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It took far longer than I would have liked to bring in Lilith, Gabe, Rick, and Kerri as well, and by the end of it I was exhausted. They were all young men and women though they were all older than me. Each of them had also been thought of as a little strange to those around them, as if they had been born for the sole purpose of dying to fulfill this position. I had to believe that Fate had planned for all of this and had made certain that there were contingency plans and loopholes in all arrangements, just in case. For those I sought now, it was as if they were actually destined to work here, which was probably why they had been on the list of potential Angels of Death.
However, unlike Adrienne, it had taken a lot more convincing to get them to accept the job. They had seemed unwilling to part with their lives, thinking of themselves as young and happy and in love. In the end it didn't matter. They were meant to do this and I was far too focused on recruiting them so I could save Thanos.
After Adrienne, the first person I met was Lilith. She was petite and artistic and I found her sitting at a park, sketching a landscape in a sketch pad. Looking at the unfinished work, I could see that she was extremely talented and if it wasn’t necessary, I possibly would have left her alone. Doing this was so much harder than I had imagined. I didn’t know how Thanos managed to do this every time an Angel of Death completed their contract and moved on. Adrienne had decided to come with me, saying that there was a chance she could actually help with the recruitment. Considering how easily she had accepted the position and how it seemed that Thanos had already discussed so much with her, I had no choice but to agree.
I was grateful for her company and assistance though. My body was already feeling the strain from lack of sleep. It was Adrienne who first approached Lilith, quite easily getting her to open up about how she was just waiting here for her boyfriend to finish playing a round of disc golf with his friends. Good, at least when we got her to agree to join us her body would not sit there for long. I walked over to the park bench and sat on one side of her, with Adrienne on the other side. “Lilith, do you believe in Fate?” I asked.
“I…guess so,” she answered, not looking up from her sketch except when she was looking once more at the details of the trees and the creek in the background.
Unlike with Adrienne, I decided it would be best just to get the truth out in the open, no matter how much it would complicate the conversation. “My name is Tamesis and I am the Angel of Death. My boss is Death and he has been taken prisoner, which is dangerous because it throws off the Balance of the world. If that tips too much to favor either life or death then the whole world will be affected, and not in a good way.”
When Lilith tried to stand up to walk away, Adrienne grabbed her arm and kept her there with us. “Listen to her. She is telling you the truth,” Adrienne said.
Poor Lilith; she looked scared, and I didn’t blame her for thinking that we were crazy. Still, I had to respect her for not screaming bloody murder now that we had refused to let her leave. “You are special, Lilith, meant for so much more than the short life ahead of you.” I had no way of actually knowing how short her life was, but there was a certain frailty to her and I took a wild guess that without me here now she would only last for at most a few more years. “You can help Fate maintain the Balance of the world.”
Adrienne jumped in again as I hesitated and I felt grateful for that. “There are some people, like your boyfriend and his friends who are meant to live long lives and experience the joy of love and the pain of loss and to learn from all of their mistakes. But then there are people like you and I, who are meant for greater things, to be the lesson for others. Our lives touch a few others in the tiniest of ways, but our deaths will help so many more. They will be inspired to live their lives to the fullest, to not waste a single day and to not be afraid to dream big. It is an incredibly worthy cause, and even after you die, you will still be able to help others.”
I had to admit that Adrienne was extremely compelling and listening to her made me want to sign up, even though I was already a part of this. It only took a few more minutes of Adrienne and I trading off with Lilith and explaining everything to her before she finally, even if a little hesitantly, agreed. Placing my left hand on her heart, it did not take me long to see the flaws in her lungs and exploit them. Lilith succumbed to her asthma, and I easily finished the job and she too joined the side of Death.
Adrienne once again proved to be helpful when we went to collect Gabe. He appeared to be older, perhaps a couple years older than Adrienne, in his upper 20s, and he was a lifeguard. That was unfortunate because the purpose of his job was to save lives. That made things far more complicated, but once again, with Adrienne there it seemed to be easy. She was the one who discovered that he had become a lifeguard after he had dropped out of college. It was a decent job and it paid well enough for him to have a decently stable life, but Gabe was more of a drifter at heart and he seemed to like that. Adrienne found out that he was between girlfriends and considered himself to be a ladies’ man. He at least kept himself in shape. I could see that working in his favor when out to Reap certain souls.
