by R. E. Vance
Yes, it is true that they are burning time. Minutes. And what are a few minutes, even a couple hours, days, when so many children are being saved?
Vampire Bowser suddenly curls into a spiky ball and rolls toward Sinbad. The pirate warrior jumps up onto Penemue’s massive shoulders, and when the monster rolls harmlessly past, she winks at the twice-fallen angel. He doesn’t need to be told what to do.
Without hesitation, he grabs Sinbad and, using his considerable strength, throws her at the balled-up creature. Sinbad must time this perfectly if she is going to get her dagger in-between the monster’s armored plates.
And she does! Her dagger penetrates flesh. He unballs himself and swipes at her. But now he is exposed and it is only a matter of seconds before she dispatches him.
Standing on his massive body, she smiles at Penemue. Then her smile turns to fear and she falls to her knees.
Sinbad is dissolving … just like the monsters do.
“What? What’s happening?” Penemue says, coming to her side.
“Sarah. I can feel her. She is here. And she is … she is safe. We did it. We saved her.” Sinbad sighs in pride and relief. “She doesn’t need me anymore.”
“No,” Penemue says, finally understanding. “Don’t leave me. I need you.” Penemue is crying tears of light.
“Don’t cry, Mr. Penemue. I have to go now. Thank you for helping me save Sarah,” Sinbad says. “And thank you for being my friend.”
And before Penemue can do or say anything, Sinbad turns to foam that seeps between his fingers and mingles with his tears of pure light.
↔ END OF BRIEF INTERLUDE ↔
The fight below might be over, but the fight above still raged on. I could see through the eyes of OtherMe that Cain’s manifested self had joined the fight above. But Milton, Sinbad, Penemue and Shouf had cleared the deck of all anomalies, Evil-and-Cute was gone and the DragonFly was polluting the ocean. OtherMe could not see the children being ferried off the island by Conner, Aau or Judith, nor did he know about the prison or Crystal below.
All he saw was an invading force preforming the most daring jail-heist of all time.
Before anyone could say or do anything, Mr. Cain pushed past them and into the lighthouse. Milton and OtherMe followed.
Mr. Cain ran up the stairs ahead of them and to his desk, where he slammed his hand down on the control panel, activating the prison’s security system. I touched my Memnock watch’s screen and flipped through the camera … several of the children were still on the rocks, Conner and Aau helping lift them into rafts being towed by the myarids. The electrified rocks would kill them if they turned on before they could get off.
“Stop, Mr. Cain,” OtherMe said. “Please. Let’s sort this out before more people get hurt.”
Mr. Cain shook his head. “I knew bringing you here was a mistake.” He pulled a gun on OtherMe as he loaded up his commands. “Come on, come on, come on,” Mr. Cain pleaded with his systems.
That’s when Milton burst in and charged at Mr. Cain.
Mr. Cain emptied his gun on the cyclops, several bullets hitting him in the chest. Two ricocheted off Milton’s nail-filled club, one bursting through the window and the other hitting OtherMe in the shoulder.
OtherMe fell with a yelp. Unlike Sinbad or any of the other dream manifestations, he did not immediately heal. Instead he sat on the floor, his very real, very red blood ruining the carpet.
Milton, on the other hand, was surprisingly chipper for someone with seven bullets in him. He grabbed Mr. Cain and pulled him away from the panel. Mr. Cain pulled one of the rapiers from the front of his desk and stabbed at Milton with its razor-sharp tip. Milton swung his massive war club. Mr. Cain took the brunt of the blow square in the chest. The blow would have felled a bull elephant, but Mr. Cain took it in stride, his chest repairing itself just like Sinbad had done while facing the anomaly on the mainland.
Mr. Cain pulled his rapier from Milton’s chest and thrust it into the cyclops’s stomach. The cyclops cried out in pain and a milky white fluid started to flow out of him.
“I told you that I cannot die,” Mr. Cain whispered to him. “I have the Mark of God … he who tries to hurt me shall be punished seven-fold.”
Mr. Cain pulled out his sword and stuck it into Milton’s shoulder, straight down into his lung, as more milky white cyclops blood flowed from him.
But even though Milton was in pain, he still smiled. He was a cyclops … a creature that knew his death from time immemorial. This was his last moment—and he knew what I was going to do before I did.
Mr. Cain went back to the control panel, seeking to turn on the prison’s automatic defenses. In another minute, everyone and everyOther on the island was going to be up against not anomalies or prison guards, but security apparatus designed to do one thing—kill Others.
Down in the chamber, I turned to the body of Cain—immobile, frozen in his catatonic state as he dreamed of his ideal self above. As long as Cain lived, Mr. Cain above could not be killed. I looked at my watch … it would be several minutes before everyone was safely off the island. Milton didn’t have several minutes. I doubted he’d last several more seconds. I thought back to what Conner said to me in the desert.
Sometimes good people do bad things. Sometimes bad people do good things.
I don’t know which one I was when I drove my sword through Cain’s sleeping heart. Either way, I did what I believed was right.
As Cain died, his ideal self faltered just long enough for Milton to stand one last time and drive down his club onto Mr. Cain’s head.
