“$45.”
“Excuse me ?”
Haley must have misheard.
“$45. Come on. Either pay or move the fuck on.”
Haley sets the bundle of instant noodles back on the man’s blanket. Luce had never told him about the inflated prices at the Spirit Market.
Then again, Luce hadn't told him much about what New Aeterna was like.
The illegal human run market reminded him of a small flea market. Some sellers had blankets stacked with a random assortment of household items. Others had tables neatly stacked with American contraband.
He wanders towards the quieter side of the market, where New Aeterna citizens were selling staples from their own pantry to get through the month. The items were still overpriced, but far cheaper than the pre-packaged American food.
He buys as much cured meat and instant rice as can fit in his backpack with the money he took from their savings. He makes a final stop at a long table covered in pill bottles. There is rugged older man behind the pill table and Haley decides to take his chances.
“Hi, um, you haven’t seen Luce Grace around have you ? He’s a friend of mine,” Haley asks the man.
The man scowls down at him. “Who ?”
“He had dark hair. Blue eyes. The right side of his face has burn scars…You probably used to get antiretrovirals for him ?”
“Oh, him,” the man huffs. “Yeah. Haven’t seen that motherfucker in months. Nobody else wants that shit, you want it ?”
“I’ll buy it .” Haley hadn’t had any symptoms from his too frequent breaks in medication but he didn’t like taking the risk. “I can only pay $20.”
“Whatever.”
A pair of uniformed MS soldiers drinking bottled American soda come up to the table just as the man starts riffling through a duffle bag for Haley’s medication. The MS were supposed to look the other way about rules at the human markets but being this close to a pair of MS soldiers still made Haley nervous.
He tries to act nonchalant as the older man takes his time pulling out the bottles of antiretrovirals. The young MS soldiers had start joking with each other about a bottle of Viagra they’d spotted.
Haley sets the $20 on the table and takes the bottles quickly, walking off just as the soldiers start harassing the man about giving them Oxycotins. It takes everything in him not to sprint back to the apartment. He takes measured steps, careful not to arouse suspicion of anyone on the street.
He hears men shouting behind him but doesn’t dare turn to see what was going on. It was better to mind his business and keep his head down. He knew from the propaganda commercials on television that being apart of a public nuisance was 5 demerits.
The shouting grows louder when he turns down the first block. It’s followed by footsteps thundering behind him.
“STOP WALKING NOW!”
Haley turns to see the off duty MS soldiers who were joking around at the pill table sprinting towards him.
He smiles in an attempt to appear at ease. “Yes ?”
The pair of soldiers crowd in on him, their stares accusatory. They were young. The MS always seemed to be.
Even 7 years into New Aeterna.
“Did that asshole give you all the Oxy ?”
“What ? Oh, no. No.” Haley grimaced at how unsure he sounds. It made him sound guilty. “Look, see–”
One of the soldiers rips Haley’s backpack from his shoulder and turns it upside down, shaking it until the pill bottles–along with all his purchases–spill onto the ground.
“Pick the bottle up,” the MS order. “Give it to me.”
Haley drops to the ground and gives the MS Soldier the pill bottle. He was confident they wouldn’t know the generic name of HIV medication. “It’s heart pressure medication–”
“Shut the fuck up.”
The soldiers opens the bottle and puzzles the pills before shaking them on the sidewalk.
He lets out a frustrated fuck.
The other soldier, who had a slightly calmer demeanor, looks down at Haley as he crawls on the ground, picking up his purchases and stuffing them back into the backpack.
“Why are you buying that overpriced shit ? The stores sells it for cheaper.”
Haley shrugs and responds calmly. “We just needed extra. You know how it can be.”
“Don’t fucking move.” The angry one–who Haley suspected was on the edge of opioid withdrawal—pulls out a radio and speaks into. “Can an active duty patrol report to 60th and 5th for a citizenship demerit ?”
“Please,” Haley says. He stays on his knees, letting the young men have the power they clearly wanted. If they tried to give him a demerit they’d see he wasn’t registered. “Please, I don’t know what I did–”
“Public slovenliness. Two demerits.”
Haley looks down at his clothes. He’d washed them in the sink with dish soap and snuck upstairs to use the iron in the apartment when the new occupant was away.
The MS uncaps his bottle of Coca-Cola and pours it over Haley’s head. His friend laughs.
Haley had very little time to consider his next decision. He stands and knees the stronger looking soldier in the groin.
Then he runs.
He could deal with the consequences, he just needed to get the backpack of food near the apartment first.
A burst of adrenaline propels him only two blocks before his body collapses in the middle of the crosswalk, his vision going black and spotty at the corner.
