his actions on others. For the first time in his life, he felt he could impose his will, that the world wasn't trampling on him, but that he could subdue it.

  And above all, what pleased him most was remembering how he had ruined that boy's face. That perfect face that had so often mocked Adam's deformity was now an unrecognizable mess, which at one time had even forced it to be hidden during funeral rites. For Adam, that gesture wasn't just revenge: it was justice, and above all, an art form.

  Time passed, and Adam led a life that, in the eyes of others, was "normal": studies, routines, the facade of a boy who endures adversity and moves on. Inside, however, the night in the cabin often revisited him like a pleasant dream, something he believed would never be repeated. But fate had other plans.

  When he was seventeen, a new affront broke the fragile threads that still bound his patience. His father, drunker than usual and clearly lacking judgment, attempted to rape his younger sister in the absence of everyone else. Fortunately, she fought back and ended up beaten instead of worse. The man justified it to his wife under the pretext that she had disrespected him, and his mother believed the story without question. Only his sister, the real victim, trembling, told Adam the truth.

  Adam's restraint broke again, and he decided it was time to get rid of his father. However, he couldn't risk a repeat of the brutal scenes in the cabin, so he devised a somewhat quieter and cleaner plan. He traveled to the nearby city and, searching the most troubled neighborhoods known for drug dealing, bought a suitable quantity of methamphetamine.

  He acted one Sunday when his mother and sisters were at church. He carefully mixed the drug into a bottle of his father's favorite liquor and placed it on the table in front of the television. The man, without thinking, drank as always, without restraint, until he was completely drunk, although this time consuming a lethal dose of a drug that soon caused him to go into cardiac arrest.

  This time, death wasn't a bloody spectacle like the first, but for Adam, it was a sentence expertly executed. When his father stopped breathing, he did what he already knew how to do: he erased traces and wove his alibi. He got rid of the bottle of liquor containing the drugs, replacing it with a new, half-consumed one, put some of the powdered drug up his father's nose, and hid a small bag containing the remains of the drug in one of his pockets.

  When they found him dead, it wasn't difficult to associate his death with an overdose, that of someone unused to that type of drug and who had consumed too much, while also drinking alcohol to make matters worse. His mother cried, the community murmured, and life went on. No one looked at Adam twice.

  For his mother, it was confirmation of what she had thought several times could happen, although perhaps it came much sooner than she expected. For Adam, it was yet another confirmation that he really knew what he was doing, and that he was really good at killing.

  Unlike the first murder, this one left him with neither the blood-spattered euphoria nor the need to mark a face to mark his triumph. It was practical, cold, precise, and perfectly in keeping with the new Adam who was emerging: a young man perfectly in control of himself, capable of achieving his goal. There was no catharsis or regret; only a sense of effectiveness, and the certainty that no human law had discovered him. That certainty shaped him from then on: he was no longer just the protective brother, nor the isolated boy nicknamed Scarface. He was someone who knew how to eliminate his enemies without leaving a trace.

  From then on, Adam's life changed completely. He accepted with an almost doctrinal coldness that he had enjoyed killing; he masked it behind a rhetoric of justice and convinced himself that his worst aspect should be reserved exclusively for those who, according to him, deserved it. This justification served as a moral alibi and allowed him to organize his priorities according to his own logic, all the more dangerous because it was rational.

  After graduating from high school, he immediately pursued a career suited to his skills and interests. He took courses in mechanics and electricity, where he quickly earned certification and found a job to help his family. The trade gave him more than just a living: it provided him with access to technical knowledge, which would soon serve as a foundation for mastering more specific and useful skills, such as locksmithing and surveillance systems.

  Meanwhile, he contained what he needed to contain. From time to time, however, the urge surfaced, and he channeled it into cold, targeted murders: lone drug dealers in nearby cities, men others singled out as "problems" for society. He always acted methodically: observation, waiting, silent execution, and disappearance. The deaths were recorded as settling scores or gang conflicts; the authorities didn't connect the pieces. For Adam, this was further confirmation of his talent: he could kill without publicly tainting himself.