End of Part 5
Epilogue to Part 5—
Metatron agrees and tells Penemue to begin the process immediately. Penemue obeys like any good angel and goes about teaching human souls of love, and then promises them that should they agree to be bound within the flesh of the human, they shall experience it completely.
But as he does, Penemue, the Chief Archiver of Heaven, starts to realize something that he suspects God does not want the angels to know. For while angels feel emotion with the intensity that only immortal beings can bare, love is still something that is strange to them.
The love felt by angels is conditional and tied to the worship of God and admiration of His Creations. It is not what the humans have. Their love is unconditional.
What’s more—it can change, evolve. Be different.
Penemue wishes to know this love. When he is certain that even the all-powerful eye of his Creator can’t see him, he imbues his own being with the emotion.
And what he feels is something that he did not expect … for if he had been asked to guess what human love feels like, he would have never guessed … this. It is total, all-consuming, devastating and liberating all at the same time.
“Love is … total.” That is the only word Penemue can find to describe what he feels.
For with his own love within him and human love now a part of him, Penemue finally feels complete.
O woe is Penemue. Little does he know that this completion will cause him so much pain. For not only does it lead him to disobey celestial law and teach humankind the power of the written word, but millennia later, after the gods leave and Penemue is forced to live among the humans he adores, this complete feeling will cause him such incredible pain.
Pain that reaches a crescendo when he watches his friend, the warrior pirate named Sinbad, die.
The pain alone might have ended his life. But he is near the Crystal. That is unfortunate. For angels are not meant to use the Crystal’s power. The last angel to do so built a kingdom of sulfur and brimstone.
And now Penemue builds a Hell of his own.
Except Penemue’s Inferno is not built on pride.
Penemue’s Inferno is built on something else entirely.
For in the twice-fallen angel’s life, he has learned so much about love and pain.
Whereas love binds, pain separates.
Whereas love heals, pain destroys.
And whereas love builds vast citadels of joy that reach up to the heavens, pain creates bottomless pits of despair that go deeper than any abyss in Hell.
And that is exactly what happens. From Penemue’s pain, he births his own personal Hell.
Epilogue—
Conner was on the mainland with Tink, Miral and the kids—making arrangements to get them all home. That left Aau, Judith, Shouf and myself (not to mention OtherMe) to do cleanup here. In the hours that followed Mr. Cain’s death, I coordinated the Other prisoners, having them lock up their jailers in their own cells—and quietly locking up the FishBowl, still full of snoozing guards. As soon as we wrapped up here, Michael would send someone to The Garden to let them out.
I worked diligently, ignoring four insane things that I had no idea what I was going to do about:
First—the fallout from this assault was going to be massive. Not only was this prison where the kidnapped kids were being held the whole time, but its creator was dead and there were dozens of comatose adults in the basement of this place. And Colel Cab was also dead. Colel Cab may have been a monster, but over the last few weeks she had been the Others’ spokesperson. Her loss would not serve the Other situation well.
Second—the Others in this prison were fugitives and, given the severity of the situation, would be hunted. They needed to go into hiding, and I sincerely doubted there was anywhere on this good, green Earth where they would be safe.
Third—there was a giant chunk of Crystal beneath Memnock Securities’ prison that, if it were to fall into the wrong hands, would just be another headache to deal with.
And last, but by far not the least, there was another Me walking around, helping get everything in order.
I ran my hands through my hair. This was going to be messy. I would need to deal with everything in its turn.
Pulling out my phone, I called George. As it rang, Judith came up to me. “Jean-Luc—I need to show you something.”
“Not now, Judith,” I said as George picked up.
“Jean-Luc,” he said, his voice strained with stress and fatigue.
“The kids—they’re safe?”
“On shore now. Conner and Miral are arranging transport to get them home. There’s a lot of them, so it’s going to take a while.”
“OK,” I said. At least one of the problems was being taken care of. “And you—where are you?”
“On my way back to pick up the … you know.”
“Fugitives?”
“Others,” George corrected. “ ‘Fugitive’ implies they are guilty of some crime. You and I know that’s not the case.”
“And the rest of the world?” I asked.
“The rest of the world can go to Hell,” he said, anger rising in his voice.
“Do you know where you are going to take them?”
“Yeah,” George said. “The myarids know of a small, secluded island not too far from here. I’ll take them there for now … until we can find a better solution.”
“Thank you,” I said.
There was a long pause. I could sense that George was trying to hold in some emotions that were desperate to get out. I gave him his space and eventually he let out a long, troubled sigh and said, “Azzah would be proud of me. Fighting the good fight and all.”
“Yes,” I said. “From everything I know about her, yes she would.”
“OK, OK,” he said. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
Good—another problem under control.
Now on to the real issues.
I dialed Michael. He answered before the first ring was rung. I filled him in on everything that happened, and then got to the crux of the issue, telling him about the comatose humans in the chamber.
Michael listened without interrupting. When I was done, he said, “We need to wake them up and get them home.”
“Agreed, but we have another problem that needs to be dealt with first. There is a piece of Creation Crystal here the size of gazebo.”
Michael didn’t say anything and an uncharacteristic silence met me. “We need to get rid of it,” I said.