Haley hangs on to his consciousness as a squad uniformed MS Soldiers descend on him and manhandle him into the back of what must have once been an NYPD paddywagon.
The paddywagon heads uptown–towards Helion City. Haley watches as they pass his apartment building’s corner. He can see the basement window from here.
They’d stupidly left him alone and uncuffed in the back of the van.
He tries the van's double doors.
They hadn’t even locked him in.
At the next stop light, he pushes the van doors and makes his exit.
The van moves forward just as he jumps and and he lands hard on the asphalt. A bone snaps in his right leg and the sudden pain tears through his body.
Haley ignores the overwhelming desire to stay still and crawls towards the sidewalk, the hot asphalt carving small rivers of blood down his legs.
He knew they would eventually catch him. He just needed to get close to the basement window first.
He’s barely made it to the sidewalk when the van makes a U-turn in the empty mid-day streets. The last thing he remembers before passing out is the officers chaining him to the van.
***
Haley wakes up in time to see Helion Castle out the van’s window.
It was beautiful. Luce had been assigned to work in the Castle and had never told him how stunning it was in person.
The van makes its way through Helion City’s opulent streets, towards a brutalist structure off the main road. A sign in front read ‘delinquency processing.’ A steady stream of handcuffed humans are being led in the building’s front entrance.
The doors to the back of the van open. An MS soldier chains Haley’s wrists together and points a rifle at him. “Out.”
“I think I broke my leg. I can’t walk–”
“Out.”
The soldier stares impassively as Haley scoots towards the doors. He tries to stand and the sensation of bone tearing though skin steals his breath. He slumps backwards against the van.
“I can’t–”
The soldiers either get tired or take pity on him because they each take an arm and carry him inside.
Inside the building is two rows of chairs and a bank of examination stalls separated by thin curtains.
Haley is stripped and made to sit on the stained examination table.
A human doctor approaches him with a swab. “Open.”
“My leg is broken,” Haley says quietly.
The impassive doctor shifts his gaze down to Haley’s leg and startles at the visible bone. Then he wordlessly wrenches the jutting bone back into the wound and covers it with medical tape . Haley vomits into his lap from the pain. The doctor is unphased.
“Open.” The doctor holds out the swab again.
“What’s going to happen to me next ?,” Haley asks. “Please, I’m terrified. I have to get home. I have two child-”
“Just shut up and do as you're told or they make it worse,” the doctor says under his breath.
Haley opens his mouth to ask the doctor if Luce had ever come through but the man swabs his mouth before he can get the words out. The swab is forced into his mouth and scraps at his throat. He is made to look down so the doctor can insert a chip into his neck. The pain of the insertion is almost as bad as the pain in his leg.
“Did you ever see a man with scars on his face–”
“Yes. Hundreds.”
“This person has dark hair. His scars are from an oil burn, his name is Luce and he went missing about–”
The microchip device chirps twice and the doctor’s neutral expression falters. He looks Haley in the eye for the first time. “Oh, fuck.”
“What is it–”
“Shhh.” The doctor flicks his gaze to the MS Officers watching them before quickly opening a cabinet and palming a syringe. Haley catches the words potassium chloride.
“What are you doing with that ?,” Haley asks loudly. He tries to remember if everyone he saw going into this building came out. Were they killing humans in here ?
“I said quiet. I’m helping you. It’s better this wa–”
Haley raises his voice. “No. I have children. No. HE’S TRYING TO KILL ME–HELP”
“SILENCE! What is the problem ?” An MS Officer approaches the table and the doctor puts his hands up. The potassium chloride syringe falls under his coat sleeves.
The MS Officer picks up the microchip device from the table. Then he looks at Haley with disgust. “HIV positive. Abomination.”
“Oh. No, I–I’m not–I was a drug–I got HIV from a dirty needle–”
The blunt side of the officer’s pistol catches him across his face. Blood mixes with the leftover vomit in Haley’s mouth. He swallows it.
“Don’t speak.”
He is given a fabric hospital gown and handcuffed to a chair in the back of the processing center. He watches for as hours as men, boys and the occasional ex-MS process into the prison system. Most of the arrested MS are given the potassium choloride and Haley watches as they are packed in body bags while their bodies are still convulsing.
When the sun goes down it is just him and a pair of officers left in the building.
The MS refuse to touch him now that they know his status. He is made to drag himself into the back of another van. They drive him on to the castle grounds this time. He gets an up close look at the Helion Castle before the van veers to a small, stark building at the edge of the castle grounds.
The inside of the building reminded Haley of a small clinic but the tables were much bigger. The grooming stalls on either side tell him what this building had been.
