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There’s a bunch of monitoring equipment set up on one side of the reinforced glass partition. Banks of computers, trays of vials ready for taking samples, all sorts. I can’t really see because we’re on the other side, a side that has very little in the way of diagnostic equipment. It does, however, have a bed with straps attached to it, an ominous sight at the best of times. This suddenly doesn’t feel like the best of times anymore.
“Katya, what…”
I hear a beep and then a clunk. It sounds like a door locking firmly behind me. I turn to look at Katya. She’s smiling at me, but the smile is no longer reassuring or inspiring. It’s dark and triumphant.
“Don’t worry, Elise,” she says. “I’m going to take very good care of you here.”
“I’m not here to be a scientist,” I say.
“You’re here to advance science in ways it has never been advanced before,” she replies. “You wield the power that sealed the garden. I cannot tell you what great significance that could have in everything from construction to weapons development.”
“You want me to stay in this cell.”
“You need to be kept pure,” she explains. “Any contamination from the outside world will affect our readings, so yes, you’ll stay here for the first phase of our studies, which really shouldn’t take more than twenty-four months or so.”
She wants to lock me in this subterranean box for two years. The way she’s talking it almost seems as though she thinks she can actually convince me this is a good idea.
Fuck this. I will not be trapped. I extend my hand, expecting to be holding a big fuck off burning sword - but nothing happens. Not even a little lick of flame. I’m suddenly rendered normal.
Katya laughs at me. “Your power won’t work here. These rooms are shielded. All angelic energy is absorbed. That means no fiery swords, and it also means no escape.”
“No… what?”
“No escape, angel.
“Uhhh…” The sound that emerges from me is like a slow gurgle of realization and distress leading to one inevitable, unenviable conclusion:
Katya has betrayed me.
I’m more annoyed at myself than angry at her. What was I thinking? She presented me with the familiar and I gave into her immediately. All she had to do was present a veneer of rationality, and all mine went out the window. The Brotherhood rubbed me the wrong way, but they only ever wanted to keep me out of danger. Now Cosmos is gone, probably dead. I wouldn’t let him live if I were them. His body count of Fleisch operatives is in the triple digits, last I heard.
“Cosmos isn’t…”
“I’ve taken care of your husband.”
“What does that mean?”
She’s smiling at me in a very dark way. “It means nobody else has to die. And it means you’re free of a marriage you likely never consented to. You can thank me now, if you like…”
I can’t summon a sword of burning flame, but I can ball my hand up into a fist, rotate my hips, and strike with a straight arm with a view to smashing the cartilage in Katya’s nose.
She wasn’t expecting that. I feel her face sort of crumple beneath my knuckles, hard and soft and gross and wet and hot, her nostrils spurting with sudden sanguine flows. She’s a much more powerful angel than I am, but in a shielded room, we are each only as good as our punches, and thanks to Cosmos, my punches are pretty fucking sweet.
I run for the door, but not before snapping her electronic pass card off her neck lanyard. Katya is stumbling around, putting her hands to her nose, then immediately wishing she hadn’t, cursing to herself as I run out the door. I can’t believe I actually punched someone that hard. I think I’m starting to become Cosmos. Where the fuck is Cosmos? Is he back at the apartment? I doubt it. I doubt that even is an apartment building. This whole thing has been a plan to lure me back and leech my essence.
Why did I not see this coming? Why didn’t anybody else see this coming? Why did they let me do this? I’m a fucking idiot. I have to be the stupidest person that ever dumbed. If I get out of this alive, I’m never going to make another decision again.
The halls of this place are like a labyrinth. I can’t remember the way I came in. Right, left, they’re all the same thing.
Sirens are wailing all around me, white walls flashing intermittently red as the entire facility goes on lockdown alert to reclaim me.
I hear explosions. Loud explosions, of the kind that indicate Katya’s single cross has been turned into a double cross. That’s what I’m hoping, anyway. If nobody is here to help me, it’s only a matter of time before the guards catch me, and I didn’t spend nearly enough time training to fight all of them.
