The Unification Chronicles

24: Briefed by an Angel

Daniel and Jeff were shoved into the back of one squad car, and Susan and Jack were in another. Daniel slumped back in his seat as they pulled away from the steel mill. He had no idea where things would go from here, or there would be any demonic reprisals for Batarel’s death — surely los­ing one of their mem­bers per­ma­nently wasn’t a com­mon occur­rence — but for now, he was actu­ally glad things were out of his hands. The next step wasn’t his to make, and that was a wel­come change. The last week — had it only been a week? — had been enough stress to last him years.

He watched the build­ings of Beth­le­hem slide past out the win­dow. For­tu­nately, the cops in the front seat weren’t the talk­a­tive types. They got one call on their radios, some­thing Daniel only barely heard. The rest of the trip went by in silence.

Then the cops pulled to a stop not at a police sta­tion or munic­i­pal cour­t­house, but rather an upscale office complex.

“That doesn’t look like a jail to me,” Jeff said.

“Yeah, I noticed.”

“No talk­ing!” said the cop rid­ing shot­gun. He and his part­ner got out, and opened the back doors. “Come on, get out.”

Jeff and Daniel got out of the car and saw the sec­ond squad car pull up behind them. In a few moments, Jack and Susan, both still hand­cuffed, were next to them again.”

“Let’s go,” said the cop, and ush­ered them inside.

The build­ing looked and smelled new, Daniel thought. They were hus­tled over to the ele­va­tors, and taken up to the top floor. The cops led them down a hall­way and into an unmarked office. They stood in front of a receptionist’s desk with no receptionist.

A tall blond man in a suit came out to meet them. “Thank you, offi­cers,” he said. “Please remove their hand­cuffs.” All four of them were uncuffed.

“And I believe there was a cam­era?” the man said, and one of the cops handed over Susan’s video camera.

“Excel­lent,” the man said. “Thank you, again, offi­cers. That will be all.”

The four uni­formed cops exchanged looks and left with­out a word.

Daniel turned to Jack. “Your doing?” he asked.

“No,” Jack said. He looked just as puz­zled as Daniel.

“Please,” the blond man said. “All will be explained. If you will come with me?”

With a shrug, Jack fol­lowed, and the rest of them fol­lowed Jack. As they walked down the hall, Daniel noticed that the offices were nice, but bland. There didn’t seem to be any­thing to indi­cate cor­po­rate iden­tity, nor did any­one seem to be there other than their blond benefactor.

The man led them into a well appointed con­fer­ence room. “Please, have a seat,” he said. “Can I get any­one any­thing? Water, soda?”

“No thanks,” Jack said. “I think we’d really like to know what’s going on.” They all took seats around the con­fer­ence table, the blond man sit­ting at the head of the table.

“Of course,” he said.

“Don’t get us wrong,” Daniel said. “We’re glad not to be in jail, but…”

“Yes, I under­stand. This must be very jar­ring. Per­haps we should start with intro­duc­tions. I know who you are, obvi­ously. I’ve been fol­low­ing your exploits for some time now.”

“And you are?” Daniel said.

The man nod­ded. “I am the Archangel Uriel.”

#

Susan couldn’t help it, but her mouth dropped open. “Uriel?” she said. “The angel who stood at the gates of Eden with a flam­ing sword? That Uriel?”

“Archangel,” Uriel cor­rected. “And I don’t recall a flam­ing sword. Some­thing prob­a­bly got lost in translation.”

Susan gulped. Was this really the same being she’d read about in Sun­day School?

Uriel started play­ing back the video from the cam­era. They could all hear Daniel and Batarel on the cat­walk, even the things Batarel didn’t intend to be over­heard. “Excel­lent work, Miss Richard­son,” the archangel said.

“Thank you,” she said. She felt her cheeks warm, and was sure she was blush­ing. “Please call me Susan.”

“Very well, Susan.” He stopped the play­back as Batarel started scream­ing, and put the cam­era down on the table.

“We are very impressed with your work, all of you,” he said. “I can’t remem­ber the last time any­one killed a demon, and I can remem­ber a very, very long time. I’m rel­a­tively sure it has never been done by human hands. You all achieved an accom­plish­ment today unique in the his­tory of your race. You should be proud.”

“Thanks?” Jeff said.

