Fuelling the Fire

NeroNero, Promo

You’ve always struck me as the kind of guy who runs like a closed system, Grimskull.

No input, no output.

No chatter or clutter.

Just a cold, locked-down machine built for one sole purpose.

Survival.

The way you sit there, motionless, your skull-faced glare doing all the talking? It’s the same kind of stillness I’ve witnessed in server rooms at 3AM.

Quiet. Controlled.

Waiting for something to break the silence.

On the outside, you’ve got all the hallmarks of unshakable code: strong firewall, no backdoors, no bugs. But the longer I’ve watched, the more obvious it’s become.

There’s a flaw in your programming.

For all your ironclad looks and dead-man’s calm, there’s one piece of corrupted code running in your head.

You want to believe. You want to trust people.

It’s hardwired deep in your core, and it’s made you easy to read.

Your problem though, Grimmy, is that you’ve never learned to patch the system. You’ve let the same vulnerability get exploited over and over, and every time you act like the crash report will read differently.

The Third Eye saw it first. They dangled freedom in front of you like a piece of bait on a broken loop. You bit, eager to escape your own death sentence, and the second you stepped out of line, they fried your hard drive.

They left you glitched and disfigured — molten metal hardwired to your bones.

…but it didn’t rewrite your instincts.

Next came John the Revelator. He plugged in a new purpose, installed you as his Horseman, and sold you on Conquest — an upgrade you didn’t ask for but couldn’t resist initiating.

Only, as always, the end result was the same.

JTR left you stranded behind the door, locked out and abandoned the moment you outlived your usefulness.

Discarded like an outdated piece of software.

You’d think all that downtime would’ve taught you something, wouldn’t you? But no. You kept rebooting — running the same old loop.

Offering your hand, waiting for someone to prove you wrong.

That’s where Drewitt came in, wasn’t it Another trusted connection. Another line you let run straight to your core without a second scan.

You watched him betray you, frame by frame. He whispered to Gemini; gave her the backdoor key.

Let her slip through the net whilst you stood there, locked up — stuck between old code and new doubt.

The moment his words hit your ears, you knew you’d been breached again, and now you sit there.

Helpless.

System compromised.

Caught in an endless loop of anger and self-doubt, trying to debug a situation you’ve seen a thousand times before.

But the fact of the matter is, preacher:

No matter how many times the world sets you ablaze.

No matter how many times it scorches you to the bone, you keep reaching for the match.

You still believe and harbour hope — even after all the countless wounds you’ve suffered.

All the broken promises.

All the systems that have betrayed you.

Still you stand.

Still you wait for someone to prove you wrong…

To you, Grimskull, we pass this burden — so pray enlighten us…

What will it take for you to stop lighting the match?