Genesis End

By Spinning Demon (Topman) and Gauntlet (Shadowman)

Chapter Twenty Two - Revelation

"The end of the world?! What the hell are you talking about??" I shouted at the demon, my arms cutting deeper into his chest as I pressed him into the wall even harder.

"As I just said, you wouldn't understand yet. Hrm, perhaps I misspoke when I said you'd learned to ask the right questions. Shall I just explain it to you from the beginning? It would save me a lot of time, certainly."

"Right, like you're really going to just reveal your whole plan to me, like in a bad mystery novel?"

He shrugged. "Why not? I've already accomplished what I needed to. And if providing you with some closure will get you out of here faster..."

I pulled away from him slowly, and he sidled away from the wall and back over to the heavy piece of wood he'd been dragging. I didn't bother tailing him... if he was going to run, he would have done it days ago, he'd had plenty of opportunities. If he was willing to talk, I'd listen. But I'd be on my guard this time. I'd underestimated him until now.

As he picked up the large wooden beam and started dragging it across the floor, I saw now that it was in fact a particularly large crucifix. Seeing the chapel in the brighter light of the broken-in doors, there were many more crucifixes than I'd expected to see - large piles at each entranceway, just stacked in heaps upon each other, wooden and metal alike. Some were rotted and tarnished, but others looked much newer, quite out of place in this wreck of a place. Even the windows were boarded up not with slats but with crosses upon crosses.

"Redecorating?" I asked in bemusement.

"Preparing, actually... I have lived for hundreds of years, and I am always preparing." He sounded let down at that last part. I wondered if I'd get to find out why. "Of course, when you live for so long, money becomes no issue - simply keep a single coin clean for long enough and you can sell it for a fortune in the next century. But there are still things that are more difficult to obtain. Sometimes you have to get creative. It's why I created emerGEnesis, though that's simply the latest in my many dabblings in the world of men."

I shook my head and grumbled. "I should have known it was you...'emerGEnesis'? 'Adam Everett' - as in Adam and Eve? You did say how much you love the Old Testament."

He chuckled. "Yes, well one must have fun where one can find it!"

"So Snake was right, it really was just a shell company."

"I suppose so, though I can't say I ever took much interest in how my associates pulled it off. Something about repackaging prototype drugs from Asia, I think, but it really doesn't matter. As I said, it was never about the money. What emerGEnesis did do, however, was afford me a way to use my healing powers without being discovered by those who've pursued me over the years."

"Use your healing powers? You started a fake pharmaceutical company just to... heal people?"

"Ohhhh yes. Do not underestimate it. Favours, influence, rare items... saving a life can accrue you many things if it's the right life you save. After all, that's why you wanted my help, wasn't it? To save lives? But you weren't the first ones to seek my help recently. There was another who'd heard of me, who begged me to use my powers on him. He was dying, you see, of something new, something I'd never seen. Something that was ripping him apart."

"...you're talking about KADE! Y-you're talking about The Harbinger!!"

"Yes, he certainly called himself that. He was barely lucid... but amidst his ramblings I gleaned some information... he spoke of being infected by a plague in Hell, of being sent back by a miracle. He believed he'd been tasked to collect souls for Heaven and Hell... before the Rapture comes. I had my own theory, of course. I'd assumed his story had grains of truth among the madness, that perhaps he'd been captured, tested on, infected... and then released, or escaped. And he'd brought with him a virus unlike anything I'd ever seen."

"Of course! That's why you took out the money, you were going to pay him for the virus, so you could spread it, or sell it, or-"

Ha'Khael put his finger to his lips and shot me a condescending look. "You're jumping ahead, squire, but no, you must think me quite pedestrian if you think that's what I was after. No, the virus was unique in an altogether different manner. For the first time, I'd found a virus I could not cure."

"You couldn't?"

"No, and it puzzled me to no end. I was able to slow the spreading, to save his life... but it was beyond my power to undo its effects."

"Maybe you're just losing your touch."

"Watch your tongue, squire. Remember that you're only learning any of this because I'm allowing you to."

I bit back a threat. It wasn't worth the backlash. "So you still don't know why you couldn't cure him?"

"I had one theory, though right away I didn't put much stock in it. You see, the healing powers I have are divine in nature - holy magicks. The only reason I could imagine that my powers would not work on him is if he was a holy being."

"...you mean like an angel?"

"Or some other being of the Higher Planes, but yes. Humans are healed by holy magicks, of course, and demons can be ensnared or exorcised with it, but on holy beings their own magicks have little effect. If he was a being of the Higher Planes, it would make sense that my spells would not cure him."

"But you said you didn't believe it."