“I’ve been mon­i­tor­ing your progress,” Uriel said. “Even before today, you had already achieved much. No one who has stum­bled upon the secret has ever lasted as long as you did. Part of that, I attribute to demonic over­con­fi­dence, assum­ing Batarel could han­dle this on his own with­out fur­ther assis­tance. But equal mea­sure must go to you. Such tenac­ity is to be rec­og­nized, and rewarded.”

“Rewarded?” said Jeff. “What are we talk­ing about, here? I got an RV to get out of impound.”

“How long have you been mon­i­tor­ing our progress?” Jack asked before Uriel had to deal with the embar­rass­ing question.

“Oh, since the begin­ning,” Uriel said. “I knew about Mis­ter Cho’s dis­cov­ery as soon as the demons did. Our strug­gle is very old, and there are really no more secrets among us.”

“Wait,” Daniel said. “You knew what I was going through the whole week and you’re just step­ping in now? What kind of angels are you?”

“Daniel,” Susan said, but Uriel was will­ing to fend for him­self. Susan still couldn’t believe she was in a room with such a being. It was imper­ti­nent to ques­tion him or his motives.

“We’re the same angels that have guided your race from the begin­ning. But the key word there is guided. We don’t gen­er­ally inter­vene in human affairs directly. If we did, your achieve­ments wouldn’t be your own. We just help you stay on the path.”

“That’s all fine and good, but he was try­ing to kill us!” Daniel shouted.

“Daniel!” Susan said. “Don’t raise your voice to — “

“It’s all right, Miss Richard­son. I com­pletely under­stand Mis­ter Cho being upset.”

Daniel rose out of his seat. “Upset?”

“Please, Mis­ter Cho, be seated.” When Daniel didn’t sit imme­di­ately, Uriel added, “Please.”

Daniel sat down, and said nothing.

“Yes, Batarel was try­ing to kill you. As he has killed thou­sands of humans. As the demons do, suc­cess­fully, every other time in human his­tory their secret has been dis­cov­ered. Don’t you see? That is pre­cisely why I inter­vened. Because this time, he didn’t kill you. You killed him. You have proven your­self worthy.”

Daniel slumped back in his seat, and Jack ges­tured for him to set­tle down.

“Worth of what, sir?” Jack said. At least he, Susan thought, was show­ing the proper deference.

“Our assis­tance. Cur­rently, you have only Miss Richardson’s pho­to­graphic evi­dence. This is exem­plary, but every­one at this table knows that mere video is no longer proof of any­thing in a dig­i­tal age. If you’re going to prove the exis­tence of the demons beyond a doubt, you need more. I can pro­vide you with some, and direct you to the rest.”

“Why are you doing this?” Daniel said. Susan was tempted to haul off and smack him, if she didn’t think that would be dis­re­spect­ful to the archangel.

“Mis­ter Cho, I believe we cov­ered that.”

“We cov­ered why you’re step­ping in now, rather than when we really needed you,” Daniel said, glanc­ing at Susan, prob­a­bly to see if she was going to inter­rupt him again. She only glared at him.

“But I still don’t under­stand why you’re help­ing us in the first place. Don’t you have as much to lose as the demons if we prove that immor­tals exist?”

“No, Mis­ter Cho. We are not demons. We are not cor­rupt­ing the human race. We are your shep­herds, as we have been since the dawn of time.”

“Then why haven’t you revealed your­selves before now?”

“It is only now that you have proven your­selves worthy — “

“No,” Daniel said, inter­rupt­ing an archangel, “I get why now is the right time to reveal the demons. I want to know why you have kept your­selves a secret, all this time. Why not reveal your­selves and leave the demons out of it?”

“Danny, maybe we shouldn’t look this par­tic­u­lar gift horse — “

“It’s a fair ques­tion, Mis­ter Frankel,” Uriel said. “The answer, Mis­ter Cho, is sim­ple. Times have changed.

“When humans were still largely agrar­ian, as they have been for most of recorded his­tory and before, reli­gion formed the basis for com­mu­ni­ties, com­mu­ni­ties the basis for nations, and nations the basis for soci­ety. In such an envi­ron­ment, it was more effec­tive for us to work behind the scenes, allow humans to try new things, with only our hand guid­ing the priests, who in turn guided communities.

