//ERROR.

//SYSTEM CANNOT DO THAT.

//TARGET DOES NOT EXIST.

//ENTITY ‘THE BEGINNING’ DOES NOT HAVE A MATCH IN THE CURRENT DATABASE.

//TARGET CHANGED TO ‘GARRET TAGGART’.

//SYSTEM DELAY STRANGELY LARGE. CONTINUE ANYWAY?

//EXECUTING.

Garret’s throat burned with anger. His lungs ballooned with the things he wanted to yell at the fucking idiots that had completely lost Annette, and the strange… thing she’d managed to get her hands on. What kind of fucking spies were they if they couldn’t spy on anyone?

And those excuses. Oooh, those excuses. The white guy had complained about a splitting headache, a goddess cloaked in ribbons of light, and a man with four eyes that couldn’t die. He’d obviously smuggled drugs in from somwhere, and he’d been oh-so-joyously tripping up a storm instead of doing his fucking job.

The black girl wasn’t any better. He’d barely been able to get a few sentences out of her before she convulsed and fell to the ground hard enough to give herself a concussion. The guy had insisted he’d seen something growing out of her faceplate when he saw the goddess, but how could Garrett trust the words of a pathetic druggie?

And it's all this close to Rainbow Basin. He thought and chewed on his fingers. His nails were soft and ragged things now, and they bled whenever he tried to use them for anything more than pointing at idiots. Sebastian must’ve got them. Don’t know how, don’t know when, and don’t know why the fuck he knew we were coming, but it has to be him. Tarel wouldn’t have had me go this far into the middle of fucking nowhere just to scapegoat some random dude.

“Garrett? Are you listening?” Coleen asked with a little too much frustration in her voice. She’d gotten cocky after Annette joined the group. “We can literally see the place. You’re our self-proclaimed leader, so lead us.”

Self-proclaimed? The nerve of this bitch. Garrett glanced over at the drunkard whose son had started all this shit and grimaced. Why did Tarel call the guy the best scout the world’s ever known? He couldn’t find his way out of a bottle if his ass was flat on the bottom.

“First off, change your fucking tone.” Garrett snapped and exposed half of his black-bladed sword for the group to see. It had the desired effect. “I’m the leader here because I’m the most powerful out of all of us. We’re going to Rainbow Basin to take care of a certain problem, take revenge for one of our own, and then we’re heading right the fuck back.”

A murmur spread through the crowd.

“I thought we were scouting for new hazards.”

“Weren’t we trying to find fertile farmland?”

“Why’re we going back? Isn’t that the opposite of what we’re here for?”

Garret snapped to the person who’d spoken that last line. Damian Illovich, as sober as the day he was born. “Hey, it’s Damian! Look, everyone! The fat alcoholic finally decided to join the realm of the sober!”

Damian tilted his head to the side. “Aren’t we here to get revenge for my son? Because you’re making me second-guess your motivations.”

Something in Damian’s eyes made Garrett want to flinch away. It was almost like the man could see right through him, down to his core, and somehow further beyond. He had a core that let him do something like that, but he hadn’t been sober long enough to grow powerful. He hadn’t lived a full other life like Garrett had.

He was just an alcoholic who’d lost his son. And probably gone a little crazy in the meantime.

“Of course we’re here for your kid. For Sebastian Cormier, the man who abandoned humanity and ran away to one of the freakish other species of this world!” Garrett repeated the words Tarel had written for him verbatim, and he heard the confused and scared gasps he’d been looking for. “He killed Damian’s son, stole what was rightfully ours, and set out in the night before anyone could stop him! I only caught a glimpse of the coward with a blood-stained blade and a smile tainted with madness, but in his mutterings, I found out where he was going and what direction it was in!”

Garrett grinned at all the cheer that erupted. He’d been expecting fear and cowering, but he liked this a whole lot better. Whoever said it was better to be feared than to be loved had no idea what they were talking about.

“In three days, we’ll reach their headquarters and take the traitor’s head for his crimes!”

Another cheer spread through the group. A flash of lightning over Rainbow Basin.

The sky fucking exploded.

Fifteen minutes later, after working to calm down a group that had no desire to be anything but worked up, Garrett decided it was high time he talked to Tarel again. The Embodiment hadn’t spoken to him in a little over a week and a half, so there had to be a few minutes of connection available.

He bit his tongue as fear threatened to seep out. No matter what lies and hollow assurances he’d told everyone else, he wasn’t exactly feeling confident. Sebastian should’ve been easy pickings, and then it would be done. But apparently Rainbow Basin wasn’t as abandoned as Garrett thought it was.

“Come on, come on.” He muttered while swiping through his interface. “Pick up, damn you. I’m in this mess because of you, and I’m not getting myself killed just to convince one alcoholic of something I don’t give a shit about.”

