The man sat on the bench, staring into the brilliant hues of the setting sun, dropping into the ocean to the west. Perfectly still, sunglasses hiding the eyes.

A construction workers tool, the nail gun, lay crookedly on the ground, blood congealing slowly next to it in the sand and rock covering the roof of the building he had been working on. He didn’t notice the pain, not any longer, if he ever had in the last few years.

Memories took him, memories of decades past, of a year ago, of murdered souls calling out to him, the ones he killed, the ones he didn’t save, regardless of who he killed, the ones he abandoned to their fates.

They blended together, and swirled, rage buried deep, anger controlled by compliance to a code, a code that he left everything for, an ideal that betrayed him, a code that he betrayed in return, sacrificed on the altar of a dead promise.

The ghosts were coming for him. He knew that, maybe had always known that, ever since he took the label all those years ago in the jungles of Timor.

Who was he to fight it? Why should he?

He had fought it for a long time. The structure, destroyed. The others thought he missed the spider because of their familial, brotherhood, all of which was true. The true need called though, he needed to follow orders, because his control had frayed. Four months into the coma, and the therapy the others suggested, it had brought the ghosts to the fore. He needed structure. Command and control.

The soldier known as Killer Ghost, the “hero” known as Ghost Venom, stared blindly into the darkening sky, hands twitching silently as they healed around the nails, the pain no longer sufficient to bring the control back.