There is not much to say about the tragedy of Squad Calvary, except that we should have seen the sin in that boy from the start, and that it was an unfortunate failure that my son will not repeat again.

—The general of New Nazareth

“What the hell is that?”

Faith’s elbow strikes Nick’s ribs, and if she keeps moving like this, he’s going to have to tie her down to get her off the wall. She’s completely red with blood; head wounds bleed like a motherfucker, but the pain hasn’t hit her yet. She’s on the walkway with wild eyes, demanding, “What the hell, what the hell.”

“You good?” Aisha demands. She doesn’t move from where she’s keeping a steady stream of fire raining down on the lawn of New Nazareth. She’s not allowed to be distracted, no matter how much she’s shaking, no matter that she saw a bullet hit Faith in the head and now Faith is down and screaming. Her voice cracks when she says, “Nick, is she good?”

“She’s fine.” He holds Faith by the shoulders, by the jaw, trying to get her back to her senses. “Stop moving.”

He’s keeping it together. He saw Brother Clairborne down on the lawn, those blue eyes and terrifyingly handsome face, and he’s keeping it together, so why can’t they? She’s supposed to be a goddamn soldier.

Nick bites down on his lip so hard it bleeds, and he drags Faith’s arm across his shoulders. She’s still making terrible noises. He draws down a shutter across the part of his mind that registers it as heartbreaking. Just because he can shut himself down—just because he can cram all the terror into a bottle, postpone the meltdown until he can explode without anyone getting hurt—doesn’t mean others should be forced to do the same.

“All right,” Nick whispers, pulling Faith close to him. The sweat, the skin on skin, the gunpowder, the ringing in his ears, and the weight of his rifle slamming against his back with every step, it will destroy him as soon as it is over, but right now he is holding it together. His job is to hold it together. “Up you go. Come on.”

He pulls her down the stairs. The bottom, at the gate, is a terrifying opening—just a cramped space between the gate itself and the bloodbath—and Nick pauses there, waiting, until a Grace barrels past. Then he’s pulling her through the gap, and she’s crying into Nick’s shoulder because the pain has hit, and it’s clicked that she just got shot in the head. She collapses.

Sadaf catches her before she hits the ground. Sadaf’s pink hijab is a mess of stains. Blood, sweat, dirt, God knows what else.

“It’s shallow,” he explains. Faith squeezes her eyes shut. Shiny bits of muscle stick out from her face. “Just a graze. Keep an eye on her arm.” Sadaf nods and pulls Faith away from the slaughter.

The ALC set up base along the empty road, right across from the gate, as soon as the little creature brought him the bead lizard. Nick had known what it was immediately: a message. That Benji was still alive, that he was waiting for them. Across the street from this awful place, the place Nick had brought them back to, Erin yanks open the door of an abandoned florist shop to let in Sadaf.

Faith is okay. Erin is okay. That’s his job.

Nick allows himself four seconds to feel the trans bead lizard in his pocket, resting right next to his own—to center himself, to get his heartbeat back to where it needs to be. Two seconds to breathe in, two seconds to breathe out. Two seconds to pack Brother Clairborne into the deep part of his mind where he won’t come back; two seconds to reconcile the boy shivering against him with Seraph howling among monsters.

The four seconds end, and he snaps each thought off at the root and drowns them because if he doesn’t, he’ll melt down. Turns back to the bloodshed. Pulls the gun into his hands and goes through the gate.

Back to where the world is ending all over again.

One step into New Nazareth, and the crosses beside the gate are demolished in a screaming song of disintegrating wood. Nick stumbles back against the stairs, right inside the rough barrier. Twisted flesh and feathers shake off massive splinters, wailing with rage.

Benji. It’s Benji. The creature Faith was crying about is Benji.

Seraph—Benji—is terrifying in his beauty, in his brutality. That’s him? That’s the boy who wanted to kiss him, who promised to come home, who made him face the broken fucking thing the Angels had turned them both into?

Nick realizes, horrifically, that he adores that boy with every ounce of himself, in a way that refuses to be packed down and ignored like everything else, and that is why he slams his fist into the stairs to shatter his train of thought. He pulls himself back onto the wall.

He slides into place beside Aisha. She’s not going to last much longer. She looks like she’s going to break with every breath she takes. On the other side of the gate, on the other wall, Cormac and Salvador struggle to keep up with the swarm of Angels between them and Benji. This has to end soon, or they’re not going to make it. It’s up to Benji now—all the Watch has to do is make sure he survives long enough to break this place apart.

