Chapter 28
Hey asshole,
Are you not getting my letters?
It’s been like two months since anyone’s heard from you. I need to know you’re alive more often than that. Your dad needs to know you’re alive, too, and he doesn’t even know you’re in a country having a whole ass civil war (you’re welcome for that, btw).
Stop worrying us so much and tell me you’re not fucking dead.
— Jackie
KAE
“Why isn’t she conscious yet? It should be working by now,” A familiar voice, deep and laced with cold concern, asks someone. It’s backdropped by the steady, unmistakable beeping of a vital signs monitor, progressively becoming faster.
Is that my heart?
Where am I?
“The reversal was immediate,” a beautiful, musical voice replies in a hushed whisper… I don’t recognize that one. “She’s waking up now.”
I try to crack my eyelids open, but my God, the lights in here are brutal.
“Kae? Can you speak?”
“Brihh—” I clear the Sahara desert out of my throat. “Bright… as fuck.”
Some angel does me the favor of turning the lights off, and I blink many times, but my eyes are persistently unhelpful. Squinting, I can only barely make out a couple of things at a time before I have to furiously blink again.
First, I discern a few features of my bedroom, resolving the question of where I am.
Then I try to make out the why, which is significantly more difficult.
There’s quite a crowd in here, circled in various seats around my bed. Abaddon, Dusk, and… Raphael? What the hell is he doing here, and are those actual scrubs he’s wearing? Oh, I so fucking knew it. The council member is, in fact, a doctor.
“Hi, angels,” I rasp, my voice so scratchy, you’d think I’ve been smoking a pack a day for twenty years. I try to clear my throat again, but I’m not sure how much good it does. Raphael seems to notice my problem and passes me a large cup with a straw. Eagerly, I take several long sips from it.
Water has never tasted so good before.
“Thanks,” I finally respond, the words coming out slightly easier. “Uh… What happened?”
Raphael seems to think about how to respond, but before he gets a chance to, Dusk steps forward with an expression that is decidedly not happy.
“You impulsive, careless human,” my friend seethes. “Do you have any idea how close you came to death? Real, final, mortal death? If you ever scare me like that again, I swear to Kesbeel, you won’t even be allowed to boil water again without an angel watching you.”
Oof… I think I’ll just go back to sleep.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Dusk growls the moment I close my eyes, moving to sit at the foot of my bed. “You’ve had plenty of time to sleep. I need to know what in the hell you were thinking—”
Raphael clicks his tongue, shooting a glare at Dusk. “That’s enough, child. I have more important questions for the patient. I would like the room, please.”
Neither Dusk nor Abaddon looks willing to comply.
Raphael sighs, reminding me of my dad when his patience is running thin. “I need to discuss Kae’s medical care in private. I will allow you two to return as soon as we’re done. Now go. It’s not up for debate.”
Reluctantly, they leave the room, moving far more slowly than necessary. I don’t catch what Dusk grumbles on the way out, and don’t particularly care to. I’m far more appreciative of Raphael’s soothing energy right now than I am of the two overbearing angels.
“How are you feeling?”
I pull myself into a sitting position, wincing, before grabbing my forehead. “I have a fairly bad headache. The pulsating kind.”
“That much is to be expected, unfortunately,” he replies with a quick nod, pulling out a notebook to jot something down. “And the rest of your body? Any pain?”
I don’t really know how to answer that. I’m both exhausted and energized.
“Just a bit of muscle soreness, I guess.” I glance at the IV still in my arm, then at the pole with a bag of fluids hanging from it.
None of it is labeled in any way I’m familiar with.
I’d ask what it is, but I’d rather hear my whole case presentation.
“I remember seeing my body have a seizure, but I don’t know what happened after that.
.. Did Michael tell everyone what he did? How long was I unconscious?”
“Yes, he did.” Raphael frowns, and I get the sense that he’s not pleased with the angel’s risky methodology. “And you have been in a medically-induced coma for a little over three weeks now.”
“Oh… That’s…” Far longer than I could have imagined. It only feels like it’s been a couple of days. “Wow. Uh… Why, exactly, did you do that?”
Raphael gives me a small, reassuring smile.
