by Brian Fuller
Helo looked and found he only had access to one area called “Error 1005.3: Ash Angel ID Missing or Corrupted. Unable to retrieve area access listing. Script terminated.” No matter how politely or loudly he said ‘Continue’ or ‘Skip,’ Anna regarded him with a pleasant expression, a looping animation of her shifting her weight and looking at her watch repeating every ten seconds. Knowing a dead computer program when he saw one, Helo walked toward the door only to have it squawk angrily at him and highlight the entire doorframe in red.
“Access denied,” the room informed him in a deep male voice that would have perfectly suited movie-trailer narration.
Somehow Helo knew it would not be the first time he heard that phrase today. After pacing about and trying various commands and tricks to see if he could reboot Anna, he resorted to something low-tech: knocking on the door. A perplexed Goldbow rescued him.
“Stuck, Helo?”
Helo showed him his pointless badge, and Goldbow laughed. “Nice. Come on. I’ll show you around up here. Sorry about the plane. I couldn’t believe it when I heard. I thought I’d lost her . . . you, well, all of you. Thanks for getting that plane down on land. I owe you one, brother.”
Helo nodded. He didn’t feel like anyone should owe him anything. He had failed. People—a lot of innocent people—were dead. Goldbow led him out of a hallway that had six arrival chambers, three to a side. Ahead, the visitors’ lounge waited.
“Deep 7 is basically a big cylinder in the ground with an elevator running through the middle,” Goldbow explained. “All the levels have these cool floors. I did some guard duty here my first year. The Command and Control level feels like the deck of a starship. You’ll like it.”
The decor of the lounge was more like the lobby of an upscale hotel. The high-tech floors ended, abutting with brown ceramic tile. In the middle, leather couches surrounded a square stonework pillar rising into the high ceiling. TV screens affixed to the pillar piped in news from the outside. The base of the pillar was a natural-gas fireplace with windows to all four sides. Colorful fish darted about in a saltwater aquarium that ran along the curved wall on the back side. Glassy, teardrop coffee tables offered various tablets for reading or surfing the internet. Helo stopped and folded his arms. Coverage of the wrecks continued on the news, and he and Goldbow watched for several minutes.
“This one’s got the normals really confused,” Goldbow said. “Apparently the Envoys didn’t even bother to hide the bodies of the pilots they replaced, so now they’ve found four pilots dead in their homes and no pilots dead in the wreckage. Talk about conspiracy theories. No one’s taken responsibility. No demands. No political manifestos. I’m sure aliens will be blamed unless the Scholus invents some terrorist group just to end the guesswork.”
“Where are Cassandra and Corinth?” Helo asked.
“They took them down already. They wanted you and Cassie first, but since you weren’t out yet, they took Corinth. Not sure what I’m supposed to do here since my part was just sitting at the Dallas airport hoping Cassie wasn’t dead.”
“You think you can get her back?” Helo ventured.
“Well, this is the thing, Helo. Whatever Cassie dislikes, she destroys. Whatever she loves, she adores. She loved me once. I want it back.”
Helo nodded, trying to picture what an adoring Cassandra would even look like. What would Goldbow and Cassandra talk about or do for fun? He could envision them at the shooting range blowing up fresh produce from fifty yards and settling disagreements with bludgeoning weapons.
The elevator chimed, and they turned back toward the center of the cylindrical structure. A thin Ash Angel in a gray business suit walked out flanked by two burly Michaels packing BBGs in oversized holsters on their hips. The man had delicate features and a small head with expertly cropped black hair. He was morphed to around thirty, though it appeared he had aged his face to give it an edgier look. Goldbow’s face scrunched up, eyes nervous and even a little apprehensive.
“Which one of you is Helo?” the man asked, scanning the badges. Helo raised his hand.
“Come with me, please,” he ordered, turning back to the elevator and allowing the muscle to do the encouraging.
“Good luck,” Goldbow said, looking relieved.
The trip took him a scant two floors down.
