“Yes, but I’d die too, being an angel and all.”
“Oh yeah. I still haven’t committed that to memory. Ah, what else, then? You know, last time I was in the void lands, everything around me turned into a really cool dragon. What if I did that again but—wait for it—lit it on fire!”
“Fire is still never going to be a universal solution. That’d have the same effect as just regularly burning the void.”
“Okay, well I’m out of ideas. And I’m not going to settle for waiting it out.”
“Trust me, I don’t want to either. I still have a weak biological link to the Metatron. I can sense the pain we are in. But I think right now the best we can do is just get you some pain killers and a crutch.”
“But then what are we going to do after that?”
“I’m not exactly blessed with a creative mind. I share one with many others, and even my more apparent uniqueness is a side effect of inhabiting the mind of this dead girl. So I guess I’m waiting on you.”
“What is your real name, then, if Midori is just your vessel?”
“I don’t remember. It was removed from my knowledge along with the rest of me,” she said, looking worried. “But! I believe it started with a T.”
“All right, then. We can get going. But we’re jogging really fast. Running, even.”
“We can’t do that in your condition.”
“Then walk. Walk really, really fast.”
A COUPLE pills, some painful lotion, and a couple poorly wrapped bandages later, we were back in the field, and I wasn’t feeling nearly as woozy as I had expected to.
“I could still fall asleep at any moment,” I warned.
“No way! No way.” Midori giggled. “That’s not possible.”
“Modern medicine is amazing.” I was not against joking around with her some more, but rather unfortunately returning to the field had ruined my mood for it. When we had left, Eden had been the worse for wear, with its white walls thinning. Now they were almost fully gone, and only the very top layer remained. Otherwise they were translucent, revealing the increasingly damaged body of the Metatron.
“What are you going to do?”
“I guess I’m going to run in there again.”
“Is that really going to work?”
“I mean, there’s more to the plan than just running in. There really isn’t much choice in the matter about what I have to do.”
“You’re not going to go out there and try to fuse with the Metatron, right? You said you didn’t want to. You hate angels.”
“I don’t know what I think. The hatred is still there, but I don’t think it matters anymore. I can’t trust myself, okay? That’s been proven. I know who I am, and I know what I think, but it’s like I’ve lost a veil of context. I can’t make myself step back and reevaluate. I can only do things that I think I should do.”
“You truly want to help us?”
“God, I don’t know.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “I’ve lost my mind, remember?”
“Yes. You’ll be fine.”
I exhaled sharply. “I was just thinking—oh, it sounds terrible. But what if I just did it for like, a minute? Just gave a little bit of myself away. Just enough for the Metatron to reboot themself.”
“For the Metatron to refresh, they need all of you—mind and body.”
“Okay, so just as little as I can give. But surely it’ll help them fight off the infection, and then they can get back to looking for another human.”
“You’ll lose too much of everything.”
“So, yeah, I was also thinking—you can’t properly fuse with the Metatron because you share the same mind. But you’re keeping the genetic flesh it needs. So what if we did it together? Maybe there’ll be enough whatever to cure the Metatron.”
“They don’t let two people do it at once.”
“Let’s give it a shot. We have nothing else to do, or lose, for that matter.”
“Our lives.”
“Yeah, okay, besides that.”
“I think our lives being at stake is a pretty notable risk, even if it’s the only one.”
“Yeah, but come on! Someone has to save the world or whatever. And sadly, I don’t see anyone else stepping up. We’ll be fine, though. Watch each other’s backs. Live.”
“If you’re so confident….”
“I’m not really, but I am getting pretty good at faking it.”
31
IT WAS a lot easier to approach the Metatron the second time. The angels that normally held a fierce guard were too busy fighting off the disease that had taken over the great creature, and though some of them turned to stare, none made a move to attack.
“Maybe we should turn back, and real quick look for a weapon,” I suggested. I still had my lighters, and while I guessed I always could burn everything to the ground, it would make escape a lot harder.
“There’s not enough time for that!” Midori urged, though she looked utterly terrified. She was clinging to my arm while still supporting my weight, and carefully watching her step.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to have some sort of backup, though? Like a gun or a bat or even like a broken glass bottle.”
“Oh please! You know we can’t harm the Metatron,” Midori said, sounding righteously irritated at my suggestion. “They’ve suffered enough.”
“I’m just saying.”
The Metatron’s body had actually shifted slightly since we left, and their long, almost human-shaped form had turned slightly on their side. Their handlike limbs had changed too and no longer provided easy access to the mouthlike aperture. Midori boosted me up, and then I pulled her up in turn.
“It smells putrid,” she said sadly, and I guess that meant more to her than it did to me, because I couldn’t smell a thing. “I’ve never seen them so ill.”
The inside hadn’t really changed as far as I could tell. Midori seemed heavily influenced by it, though, and sometimes she’d sigh or make little squeaky noises that I took to mean she was upset.
Only when we came to a room that was lit could I take in the damage: giant black lumps grew out of the walls, and things were definitely moving just below the surface of the floor—odd shapes that pulsated and looked sort of like large dogs under fleshy blankets.
