Page 4

My body feels as torn and broken as my mind, like I’ve been hit by a truck. My head aches, my limbs numb, my chest tight.

I’ve never been knocked out by a simulation before; no one has. It’s supposed to stimulate some sort of pain, but it’s never supposed to cause any actual harm.

My fingers twitch at my sides, my body regaining consciousness. The pain isn’t real. It’s part of the illusion of darkness that pulled me under. As the paralysing feeling fades, so does the pain.

I try to fight the confusion and paranoia that begin an internal fight with each other, struggling to wrap my head around what happened. I’ve never experienced anything like that before.

It looked as if I was living a nightmare, and it felt as if I was dying.

My eyes flutter open. A blur of faces hover above me.

“Amara? Are you okay?”

The concern in Xavier’s voice is touching as his face comes into view.

“You’re ruining a perfectly good view of the ceiling.”

The words come out broken and croaky, and I pretend to shield my eyes.

Xavier’s eyes roll and he chuckles. “You’re okay.”

Layla breathes a sigh of relief next to him, her vibrant copper hair cascading over her shoulders.

“I’m fine.”

I prop myself up on my elbows and scan the room. Everyone has stopped training and gathered around us to watch the show. Great. “You can all return to your regularly scheduled programming.”

“Training’s over. Everyone get to work,”

Captain Moore commands loudly, gesturing to the changing rooms.

Xavier holds out his hand for me, and I’m thankful for it as my head spins when I stand. The room clears out around us, but Xavier stays by my side, the concerned look on his face never wavering.

He watches as each of our colleagues leave the room, then turns back to me when he’s sure it’s empty. “What the worlds happened in that simulation?”

I stiffen, unsure if I should tell him the truth.

“Not a single daemon had even appeared, but your heart was racing so fast I thought you were going to have a heart attack.”

He shakes his head.

I know if I tell him what I saw, he’ll freak out and call Jeremy, and after this morning’s awkward conversation, I don’t think Jeremy needs another thing to worry about. But I’ve never lied to Xavier before. We’ve always told each other everything.

“I just relived one of the early days of the war. PTSD, I suppose.”

It’s a partial truth, but I leave out the nightmare that followed the memory.

Xavier frowns, disbelief carved into his features. “Amara, you looked like you were paralysed by fear. I’ve never seen you afraid of anything, not like that.”

He crosses his arms over his chest.

“What can I say? Jeremy’s making me weak.”

I give him a half-smile, not bothering to correct him. He’s wrong. I’m afraid of everything.

I’m afraid of dying. I’m afraid of the creatures that lurk in the shadows. I’m afraid of the winged beasts that terrorise the sky. I’m afraid that when this is all over, I won’t have anyone left. That I’ll lose them all. That I’ll lose myself.

Xavier sighs in defeat and holds his hands up, nodding towards the changing room doors. “Fine. Let’s go. We’ve got a long list today.”

We hardly speak the rest of the morning. It’s obvious that Xavier doesn’t believe me, and though guilt squeezes at my chest, I would rather let him think that I lied than know the truth of what I saw.

Perhaps I’m being ridiculous. Perhaps I should tell him – after all, he might be able to shed some light on it. Or perhaps he might think I’m going insane.

Either way, there’s no point worrying him. Everybody knows that the simulation plays on your anxiety, and after the bomb Xavier dropped, mine has been at an all-time high.

Now, he leans against my desk and stares down at me, his face devoid of emotion.

“What have you got for me, Chief?”

It still feels odd, the fact that he’s now my boss. This man I once saw dive off a dock into the ocean while completely naked and inebriated. He’s everything a boss shouldn’t be, but perhaps that’s why he makes such a great one.

He drops a file on my desk and stands up, crossing his arms over his chest. “Angela Hill. Female. Thirty-two. Her partner reported her missing this morning after she didn’t make it home for lockdown last night. He said that it’s very unlike her to be late and that she’s so cautious about the curfew she always leaves work an hour early.”

He pauses, his brows knitting closely together. “She’s a doctor. A volunteer for the shelter. She saves other victims’ lives for free.”

Xavier shakes his head and takes a deep breath. “Look into it for me, please? I want to find her.”

I nod, but say nothing. Typically, even though we look into these cases, there’s a strong chance we already know what the result is. Either footage of a brutal death by something otherworldly, or no trace of the missing person whatsoever.

I don’t question why this case is different. I don’t need to. I know why it’s important to him. His mother was a volunteer doctor at a domestic violence shelter.

Xavier squeezes my shoulder lightly before walking back to his office. Seeing him so serious is unsettling. I’m so used to the cheerful pain-in-the-ass boy who’s like a brother to me. Nowadays it’s as if he’s carrying the world on his shoulders, and truthfully, he is.

