"Sergeant Rowley, ICAP has intelligence you may be interested in."
Matt licked his lips. "I thought ICAP was defunct." Their future funding had been rolled into pensions for former augs, since two-thirds of the upper management had died on the same day, augs had stopped working, and Jade no longer held any narcotic or addictive properties.
"Government agencies never go away." As she talked he looked at himself in the mirror. His hair had started to grow back, his scars were fading, and new muscle rippled under his robe. "I thought being an American you would understand this. Do you want to hear or not?" He flexed, and his chest bulged, lean and massive despite a lack of exercise. Maybe even bigger than when he'd gone to bed.
He hid his worry behind a chuckle. "Sure, Blossom. What's the news?"
"A creature has been spotted outside Damascus, nine feet tall with wings of silver feathers. It claims to be a god and has enslaved several villages so far. Calls itself Arakiel."
"Wow." He couldn't think of a more coherent reply. Arakiel, the second fallen angel mentioned in the Book of Enoch.
"Cults to it have sprung up in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Cairo, Al Qassim, Riyadh, Ma'an. There are twenty-seven aggregate reports so far."
"Shit, Blossom, what are we supposed to do about it?"
Until that moment, he never knew a shrug could be audible. "I don't know. But we're the worldwide experts on egregoroi now, and you're ordered to report to work at oh-nine-hundred. As a consultant."
"What if I don't want the job?"
"They've been authorized to detain you until you cooperate. See you in two hours."
He opened his mouth to protest the timeline, then heard the throaty chop of an Apache AH-64's rotors approach over the treeline. "Okay, I'll see you then."
He hung up the phone and limped back to the bed. Monica raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
He kissed her cheek. "Hey, baby. I got to go to work."
The End
Jade Sky Page 24