Before Gil had even opened his mouth to begin to speak, Ed realized what was coming.
"You know what, Parker?" As the unstable man grew even more agitated from Team Ones' leaders unsuccessful attempts of negotiating him to calm down and release him, Gil leaned forward towards Greg, pulling on the role tied to Greg to pull him even closer as drops spittle flew from his lips as he unloaded his anger and resentment onto the man. "You don't get the last word this time."
Looking back on it later - much later, when Ed could look back on it without having to drown the flashbacks and dark thoughts in countless bottles of alcohol after, - Ed thought Greg might have known what was about to happen to him as well. It was all there, the tightening of his muscles, the widening of his eyes and the flaring of his nostrils as his chest heaved, increased amount of sweat dripping from his face, his attempts to negotiate with the angered and inconsolable man growing more and more desperate as he was leaned further and further back over the edge of the platform he had been forced upon by the unstable man.
But even as the sniper and the rest of Team One screamed their friends' name, - in a fruitless effort to stop the events that were inevitably about to happen, unaffected by their loud screams of desperation - Ed Lane knew that they were too late. Too late to save Greg Parkers life. Too late to stop Gil from gaining his sick and twisted version of revenge from the man that, in his eyes, ruined everything in his life.
There was no way out now.
With widened eyes and screamed pleas for mercy and forgiveness, the members of Team One were forced to watch from their positions, hundreds of feet away from their leader as Gil released his tight grip on the rope, letting the only thing keeping Greg Parker from falling to the floor go.
Ed's vision blurred, tears dripping from his blue eyes as he watched his friends' only hope of surviving this let go, stoically stepping forward to the edge of the platform to watch Greg fall, not even showing a sliver of remorse as he watched the man fall backwards.
Within seconds Greg fell backwards, a loud cry of shock and horror escaping his lips as his feet slipped from the edge of the platform - sending him plummeting towards the concrete floor far below.
It only took seconds. The movies make it seem like everything slows down, but from Ed's eyes, his friend and teammate plunged through the air almost too fast for his eyes to follow, swiftly cutting through the at least a hundred feet of distance from the suspended platform where Gil had forced him onto, to the concrete floor of the stadium.
Team One watched, horrified and immobile to save their leader from his cruel fate, cries of anguish escaping their shock-frozen forms and tearing through their screamed-hoarse throats as their widened eyes tracked their leaders body as he came swiftly plummeting onto the hard and unforgiving concrete that made up the stadium floor, a sickening thud followed by the crack of Greg Parker's skull slamming against the concrete echoing across the stadium. Greg's body immediately went limp, the man lying sprawled on his back, his limbs thrown around him carelessly, like a puppet who had had its puppeteering lines severed abruptly.
Ed could have tricked himself into believing his friend was sleeping - if it wasn't for the ever growing pool of dark crimson blood that was growing around his still body.
Ed abandoned his rifle, carelessly letting it clatter onto the metal of the seats as he stumbled up to stand upon trembling legs, his normally still and unmoving hands shaking violently as he made his way down the stands with tears dripping down his face, the voices of his teammates crackling through his earpieces they all ran through the building towards the stadium floor, all of their eyes trained on the form of their friend and team leader that lay crumpled and broken, each one of them trying desperately to convince themselves that Greg would get up, that Greg would groan and give the "no harm" call. That Greg would cough, roll over, give any sign of being alive.
Greg needed to be okay.
Ed needed Greg to be okay.
But Greg wasn't. It was too late.
Ed felt cold and numb as he roughly collapsed onto his knees beside the unmoving form of Greg, the cloth of Eds' uniform pants immediately becoming darkened and dampened as they soaked up the blood that had pooled and surrounded his friends' crumpled form. As Ed stared into the cloudy and unseeing eyes of the man he had been talking with less than an hour prior, he felt the heavy truth crash down upon his already sore and weary shoulders, his breaths quickening as his brain finally comprehended the truth of what had happened.
Ed couldn't deny it any longer.
There, laid out on the cool concrete before him was Gregory Parker, in a pool of his own blood, eyes wide opened and focused on nothing, blood staining his face where it had dripped from his mouth and nose, his mouth open as his jaw hung, his features frozen in a permanent look of horror and despair.
Gregory Parker, the longtime leader of Team One and a good friend and trusted figure of the entire team... was dead. He was gone.
A choked sob escaped Ed's lips, and he buried his head in his hand, - the hand splattered with blood, Greg's blood - using his other to gently trail across the already cooling face of Gregory Parker's, respectfully pulling his friends' eyelids closed, giving him the dignity of the illusion of just being asleep.
If only it was real.
As the rest of Team One slowly gathered together around Greg's broken form, resting comforting hands on each others shoulders or burying tear-streaked faces into teammates chest, silence was the only sound.