What is the price tag?

"Following orders"
is just not good enough

to justify an action you know is wrong
– your soul won't buy it.
No-one makes you pull the trigger,
no-one forces your aim
toward an unarmed person’s face or groin
to cause maximum injury with those rubber bullets.
There is no-one to blame
when you soak people
– fellow human beings –
on a freezing night,
with water turning to sheets of ice.
No, it's not like a real bullet,
but you know the effect can be the same.
And knowingly, you “follow orders”.
For what?
A paycheck?
So looking back at this time, years from now,
you will have exchanged your integrity as a human being
for,
tell me,
what is the price tag?