Shattered

Brian

"I'm going fight 'em all," Brian sung to himself, tapping his feet on the helicopter's metal floor to the beat of the White Stripes blaring through his earbuds. "A seven-nation army couldn't hold me back."

For the first time in years, he was truly nervous. And a quick glance around the cabin proved that he wasn't the only one to feel that way. The ten armed-to-the-teeth marines around him, despite being known for their stoic dispositions, all jumped in their seats every time the helicopter bounced unexpectedly; which given the battle going on around them was every few seconds. Some of the men were looking at pictures of loved ones, some were praying, and some were doing last minute checks of their equipment; all trying to stave off their nerves for whatever was coming next.

"They're going to rip it off. Taking their time right behind my back."

But he wasn't nervous about any battles or death, he was nervous for an entirely different reason. His nervousness was also accompanied by a sense of anticipation. Anticipation that had been slowly building since he had been recruited into Avalon.

"And I'm talking to myself at night, because I can't forget."

The engineer's gaze drifted to Merlin, who sat directly opposite of him. The old man looked comical wearing an oversized flap jacket and helmet over his standard attire, and Brian had to wonder how long he would actually be able to support all that Kevlar before keeling over dying of exhaustion. Sadly though, he knew he wouldn't get rid of Merlin that easy if the pure unadulterated rage in his ancient eyes was anything to go by. The old man wanted to kill him for Revelation Day, but Brian knew that if they would have followed Merlin's plans the change he desired would never truly come to pass.

"Back and forth through my mind, behind a cigarette."

He also knew that given the opportunity the old man would have him killed. But being the world's savior kept him under twenty-four-seven surveillance, preventing Merlin, George, or any of Avalon from so much as touching him. That, and he had conveniently taken Terminate-us off the system and made him his dedicated G.

"And the message coming from my eyes says leave it alone."

The helicopter bucked yet again, and the rotor groaned as something splattered against it. Some of the men raised their weapons to the ceiling, their fingers on the triggers, waiting for something to burst through. It didn't happen though, and Brian knew it wouldn't happen. The Gs he had pulled from storage to escort them to Olympus had two primary objects: escort them safely there and kill anything in their way. Terminate-us' orders hadn't changed though: protect him and do everything he said.

"Don't want to hear about it. Every single one's got a story to tell."

He looked down at his phone to check the status of the Gs; opening an app of his own design. It wasn't much in terms of interface, just a list of each active G, with their designations highlighted a certain color based on their status. No color meant inactive, a sign that they were in storage, green meant active, red meant they were free but could be rebooted, and black meant that all connection had been lost. Of the forty-five he had deployed to escort them, forty-two were green, while the other three had gone black.

Brian frowned. "Everyone knows about it. From the Queen of England to the hounds of hell."

A black status was a rarity, something that he coded but at the time thought an impossibility. The quantum state by which the control cylinders interacted with the Gs could theoretically never lose their signal; existing in a place between one and zero, between existence and nothingness. But never-the-less, when G:DB was devoured at the Amazon headquarters, its status had gone black. It was something he wanted to investigate, but it never made it to the top of his list.