After telling him that he would be able to have as many girlfriends around the world as he would like in his off-time, it seemed to be a lot easier to explain the whole situation. He accepted that I was the Angel of Death better than I had expected and didn’t even seem to balk when I told him that he would need to die in order to accept the job. There was nothing really wrong with Gabe, but I had to exploit something that people would not question too much and so a little concentration led to the weakening of the artery walls in his heart. Eventually Gabe's heart gave out.
We found Rick eating at home by himself. Considering that we had just appeared in his dining room, it was no surprise when he had grabbed for his shotgun and pointed it at us.
“That won’t work all that well, Ricky,” Adrienne said. “We’re already dead, but you keep on holding that if it makes you feel better.”
After a few moments, when he realized that we weren’t there to rob him or anything, he finally set the gun down on the table and just stared at us. Our sudden appearance at least alerted him to the fact that we were not exactly normal, so accepting that I was the Angel of Death was relatively quick and easy. However, convincing him to join us in the fight against the Resurrectors was considerably more difficult, even though he had been a soldier for the past eight years; he was used to wars. The way he saw it, war was only every really successful when those fighting truly believed in what they were fighting for. I thought I had him by telling him that we were fighting for the continuation of the world.
Instead that had only led to him countering with how messed up the world was, with all the murders and rapes and other acts of violence towards people who had done nothing wrong. “Is that really the kind of world you want to fight for?”
“It’s free will. You can give a man everything he could possibly need in his life and he’ll still find something that he thinks he deserves and will do anything he wants for it, including violence. That is his choice, just as this is yours. But, here and now, you need to choose whether or not to help free will to continue. Just know that if the Balance is thrown into chaos, then the ramifications will be great. People will actually die before their time and in ways more gruesome than they should, while others who are meant to die in order to help cleanse the world will continue on and bring destruction down upon others.” Adrienne always seemed to know exactly what to say to exploit the beliefs of a person so they would agree to join us. In the end, Rick choked on his dinner, sitting alone in his house. I had been concerned about how long it would take for his body to be discovered, but Rick told me that he still worked for the military and so when he didn’t show up, they would come looking for him.
The final person on my list was a young woman who seemed to be a workaholic, if the fact that she had three jobs was any indication. We found her at home as she was changing from one uniform to ano
ther one, all the while scarfing down a lunch meat sandwich. Considering her extremely hectic schedule I knew we didn’t have all that long, but by that point I was about ready to collapse. I needed sleep, but I knew that I had to get this job finished, that I had to make sure that Balance was maintained. Thankfully, my most valuable new co-worker was there to basically take the lead as I sat down on Kerri’s bed while she scrambled around for her things.
“I am going to make this really simple for all of us,” Adrienne said. “Kerri, it seems to me that what you really need is a better job with more flexible hours so you can actually enjoy your life. Working three jobs so you can make ends meet is no way to live, especially for a college graduate. It is rather sad that graduates are unable to find jobs in their career fields, but I can tell that you like the work and even more than that you like to help people.”
Kerri was mostly silent compared to the others. Perhaps that was just because she was too busy with trying to balance her jobs with everything else. Adrienne very briefly explained the job and some of its perks, and afterward Kerri finally stopped moving around and her whole body seemed to perk up, as if the weight was falling off of her shoulders. The burdens of student loans would vanish with her death and she seemed to realize that fact. Considering the hectic nature of her life it was easy to have Kerri pass out and hit her head on her bedside table. It was a hard enough hit that her accidental death would be chalked up to blunt force trauma.
After getting them together, I took them all back to our facility.
After a tour of everything, including their new rooms, which they were told they could decorate however they chose in their free time, I took them all to a room I knew well, the same room Thanos brought me to for training. "We aren't going to have much time for training so I hope you all are fast learners. Here we seek to ensure that Fate gets what it wants and that keeps the Balance in check. If a person is meant to die their names will show up on the list. It then becomes our job to go to that person and help their passing along. It is simple enough and I'll show you how exactly to do it all. You'll need to know about Resurrectors and I'll tell you everything I know about them eventually, but for right now just know that they want everyone to live until they are old. Most of the time we can't allow that to happen."
I paused and looked at them. "Thanos isn't allowed to have more than one Angel of Death on his side. For that reason I have decided that it is time to have another classification working here. You all are now to be known as Reapers."
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Project Death: Resurrection Page 31