“We can’t,” Michael said.
“We can’t leave it here.”
“No—we can’t do that either.”
“So what are we going to do about it? If it falls into the wrong hands, we can have another Tiamat or whatever.”
There was another long pause before Michael said, “Very well—I will have it dealt with.”
“How?”
“By going against my instincts and trusting in someone I have always had my doubts in.”
“Who?”
“The less you know, the better.”
“Come on, Michael. After all this, you know I’m on your team.”
“I do not question your loyalty, Jean-Luc. I question your ability to stand up to torture when those who wish to possess the Crystal come after you. The less you know, the less you can tell them.”
“Oh … Geez, thanks for looking out for me,” I said sarcastically.
Judith floated up to me. “Jean-Luc, you really need to—”
I covered the phone’s mic. “Not now.”
Judith rolled her eyes and went over to console a crying Mable.
“Jean-Luc,” Michael’s voice boomed. “Is there anything else?”
I looked around me until I found myself—OtherMe, that is—standing by the shoreline staring out at the ocean. I could feel him looking out into the darkness, contemplating what had just happened, while he tried to make sense of it all. He felt no doubt, no fear—just cold, hard calculations.
“No,” I sighed. “Nothing more that needs your attention. Me, on the other hand, I have to go have a long, hard talk with myself.”
Michael sighed. “I cannot tell if you are serious or not.”
“Oh,” I said. “I am very serious. Very serious, indeed.”
↔
“I’m not sure how to start a conversation with myself,” I said to OtherMe.
OtherMe didn’t turn around, just stared off into the ocean. “What am I?” he asked.
“You’re me—with a couple differences.”
“Yes,” he said. “We have the same memories, don’t we? And in those memories, I remember being so full of doubt. So afraid. But I’m not afraid now. Nor do I have any doubt, even though all my memories tell me that I should. Tell me, are you afraid? Do you have doubts?”
I took a step back. I hadn’t expected a conversation with myself to get so real so fast. But I guess when you’re talking to yourself, there’s no real need for chit-chat. I searched my feelings. Yes, I was overcome with doubt and terrified for what would come next. “Yes,” I said.
“So that settles it—of the two of us, you’re the original.”
“Yes.”
“And what’s gonna become of me?”
“I don’t know. Either you will carry on … or whatever magic created you will fizzle out and you will disappear.”
OtherMe put his hands out in front of him and looked at them for a while. “No, I will not fade away.”
“You’re sure of that, aren’t you?”
He nodded and turned to look at me for the first time. To say it was like looking into a mirror did not come close to what I experienced. OtherMe may have looked like me—but he was distinct. Foreign. Like meeting a long lost twin or your doppelgänger.
I simply did not see myself in him.
He must have felt the same way, because after a long, hard look, he shook his head and said, “I need a name.”
“Excuse me?”
“I am not Jean-Luc. You are. I need a name.”
“Just like that? No more self-exploration? No existential crisis?”
“No need. I am who I am, as you are who you are. But given that I am new—I need a name. And given that you are in a very real way my creator, it is only fitting you name me.”
“You are a lot less funny than I am.”
He didn’t say anything, just waited expectantly.
“OK—a name. Let’s see. My whole life people have made the same stupid joke. Jean-Luc Matthias. John, Luke, Matthew … only missing the—”
“Marc,” we said in unison.
“Spelled with a C. Mom would have wanted it that way,” I said.
He nodded. “Marc—my name. Very well, then.” He stuck out his hand. “Good to meet you, Jean-Luc.”
“You, too, Marc.”
“What now?”
Marc looked toward the helipad where the old the Apache warbird sat. “I’m going to fly her back to Paradise Lot. Once I land, I’ll start my new life.”
“You can’t fly a helicopter. You haven’t flown a copter in years—and even then you were a terrible pilot.”
Marc smiled. “You were a terrible pilot. I will be just fine.”
Empty Hell, OtherMe was one cool cucumber.
↔
I left Marc to the Apache. He had agreed to ferry some of the Others back, but most wanted to wait for George and the promise of a safe hiding place. Without many passengers, Marc did what I would have done—with the help of Shouf and a few others, he gathered Milton’s body, promising to give the fallen cyclops a proper burial back home.
As he prepared to leave, I took one last look around. In all this time there were two people I didn’t see—Penemue and Sinbad. Maybe that was what Judith wanted to talk to me about.
I saw her in the distance and walked over to find out if my best friend and very brave little girl survived the battle. As I drew near, I asked, “Sinbad?”
From the way she cast her gaze downward, I knew that Sinbad hadn’t made it.
Tears welled up. Wiping them away, I asked my second question: “Penemue?”
“I’m … not sure.”
“How can you not be sure?” I said.
“Because … Jean-Luc, just come with me. There is something you need to see.”
She took me to the other side of the lighthouse, where I saw a shimmering darkness that hung suspended in the air, like some sort of optical illusion. The shimmering portal didn’t make sense. For one thing, I should have been staring at the ocean, not some dark hovering cave. And for another, it constricted and expanded in an unnatural way—like a curtain suspended in place, but still subject to the air around it.