His interface deepened to a dull silver, then fuzzed into a mass of indecipherable mess. {I don’t think you’ve ever been the one to contact me.} Tarel’s voice echoed in Garrett’s helmet. {Is it done?}

{No, it’s not fucking done!} Garrett hissed. {The hammer of god just fell on that damn city, and now everyone’s fucking terrified! You didn’t tell me anything about this!}

{Are you included in that ‘everybody?}

Garrett bristled at Tarel’s tone. It was a pity so thick it was almost mocking. {Of course I am! The only reason I’m even here is because you send me after some random dude who ran the fuck away! Why couldn’t I have picked some random asshole, cut his head off, and told Damian that I got the guy who killed his son? Wouldn’t that have been so much fucking easier?!”

{No. This is how it has to go.} Tarel said smoothly. {Sebastian Cormier has to die before he can say anything. Or do anything stupid enough that endangers all of us. Do not mistrust me again, Garrett. You are my chosen one–the chosen of will–and I expect you to live up to my expectations.}

With that, Tarel severed the connection. Garrett found himself staring at his fully functional interface, and he took a deep breath to calm himself. Tarel was right. Garret wasn’t like the rest of these idiots. He was better in every way. And if Sebastian needed to die for some greater reason Tarel wasn’t telling him, then that was just how it was going to be.

//SLIGHT PERSPECTIVE SHIFT INITIATED.

//TARGET DESIGNATED AS DAMIAN ILLOVICH.

//INITIATING…

“Something’s up with him.” Damian muttered.

“Nnoooo. What made you think that?” Coleen snorted. “It’s not like our dear leader just blew up at us, and then the city we’re about to go into got attacked by God. Damian, what the hell are we going to do about this?”

Damian laced his fingers together and frowned into the light of the campfire. Coleen, Nazanin, and Felix fidgeted in different ways, but to the same discomfort. Only they knew what Annette had done, and it didn’t sit well with any of them. Not because she wanted to talk with Sebastian, or that she was working with an alien, but that her way sounded so much more… desirable than what they were stuck with.

“Is it bad that I want to go with the strange alien into the city God hates?” Felix laughed. “Somehow, it feels safer than staying around Garrett. Um, no offense, Damian.”

“None taken.” Damian said. “You all know I’ve known Sebastian didn’t kill my boy since the day I agreed to come with this little snot. I was just… running from it.”

Damian smiled weakly and looked over three of the four people he’d put his trust in since he came to this blasted world. Something told him that there was so much more to it than he knew, and he’d quickly found out that ‘something’ was his core. It felt older than he was. Like it had existed in this world for decades before it found its way into his chest.

It was the only reason he got up in the morning. Why he didn’t wake up staring at the bottom of a bottle. It told him Sebastian wasn’t the right target, and that by staying near Garrett, he’d find the person he was looking for. And then he’d found the four. His core had gotten quieter, but he still felt things that shouldn’t be there. Like at this particular moment, where it felt like Garrett was both right there and millions of miles away at the exact same time.

Nazanin smiled and patted the massive gun that sat next to her like another person. “If Garrett tries to run, he’ll have a bullet in the back of his head before he knows what hit him. He knows what happened to your son, and he’s not getting away before he tells us the truth.”

The overly violent sentiment warmed Damian’s heart. “Thanks, Nazanin.”

“We’re all here for you.” Felix patted Damian’s shoulder reassuringly. “Garrett promised us all really different things to get us here, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to follow through on any of them. So there’s only one thing we can rely on–each other.”

“Nice sentiment, but a little too happy for me.” Coleen cut in. “We’re about to march into some alien species’ hometown, poke around for one human that might be hiding his identity, and then go home. What part of that sounds like a competent plan to you?”

“None of it.” Felix agreed. “That’s why we’re talking here, not in the camp with the rest of them. So what’s the call? Do we sneak away and try to find Annette?”

Coleen violently shook her head. “She had that weird alien guy with her. We don’t have anything like that. I say we follow Garrett’s lead until it's obvious he doesn’t have a plan, break off, and try to find Annette on our own. Or who knows–maybe we’ll stumble into Sebastian by complete accident and find out why the hell Garrett is so obsessed with him.”

“The mystery man won’t be a mystery for much longer.” Damian sighed and leaned back, summoning a flask of slightly spiked cola from his interface that he took a small sip of. “If he isn’t some kind of death god or great betrayer, I’m going to be pissed at Garrett for wasting all of our times.”

Nazanin patted her sniper in agreement. Coleen nodded with a snort, and Felix excitedly vibrated where he sat. It wasn’t anything like the crew Damian had surrounded himself with back on Earth, but somehow, he felt so much better with them. They weren’t enablers, they weren’t leeches, and they didn’t hurt him whenever they got into an argument. When he was with them, a taste of alcohol was enough.

Just for the enjoyment of the night. He raised his flask in a silent prayer and passed it to Felix, who did the same and took a swig. It circled around until it got back to him, and Coleen had taken the longest sip out of everyone.

Soon, there would be no reason to stay together. It was the one part of everything Damian wasn’t looking forward to.