Robert had only been three steps behind Ava in her race toward the violent scene, but he’d stopped running the moment he saw Ava take her first step onto the unsolid air. It was unexpected. All of it. He’d seen her in action on videos, but in-person was something else. He was too amazed at what he was seeing to think of assisting, and Ava’s actions made it clear she really didn’t need any help.
The slur-spewing girl had been knocked down but not out when Ava forced her to the ground. As the girl cursed and struggled to get back to her feet, Ava struggled to keep her own body straddled on top of the girl. Ava used her hands to hold the girl’s head, squeezing it, making the girl’s nose point toward hers as Ava looked into her eyes. When they were in the right position, Ava did something with her own eyes and somehow rendered the girl still.
The two delinquents still on their feet left the father alone and ran toward Ava. She spotted them, rolled to her left, and grabbed a fallen tree branch as she came up to her knees. Ava threw the branch at the boy’s knees as she looked with squinting eyes at the running girl’s throat. Robert could see she was being shot with twin narrow beams of infrared radiation. The girl would feel a sudden sensation, as if a match had been struck on her throat and then left there to burn through the skin.
She felt it. Both of her hands went to the burned area as the girl dropped her head, stumbled over her own feet, and fell, landing on her side.
The boy who’d dodged the tossed branch had been hindered, but he was still coming at Ava. He was less than ten running paces away.
Ava hopped up to her feet and ran three steps to her left, toward the nearest picnic table. She jumped, placing her foot on the edge of the tabletop and pushed off, twisting in mid-air, putting her body in just the right position to kick the boy in his ear.
The boy went down, and Ava was soon on top of him. She rendered him motionless in the same manner she had the girl—by forcing him to look into her eyes.
Robert had stepped off of the paved path and onto the picnic area’s grass, nearer the chaos. The panicked mother was trying to calm her four screaming children and rush them into the minivan while the bruised and bloody father stumbled around in a daze. Robert saw but didn’t know what he could do to help them.
His full attention shifted back to Ava when she leaped from a picnic tabletop, took two steps on the air, and landed on another tabletop, moving closer and closer toward the boy who’d received an arrow of light in the back of his neck. He was on his feet now, but he was still pressing his palm against the burned area and sucking in small streams of air through clenched teeth. He wasn’t exactly in a daze, but it was obvious he was following no particular direction as he took tentative, baby steps forward.
In her second-to-last leap off of a picnic table, Ava tossed another bright arrow at one of the boy’s elbows. He screamed when stung. He screamed again when Ava kicked him in the chest. The hoodlum fell back against a tree, and Ava hit him in the jaw—left hook, right hook—before placing her hands on his cheeks and giving him the same treatment as the other two. The boy collapsed on his butt.
Robert got a fleeting-but-close look at the formation of the electromagnetic arrow during Ava’s last throw. The arrow itself was a shaft of yellow and orange light that had been sharpened at one end with light in the infrared range. As it took shape in her hand, strange webs of orange and yellow light were visible on her forearm, strangling them, appearing almost like strings, or vines. While he wondered how a Virus-carrier would react to being struck by such an arrow, Ava made quick work of the last delinquent still conscious, the girl with the burned throat.
Ava wrapped her hands around the girl’s neck, pressed her thumbs against the burned area, squeezed harder and said, “Look at me.” The girl opened her eyes for only a sliver of a second, but it was long enough for Ava to do whatever she’d done to the others.
Four down. But what about the family of six?
Robert turned and saw they’d finally gathered themselves into their minivan. He called out to them, asking them to wait. They were safe now, and the authorities would have questions for them. The father shouted back at him in Spanish while the mother shouted in the same language at her kids, probably in another paradoxical attempt to calm them down.
His pleas ignored, the vehicle sped away, and Robert was left to survey the area, observing how the grass and dirt were littered with food, napkins, spilled condiments, and other assorted rubbish, not all of it a result of the melee. Did anyone respect the environment anymore?