“Deep 7 Security,” the elevator informed them in an innocuous voice. “Surveillance, Detention, Armory, and Interrogation.”
The elevator door slid open. The man led the way while reviewing information on his tablet, the guards following behind, Helo in the middle. They led him to a door labeled Interrogation Room Two and signaled for him to enter and sit in a metallic chair with restraints. The entire room seemed made of a glassy, plastic substance and was spotless. A table and another metallic chair sat across from him, a large mirror—no doubt two-way—on the opposite side. The Michaels grabbed his wrists to restrain him, and Helo resisted.
“What’s going on?” he yelled at the man with the tablet.
He regarded Helo expressionlessly. “Standard procedure.”
Helo submitted, the guards clapping his wrists inside the metallic cuffs that clicked as they trapped him. The man nodded to the guards, and they left. He placed the tablet on the table and the glass top sprang to life, files filling the space.
“My name is Faust, and I am representing the Archai and the Medius today. Our session will be recorded. You are known as Helo, formerly Trace Evans?”
“Yes. What’s with all the—”
“And your team leader is Cassandra?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Then let’s begin. First, as per the dictate of Grand Archus Gabriel, we need proof of Ash Angel Bestowal. I understand you have Strength and Inspire. Since Dreads can also have Strength, I will need you to use Inspire on me. Begin.”
“You’ll have to touch my hand.”
He complied, and Helo poured his Virtus into Faust while saying, “If you smile, more people will like you.”
Faust pulled his hand away, eyes flashing. He tapped on the table and entered a few notes on his tablet before looking up and meeting Helo’s eyes with a grave stare.
“I should inform you that the particulars of the failed Dreamliner mission have already been covered by your associates. They indicate that you had a conversation with a Dread female, Dahlia. Is this correct?”
“Yes.”
“According to our records, this was your third interaction with her. Are there other encounters you have not reported?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He typed in a few more notes. “Going back to your first encounter with this Dahlia, please tell me everything she has said to you. Under Article 29.3 of the Ash Angel legal code, I am required to tell you that this will be recorded and could be used in a tribunal.”
“Tribunal? What do you think I—”
“Nervous, Helo? Do you have a reason to fear a tribunal?”
“No!”
“No? I think you do.” Faust leaned forward. “Dahlia. I want everything she’s said to you, including information you’ve withheld.”
Helo related his conversations to the best of his recollection while Faust looked on, expressionless. When Helo got to the part where Dahlia identified herself as Aclima, Faust took more notes, but as Helo began to relate the rest of the events of the doomed flight, Faust held him up.
“What happened during the flight has already been recorded, including your failure to gain access to the cockpit in a timely fashion.”
Helo felt like someone had punched him in the gut. They were going to hang this on him. Maybe they should. Faust tapped a few more times while Helo fumed, wondering if he would ever make it out of Deep 7. That he could ever be a prisoner in the Ash Angel Organization had never crossed his mind. Would they really lock him up for failing his mission?
“Do you know this person?” Faust asked, turning the tablet toward Trace. And there he w
as, the man that had tried to kill him in the bathtub.
“That’s the one,” Helo said, trying to lift his hand to point and remembering he was restrained. “He’s the one in the graveyard video and the one I ran into in the Hammer Bar and Grill. Who is he?”
“You tell me,” Faust said, leaning back in his chair portentously.
“What? I have no idea.”
Faust let silence reign for several uncomfortable moments. “I think you know more than you’re letting on, Helo.”
“Why would you think that?”
“It just seems that you’ve had a particular knack for rather conveniently escaping Dreads and Shedim. I doubt there are any Ash Angel operatives alive who have seen as many creatures of evil in one place and lived to tell the tale. It seems you even have a little Dread guardian angel who shows up to warn you of danger, isn’t that right?”
“I told you her reasons.”