But that thing. That fucking thing.

Brother Clairborne, or what’s left of him.

The beast is a mockery of Benji, an unholy twin. It’s what happens when the Seraph strain tears through its host too quickly for it to possibly stay intact, so desperate for meat it feeds on the corpses littering the ground. The soldiers still alive choke on their own vomit and shatter under the weight of the virus lying dormant in their bodies. One topples in the middle of the road as his head comes apart into a mush of brain matter. Benji and the beast smash together, ripping flesh and snapping bone, until the beast grabs Benji by the wing and twists him to the ground. Benji screams and barely tears out of its grasp, scuttling backward with his wing held awkwardly like an injured bird.

The battlefield begins to change.

The first error, and Nick registers it as an error: a Grace turns for the stairs on the opposite side of the gate, the ones that lead right to Salvador, and snaps its teeth inches from xyr leg. Xe only barely manages to put a bullet in the soft tissue of its eye as Cormac drags xem back. The second: a twisted hand reaching up from the stairs—his side of the stairs, shit, he’s been too focused on the lawn, he hasn’t been watching his stairs—and sinks its claws into his thigh. The Angel it’s attached to wails, bloated skin marred with a too-wide mouth that explodes into gore.

Nick’s response is an instinct—pull the knife from his pocket, flick the blade out, strike. The first hit breaks the nose and the Angel screams, and Nick yanks it out and slams it back in. This time it hits the eye and goes right through to the brain. It pops, and liquid streams down his hand. The Angel convulses, claws digging deeper, before finally going limp.

Nick muffles a cry. His thigh is a shredded mess of raw meat, wet and glimmering. The earth shakes as a Grace hits the ground, and he can’t hear his own thoughts past the screaming of gunfire and the shouting of orders. His mind grabs for something to hold on to, but the pain snatches it away, taunting him, mistake, mistake, mistake.

This is what happens when he’s wrong. People get hurt. The Angel didn’t hit anything that’s going to kill him fast. Just everything that’s going to kill him slowly. God, the wound is so big.

He’s so focused on his leg that he doesn’t notice the Angel climbing over the wall behind him until something drips onto his forehead. He looks up to see a mass of flesh and organs grinning down at him.

And as soon as Aisha blows the Angel’s head off, something in Nick’s face shatters too.

Something trying to tear its way out of his skull. Something has torn out of his skull. The pain drives his vision to a single white point, and everything in his throat chokes on its way out. Bile floods his throat until he splutters for air, and it comes out his nose. He tears down his mask, and the same black shit falls out of his mouth, splattering his chest and pants.

The nest. The church. The Flood. Seraph is making the Flood bloom, the virus he took into his body when he kissed the nest at Reformation. No. No, Benji is too distracted, he’s lost the Graces, it can’t be him.

It’s the beast. Taking Benji’s powers and making a mockery of them.

Nick has been away from the Angels for too long. The virus has gotten weak in his head, away from other carriers, dormant and isolated all those months. And that means he has time.

He drags the Angel’s broken body over his, wearing the mangled corpse like armor as he forces himself up to his knees—despite the pain, Jesus Christ the pain—just high enough to see over the edge of the wall. His hands tremble, little pieces of bone jutting out from under his skin. Weakness can only be an excuse for so long. Breathe, in, out. Pull the gun closer, settle the stock against his shoulder. Breathe.

On the lawn, Benji is on all fours, wings tucked in close, shoulders down like a cowed dog even as he gnashes his teeth at the beast towering over him. The twisted thing flaps its broken limbs and howls.

Nick was an Angel. He was made for war.

Breathe.

Benji lunges, tearing a bright streak from the Grace’s stomach and exposing a pit of pulsing muscle. A string of what looks like intestines catches in his teeth, unraveling a nest of pink organs and yellow fat before the beast grabs Benji by the neck and smashes him into the broken tangle of crosses like a ragdoll.

The Flood sinks its claws into the empty space of Nick’s skull. The wound on his face pulses with his heartbeat. He remembers how Benji talked to the Graces without ever speaking, how he could barely move his lips, and they would understand.

For the first time in a long time, Nick puts his faith in something and prays.

Benji. Can you hear me?

Benji makes an awful whimpering sound and pulls himself from the wreckage, splinters falling off his wings in a chorus. The Grace screams a war cry.

He prays, I’m here. I’m ready.