He picked up the trash in his path as he made his way to the picnic table Ava was leaning against. She seemed to be in two modes at once—resting from her activity, and ready to take a swing at someone else. The way she looked at him as he approached put Robert on guard.
“Why didn’t you help?” she said, trying to catch her breath.
He did feel a little embarrassed by his inaction, but not regretful. She’d gotten the job done, in short order, and maybe even better than he could have. He wasn’t ready to start giving her compliments just yet, though.
“I didn’t have time.”
“Yeah?” she said. “You’re wearing two watches. What happened? They canceled each other out?”
Cute. Rhetorical questions and a terrible joke all wrapped into one by a wise-aleck. Robert felt it was probably deserved, but, more important, the remark reminded him of his watches’ primary use. He touched the tips of his index and middle fingers to the face of his right wristwatch to give Adam a brief summary of what had happened and ask him to contact the authorities to round up the fallen. Ava pointed at two of them with her thumb.
“These are the type of terrorists you accuse me of being in line with?”
“No,” Robert said as he deciphered Adam’s immediate response. “These aren’t terrorists. They’re just brats. What did you do to them anyway?”
“I froze them,” she said. “Put them in an altered state. They’ll be fine in an hour.”
Robert took another look at the four victimizers-turned-victims. They almost looked as if they were dead. He could see they were still breathing, just very slowly. Frozen.
“So, what’s that you were saying before,” he said as he sat on one of the table’s benches, “about the Flood coming?”
Ava smirked at him. “So now you just want to talk, huh?”
Although he still wasn’t convinced she was truly on the side of the righteous, he was a bit more willing to consider her close enough, close enough to be trusted as—at the very least—a potential ally. Maybe Adam had seen something in her Robert couldn’t. He left her question unanswered as she sat down on the opposite bench, facing him.
“I was saying that I know that the fundamental realm of Reality— XynKroma—is the collective sunconscious of all living things, and as a result, the place is a mess. A chaotic collage of nonsense. The apparent indiscriminate result of an unsupervised collaboration of an enormous number of the most abstract artists, poets, and musicians. But it’s also a realm of polluted light. And while all angels can manipulate light at will, those of us with higher aspirations have applied our talents to the realm of XynKroma. We’re not content with just beating the stuffing out of other angels here on the surface of Reality.”
Or freezing the stuffing that’s inside the noninfected, Robert thought. The term “sunconscious” wasn’t just a cute term combining the words “subconscious” and “unconscious;” it was an apt one-word description of the extra-dimensional realm of low light, dirtied up by the thoughts of an uncountable number of sentient beings. Robert was more used to seeing Virus-carriers use their eyes to burn skin than freeze something deep within.
“I and other angels,” Ava said, “like the Archangel who oversaw my inversion, we’ve sectioned off parts of Xyn and protected them, cultivated them, remade them into Pieces of Paradise. We’ve created temple-palaces. One grand palace and one surrounding garden per one fit-and-deserving angel. And each temple-palace is inhabited by the caretakers o
f these pieces. They’re attempting to bring and maintain order in Xyn, but they’re also watching for the day when the realm spills out to the surface of Reality. We want XynK-roma to be as ordered as possible when that happens.”
“And you believe this Flood can’t be stopped?”
“I know it,” Ava said. “The Flood has to happen. Creation isn’t finished yet, Robert. It’s only a work in progress. The Flood is part of the process.”
Hence her metaphor about artists and poets, Robert thought. Ava was a clever one. Smart and clever.
“I was once an Evangelical Christian,” she said, “believing in a superhuman God who created the universe in six days and then guided everything within it, using divine intervention. Answering prayers, teaching people harsh but deserved lessons, and all the rest. But the Archangel taught me the truth about Reality. The Creator did create the prototypical universe, by lighting the spark of consciousness. But as this fire of consciousness burns, as the level of consciousness in living beings is raised, the universe develops, and the Creator is consumed. Creation didn’t happen; it’s happening.”
