Blast Protocol

Chapter 31

GAVIN

It's strange. The smooth, flat, concrete floor in the East Hangar. Gavin has always thought of it as being immaculate in its construction. Perfect, just like the rest of the Cloister. Not without its quirks, perhaps. It's idiosyncrasies. But perfect, all the same.

Now, as he sits on a bench next to the lockers which house the Watch's weapons and gear, he stares down at that floor. Where once he ascribed perfection, he now sees blemishes, inadequacies. Weaknesses. Pockmarks. Grainy obtrusions. Thick, spindly cracks, spider-webbing, like a mirror that's been punched. As he gazes, frowning at those fractures in the concrete, he thinks, distantly, I am not here. This is not me, here, in this room. None of this is real.

As if to confirm this, reality warps. The cracks loom large, making massive chasms in his vision. Dark and deep, brimming with shadows. Some of them are shifting, as if restless, anticipating. Gavin hovers somewhere over that massive, bottomless chasm. At any moment, he will be dropped down into it. And there is no knowing what he will find there. What will become of him. He-

A voice. Distorted. Warbled. As if Gavin's ears are submerged. Whatever it is, it seems to...disrupt. It cuts into this vision, this experience, whatever this is, yanking Gavin out of it like an unborn child forcefully expunged from the womb.

Suddenly, he is here. He is in this room. He thinks. But if anything is real, perhaps this is.

Is he losing it? Really losing it? He's been in tight spots, before. Lost people, before. He's equipped for the trauma. For the pain. He knows he is. Or at least, believes. Believed.

It's normal- well, no, nothing about it is normal, or natural, or right; death is a product of the fall, the new condition of a corrupt world, an affliction, and as for the Rusters, those soulless husks of wiring and metal, and strobelike electric impulses, there's nothing natural about that, NOTHING-

That voice, again.

"-don't blame you. None of us do."

It's Miles. He's geared up, rifle hanging from his shoulder by the strap, oxygen mask dangling against his chest. He's standing at the ready. So are the rest of the team.

And what about me? Am I ready?

I'm supposed to be the boss. I'm supposed to have it together, dammit.

But why fight when he can retreat? Inward. Where he doesn't have to see Karla's neck being severed, over and over, or Riley's body crumpling against the rocks. Where, instead, he has strange visions of sheer drops into complete nothingness.

"We all thought it was the right call, at the time," Renzo says, running a dry, scratchy palm over his bald, shaved head. There's a playful timbre to his voice, almost musical. But his expression is grave. Austere.

It's strange, seeing him like this. He's usually so upbeat, even in the most dire straits. But then, usually things are bad, out there. This is the first time death has come right up to the door and knocked, with a scythe, it's blade long enough, curved enough, to take all their heads in a single stroke.

When was the last time Gavin thought this way, in striking, vivid imagery? But it's his father, influencing his thoughts, here in this dark time when his mind wants nothing more than to regress backward, into the past. His father, Llewellyn, who used to talk in poetic expressions. Used to read poetry, and would recite some verses aloud and from memory, his voice reverberating breathily inside his mask as he trekked the plateaus and desert wastes.

Llewellyn used to be Watch leader. He died Watch Leader. And Gavin was there to see it happen. In a way, he let it happen. No one else on the team reacted quite fast enough to prevent it, and neither had he. It's a failure Gavin refuses to forget. It haunts him. It plagues him. But it drives him, as well. He harnesses it. The memory is never far from his mind.