  Over time, family obligations eased. His sisters finished high school, found stable jobs, or got married, and the household no longer needed him as a central pillar. That's when Adam decided to leave. He packed up just enough and went to seek success in bigger cities. There, he fully unleashed the thirst he had kept at bay: with new targets, more refined methods, target after target selected according to his own criteria of "worthiness."

  In a matter of a couple of years, Adam became one of his nation's most successful assassins, even though he was a complete unknown to everyone. He never liked to draw attention to himself; he enjoyed anonymity, and his care in leaving contradictory evidence was so meticulous that, despite the police and media speculation, no one ever came close to catching him.

  However, there was a problem that not even he could have predicted: as he gained experience and confidence, he began to enjoy torture as much as murder. He discovered this when, deciding to kill a child rapist who had just been released from prison, he prolonged his agony longer than necessary, savoring every plea he made until he lost his speech. He then repeated the same pattern with a madman who sold drugs to children. In both cases, he made sure to make them suffer as much as possible before ending their lives.

  That marked a new transformation. Adam became more cynical, and his social mask took on a twisted hue: he began to display false emotionality in front of his victims, feigning tenderness, compassion, and understanding, only to break them even more deeply in their final moments. At first, it was a cruel game, but soon that falsehood became his true face. He laughed uncontrollably while he tortured, finding in their screams and desperation a stimulus that fueled him like never before.

  His targeting also evolved. Adam sought out strong criminals, those who believed themselves untouchable, men who wielded power with violence and cruelty. He also placed special emphasis on those who were handsome. The beauty of those faces obsessed him as much as it enraged him, and nothing was more satisfying than disfiguring them beyond recognition, as if with each cut he were mutilating the mockery of a lifetime.

  But that same pattern was his doom. His killing spree began to cross invisible boundaries: first, he killed criminals belonging to large gangs, then members of criminal organizations with tentacles even in political institutions. He knew it, he understood the danger, but he couldn't stop himself. The adrenaline rush of being on the edge of danger, of feeling death nibbling at his heels, was the perfect stimulant for him.

  Until the day came when it all went too far. Adam targeted a man who appeared to be an impeccable businessman, but who in reality ran a sexual exploitation and extortion network in several cities. The murder was brutal, as Adam discovered that the man also promoted child prostitution. The torture took too long, and several witnesses ended up seeing him near the murder scene. The problem is that this man wasn't just a criminal: he had ties to judges, senators, and even the police.

  The authorities' response was swift. Within hours, the streets were filled with sirens, and the public security apparatus—police, special forces, and even national intelligence—were mobilized. For the first time, Adam felt that the security he had woven around himself wasn't enough. He had been careful, but this time everything seemed to work against him.

  For weeks, he remained on the run, changing locations, burning forged documents, hiding in basements and abandoned apartments. He came close to being caught more than once: a raid on a motel where he had stayed the night before, a face resembling his on a toll booth camera, a clue left by a witness who saw him from afar. Each time, he managed to escape by a much smaller margin, and the chase tightened like a noose.

  He realized then that it was all over. But there was one problem he wasn't going to ignore: if they caught him, the torment wouldn't be his alone; His sisters, the people most important to him, would also pay the price, simply for being related to him. He decided at that moment that he would not allow himself to be apprehended alive or identifiable. The authorities had a blurry photo, a partial description, and scattered evidence, but they still didn't have an exact identification. That had to remain the case.

  Adam, who had learned many useful things throughout his life, moved with the efficiency of someone who knew how to improvise. He sneaked into a small airfield at night, bypassed padlocks and sleeping guards, and found an airworthy small plane. He started it and took off at the first light of morning. At low altitude to minimize radar detection, he flew close to the ground until he reached one of his nation's few active volcanoes. He aimed the craft at the smoking mouth and, without hesitation, let the plane plummet. The plane pierced the thin upper layer and plunged into the lava, erasing all traces that he had ever existed.

  In his last moments, he smiled defiantly, and fortunately, the impact of the crash killed him before the lava consumed him. However, just when he thought it was all over, and that only the emptiness of nonexistence awaited him, his eyes opened again, in a completely unfamiliar place, a kind of room made entirely of wood, with no windows, and a comfortable bed with clean sheets.

  "WTF," was the only thing he could say in the face of the bizarre situation.