My mother was never particularly religious, but she named me Gabriel after the archangel, hoping that I would grow up to be a righteous man.
I lived a normal life, with a normal family, trying my best to hurt no one and help when I could, whoever I could.
But I never expected to be dragged into war at 19, forced to fight for my country because some madman in Russia decided my homeland somehow belonged to him.
I wasn't exactly looking forward to college, but this was definitely not the future I envisioned.
These days, everyone's whining about how hard life is or how unfair things are. I never understood it, but let me tell you something—when the shit hits the fan, suddenly everyone shuts up.
I'll never forget my first day at boot camp. A recruit, fresh off the bus, told the instructor he wanted to be discharged because he didn't identify as a man. The instructor kicked him so hard in the balls I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his skull, like Glenn in The Walking Dead. The instructor just looked at him and said, "Looks like you're a man after all."
After that, nobody dared complain. We were there to prepare for war—there was no room for that kind of nonsense. The enemy wouldn't care about our feelings.
The next three months? They were the hardest and most rewarding of my life. That was when I discovered I had a god-given talent for combat, for war.
In school, I was never top of the class, but when it came to hand-to-hand combat, strategy, tactics—I excelled. In just three months, I reached a level of proficiency in those fields that would take others decades to attain.
My abilities didn't go unnoticed. I was promoted and sent to the front lines, leading a squad as the war intensified. The army couldn't afford to keep training new recruits anymore, so we were sent out—whether we were ready or not.
The horrors of war are difficult to describe. Over five years, I lost countless friends and took even more lives. It eventually became second nature to me—so much so that I grew numb to it all.
By the age of 24, I was unrecognizable. I don't think my own family would even know me now. But I'll never know for sure—they fled across the Atlantic while I stayed behind. The boy who had no direction in life was gone, replaced by a hardened soldier, a weapon covered in scars that told stories of battles fought and survived.
It may sound crazy, but I thrived in the chaos of it all—the fights, the explosions. It made my blood run hot, made me feel alive in ways I can't explain.
In those five long years, I honed my skills to the point that no one could match me. Don't get me wrong, a bullet could take me down just like anyone else, but my body, my abilities, my techniques—they were honed to a razor's edge, perfected in ways that would've seemed impossible.
Because of my record, I was selected for a mission that was supposed to end it all.
On December 31st, 2030, a team of elite operatives and I were given a simple order: infiltrate the Russian presidential palace and take out the madman who started this whole mess.
Long story short, everything went to hell. My teammates were slaughtered, and I had to fight my way through until I finally found the bastard hiding and put a bullet in his skull.
Too bad I got hit by a stray bullet in the process.
A fucking stray bullet.
Here I am—one of the best soldiers on the planet, a man who had killed entire squads of elite troops single-handedly—and I'm about to die because of a lucky shot.
As the blood poured out and I felt the numbness spreading through my limbs, my mind drifted back to simpler times. I thought about the days when I was just a kid, sitting with my family, watching movies and TV shows—especially Star Wars.
"Man, it sure would've been cool to use the Force… I wouldn't have to die like this… too bad."
And with that final thought, everything went dark. I felt myself floating, drifting away into the endless sea of unconsciousness.
…
Or so I thought.
"MAN, THAT SURE WAS A BADASS WAY TO GO OUT!!"