Robert was on the edge of his bench. It seemed that either Ava or this mysterious mentor to whom she kept referring had developed a postmodern take on modern theology, a kind of in-process Deism. Original Deism had its roots in seventeenth-century Europe, during the period of the Enlightenment; its adherents believed a Creator-God designed the universe during a set period of time then, once the work had been done, retreated to observe life and history and everything play themselves out while the Creator declined to interfere in anything in any way—an old-fashioned Watchmaker, watching the finished timepiece tick-tock on its own. In Ava’s mind, the Watchmaker was still creating the watch. Once finished, the Watchmaker will have a well-timed heart attack…unless The ID interferes, smashing the unfinished watch and murdering its Maker prematurely.
“One thing I remember,” she said, “is what you seem to have forgotten, if you ever even knew: we angels have a duty to ensure Creation’s finished state is as perfect as possible.”
“No doubt there’s a whole boatload of things I should know,” Robert said as he looked at the frozen kids to ensure they were still breathing, “but there’s only so much I can wrap my skinny head around.”
“There’s a lot I want to teach and show you,” Ava said, “but in order for you to understand it all, to see the entire picture clearly, we have to go to XynKroma. That’s where we have to begin. My sight and yours are limited here, and I mean that in more ways than one.”
Robert considered her words, and his thoughts drifted to Darryl. Darryl was of the firm belief that, with each individual mind he changed on the subject of “love,” he was progressively healing XynKroma, the collective sunconscious. Each lover he charitably left in “peace” was one step closer toward an improved state of Creation. His philosophy and Ava’s were remarkably similar, at least on the surface.
Robert hadn’t been to XynKroma in a long while, but this Flood had to be taken seriously. For the first time, he began to seriously consider allowing Ava to usher him to the fundamental realm of Reality so he could soak up as much as possible, learn everything, and, fortune willing, emerge sane and prepared to do whatever he could to stop it. But he still had questions.
“How can going to XynKroma together help us find Marie-Lydia?”
“I told you,” Ava said. “That’s where I took her. That’s where I last remember seeing her.”
“But not her.” Now that she was talking, and now that he was willing to hear her out, Robert wanted to be sure he was clear on everything she had to say. One couldn’t travel to the extra-dimensional realm as if simply driving to Canada or flying to Japan or rocketing to the moon. One had to leave all material possessions behind, including the body.
“Yes, I took her. Her essential essence. Her soul, if you want to get technical.”
“Yeah,” Robert said, “technically, I suppose that’s the best way to get there.”
Even though the realm was accessed by traveling to the core of the human mind, its sights and sounds weren’t immediately comprehensible to humans, not at humankind’s current stage in the evolutionary process. Everything seen in Xyn was metaphorical; everything heard was symbolic. The only hope a human being had of existing and traveling within any degree of comfort in the realm was by concentrating and reshaping the essence of his consciousness into a symbolic or figurative representation of what religious folks would call the “soul.” This allowed Xyn to make some sense to a human being. The soul translated the sights and sounds into stuff that was more or less familiar, but there was a price. Whatever happened to a person’s soul while in Xyn had permanent effects on the person’s body and mind, sometimes minor, sometimes major. These “Pieces of Paradise” and “temple-palaces” Ava had mentioned were also metaphorical, but could also be consequential.
“Marie-Lydia’s soul and mine traveled there together,” Ava said. “You know she was a corrupted angel”—Robert nodded—“but she wasn’t a thoroughly corrupted one; I didn’t believe so. I took her to Xyn to reform her. Just like the Archangel inverted me, I intended to reconfigure Marie-Lydia’s soul, clean up her way of thinking, remake her into an angelic being that could benefit humanity and help usher in a perfect, finished Creation.”
“Noble intentions.”
“I just need to get to my temple-palace, Robert. Its caretakers can tell me everything I need to know, maybe even restore my memory.”