I pull the notepad from my bag and scan over the names I scribbled down last night. We’re each assigned case studies that are handed out in the morning and usually declared inconclusive by the afternoon, but those cases only include names reported directly to the AIA. No one pays attention to the hotline – the people who are desperately reaching out to as many resources as possible to find their loved one.

Each morning I start my day by scanning that list. If no one else is going to look out for them, I will. Even if it is only to give their loved ones some form of closure.

It typically takes me a couple of hours to find those on the list, though today there are a few more names than usual.

Ben Mumford, deceased by daemon.

Sadie Smith, deceased by daemon.

James Cromwell, deceased by daemon.

Alma Munroe, deceased by angel.

Jared Hayes, deceased in the crossfire.

Damien Adair, inconclusive.

I spend the next hour on the phone to the people who reported them missing. This is the worst part of the job. There are always tears, but there’s also always gratitude. They have closure.

My last call is to Lucy Adair, Damien’s wife. The inconclusive ones are always the hardest, because even though there’s no definitive answer, we know they’re dead.

“Hello?”

a soft voice sniffles from the other end of the line.

Oh, boy. This is going to be hard. “Hi, am I speaking with Lucy Adair?”

She pauses for a moment before answering so quietly that I barely hear it. “Yes, this is she.”

“Lucy, my name is Agent Jones. I work for the AIA. I…”

I hesitate. “I heard your call on the radio for your husband.”

A small gasp. “Did you find him? Please tell me you found him. Please tell me he’s okay.”

She barely takes a breath between words, hope filling her voice.

I shouldn’t have paused. I shouldn’t have given her the chance for hope. My eyes squeeze closed and my free hand massages my temples. “I’m sorry, Lucy. I looked everywhere. There’s no trace of him.”

“Can’t you keep looking?”

Lucy’s voice trembles. “He can’t have just disappeared!”

I’ve been through this a hundred times before, and she’s right: he can’t have just disappeared. He didn’t disappear, though – he was murdered. It just means that none of our cameras picked it up.

“Lucy, I know this is hard, but unfortunately the chance that your husband is alive is less than one percent. Just because our cameras didn’t catch it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It is likely that his body will show up near the borders of the city in the next couple of days. I can keep an eye out, but I’m sorry… You need to prepare for the worst.”

It’s harsh, and it only makes her sob down the line, but it’s true. I used to give them hope. I used to have hope myself that one of these days I’d find someone alive, but after two years of this, hope feels so feeble.

“Please just keep looking. Don’t give up,”

Lucy says between cries. The mix of grief and hope in her voice makes me flinch. I wish there was more that I could do to help, not just for Lucy, but for all of them. It’s moments like these where I’m almost grateful to be going back out in the field; at least it means we’ll be doing something. Even if it only takes a few months before we’re all dead.

They tell you to never promise anything. They tell you to never give false hope.

“I promise I will keep looking.”

I’ve never been good at listening to instructions.

She lets out a sigh of relief. Her sobs slow and her breathing steadies. “Thank you, Agent Jones.”

It takes me a few minutes to collect myself after that call. Every day it seems to take more and more of a toll on me. Every day it makes me want to do more, to actually help.

We’ve tried before and failed, but now we’ve got weapons designed to kill daemons. We just have to figure out how to stop the angels.

The image of lifeless bodies piled on top of one another flashes through my mind, echoing the scene of horror that appeared in the simulator. A small, icy sliver of fear spreads through my veins.

I shake away the feeling as I open the file on my desk and log back into our surveillance system. “Okay, Angela, where are you?”

I mutter as I bring up the CCTV footage.

For hours, I scroll through it. I find nothing outside the shelter, so I decide to track her movements from the start of the day. The file says the last time her husband saw her was eight in the morning when she left for work. I follow her from the apartment block, but she doesn’t head towards the shelter. Instead, it looks like she answers a house call. A child sits on the front porch with a woman, who I presume is her mother, by her side. The little girl’s face lights up at the sight of Angela.

They walk inside hand-in-hand, and Angela doesn’t leave until around ten. At that time, she walks back to her car, fiddling with her keys. She looks unsettled as she fumbles through her bag.

I stop fast-forwarding now and watch more closely. As Angela is about to open the door, she turns around, staring behind her, then above.

Within a second, an angel swoops down and grabs her. No – not an angel. He has wings, but they’re not made of feathers. Blades cover them from top to bottom. They look as if they were created in a lab for no other purpose than killing.

Angela tries to struggle in his arms, but he doesn’t flinch even a little. Then, with a quick movement of his razor-sharp wings, they’re gone.

My jaw falls slack and my eyes widen. That thing is unlike anything we’ve ever seen. What kind of angel has blades for feathers – better yet, why have we never seen him before?

No wonder the leaders want to keep this a secret. Nobody is going to willingly volunteer for patrols if they see this footage. If they find out about him.

The angel who is going to ruin any sense of normalcy humanity has left.

Our deal with the angels is over. We’re no longer safe in the daylight.