Sometimes the martyrs speak of a place beyond us—beyond the understanding of those here on this Earth. As my faith wavers and wanes, most days, I wonder. Is it Heaven? Could it be?

—Sister Kipling’s notes on the Flood

Red, bloody water drips off the sharp point of the stone, off Theo’s fingers, falling in rivers down his pale cheeks. It’s stained his robes pink, the same festering shade as infected gums. His head is still shaved, his robes still soldier robes, there’s a hitch to his shoulders when he moves—and a curl to his lip, his cupid’s bow twisted into a sneer.

He’s crying.

I’ve never seen him cry before. He didn’t cry when his mother martyred herself on Judgment Day. He didn’t cry when his father flayed him alive. A teardrop traces its way through the slick water on his face, his eyes are red, and he’s crying.

The blood water bubbles from my mouth. My normal human mouth, no fangs, no wounds. Without the Flood, I’m just a boy. No Graces to call, no Angels to shatter. I don’t even have the testosterone to back me up on the boy part. And Theo has half a foot and fifty pounds on me—a cis boy who could shatter me if he put his mind to it. Who has done it before. Who is more than happy to do it again.

He raises the rock to point at me, his arm shaking.

“What,” he gasps, “is wrong with you?”

I step back. My shoes sink into the slurry of mud and grass. “Theo, I—we—” Is this what I sounded like just days ago? How could anyone have seen me as a guy with a voice, a body, like this? “Put that down. Please.”

“They gave you everything!” He closes the space between us and then some. He’s almost within arm’s reach, close enough that the rock could almost smash into my skull. “Do you even understand how much you’re throwing away? How many people you’re fucking over?”

His name comes out of me like a prayer, like reminding him he’s human will snap him out of this. “Theo, please.”

“All because you don’t like it.” He laughs, and his pale, pretty face twists into something more like Dominion than the boy I fell in love with. I take another step back and nearly trip over the submerged sidewalk. “You’ve never liked anything about yourself, have you? Always trying to change it. You’ve never accepted what you’ve been given by God.”

He was the one who told me being trans wasn’t a mistake, that God made me trans on purpose. Did he never actually believe it? “Shut up. Don’t you dare.”

“You’d burn the world down if you thought it’d finally make you happy with what you’re supposed to be in this life. This life. You’d have a perfect one waiting for you if you just swallowed it like everyone else!”

But that would never work! Because—

Because I don’t believe in Heaven.

The realization crashes down, sinks its claws into me, threatening to drag me to the water. I don’t believe in it. I never have. I could tell myself that it all existed, I was just too wrong to feel it, that I had faith no matter how broken I was, but—oh God, I never believed.

That’s it. That’s what it comes down to. We exist in two entirely different versions of the world. Theo sees Heaven waiting for him when he dies, a life beyond this, something more. I see Dad’s face and a fucking black hole. No matter how much I tell myself that there’s a Heaven, I just can’t believe it. My mind refuses to grasp it; it recognizes the idea, but as soon as I try to say it’s true, I hit a wall. The same wall I’d hit if someone told me sewer water could be fresh and clean and clear if I swallowed and believed hard enough. It would be such a relief if I could just believe there was something after this, but I can’t.

It’s terrifying.

I say, “If you really think there’s something after this, that still doesn’t excuse what you’re doing now.”

“Don’t say that like we’re the bad guys.”

“You are! Jesus Christ, you are! Nine billion people. You killed—”

Theo growls. “That’s not the point.”

“What, genociding the entire human race wasn’t the point?” I fling my hand at the ghostly copies of New Nazareth buildings behind us, sticking up from the flood. “Like you haven’t spent your whole life praying for this world to be wiped clean? Besides, you know, a bunch of rich white Christians and the handful of undesirables they decided were useful enough to man the guns?”

“Stop.”

“I’m one of those undesirables, Theo. You are too.”

“Don’t.”

“They just tolerate you because you do what you’re told.” The words come so easily, because I have seen what the Angels have done to the world and I understand. “They don’t give a shit about you, and no amount of sucking up to God and your dad is going to change that!”

Theo lets out a low, guttural howl, just like Dominion, and lunges for me.

He brings the rock up wide to smash it down on my face—bloody flower shattered skull—but he’s so much bigger than me, and I slip under his arm. Slam all my weight into his side.