Faust let go a derisive chuckle. “Yes, this mystery talisman that controls the Dreads. She wants to partner with us, is that right? So she can get her free will back? You do realize how ludicrous this all sounds, don’t you? I mean, you don’t seem like a particularly creative guy, but in all my days sitting in this chair, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone spout this level of preposterous nonsense. So why don’t you cut the bull and tell us what you’ve been up to.”
Helo leaned forward and was about to say something rather un-angel like, when the door slid open. Grand Archus Gabriel stood in the doorway wearing a blue Deep 7 uniform and military-style cap with the halo-sword logo in gold thread on the front. While both Faust and Gabriel looked grave, Gabriel added a regal, commanding touch to it that meant business.
Faust stood up. “Grand Archus . . .” he stammered. “I wasn’t expecting you. I was nearly done.”
“Why is this man restrained?” Gabriel asked.
“Standard procedure. Archus Ramis ordered that Helo be interrogated as a potential hostile,” Faust explained.
It took Helo a moment to realize he’d called Ramis an Archus instead of an Archon. Ramis had been promoted.
“Let him go. Now,” Gabriel ordered. “I’ll take this up with Ramis.”
Faust came around the desk to release the restraints, but Helo flared his Strength and ripped out of them, ruining the arms of the chair.
“You’ll be filling out a 1399-EQ on that!” Faust hissed.
“No. I won’t.” Helo retorted, tossing what was left of the restraints on the desk, the glass cracking and warping the screen.
Gabriel grinned. “Follow me, Helo. We need to talk.”
They left Faust and the security level behind, Gabriel keeping silent until the doors on the elevator closed.
“Since this is your first time in Deep 7, I think you should get a look at the reliquarium. It’s a nice place to have a private conversation, and someone wants to meet you. I apologize for all this. Unfortunately, the directives I intended to spur the discovery of the leak have instead led to a hunt for scapegoats. The Bible says humans were made a little lower than the angels. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference at all.”
“The reliquarium,” the elevator chimed. Then, “Access Denied!”
Helo stepped back, Gabriel forward, and the door slid open.
They stepped into a circular, domed room, a large steel door sealed with horizontal steel bars waiting at the other end. It looked like a bank vault. Two Michael guards stood at attention as the Grand Archus stepped in, and a woman at a long counter on the side of the room rose from her chair where she had been typing on a console.
“Open it up, Naomi,” Gabriel ordered.
“Yes, sir,” the woman replied, returning to her console.
Machinery clanked and whirred as the steel bars retracted into the wall. Heavy double doors pulled apart ponderously, slowly revealing a dimly lit space beyond. They entered the spacious, vaulted library and reliquarium, the doors shutting them in after they crossed the threshold. A row of curved silver shelves were built onto the outer curved wall. They held hundreds of mismatched objects, some of them glowing with an angelic aura. These were the sanctified Sheid killing weapons he had heard about, each created by the sacrifice of an Ash Angel. The other objects seemed a menagerie of odds and ends—a pair of glasses, a rock, articles of clothing, paintings, and a host of ordinary, everyday items.
The interior of the room was filled by packed shelves, curved to match the shape of the room. Books old and new lined the shelves, and one section held scrolls, stone tablets, and metallic plates. But the most interesting feature was light. None of the illuminated squares in the floor or the LED lights in the ceiling were lit, but a bright light shone from somewhere behind all the shelves, and that light illuminated the room just enough for them to see, even from their position just in front of the doors.
The light gradually moved toward them, and when it came into view, the radiance hung Helo’s mouth open. He had seen Cassandra’s gift of Glorious Presence, but it seemed but a dim copy of the burning radiance of the angel in front of him.
She smiled as she approached, friendly brown eyes falling on her visitors. She was a beautiful African American woman, her glory so powerful and intimidating Helo couldn’t meet her eye and had a hard time resisting the urge to kneel.
“Who is she?” Helo whispered to Gabriel, who regarded her fondly as she walked toward them. “Is she an angel? A real one?”
Gabriel smiled. “No more than you or I. Well, a little more, I think. This is Rachael, the Unascended.”
