Artificial Light (Evolution of Angels Book 3)

by Wall, Nathan

  Thor was dead. His head was delivered personally to the Archangel council by Sif. He was also a great opponent to the Light of Souls. It was largely constructed without his knowledge. Even though many in the Northern Corner still remained at large, it was believed with relative certainty that they lived on the outskirts of existence, beyond the rainbow falls.

  “Loki was always a trouble maker.” Gabriel brought up Loki’s profile with a wave of the hand. His fingers moved, nearly throwing Loki into the slush-pile, but he hesitated. He enlarged Loki’s picture. “No, you were crafty. Espionage doesn’t seem like your cup of tea, but then again misdirection was your greatest asset.” Gabriel swiped right and placed Loki in the suspect pile, which was still an exclusive list.

  “There is something I’m missing.” Gabriel looked out over his observation deck. His room was encased in a fortified glass sphere. He had a full-view of all of Heaven in any direction he looked. Directly below him was the rainbow falls, a swirling gush of fogged-light that no one dared enter. It was simultaneously beautiful and menacing for it held great sights but traveling through it led to unknown realms.

  The monitors to his right shimmered and caught his attention. He typed feverishly over the lights, not blinking. You’re in my systems, aren’t you? He squinted and grinned. You are fast, but I am craftier. His fingers were a blur. He bit his lower lip, leaning over the panel, breathing with gleeful anticipation. “I have you.”

  The location of the hack was revealed. It cannot be. He stutter-stepped backwards. In the reflection of his breastplate, Michael’s face shone brightly. “Michael is no traitor…” Gabriel ran his fingers over his head and pulled at his blonde hair. Or is he?

  His eyes turned toward the monitors and soon his step followed. The holographic display suddenly shut off. He let out a frustrated laugh and looked at the floating halo in the armory. “Of course.” He nodded. “You knew I would separate from the Deliverance to protect against enemy intrusion, thus you implanted the code in the crystal you gave me directly into my computer when I walked through my halo. Well played.”

  An orb of light appeared, formed by flickering lights in place of his control panel. He touched it and it shocked him. Undeterred, he tried again, this time with his armor fully manifested to shield his skin. Upon contact, a virtual display appeared over the eye-slits in his faceguard. Gabriel smiled.

  “A secure and untraceable line, but why…” He froze in place, as if serendipity had caused him to take pause. “I was focused outwards. You mean for me to look within.”

  “Gabriel,” Uriel said with surprise in his voice. He stood on his leader’s catwalk, dressed in evening robes, and examined the scene before him. The empty space where Gabriel’s starstone should be was of particular interest. “You’ve separated from the Deliverance?”

  Gabriel’s helmet folded into his shoulder plates and he turned around. “Your presence here is a peculiar one.”

  “I received this message.” Uriel held up a crystal with pink mist within. “I assumed it was from you.”

  “Why?” Gabriel asked.

  “It contained a message only we could know the answers to.” Uriel tightened his robe and placed the crystal in a pocket. He looked at the ground with an embarrassed glow in his cheeks. “Pardon my intrusion. I shall leave.”

  “No.” Gabriel’s voice was firm. Uriel looked back with hope, but Gabriel’s gaze held something different. “The information,” Gabriel said, holding his hand up. “I’d like to take a look.”

  “It was an obvious misdirection. We are being played.”

  “But only one of us was in the game, Uriel. You were purposefully excluded.” Gabriel walked up the steps, speaking with relative calm. “Tell me, when did you receive word?”

  “The crystal?” Uriel seemed confused and slowly walked backwards. “It was in my quarters waiting for me when I retired for the cycle.” His back foot slipped off the platform and Gabriel grabbed him by the robe. He pulled Uriel back onto the platform and steadied him before removing the crystal. “You don’t think I fabricated…”

  “I know not what to think; only we’ve experienced two rebellions in the past and I’m not beyond believing in a third.” Gabriel looked at the crystal and it dematerialized, absorbing into his armor.