With an athletic grace that I was unable to match, Midori leapt around them and the swollen veins that ran in every which way. After a much too long five minutes’ worth of hesitation and poor jump planning, I made it to the other side and we set out for Vask.
“Everything already seems dead.” I traced the walls with my hands, and they seemed much softer than before, and full of odd bumps and bruises. They reminded me of an open sore, and were indeed slightly wet to the touch. If I didn’t need to feel the walls to navigate, I would definitely have kept my distance.
The heat began to seep in long before we came to Vask, and along with it came smoke. Midori paid little mind to it, though she did squint her eyes. I couldn’t take more than a minute of breathing the heavy air, and I was forced to crawl. The air wasn’t much better near the floor, however, and I had to stop to cough fairly often.
“You’re slowing down,” Midori said, but she said it with concern and wrapped her shawl around my face. It didn’t really do much to block the smoke, but I appreciated the effort.
With the shawl still over my head, I didn’t know we had reached the exit until I bumped into Midori’s legs. I peeked through the fabric, and was utterly unsurprised at the level of damage the chamber had sustained. Fex lay on the floor, half melted and unmoving. Gavreel was almost entirely fused with the wall, and likewise had become very still. I still had to keep to the ground, but even if I could, I wouldn’t have wanted to investigate them any further.
From there it was a short crawl to the room Midori had been in, which was luckily not on fire any longer but had been flooded. I stood up and waded across a knee-high pond of hot, yellowish liquid. It was thick, heavy, and not entirely translucent.
I took a mome
nt to wipe it off my pants before climbing up to the platform, but regretted it immediately as some came off on my hands in disgusting goops.
“Shit. Please tell me this isn’t pus because I feel like I might throw up.”
“It’s not, technically,” Midori offered. “Very different biology at play here. But similar, I suppose. It certainly put out the fire.”
“Ugh.” I wrinkled my nose, but I couldn’t really smell a thing. “Let’s just become one with the terrible single-souled entity that has destroyed the world and get out of here.”
“This isn’t going to work,” said Midori, but she followed suit as I kneeled in front of the wall. I placed a hand lightly against it, before slowly increasing pressure. The wall didn’t budge, not even a little bit.
“It’s a state of mind.” Midori sighed. She motioned for me to follow as she leaned forward and placed her head against the wall. “A deus ex machina.” She closed her eyes as she spoke.
“You’re using that phrase wrong.”
“A machina ex deus, then.”
“Still not right, and honestly I’m quite worried by whatever you’re possibly trying to tell me. How am I supposed to enter some mystical state of mind with you worrying me like this?”
“They don’t want two of us. They won’t let us in.”
“What, you’re linked with the Metatron right now?”
“It’s not like I can ever really stop. But can’t you feel it? The vibrations in the wall? Can’t you hear their voice?”
“I’m having difficulty concentrating.”
“Oh, you don’t have to concentrate. You just have to think.” She placed her hand on my back and began to press lightly. “I’m sorry about this.”
And she pushed me through the wall.
I WAS not entirely gone, nor was my existence suddenly one with the mind, as Midori had promised. I could still wiggle my toes on my right foot, and for some reason I found the sensation to be the most rewarding out of everything I was capable of, which wasn’t much. Everything was rather hazy and closer to black than anything else. But it wasn’t really that it was dark—it was more that my eyes had stopped working.
I couldn’t tell if I could hear or not, because nothing was making a sound and I was entirely unable to open my mouth to make some myself. The only sensation I had was that of my own self, and my toes, which were still outside the wall.
It was awfully dark. I tried to retreat into my mind, as I figured I was supposed to, but something about this haze was making it hard for me to think. It really tore at my edges to exist in this place, immobile and confused.
There was an odd growing sensation along the tips of my unmoving fingertips, and it spread throughout my veins and nerves. I was acutely aware of it too. It wasn’t just a shiver of skin, but of everything deeper than that. And then I looked down on myself and realized I had ceased to have a body. I was still aware, however, that I had a corporeal body. I just couldn’t locate it.
This was bad. I still knew who I was, but this fog was making my previous state of mind look clear by comparison. If I lost myself in here, I’d be gone for good. I tried again to focus with all my mind on what had to be done, and I began to get a sort of sense of a voice. Maybe the Metatron’s. Maybe not. But the words were so muffled, I only gathered the bare bones of thought.
W, the voice said. L, K, M.
Was that supposed to mean something? The voice’s plea was so desperate and so quiet, I was struck with a sudden thought that caught fire through my mind like nothing else: this was pathetic. Absolutely weak. Why was I immobilized? I was the only one with power here. After all, I was the one who set the Metatron on fire. I was the one who brought the disease inside them. I was the only important factor in all of this, and all these angels, these angels of fire and eyes, they were pathetic.
And I was painfully stronger than them.
