Radicle (Terminal trilogy #2, can stand alone)

34: The siege

 "At least we won't have to worry about him." Lane said the moment we heard the elevator doors shut.

"The fact he literally can't die still rings itself through my mind." Glenn sighed. "He doesn't need his army. He only needs himself."

"In more ways then one." I added. Unfortunately, this served as a reminder of my presence, and the attention shifted back towards me.

"So. You blew up the tunnels, huh? You killed thousands of innocents today you know." Glenn said.

"We should kill him ourselves." Stacy offered.

"No, that's not a good idea." Kell said. "Michael would likely be annoyed if we did that."

"So would the public. They'd need to hear his full confession before they accepted him as being at fault. If we just showed up with a dead body and called him criminal, we'd have a riot on our hands." Lane said.

"So... you guys can't kill me. So it's good. No need to talk it over any furth-"

"Actually, we might as well film him confessing- I mean, not everyone will go for it, but we might as well. Then we can send him over to Michael to get killed, and the problem is entirely over." Glenn suggested.

"People will think we forced him to say it as a scapegoat. It'd be more solid if we had him do it with a podium in front of a crowd- the sort of secure event that makes it seem more realistic. A personal video in a dark room reeks of suspicion." Kell said.

"Everyone did see him in the sky though. He's not some random civilian. I'd bet a lot of people are suspicious of him to begin with- he had a bunch of cults obsessed with him and everything."

"It would be better than nothing. Even if we never use the video. We might as well gather what we can while he's still alive." Lane said.

"It's our best bet." I couldn't help but notice how quiet Stacy had been- besides the one genuine burst of emotion when dealing with Michael, he had been keeping silent and sticking to basic phrases of bland fact. If I hadn't already known he was guilty, I would have been able to guess it.

An agreement had been reached, though The Few were yet to put all of their effort in any one task- all would pause to check their phones or the news every few minutes.

Still, a script was ironed out for me. I was forced to write out a statement as well- the first time was in English, but my handwriting was so despicable they opted for me to write it in angelic as well.

Glenn's small computer phone was used as the camera. For the sake of making it look 'not forced', I was seated with my back to The Few- they were to look generally busy in the background while I spoke. Lane was also at my side, evidently holding me down.

My script was written by Glenn, but she barely knew the details of what had happened, so it was mostly filled with parentheses reading 'insert reason for attack here' and such.

Glenn actually stood across from me, holding up pieces of paper for me to read off of.

"Hello." I started. "My name is Michael Castellano-" Her card actually read 'Nichael' but I decided I was going to be honest- "And I am not an angel. A few hours ago, I hacked into the main sky network frame and said some things. They were incorrect. No angels were or are coming to Hell."

Reading off her cards was still sort of hard, even with my ever improving literacy, so I was talking fairly slow. "Then I exploded the tunnels. In these tunnels were a bunch of cults who worshipped me. I pretended to be an angel so they'd do this. I am not though. I killed a lot of demons today. I did this because I thought I was an angel. I'm not. Anyways, The Few are going to execute me for my crimes of mass murder pretty soon. Bye."