  Information quickly scattered through his aurascales. The movement of his armored red scales slowed to a halt and turned gray. His exoskeleton became rigid and kept him from moving. All outside sound was muted and the vision through his eye slits turned black. He was trapped.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lian III

  Lian moved away from Austin and gazed intently at the Progeny Lounge in order to memorize the surroundings. Tables made of reclaimed boat wood. Pheasantwood stools with leather cushions. Large oak barrels stood upright for use as cocktail tables near a stage. Walls and floors stained with cigar smoke. Her mind sketched a picture of Sanderson and his favorite habit. It was as if time stood still. She turned to Athena, whose platinum blonde locks were now familiar.

  “When was I here?” Lian asked, but she spoke to no one in particular. She gazed wide-eyed at her hands as the several cuts she’d sustained during her vision at the pub healed. Her headache was gone. She no longer felt queasy, but instead more powerful than ever. It was as if the lounge was healing her and its energy surging through her. “My abilities... I can hear people think on the far corners of the earth. What is this realm?”

  “It’s not this realm that heals and works through you,” Madame Patricia replied. Her hands massaged the shoulders of the small five year old boy in front of her. Her hands slid behind the boy’s back and lightly pushed him forward. “It’s your proximity to him.”

  Lian swiveled around and stood motionless, looking at the boy. Several memories flashed through her mind like a black and white super-8 film. She fell to her knees and extended her arms. After years of separation, could she finally be reunited with her brother? Austin stepped to help her, but Harold pulled him back.

  “You’re going to want to give her space, mate,” Harold whispered.

  “Jaden?” Lian asked through her tears, her voice hoarse. The child lowered his eyes and turned his head to hide. Lian folded her hands over her face while she sobbed. “You haven’t changed.” Her brother was almost exactly the way she’d left him. All the years they had been denied bubbled up in her throat and choked her words.

  “I don’t understand.” Austin pushed past Harold and knelt beside Lian. His big arms steadied her while sorrow caused her bones to rattle. He kissed her cheek and whispered in shock. “Is that...?”

  “Her brother? Yes.” Madame Patricia nodded. Jaden ran to Athena and crawled into her arms instead of Lian’s.

  “He should be a teenager.” The confusion in Austin’s mind screamed out to Lian. Every question in his thoughts blurted out at once. He vocalized them. “Lian was abducted by the Agency when she was six. Jaden was just a few years younger. What happened to him?”

  “He’s never been outside this realm. At least, not since William Sanderson brought him here.” Madame Patricia walked over to Lian and offered a hand. Lian’s red eyes turned upward. She took Madam Patricia’s hand and was led over to Jaden. The boy was timid at first, but eventually leapt into his sister’s waiting arms. “All of our bodies are mortal in some way, yet time is relative. It affects us all, which is why my kind builds homes where the natural laws of physics are bent.”

  “You’re not with Maya?” Jarrod cracked his knuckles, obviously still ready to throw down.

  “Heavens no.” Madame Patricia giggled. “Pardon the slight pun.”

  Lian put her forehead to Jaden’s and smiled. She didn’t know if she should kiss him or give a huge hug. To cry or to scream? To just close her eyes and breathe it all in, or to lament everything that’d been done to her? If she could’ve transformed into a hundred people to let it all out at once, she would have.

  Her hands sifted through his hair and their eyes locked. There
was a powerful bond between the two. It coursed through her blood. An added sense of static was in the air, working its way in and out of everyone around them. The longer she held his gaze, the more his eyes reflected the energy she emitted.

  His similarities to Azrael are striking; the black hair and beaming blue eyes… Madame Patricia’s voice faded out. Lian turned around and cast a confused squint. The old woman was standing with her mouth closed and arms crossed, examining Jarrod.

  “Did you say something?” Lian asked.

  “Who, me?” Madame Patricia was thrown off by the question. The way her body remained steady told Lian she wasn’t lying. “Just now? No.”

  “That’s weird. I swear I heard… Never mind,” Lian whispered, turning her attention back to Jaden, “Did you hear it too?” she asked him. Her brother grinned at her as if he knew something.