“To be honest, Kae, you defied all odds by surviving. Your soul was separated from your body for far longer than any human should be able to withstand. The subsequent realignment was exceedingly difficult. If I had woken you during that process, you likely would have experienced delirium, fevers, seizures, and intense full-body pain. I only wanted to spare you from the worst of the suffering.”
“Then I should be thanking you for keeping me unconscious.”
“There’s no need. Besides, I was not even certain you would have survived if I had woken you to that. As it is, I had one of my prodigious students enhance your physical body to increase the odds of it accepting the… enhanced spirit.”
My jaw drops when I glance down at my arms, finding that I am, in fact, significantly more muscular than before.
All that time spent doing physical conditioning, just for it to not be enough.
While I was preparing myself the old-fashioned way, they were preparing a fucking cheat code to use on me.
“You guys could have told me that was always the plan.”
“We did not know the procedure would be necessary until...” He trails off, giving me a pitying look. “Well, until the day came when we needed it.”
“But why?” This is it. This is my chance to get answers. It’s what I’ve been wanting, more than anything, since I got here. I can tell he’s holding back. He knows something that I don’t. “Raphael, please, I need to understand. What happened to me, specifically?”
“It is hard to explain.” He sighs. “But I will try my best to do so in a way you can understand. You are a scientist by training, so perhaps I can give you a physical parallel. Are you familiar with the origins of mitochondria?”
“…Yes.” And I don’t like where this is going one bit.
“Then you know that the mitochondria became an essential part of the cell from an endosymbiotic event, where a free-living organism was engulfed by a host cell. Your companions mentioned that you frequently called the Key to the Abyss a parasite, claiming it felt like a foreign entity. This might be true, in a way. When your soul returned, it had been fundamentally altered in a way we’ve never seen.
The most logical explanation is that your entity, much like the mitochondria, has become an integral part of you. ”
“And… its power, too?”
“In theory, yes.”
So my celestial parasite has morphed into my shiny new metaphysical powerhouse of the cell. Or powerhouse of the… soul. Goddammit, now I’ll never be rid of the thing.
“Great. Love that.” If it starts talking to me again, I don’t think I can handle it. I’m going to have a mental break.
Raphael continues to look at me with pity, ignoring my sarcasm. “I’m afraid there’s one more thing I should tell you, Kae.”
“What’s that?” I take another sip of my water, watching as he suspiciously waits until I’m done drinking before saying—
“I believe you’re immortal now.”
I still choke, coughing up a lung, before rasping a very perturbed, “What?”
“Yes, I’m afraid you have lost the gift of mortality.
” He looks very sincerely into my eyes before grasping my hands in his own.
“Your soul is different, evolved—strengthened by an everglowing light. I would be curious to see what other unique changes you may yet uncover about yourself.” With a small pat on my hands, he lets go, standing up to leave.
“For now, though, I leave you to forge your own path of discovery.”
“Raphael, wait,” I swing my legs over the side of the bed, cringing as it makes my head throb even harder. “There are so many things I want to ask you. A lot of them are medical, but most importantly, the apocalypse. Can it be stopped?”
He glances over his shoulder, smiling sadly at me again. “Patience, my child. You will learn everything you need in time.”
I have all of ten seconds to process both my newfound immortality and Raphael’s incredibly vague answer about the apocalypse before Dusk and Abaddon come barging in.
I can’t bring myself to look at them. It’s like those moments in movies, where everything becomes white noise.
My brain flies and twists and turns around on itself.
I haven’t really paid too much attention to how immortality works for the angels.
Will it be the same for me? Has there ever been a human who became immortal?
And I just keep coming back to vampires. They’re the most notorious immortals in human lore, after all. What if it’s founded in some truth? What if I start craving the taste of blood—
“Kae,” Dusk calls, pointing towards my vital signs. “Your heart rate is skyrocketing.”
“Well, fuck.” My head jerks towards him. They both seem equally apprehensive about approaching me right now. “I guess I can go ahead and have a damn heart attack, because it doesn’t matter anymore.”
They look at each other like two brothers who know a secret, fully convincing me that I’m living in some sort of alternate reality.
These two hate each other.
What is going on?
“I’m glad Raphael told you,” Abaddon says slowly, watching as I start ripping off my telemetry and standing up.
“How long have you known?”
“I had a hunch it would happen since I first felt the entity inside you.”