I began to run. I was able to do so quite easily, and the fog around me catered to my demands, clearing to reveal a space that was indeed dark, but the sort of dark you’d expect to find inside of a tree. And there, all around me and watching in a circle, were millions of faces and bodies and souls, the members of the Metatron. Some were dying, some were dead, and some were healthy. And the living looked at me with such fear that I simply had to laugh at them.
“You need me to live. I don’t need you,” I reminded them. But I was going to be true to myself and to Midori. I gave the Metatron my mind, some parts of it that I maybe never used, or never wanted to, and when all was said and done, I didn’t feel any different. I wasn’t even sure if I had done anything. All I had done was think, Okay, I’m giving the worst parts of my mind to the Metatron. Surely I didn’t have to lose my conscious mind in the process?
I breathed for a moment, which was a feat considering I didn’t actually need to. And then I thought for a moment. I tried my memories—boring ones at first, and then I stepped it up with the best of the best. The fire that had killed my parents. Funerals, both theirs and mine. The days I had spent living on my own, watching. But nothing was taken. And then I just tried anything I could. Algebra. Australian history. The plots of various mediocre books. Anything I knew—but still, nothing.
The Metatron was still trembling at my presence. No time had likely passed since I had last spoken. In fact, based on how this place worked, I had probably already spoken the moment I arrived here. There was no time in a lost mind.
I sighed, which was another task technically unneeded in this realm of existence. “What do you want from me?”
The Metatron leapt to life all at once. I did not have a real sense of many voices speaking at once, though many voices surely were. Instead there were simply the words, and maybe, an unimpressive voice.
Lose yourself. You are not unworthy to us. We will do our best with you.
“I will burn you,” I reminded them. “I will turn you into nothing more than ash, and that ash will scatter into the wind and become nothing more than a mild irritant in my throat.” As I spoke I summoned flames to my fingers until I was wreathed in them like a halo of pure energy.
Lose yourself. We will take you away.
Can a mind’s confidence grow? They sure seemed to be getting bolder despite my threats. “Take me away? Don’t be ridiculous. You will writhe before my feet hours before I’m done with you.”
Then lose yourself. We will free you. You may rest again.
“I don’t want to rest. You are the one who needs to lose yourself.”
No. You can lose yourself. You can leave. We will use you to the best of our ability. Let us handle it.
It was such an alarming thought that it seemed to echo through my body. The fire faded. The room grew darker. And I was suddenly aware of how very alone and small I was. I was inside a mind, but it was nothing like mine. There were people here. And I was starting to think how maybe, perhaps, I wouldn’t mind letting someone else do the work for me.
I nodded, and then I thought it, and then I spoke it—
“Okay.”
A final word of acceptance. Because I was not a girl made of flame. I was a girl who wished to be fire—to burn and destroy and live without mercy or thought. But the world was full of thought, and I was full of thoughts, and maybe it was time I took a break from pretending I was responsible. Maybe it was time I let the world fix itself, and let things run their course. And maybe it was time I let myself rest, if only for a little while.
32
I LEAPT into the air, though there was no true air in the Metatron, nor was there any true anything, and from the air I did a flip, and I dove out into the realish world again.
That was putting everything in the simplest of terms, of course. There was a lot more to it than that. A lot more indescribable feelings and motions and happenings that tended to go along with phasing through semisolid matter and disconnecting from a grand supersoul.
Either way, I flew out of the wall like a bullet. And in my flight of maybe half a second, I was dimly aware that
I had lost some part of my body. Then by the time I had landed, it was back again. I found my leg was better too.
Midori moved my head to her lap and cradled it in her hands while I waited for the dizziness to settle.
“Mido—am I missing any limbs?” It didn’t feel like it, but I was still too dazed to be sure.
“Yes. But we replaced them for you. Do not fear. We just needed the flesh donation.”
“Stop using ‘we’ as a singular pronoun. Shit, you’re not, actually. Okay, please just stop using it. It’s confusing. Just ‘I,’ please….” I was still too tired to really mind what I was saying.
“You talk a lot for someone who just lost a lot of yourself. But… it seems to have worked.”
My vision was clearing, so I sat up and shook off the clouds of black that still pulsated in my vision. “So wait, what are my new limbs, then?” I looked my arms over. They seemed identical, and already the memory of having lost them was fading.
“The same matter as the angels. We—they needed human flesh, but it’s not like they can’t produce their own alternatives fairly easily. So it’s not very hard to just create replacement limbs. It’s not like they’d want to leave you high and dry and with minor difficulty living.”
“Does this mean anything?”
“What, like you’re an angel now? Obviously not. Your new limbs are not human, but unless you actually examine them at a molecular level, you won’t be able to tell the difference. And they are susceptible to the infection, but they can’t become carapaces since they lack minds.”
“About my mind….”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “I can pretty much tell you everything I know, and I still wouldn’t be able to satisfy you. I have no way of knowing what was removed from you. I can see your limbs have changed, but I can’t see your mind.”
“And neither do I.”
She shrugged. “Well, it’s done now. The Metatron are already fixing themselves. It’s going to be a difficult task, considering how little you gave up and how unsuited your genes are to them. But they’re doing what they can.”
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