  “Seriously, I don’t get it.” Austin stood up, scratching the back of his head, dumbfounded. “No, seriously. He’s aged, what, maybe a day?” Austin asked, looking at Lian’s little brother.

  “What’s not to get?” Madame Patricia circled Austin. “How many days passed when you were taken captive by Maya and her forces?”

  “You’re a special person, right? Like Jarrod, only natural?” Austin asked. “Aren’t you gods?”

  “Where you’re wrong is I am no more natural than he.” She nodded at Jarrod. “We’ve been called gods by those who search for words to understand us.”

  “Oreios didn’t age,” Jarrod said, standing toe-to-toe with Madame Patricia. Harold moved to her side. Jarrod glared at Harold, as if begging for a fight. “He said he’d been on the planet for ages. How does that work?”

  “On Earth, your planet, yes.” Madame Patricia nodded. “But where do you think you are now?”

  Everyone turned to face Madame Patricia, silent.

  “Earth, Heaven, Tartarus, Asgard and the other realms of the broken Corners, they’re not all together and they’re not some special dimension of existence. They’re physical places with very specific laws and ways of subverting them. When you rift, you’re not changing reality and time, you’re slipping through the fabric of space.” Lian only half listened to Madame Patricia speak. “You feel untethered and nauseous because your bodies have been ripped apart and then reconstructed to fit the laws of the new planet you’re on. Your galaxy is but one of an infinite number. You didn’t really think you were special, did you?”

  “Well... kinda,” Jarrod said sarcastically, shrugging.

  Madame Patricia continued without hesitation. “Time has no effect on Oreios and his kind because he has no soul or version thereof. Ourea were strictly elemental and therefore can’t decay, but go through changes of certain kinds. Time and space have no effect on them because when time and space cease to exist, so do they. Therefore, Oreios and his species are truly physically immortal until they are broken apart by a physical alteration. The human soul is a light that transcends the physical. The Ourea have not an afterlife, unlike mortals.”

  “Afterlife? Heaven?” Austin asked, squinting. Lian could hear in his mind as he tried to comprehend, but he was too jaded by the death of his parents to give the ideas the credence they needed to be understood. “You mean religious concoctions you just labeled as physically existing?”

  “The great misconception of existence is to think myth and religion to be opposites of science. You think of them as black or white, truth or fallacy, when in reality they’re the opposite sides of the same coin.” Madame Patricia brushed past Jarrod and walked over to the bar.

  Lian thought she heard an inflection in Madame Patricia’s voice giving away the fear she was trying to mask, or had something else betrayed her?

  Madame Patricia examined the glass of wine, tilting it side to side. She took a gulp and set it down with enough force to crack the stem. “We’re the grooves between the two faces of a quarter, able to touch either side. What heads may do through experimentation and technology, tails does just as naturally as you breathe.”

  “If we’re not on Earth, where are we?” Claire hyperventilated and bent over to collect her breath.

  “We’re at a point in space where a day here is, what, a year on earth?” Austin contemplated, looking at Lian as she tried to get Jaden’s attention. “He didn’t initially recognize his sister because to him they were separated yesterday?”

  “It was twelve years ago.” Lian touched Jaden’s face. Her fingers glowed when their skin connected, as did his cheeks. He looked at her with a slight smile. “He’s not but maybe a year older.”

  “Time on Earth moves thirty times faster than it does here?” Austin’s eyes were wide with shock as his mind quickly did the math.

  “God’s time...” Jarrod whispered.

  “Yes, it has been called that,” Madame Patricia replied to Jarrod with a smile. “You’ve been here almost twenty minutes, which means it’s already morning time where we picked you up. Believe me when I say this, there are places where time moves even slower than it does here, and there are beings capable of comprehending the static of it all simultaneously.”

  “How old are you?” Jarrod asked Madame Patricia and then looked at Athena. “And her?”

  “I’m unquantifiable to you.”

  “You look like you’re in your 70’s.” Jarrod smirked. “Seems pretty quantifiable to me.”