"That's right, I didn't. For one thing, beings of the Higher Plane rarely come to the mortal world. It was easier to believe he was simply insane, and it was a property of the virus that was blocking my magicks. That is, until you came along."

"...me?"

"Yessss. It was surely no coincidence that days after saving that man's life, a series of mystical murders began sweeping the city. I was intrigued. I wished to investigate further... and you handed me the opportunity, as well as my talisman, on a silver platter. How could I refuse? Of course, even when I discovered their souls had been stolen, there was still no way to be certain it was the same man... but as soon as I saw the photos on your board of the other victims, the infected ones, I recognized the virus immediately and knew he was at least one of your killers.

"You... y-you knew?! You KNEW it was him! You knew where KADE came from!"

"Yes, it's rather too bad you never asked me about that case... I'd have had a much harder time playing coy about that one."

I took a swing at him, but he dropped the heavy beam and stepped nimbly aside. "Uh uh uh, and I'm being so cooperative too! If you can't handle a little truth, I'm really not the right person for you to be talking to."

"You... you helped kill all those people!"

"You haven't heard the whole story yet. Shall I continue? Or do you want to end it here and have wasted both of our times? I suppose as long as you leave it's all the same to me."

My shoulders sagged. It's not like attacking him now would do anything - those people were long dead. At least if I found out the truth, their deaths wouldn't be completely meaningless... or so I hoped. I gestured for him to continue.

"Smart choice. As I was saying, I now knew he was at least one of your soul-stealing killers, if not both. Which meant he'd been telling the truth, at least in part. I began to wonder if my theory about him being a holy being held some merit. But something still bothered me - you may recall I told you neither beings of the Higher nor Lower planes can take a soul before its time. But there's one exception, of course. A single one. The Rapture."

"You mean the end of the world."

"Exactly. God sowed the seed of Man, and the Devil tilled the fields. At the end of days, each would want to claim their share. There would need to be a neutral party, a reaper of souls, to judge which souls are worthy of Heaven and which are doomed to Hell."

"You can't seriously believe that the Harbinger is this 'reaper of souls', can you?!"

"I never said it was true, I said it was a theory. And one I couldn't discount. I am speaking to a construct. I have touched a table with no soul imbued inside. 'The old order of things has passed away'. If it were true, if the end of the world was upon us, it meant I had very little time left. So I devised a plan. That night, when you sent me back to the safehouse, I contacted the Harbinger. He agreed to meet me the following night, at emerGEnesis. And I would pay him - not for the virus - but for the souls of those he'd killed with it."

"You wanted the souls? I thought you said mischief demons-"

"-have no use for them, yes. But I needed them for my plan to succeed. Our meeting was set. However, you proved to be more tenacious than I'd anticipated. When I heard you speaking to your teammate about staking out emerGEnesis, I knew I had to force my hand. I couldn't allow you to interfere, so I steered you into a situation where you would be... otherwise distracted."

"You said the divining rod had found something!"

"Oh, it did. In fact, I'd detected three spellcasts over that last hour. I simply waited to tell you until the timing was right. Then, while you were all occupied, I met with the Harbinger and made the exchange"

"So I was right, it was you, then. Who told the Ascendant Androids we'd be there so they could ambush us."

"Guilty," he said with mock shame.

"I don't get it, you told us you wouldn't betray us! I thought you couldn't lie?!"

"I didn't betray you. Do you remember what I said when you asked me to help? I said I would do so for the sake of the people who were dying, not for yours. By sending the Androids to distract you, I kept my vow, not broke it."

"HOW?! You let hundreds of people die to the KADE virus, how did you help ANY of them?!"

"If you had caught the Harbinger before he'd sold me their souls, they would have been lost, discarded to the aether. And if you had allowed them to live their lives, in soil and in sin, then when they died they would have gone to the Lower Planes to spend eternity in torment. But I offered them something nobody else would. I offered them absolution."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"The Harbinger used the KADE virus on the people he'd judged guilty - the souls destined to go to Hell. He sold me their souls because he knew I'm a demon. He must have thought that, like any demon, I would collect their souls for barter in the Lower Planes, where they rightfully belonged. But that was not my intention. After I bought the souls off of him, I absolved them of their sin, purified them. I gave those souls to the Higher Planes. I sent them to Heaven."

"...you... why?"

"Why! And so we return to it... why. Do you know why I took this body as my host, so many lifetimes ago?"

"Of course. Immortality, access to holy powers, the inability to be exorcised..."

"All means to an end," Ha'Kael corrected me. "When I came upon New Eden, I saw an opportunity. Not to destroy, as the story goes, but a chance to do what no demon had ever done before."

"Possess a mage," I concluded.

