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.
They were out in the wastes. Too far out. They'd since learned that there are places you shouldn't go, distances that shouldn't be traversed. Sometimes you wander into areas where the SERAPHIM can appear. And sometimes the Rusters get you.
That's what happened to Llewellyn, after all. Got nailed by some Ruster scout ship. It dive-bombed the wayward Watch crew, sounding like some giant, gas-powered pepper grinder as it traced a dotted line across the dune sea. A line that crossed out Gavin's father mid-route. Shredded him. Long after the realization had truly set in, and Gavin's mind slowly returned to him, moment to moment, by degrees, he'd become fixated on the sheer, brutal efficiency of it, the way parts of his father's body had been neatly separated, severed and sliced as if by a large knife. Almost surgical. Almost intentional. Like finding a loved one pinned to a giant specimen board, parts of the body removed and set aside for later examination. So callous. So...precise.
Only a machine can be like that. Kill without thinking. Strike without caring. Because even if you find a rat in the granary, you don't relish having to kill it. You don't test out your knife-throwing skills on it. You don't see how long you can make it bleed before it dies.
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Or at least, there was a time when Gavin believed that. The 'before' time. Before he watched his father's body get taken apart by a fine spread of bullets from overhead. He realized that, with the Fall, came death. Nature changed, and mankind as well. They...adapted. And like the time of mankind's first sin, the world had fallen once again. With that, came a new Curse. The Curse of the Rusters, and the SERAPHIM. And with that, mankind needed to adapt once again.
Brutality is the new law of the land. A man's ability to survive depends on just how far he's willing to go.
That was Gavin's mistake. Not just losing two people, but not having the foresight, or the determination, to use their sacrifice to his advantage in the moment. He took their deaths as a total failure, rather than a setback.
If he'd moved fast enough, could he have turned things around? If he'd been willing to sacrifice his men from the outset, would things have gone differently? There was no way to know. But at the very least, he wouldn't be in this hole, right now. By starting at the bottom, he wouldn't have had to face the fall. By embracing reality, he wouldn't have had to feel the illusions shatter in real time.
This is what Shiloh doesn't get, and perhaps never will. You don't negotiate with Rusters. You don't play by their rules. Because they don't play by yours. There is no mutual understanding. No common ground. Conflict, ultimately, can only be resolved by means of destruction. The only question is, who will be destroyed, and who will survive.
And Gavin, today, chooses survival.
Gazing about at his members of the Watch, his crew, Gavin swallows and wets his lips.
"You're giving me an out. All of you. But I won't take it. What happened out there was the result of my faults and failings. I made bad calls. More than one. And the proof of that is in the result. It's my fault Riley is dead. It's my fault Karla is dead. It's my fault that Ruster is still out there."
Miles starts to shake his head, but stops when Gavin stares him down.
"I can understand if you feel I shouldn't lead the Watch, after today. And you might be right. But there's still more to do. For now, I ask that you follow my lead. After, we can grieve. After, we can decide what the future will be. If that's something you all can agree to."
Renzo steps forward, head cocked as he peers down at Gavin. And Gavin feels himself bracing. Bracing for...what? What am I afraid of, exactly?
What is the meaning of all this, anyway? This whining, this introspection. My job isn't to think. It's to do. My job is to fix the problem.
It is the unspoken rule. The unspoken expectation. It doesn't need to be said. It might as well be carved into the hangar wall by an invisible hand in giant script.
So of course Renzo doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to. He just holds out his hand.
Gavin studies Renzo's face, impassive as it is. He looks at the outstretched hand.
Have Gavin's crew members ever seen him like this? Tender and raw, like an open wound? Vulnerable? Will this endear him to them, if anything? Or has some quantity of his hard-earned respect been lost, in this moment? And if so, will he lose some degree of his control over them, down the line?
At the moment, should he even care?
“It's not you," Renzo says. "It's not us. It's them. It's the Rusters. It's that Darvin girl. You were right about that. The whole thing smells of a setup, from beginning to end. And we fell for it. But that doesn't mean this is over. Not yet. Not while we're still here."
He's right, of course. It's not over yet. And what good will it do to sit here and mope about it? That's just not something they can afford to do. Not while there's still work to be done.
He takes Renzo's hand. Renzo heaves, helping to pull Gavin to his feet. He pats Gavin on the back, grips his shoulder tight. Nods.
"So, Watch Leader," Renzo says. "What's the plan?"
It's a short walk to Mechanical from the South Hangar. There's a short, wide curve of a hallway connecting the two. Earlier, when they brought in the captive Ruster, they could have brought him directly to the garage. But what was the fun in that, when they could parade the machine through the main hall, and some of the major walkways? It was great for morale, and getting the word out. It was a big middle finger to the outside world and a hearty cheer for the Cloister.
But of course, that was then, and this was now. So much had changed, and in so little time. And now they had passed a boundary from which there would be no return.
Things will never be the same, Gavin knows. And for some reason, that fact doesn't bother him so much anymore. In fact, he can feel cold, metallic resolve steeling over him. He doesn't feel so shaky. So...out of touch. He's never felt so present, so important, as now, in these moments.
They arrive in the Mechanical Bay. They pass by the tall, hulking mass of the Walker, with its wide, oval body, and six spider-like legs. Two engineers maneuver underneath the body of the Walker, stepping over and around the round, massive feet. They're making adjustments and check-ups, seeing if they need to make any quick repairs.
As Gavin circles around the Walker, he doesn't have to point, or make any signals. Renzo has already approached an engineer, the one nearest the boarding ramp, and is pointing at some imaginary anomaly under the hull of the Walker, trying to get the engineer to see it. Once he sees Renzo has the worker suitably distracted, Gavin makes his way up the ramp.
It's darker, inside. The overhead lights are dim compared to the fluorescents throughout the Cloister.
It's the screens, buttons, and instrument readings that are bright, almost glaring in the otherwise shadowy interior of the cockpit.
Gavin kneels down in front of the console board at the middle and front of the cockpit. Normally the console board can't be accessed without the right tools to unscrew and pry it open out of the control panel, but Gavin already did that back when they first acquired the Walker, and hasn't bothered to close it back up since then. When he squeezes two points on the board and lifts, it comes disconnected right away. Winding weaves of cord spiral down from the board, splitting off to connect to various parts of the panel.
Once or two well-placed incisions with a sufficiently sharp knife can disable the entire mechanism. Perhaps even fry some parts of the Walker irreparably. But Gavin isn't so crude. His aim is not to destroy, in this instance, but control.
He reaches inside, maneuvering his arm amid the meshes of wiring. His fingers close on a slim object, cold to the touch, covered in a layer of grimy dust. Once he's sure of his grip, he pulls up.
A snap. Not a break, but a disconnection. He pulls the device up. A cartridge insert, with a green electronic chip component jutting out of it. It's the Navchip. The part of the Walker's computer system that allows it to scan terrain and navigate it accordingly. Without this, the Walker can't move. Without this, Shiloh can't have her way. Not unless Gavin says so.
He pockets the Navchip, backs out of the cockpit, ducks through the opening, and heads down the ramp.