  “I’m flattered.” Madame Patricia rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, countering his sarcastic tone tit for tat. “I look this old because recent struggles took a toll. My physical makeup is different than a human’s, as is Athena’s. Harold’s is different still as he is something known as a half-breed. The three of us age at different rates to you. Athena has been here for eighty years...”

  “Wow.” Jarrod looked her up and down. Claire pinched him.

  “The mind can only mature at the rate of the body. She’s in her mid-twenties. Harold was born in the fifth century. Physically he is mid-40’s...”

  “And mentally some would say thirteen,” Athena joked, holding back a smile.

  “And she’s unquantifiable,” Jarrod added, pointing his thumb at Madame Patricia while turning to walk away. “What a crock. We came for answers, not a lecture.”

  “You’re a speck of dust in a cosmic cube.” Athena stood in his way. They connected eyes, ignoring everyone else. “To you, answers would be a lecture.”

  “Don’t you want to know about yourself? William talked a great deal about you,” Madame Patricia called, lifting her voice. Jarrod stopped dead in his tracks, cast his eyes down and looked over his shoulder. He shook his head and left. She continued despite his absence. “That’s a shame.”

  “He’s going through some things right now,” Austin joked nervously.

  “Athena, take Jaden to his room,” Madame Patricia commanded while nodding to Austin’s comment.

  “What? No, I want him to remember me,” Lian protested, pulling at her brother. Their grip on each other grew stronger, glow brightening. She’d just found him again and wouldn’t let go. With ease, Athena pushed Lian onto her hind end and pulled Jaden away. Lian shoved her face into Austin’s chest and wept. “Why...?”

  “William had his reasons for splitting you two.” Madame Patricia put a hand on Lian’s back. She pulled her hand back quickly, as if Lian were a hot stove, and walked away. “You’ll find you and I have a lot in common.”

  “I wish I could have just been normal.” Lian pulled on Austin. Her tears soaked his shirt. He sat slowly on the ground and wrapped his arms tightly around her.

  “Shh, it’s gonna be alright,” he whispered, rocking back and forth.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Austin III

  That last conversation didn’t sit well in Austin’s stomach. A sour note hung in the air, and it was more than just the bitter scent of pipe tobacco and wine stains making him gag. Since his parents were murdered by radicals in Lebanon, Austin had eaten more than his fair share of lies and secrets. The taste of them could no lo
nger be choked down, especially when someone he cared so deeply for suffered because of it.

  Sure, he was grateful for Madame Patricia and her people welcoming them into her realm for safekeeping. It beat the hell out of grunting it out on that god forsaken freight ship, or running from whatever might be hunting him and his friends. However, as he held Lian in his arms, feeling her shake with grief, he’d decided that Madame Patricia’s casual dismissal of their questions and feelings wouldn’t be tolerated.

  “Don’t say anything.” Lian grabbed him. She had to be peeking inside his head again. “I was. Sorry. You were practically screaming your intentions.”

  “I’m tired of just falling in line. Nothing good can come of it.”

  “So you can see the future now?” she asked, but wasn’t playful about it. Was it intended to be a slight? “No, it wasn’t.” Again, she’d replied to his thoughts.

  “I’m here for you. I am. I know you’re emotional because you just found your brother, but I’m serious when I tell you to stop snooping in my mind.” Austin stepped away from her. If he didn’t get his space, he might say or think something he’d regret. He tapped his head for emphasis. “What happens up here is mine and mine alone. You need to understand that.” Her fingers slid up his back, between his hulking shoulder blades. She hugged him from behind, but he didn’t care to accept the embrace. “You need to learn the difference between friend and foe.”

  “Those things were nearly the same when I was with Sanderson.”

  “You’re not anymore,” he replied. He waited for a retort. It didn’t come. There was no way he could’ve really shut her up. “I would think by now you could trust me. My mind doesn’t need supervision.”

  “You think that’s what it is?” she asked laughingly. He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not.” She slapped his arm. “I just like making sure you’re safe.”

  “Thomas Jefferson said you give up liberty for safety and you get neither…”