"NO!" Ha'Khael shouted, abandoning his soft-spoken demeanour. His voice was excited, distorted, and echoed through the empty church. "Again, you think too small, just like all of my kind! Of course to them it would seem grand, the possession of a magicks-wielder, an unprecedented triumph for my race! But it was never more than the means to an end."

He paused, and when he spoke was quiet again. Not just quiet, but wistful, defeated... like he'd given up on something important to him in that very moment. "'You cannot lie. You cannot kill. And when you receive the summons, you must return to the lower plane, sentenced to eternal servitude.' These are the truths that have ruled my existence. But I have never needed to lie, nor to kill. There is only one thing I've ever needed, only one thing I couldn't ever have, and that's to be free.

"Delaying the summons with acts of violence and corruption was always a temporary solution. I needed the time to find an answer, a way to lose the shackles of my summons. In New Eden, I found a way to make time slow to a halt... but isn't it ironic? The Blessèd Childryn were fools, cattle that clambered to bend to my will, and still, they influenced me as much as I did them. For through them, I learned to believe in Heaven.

"Since New Eden, I have devoted every moment to finding some way, any way... a loophole, a bargaining chip... pausing only from my relentless search to delay the summons a little longer... but I swore to myself, that I would not return to the Lower Planes. I would go to Heaven."

"A demon who dreams of Heaven??" I scoffed. It sounded ridiculous. "So what, you gave them those souls as... as a down payment?"

"More like a gesture of goodwill. It was a gambit - one that did not pay off. Now... hundreds of souls, each as corrupted as I am, some worse... and they will spend eternity in paradise. But not I."

He picked the large crucifix up again, and tossed it the last few inches, until it slammed against one of the doors with a loud crash. "If it really is the end of the world, then it doesn't matter anymore if I sin or not. The summons will come to all, soon. I may not ever reach the Gates of the Kingdom, but neither will I surrender myself to Hell." He gestured to the crosses in the pile, and then pulled at the front of his robe, exposing his bare chest. The black tattoo that marred his face continued down his waist, emerging again below his pants at the outside of his right foot. A second horizontal stripe was now visible intersecting with the first at his shoulders, continuing down his arms and narrowing at his hands to encompass his ring and middle fingers. He raised his arms perpendicular to his body, and I could see that when held like that, the tattoos were meant to make up a cross.

"When the summons comes, no force of the Lower Planes will be able to drag me down with them. I'll be free... as long as I remain confined. Fate seems to revel in irony, doesn't it?"

"That's why you wanted that trinket back, isn't it?" a voice behind me asked. I turned around - from the choir pulpit on the upper level, Shadow Man dropped down silently. I wondered how long he'd been listening in. "You're going to go into hiding again, or try to. But without that talisman, they can track you down."

Ha'Khael just scowled in response.

"Did you think I'd forget about it? I thought you'd been bound to your word not to escape with it."

Ha'Khael smirked. "Yes, well 'escape' implies pursuit. I simply arranged circumstances so that I would not be pursued."

He was talking about me. So he'd tricked me into attacking him, just so he could fake his death. Did he know about the lights, too, that they would trigger something inside me?

"You forget that you also said you would give the talisman back once the investigation had ended."

"Did I, now? You see, my exact words were that I would give it back 'once you have solved the murders'. So tell me, you two, do you believe that the world is ending? That the Harbinger was in fact a being from Heaven, tortured by Hell, sent back to reap the souls for the coming Apocalypse?"

"Of course not," Shadow snorted.

"Well then we are fundamentally at odds, for I do. 'Solved' implies consensus, it implies a correct answer, it implies finality. If we don't agree, then the murders haven't been solved yet."

Shadow was silent for a second, then turned his back on Ha'Khael. "Keep your little toy, demon. Just remember, you made another enemy in us. I guess you can add us to the list."

Without another word, he began to walk out into the daylight. I followed, but something made me turn back.

"You know, the Harbinger is dead. He died fighting just two of us. If he was really this 'reaper of souls', shouldn't he be immortal, or invincible, or something?"

Ha'Khael smirked. "Oh, you never know... that may not have seen the last you'll ever see of him. After all... 'no more death', right?"

I didn't know how he knew about that, but I wasn't playing this game anymore. Like Shadow, I turned and walked out without another word.

****

I should have gone straight back to base, but there was something I had to do first. It took me a while to find the place from above ground, but as the buildings turned more and more dilapidated I knew I was getting warmer. Eventually I came across one building taller than the others, a rundown old hotel.

"Halt! Who goes there?" a voice cried out as I moved through the lobby. My gaze followed to the upper level terrace where a robot was perched, ready to pounce.

"Omni, it's me," I shouted up to him.

