Blackridge Institute (wlw) - DA 1

Chapter 15

She met him there, at that far corner of the Dream. The Furnace roared, but not as loud as Casandra's blood did in her ears.

"Where is God?" Louder still did Harlan Xate's voice ring in the empty space. The form he assumed looked like his human body, but also not.

"Not here. Not anymore."

"Where is He?"

"Listen to me, Harlan. God went away a very long time ago." Casandra could feel the heat of the fires.

"Bullshit!" Xate screamed, and the Furnace screamed with him. His face flickered, hair turning golden for a moment. "I've spent my whole life getting here. The brain told me. I need to talk to Him, or I'll—"

"We're running out of time. You need to go—"

Everything went dark and back again, like the universe blinked. The Metatron appeared between them.

Harlan said, "Who are you?"

"God," said the prime angel. "As far as you're concerned. Casandra?"

"And what would you have me do?"

"To the Pit."

"But he's not dead. He doesn't belong there."

"Then make him dead. Scorch Blackridge if you must."

Harlan said, "What?"

"The Metatron wants to wipe Blackridge clean, all because he wants to find you." Casandra, in the Dream, still felt the wired tension in her shoulders and the sweat down her back.

The Metatron turned his sorrowful eyes at her. "I am displeased. But I will not punish you for the crime of being young. This has to be done."

The Furnace reached for them, the flames invigorated. The Metatron stepped toward Harlan, put his hands inside his chest, and Harlan imploded.

What an unimaginable death, what a beauteous death; Harlan Xate's atoms divorced themselves from each other all at once in honeyed time. He resembled now only an amorphous cloud of gore, his particles remembering what they used to be.

And time picked itself back up—Harlan Xate splattered across everything that stood in the way.

Bright spots in Casandra's vision, blinding her.

And they lifted from her eyes, from her mouth, from her clothes. From the floor, from the arms and face of the uncomprehending Metatron, and again that shape, that form.

Harlan solidified again.  His face morphed into a beautiful one, all blonde hair and alabaster skin. Ulysses's mouth screamed, and the Metatron dropped him.

Before their eyes, Harlan kept changing, the body shifting between himself and Ulysses.

"What is this?" The Metatron looked at Casandra, as if she had the answers. The Furnace kept arcing its flames, desperate to reach them.

"I have him," said Harlan. "If you don't do it, I'll—"

The stakes could not get higher, nor more dire—The Metatron and his lonely, untouchable insanity, fanatic Harlan Xate finally pushed over the edge, and Ulysses desperate to lash out. She had to be the intermediary.

"Show him," she said.

The Metatron shifted his eyes to her. "He'll shatter."

"He won't."

"He shouldn't know. It's meant for the eyes of the ascended, not a—" His words were cut off, as a tendril of flame looped around his ankle and yanked him away, like a bad act off a stage.