“In the past few hun­dred years, the fab­ric of soci­ety has begun to unravel. Peo­ple no longer believe as they once did. Even the ones who say they do often act in com­plete oppo­si­tion to their sup­posed sacred beliefs. And some among the angels have come to real­ize that the time for belief as a form of — “

“Con­trol,” Daniel said.

“ — guid­ance, Mis­ter Cho, may be pass­ing. The trend has been build­ing ever since Galileo, and it is clear. The belief of the twenty first Chris­t­ian cen­tury is in fact, in sci­ence. Skep­ti­cism is the new reli­gion. And so if human­ity requires proof to accept our guid­ance, we will, at last, pro­vide such proof. But we will do so on our terms, in such a way as to con­trast our good inten­tions against the cor­rup­tion of the demons.”

“You know what they say about good inten­tions,” Daniel said.

“Daniel!” Susan said. “I’ve had it with you! Why can’t you just accept what Uriel’s telling us? Why do you always have to be such a pain in the ass?”

“Please, Miss Richard­son, it’s all right. Mis­ter Cho’s skep­ti­cism, his sus­pi­cion, is exactly why we’re hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion at all. Mis­ter Cho is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the human race as a whole, I’m afraid. If I can’t con­vince him, then our cause is lost.

“So here is what I am offer­ing. I will offer what pro­tec­tion I can, but sadly that is prob­a­bly less than you think. Our orga­ni­za­tion left fight­ing behind mil­len­nia ago, unlike the demons. Your true pro­tec­tion is knowl­edge, and shar­ing that knowl­edge with the world.”

He pulled a small USB thumb drive out of his coat pocket and slid it across the table to Susan. “Con­tained on that device is a data­base. This data­base con­tains the name of every angel and demon, along with the var­i­ous human iden­ti­ties every one of us has assumed through­out recorded his­tory. A com­plete record of our doings in your world, and of the demons as well. I encour­age you to pass it along to your col­leagues in the press, Miss Richard­son, so that they may begin check­ing it against your own his­tor­i­cal record.”

From another pocket, he pulled out four envelopes, and passed them out to each per­son at the table. “In these envelopes are papers estab­lish­ing new, tem­po­rary, iden­ti­ties for you all, which should allow you to travel and evade the demons for a while. They also include air­line tick­ets from this city’s air­port to New York, and from there to Baghdad.”

“Bagh­dad?” Jack said. “What’s in Iraq?”

“Buried under an ancient mosque, likely for­got­ten, is a scroll. This is the Lost Gospel Of The Angels, a work that doc­u­ments our his­tory in far more detail than any of your sur­viv­ing holy books. It tells the story of my peo­ple, how the demons actu­ally fell from Grace, and the war between us. Authen­ti­cate not only its con­tents but the antiq­uity of the doc­u­ment itself, and ver­ify the infor­ma­tion con­tained in the data­base, and you will have all the proof the mod­ern world requires.”

Uriel stood up. “A map to the mosque is included in your paper­work. Now, if you’ll excuse me, we all have work to do. There is a car wait­ing for you down­stairs. The dri­ver will take you some­where to pro­cure you all a change of cloth­ing, and then escort you to the air­port. I wish you good luck.”

The archangel held the door open for them as they exited, and then saw them to the ele­va­tor. He was smil­ing as the ele­va­tor doors closed.

#

Three hours later, Jack sat with the other three in JFK Inter­na­tional Air­port, wait­ing for their flight to Bagh­dad. The ter­mi­nal wait­ing area was at least half filled with sol­diers clad in BDUs. I guess they’re still going with com­mer­cial trans­port for a lot of the deploy­ments, Jack thought.

Susan was tak­ing advan­tage of the air­port wifi to upload the last video. “Are you sure that’s wise?” Jack said.

“What do you mean? I’m still using onion rout­ing. No one will know where we are.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Jack said. “I’m wor­ried that the demons will see this as an escalation.”

“You mean,” Jeff said, “as opposed to killing one of their own, which they almost cer­tainly already know about?”

“It makes me uncom­fort­able,” Jack said. “I saw war­ring tribes do this sort of thing in Iraq. It always invited reprisals.”

“Jack,” Susan said, “we’re under the pro­tec­tion of the angels now. Noth­ing can touch us.”