Rather than leaping at me to attack, he jumped down quite gracefully for his size, landing a few feet away.

"Spin, you were gone for- what happened to your armour?"

I hadn't noticed, but Light must have taken the Spin Man armour off when he'd repaired me. I felt a little bad that I hadn't brought it back.

"Omni, I just... I wanted to thank you for your help the past few days. I never expected I would call you an ally, but you saved my life. There's something I want to give you."

"Wh-?" I held out my hand and placed the small piece of metal into his palm. "Th-this is..."

He looked up at me with dawning realization. That I wasn't under anyone's influence anymore. He leapt back and readied his lance, his other hand gripping the chip tightly.

"I'm not here to fight you, Omni. Just... keep it. Doctor Light wiped the programming clean, so you can't use it anymore... but I thought you might like to have it. Like you said, the vestiges of Wily's technology are hard to come by... I thought you might want the memento."

He stared at me, his expression blank. Was he upset? Grateful? Calculating his next move? Then he looked down at the chip. His thumb ran across the small "Dr. W" insignia on the front. "...Thanks," he finally muttered.

"But - and this is the only warning I'm ever giving you - stop. Move on. You can be more than... this. But you have to let go. And if you don't... don't try to mess with us again. You'll regret it."

I turned and skated out. All threats aside, he could beat the crap out of me if he wanted to. I just hoped some of what I said would reach him, so it would never come to that.

****

When I got back to headquarters, I was greeted with open arms. Spark ran up and gave me a hug, Mags punched me on the (newly re-attached) arm, even Snake gave me a nod of his head, a rare treat from him. I wasn't sure if Shadow had told them about the Wily Chip he'd thought was in me, or if they were just happy to have me back regardless. But it felt like the first win we'd had in days.

As we celebrated, I drifted from conversation to conversation, just soaking it all in. Hard was talking to Mags about the fight, and even laughed as the Sheriff made a corny joke. Snake and Needle were reviewing tactics for their recent fight against me. Spark was telling Gemini about the success the scientists had been having with the virus sample I'd given them.

"Hopefully there won't be any more KADE victims now that we've stopped the Harbinger," she was saying, "but they're still working on a cure just in case the virus falls into the wrong hands. They're optimistic about finding a cure in the next three or four months," she beamed.

"Wait," I cut in, "what about Esme?? I thought she was safe now."

Gemini put his hand on my shoulder to calm me. "Do not worry yourself, Top Man, she is indeed safe. After you brought her to us, we tested her for the KADE virus, and she was not infected."

Mags came up from behind Gemini and slapped him on the back with a hoot. "Yer being modest, Gem, and it ain't like ya. After she tested negative for KADE, Gem here got the idea to check if a spell had been cast on her. Saved her damn life, he did!"

Gemini blushed. "Well, I suppose I have Ha'Khael to thank for that, strangely enough. It was he who taught me how to reverse the effects of the spell." He turned to me and looked earnestly into my eyes. "But I would not have been able to save her if you had not brought her to us in time, Top Man. The spell was almost too strong for me to stop already. She owes you a debt."

I smiled weakly and nodded, but didn't answer. How was that possible?

The team talked amongst each other well into the night, but I couldn't really follow any of the conversations. Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore. I snuck out as best I could onto a balcony overlooking the city and stared out at the horizon.

"Something on your mind?"

I jumped, startled. On my right, in the darkest corner of the balcony, Shadow Man was standing there for who knows how long, looking out towards the city.

"No, just... why her?"

"Hm?"

"Why her, why Esme? Er... 'Hu Man'. Gemini said that she'd had the spell cast on her, the one he used to kill people to send to Heaven. But he was there when I fought her, he saw how violent she was, how enraged... why did he judge her innocent?"

"...You mean, why her and not you."

"...Yeah."

"Top, he was crazy. It doesn't matter. Who he picked or didn't pick, it didn't have to make sense. It didn't make sense. Don't let it eat you up inside."

"So you don't think it's the Apocalypse?"

"Nope."

"...Why not?"

"Because we're not done fighting."

"Hmmm."

We stood there in silence, the night breeze blowing Shadow's scarf toward the dark sky. The bright lights of skyscrapers and cars in the distance twinkled, and for the first time since Light brought me back online I thought of the stars. For a second I felt a rising anger, but as I reminded myself of this cool quiet night with no threat in sight, I felt the rage subside.

Everything felt different tonight. But... for me, this wasn't the book of Revelation, it was the book of Genesis. I was like Adam & Eve - I'd just eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, and for the first time, I could see the evil that was inside of me.

Tomorrow I would have to deal. Tomorrow, I would have to find a way to put a positive spin on it. But that's okay. Spinning's my specialty.