We crash into the water together, splattering our faces. Theo scrambles to get himself upright. He’s not holding the rock. He dropped it. I dig under the water to find it, but the blood is so thick I can’t see, and my fingers push into mud.

Theo’s elbow hits my ribs. I fall into the water.

He’s on top of me.

He shoves me onto my back. His knees press into my stomach. I see his snarling face for just a second before he plunges my head underwater.

Don’t breathe.

I grab for the Flood in his head, like I can pull it out of his body and leave an exit wound like the one they left in Dad. I reach out for a Grace that can snap their jaws shut and break him in half. But there’s nothing. Just that girl’s skull breaking with the force of the Flood, her hand reaching out for mine.

I want it back. I want Seraph back. I want it back not because of the power, but because it’s who I am, and I am done being thrown among so many bodies.

Theo’s arms tremble with the strain of holding me down. My nails find his cheek. His hand comes down on the side of my face, pressing my skull against the edge of the sidewalk.

He could bash my head into the concrete if he wanted.

I am part of the ALC. I am part of the Watch, the people who kill Angels, who fight back, who turned the extermination back on the exterminators. I am Seraph, and some boy isn’t going to be the fucking death of me.

Wait—the Watch.

My head is going light from lack of oxygen, and the blood water is burning my eyes, and I reach into my pocket to find the knife.

This is the knife Nick gave me. The one he gave me because he saw a warrior, because a person like Seraph would be able to walk through the flames of Hell and come out snarling and burned—but alive.

The knife I haven’t had since I gave it back to Nick in his room.

But I haven’t had these clothes, either. I haven’t had this body.

And I’m not going to be afraid of some boy.

Click.

The knife hits once, but that’s all it has to do. It sinks right into the soft flesh beneath Theo’s ribs, and I rip it out as hard as I can. A hot cascade of blood erupts across my hand, and Theo screams and stumbles away, his weight suddenly disappearing from my chest.

I sit up, water rushing over my face. It falls into my mouth as I struggle for air. Fresh red swirls around my arms, bright against the dark, browning pink. I shove myself to my feet, head swimming, trying to focus my vision.

Theo stands half bent in the water, robes pooling around his shins, clutching his side. Blood trickles through his fingers. His robes have fallen off his shoulder—he never bulked up as much as he claimed he would—and there are bandages sprawling the expanse of his back, peeking from his underclothes.

Bandages? For what? What kind of injury would follow Theo into the culling fields?

…A tattoo.

I’m wearing cargo shorts and a jacket. I haven’t worn these clothes or held this knife in days. Theo hasn’t had death-squad tattoos in months, let alone fresh ones that hurt.

He lets out a small, pained noise, barely holding himself upright. His shoulders hitch. He’s dressed like he’s always wanted to be, the way he’s always seen himself: a soldier. And I’m dressed the way I’ve seen myself lately: a kid only playing soldier behind enemy lines. The bodies hanging from the trees are the deaths that have followed us. The stream shifts and changes with the bodies above it and the boys in it.

This place is what we make it.

I drop the knife into the water. It hits the surface with a hollow sound and sinks.

“Theo,” I murmur.

His glassy eyes focus on me.

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” he says. “You’re going to hurt so many people.”

Slowly, I reach him. My hand curves to his cheek. He flinches away, more blood streaming through his fingers. He’s sheet white, lungs laboring for breath.

My hand is so much bigger than his. His baby-blue eyes widen as he looks up, cracked lips parted just enough for me to kiss him.

“Benji.” Nick’s voice. As if through the water, warped into something Grace-like. “Can you hear me?”

My teeth sink into Theo’s bottom lip. My wings drag in the blood water. The warm spring sun beats down hard between glittering glass buildings and the New Nazareth wall, and I know the world has returned because I would know that voice anywhere.

Nick says, “I’m here.” He says, “I’m ready.”

My claws dig into the thick mass of tumors swallowing Theo’s neck, and I tear back, rearing my head like I’m taking out a soldier’s throat. Dominion’s bottom jaw snaps between my teeth, tongue and muscle ripping with a rush of black sludge.

I reply, “Look.”

Nick hears me.

The air explodes.

Theo’s head caves around the bullet, his warped skull crumpling in on itself like it’s been bashed in, his left eye swallowed up into a deep, dark hole.