Raven

C4-621: RAVEN C-four-six-two-one. Callsign: Raven. No home. No future. just another weapon. Drop through the atmosphere, red in the sky, Another dead world with a reason to die. Corporate vultures circling, waiting to feed the fire, Steel on my shoulders, a pulse in the wire. Boost through the wreckage, let the targeting sing, I don't ask who I'm killing, just the price of the thing. Walter has a contract, debts to repay, Turn another sunrise to a battlefield of gray. Augmented and hollow, with a number for a name, They rebuilt the machine but forgot the frame. A man beneath the armor, if there's anything to save— A heartbeat in a cockpit and a future in a grave. I am Raven, I don't remember who I was. Just a voice in the static and a weapon because— Someone gave me a number. Someone gave me a name. Now I'm caught between the silence and the sound of the flames. Rubicon, a graveyard with a fortune underground, Coral in the bloodstream, singing without a sound. Arquebus brings iron, Balam brings guns, Liberation Front bleeding, still holding the line. I'm selling out my services to whoever pays in time. Then a voice in the static cuts across the comms, Not a warning, not a target, not incoming bombs. Ayre speaks like I'm a person, like there's something I can choose, Like a world beyond the crossfire has a future left to lose. I've been modified for combat, engineered to survive, But surviving isn't living if there's nothing left inside. I am Raven, black wings in a blood-red sky. Born to follow orders, never question why. Someone gave me a number, just a ghost beneath the steel. If there's nothing left of who I was, Then tell me why I feel. There's a voice across the battlefield that calls me buddy, Rusty in the cockpit, laughing when the sky gets bloody. He doesn't know my history, doesn't need my past, Just trusts me in the crossfire when the missiles blast. But friendship turns to weakness when the contracts draw the lines, And a brother becomes a target when the orders are assigned. I won't pretend I'm righteous, won't claim that I am free, But when he calls me buddy, there's still a man in me. “621. Do you read me?” “Raven, we need you on this one.” “Raven?” I'm listening. For the first time in my life, I'm listening. Walter says the mission's worth the cost of what we burn, Carla sees the clock run down, says there's no time to return. Ayre hears a future calling from a world we can't contain, And I'm standing in the middle of a planetary grave. Three voices in the comms, three paths through the smoke, One says finish what we started, one says leave the past behind, One says there's another future if we dare to cross the line. I'm tired of the numbers, tired of the names they give, Tired of being told that killing is the price to live. I'm no shining hero, no savior of the land, Just a mercenary with a weapon and a trigger in my hand. I can turn the world to ashes, let tomorrow disappear, Or choose an unknown future, face the cost without the fear. No name on the roster, no face in the file, A pulse in the chassis, a world on the brink, A thousand questions I was never meant to think. I'm the sum of the surgeries, the debt and the steel, The things I can't remember and the things that I feel. Call me hound, call me asset, call me whatever you please, But you don't get to own the choices living under these seams. Maybe I'm still a weapon, maybe that's all I'll ever be, But a weapon that can question is a danger to the hand. No more waiting for permission, no more living by decree— If there's a future worth protecting, it'll be because I chose to be. I am Raven. Not the man I was before. Not the weapon you remember. Not your hound anymore. I am Raven. Let the engines shake the ground. Let the Coral sing its warning. Let the dead world hear the sound. I am Raven six, two, one.