It was all very interesting to him, but something about her story just didn’t seem right. He wondered whether or not he should introduce Ava to Vince Ceniza. The psychological mapmaker might be able to supervise a solo journey through Xyn for her like he’d done so many times for Darryl. Robert hadn’t yet convinced himself this was a good idea when three police cars pulled up to the curb.
“Which one of you is named ‘Goldner’?” one officer said as she and her partner approached.
Robert raised his hand, got up from his seat, and—when prompted—gave the officers his version of what had just taken place. When they questioned Ava, and she gave them a word-forword recap of what Robert had just told them, he again looked at the bodies on the ground. Ava’s handiwork.
Frozen.
Just what did it really mean?
ELEVEN
“Okay,” Robert said, “what’ve you got for me?”
“Something hot,” Kurtis said.
“Burning.” Anika glanced at Robert with an odd smile.
It was noon on Monday. The three of them were huddled in a private study-room of a campus library.
After taking a tired Ava back to The Burrow on Sunday evening and privately asking some other agents to keep a close eye on her, Robert had called his friends and asked for an update on their project. They hadn’t yet completed their research, but they had some material they wanted him to review. Robert was eager to see it. His excitement just barely compensated for his exhaustion. He’d spent much of the night tossing and turning as he turned over in his mind the concepts of “God” and “Satan” in light of everything Ava had told him in the park.
In Christian belief, angels were beings of light; Satan—a fallen angel—and his demons were creatures of the “fire.” Robert couldn’t help but think that “fire” and “polluted light” were synonyms. He knew from his long-ago Sunday school lessons that Satan had once been a servant of God, as illustrated in the Book of Job—synonymous perhaps with how The ID were somehow servants of the Arkangels who, according to Ava, were serving the Creator and its work of Creation, a Creation that got its start via a metaphorical spark. Before falling asleep, considering it all mathematically, the best he could come up with was that, whatever Supreme Being or Higher Power the Arkangels truly served, it was neither an indifferent Watchmaker nor a Benevolent Deity. Robert was sure in his bones that the space-and-time warping Flood was not inevitable, but these Arkangels were organized to make it so.
He’d agreed to meet his
friends during their lunch hour, the only break between classes Kurtis and Anika shared. Robert had arrived not knowing what to expect but hoping it would illuminate what he’d seen the day before.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Hell,” Kurtis said, “over the past year, that girl has been busier than a bee trying to get into Georgetown Law.”
“Check this out.” Anika made a few fast keystrokes on her laptop. Within seconds, the three of them were watching a surveillance camera recording of a confrontation in a strip mall’s parking lot. The unusually clear and detailed footage showed Ava fighting with two adults, a man and a woman. It was obvious by their methods of fighting the adults weren’t Virus-carriers. It was also obvious the two were trying to do Ava some serious harm. Among a scattering of onlookers, two young children were prominent in the picture. The video had no sound, but Robert could tell by their movements the kids were panicked, crying and screaming. Ava appeared to be trying to maneuver herself around the man and woman, attempting to get at the children, while ducking and dodging the adults and the objects they threw at her.
“What’s she doing?” Robert asked.
“Not sure,” Anika said, “but based on all we’ve reviewed over the past twenty-four hours, I’d say she’s fighting for those kids you see.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I can add,” she said, “even when no numbers are involved.”
“Some of the other footage we’ve seen,” Kurtis said, “shows her fighting in areas where graffiti is a natural part of the environment.”
“Out of all the drawings, symbols, gang-tags and so on,” Anika said, “one little decorative message stands out: ‘Save the children.’”
“Yeah,” Robert said, “I’ve seen it before.”
“We’ve seen it in two of the videos we reviewed,” Kurtis said, “and heard her say it more than once in those that have sound. Look at those kids. They’re scared, but they’re not running away. They’re hoping one of those parties will protect them from the other. We haven’t had time to do the digging on those two, but I strongly doubt I’d lose my scholarship funds by betting they’re abusive guardians.”
Broken Angels Page 18