Chapter 31
Cast Out
Helo remembered his instructors mentioning the Unascended during training as a footnote. The Unascended were rare Ash Angels who gained their Seventh Ascendancy but had not risen when their year was up. Even if they had spent more time explaining the phenomenon, Helo doubted any description, however eloquent, could do the Unascended justice. While hard to fathom, normals would still see Rachel as just another woman walking down the street. The Dreads would be able to spot her from orbit. She was as close to a heavenly being as Helo could imagine, and if heaven were filled with beings like her, he had a long way to go before he felt comfortable rubbing shoulders with them.
“There you are, boy!” Rachel said, a hint of the Bayou in her accent. “It’s been a long time I’ve been seeing you behind my eyes. What do they call you?”
“Helo, ma’am.”
Rachel laughed. “Ma’am? Makes me feel like I’m in charge of something down here. Call me Rachel, Helo. Glad you finally came. Been over three years since I’ve had your face in my head. Seen you even before that.”
“I’ve only been an Ash Angel three months,” Helo said.
“That don’t mean nothing, but I ain’t too sure why I’ve had that mug of yours dancing around in my thoughts. And I ain’t the only one. So what do you think, Grand Archus? Why do you think this boy’s been stuck in my head? What’s his next assignment?”
“I was hoping for a little wisdom from you, Rachel,” Grand Archus said, “because the truth is that his next assignment is no assignment at all. When you asked me to bring him, I thought you might have something for him to do while he’s out on his own.”
“On my own?” Were they cutting him loose?
“Let me explain,” the Grand Archus said, “for the benefit of you both. Helo, I want to make it clear that you are not being punished. You’ve done good work for the Ash Angel Organization. It was the majority vote of the Archai that your connection to the Dread woman and her ability to track you make you a liability until either she is dead or the source of the leak is found. We’re going to ask you to make your own way for a while. Do you understand?”
Out of the AAO? Helo suddenly felt like a boat without an anchor, not quite sure what to say. He certainly wouldn’t miss the bureaucracy, but to not have contact with his team or be able to finish what he had started stung. What was he supposed to do with his time? No apartment. No money. Ash Angels didn’t need much, but he didn’t w
ant to live under a bridge.
Rachel’s glowing hand brushed his cheek. He glanced up, finding her smiling sympathetically. “Thank you, Grand Archus. I believe I can take it from here. I know why our boy is here, now.”
The Grand Archus’s eyebrows raised. “Are you sure? I’d be happy to—”
“Go on and shoo,” Rachel ordered.
“Don’t you ascend without me!” the Grand Archus ordered on his way out.
Rachel waited for the vault door to bang shut before waving for Helo to follow her deeper into the shelves, her aura casting a warm bubble of divine light about them.
“Why are you so bright?” Helo asked.
Rachel shrugged. “All Unascended are. You Blanks get a little aura envy, I bet. No one likes to feel like the candle that won’t light. But don’t you worry, the light’s inside you whether it comes out to shine for all to see or not. It’s not your light, anyway.”
“Not my light?”
“No, sir! You think all the crazy things we can do come from us? We dance in borrowed shoes to music we can’t play. God shines, and if we keep the windows clean, that light just fills us up, and we can do what we never could alone. You might be a Blank, Helo, but I can still see you burning bright. So tell me about the Dread woman. Do you know her name?”
“She goes by Dahlia, but when I talked with her on the plane, she said she would tell me her real name. She said it would give me some clue as to who is behind the Dread problems.”
“And did she?”
“Yes,” Helo said. “She said it was Aclima, but I’ve never heard that name before in my life, so I don’t know why it would help anything.”
Rachel smiled knowingly. “Have you told the Scholus?”
“Well, I just told an interrogator. Not sure if it’s made it to the Scholus yet or if it will. People think I’m making it up. Do you know the name?”
“I do,” Rachel replied. “That she would claim to be Aclima is bold. If she is the Aclima, it would really turn over some apple carts. Is she dark haired and as beautiful a woman as you’ve ever seen?”