A veterinarian office.
The soldiers make a point of putting on plastic coverings and thick gloves before carrying him down a set of stairs to the basement--where the necropsy lab would have been.
The stench that hits him when they open the basement doors tells him that whatever the Regime is keeping in the basement is very much alive.
In the center of the basement are a pair of hospital beds occupied by men who looked to be in a vegetative state but a quick glance at their monitors tells Haley differently. They were very much awake and aware of what was going on but seemed to be under a paralytic.
Surrounding the two hospital beds are half a dozen cells made of razor wire and large animal cages welded to the ground. Each cell is occupied by two men in hospital gowns. Most of the men were catatonic, sitting hunched over and staring blankly as Haley passed.
“No, please,” Haley begs when it became clear they were leading him to a cell. “Please, don't. Please, don’t leave me here. I can give you money. Please.”
The officer opens a cell in the back and pushes him inside.
The cell has barely enough room for Haley to stand. There wasn’t even a mattress–just two buckets on a concrete floor.
A concrete floor littered with gray feathers.
Shackled to the back of the cell is a Helion man, his graying wings splayed across the entire back wall of the cell and pierced with fishing weights.
Haley scoots backward, his back pressed to the front of the cell. Razor wire dig into his skin but it was the farthest he could get from the chained Helion–who sat still as a statue.
When the MS soldiers leave he finally lets the tears fall. He’s not sure what is worse; Nova and Sailor starving to death or them being found and made to go through the same imprisonment.
The other prisoners must become annoyed with his crying because they start to throw trash into the cell and yell obscenities.
***
Hours later, when all the men seem to finally be asleep, the Helion in Haley’s cell moves. He slides a red hard plastic cup across the concrete floor.
Liquid sloshes inside.
“It’s water and morphine,” the Helion says. “You can have one sip.”
Haley sucks in as much liquid as he can in the one sip, pushing past the acrid taste of the morphine. “Thank–”
“You can’t cry all night.”
“They put me in here without telling me anything…I can’t stay here– I have children–”
“So do I. That won’t get you out of here.”
Haley was surprised. The Helion looked barely out of his teens, like a baby faced version of the General.
“Do you know how long they’re going to hold me here ?”
“Until you die.”
Another prisoner yells something unintelligible in the distance and a screw hits the back of Haley’s head. “Why are they doing that ?”
“You’re just in the way. They’re aiming for me,” the Helion responded dryly.
***
The Helion is quiet the rest of the night.
The morphine gives Haley much needed relief from the throbbing pain of his leg and lulls him into a half sleep.
He’s woken by a dozen armed MS Soldiers and a pair of Helions going through the cells and shouting orders. At some cells they set down packets of instant oats and bottled nutrition shakes. At others they pull men out and strap them to a portable gurney.
Haley is taken out of his cell and strapped on to a gurney by rough hands. The morphine had taken most of the fight out of him. He’s carried into a operating room and his gurney is laid on a lab table next to the others. Most are quiet while some are crying--begging to be sent back to the cages.
The medical equipment in the room looks modern and high tech. Haley isn’t sure if it’s because he’s been away from the world for so long or if this is a state of the art lab.
Before he can consider, an MS injects him with a general anesthesia.
***
When he comes back to consciousness he’s back in his cell.
Whatever they’d done to him in that operating room, they hadn’t bothered to fix his broken leg. A soreness in his groin had joined the stabbing pain in his leg.
With trembling hands he pulls up the bottom of the blood stained gown to see a hastily sutured wound where his testicles had been.
Haley quickly pulls the waste bucket to him, vomiting up the very little that was left in his stomach.
“Castration ?,” the Helion in his cell asks. “That's always the first one.”
Haley wipes at the tears of frustration that had pricked the corner of his eyes.
The Helion was in the same place he’d been that morning but he now had fresh bruises on his face. The words ‘humanfucker’ had been carved into his bare clavicle.
Or, judging by the poorly healed scars around the open wound, carved again.
“What’s your name ?,” the Helion asks.
Haley considered this. The Helion had clearly had a falling out with the Regime to end up here. But he was still a Helio–
“Don’t lie to me,” The Helion interrupts his thoughts. “When you die here they burn your body in a mass grave. No one will ever know you were here if you don’t tell me your real name.”
“Alex Haley….yours ? ”
“Benedict.”
“...How come we aren’t in the castle prisons?”
Luce had always said there were prisons for adults and children underneath the castle. He’d never mentioned one like this.
Benedict chuckles. “Special Circumstances. We are such abominations to the Regime that we’re not fit to be imprisoned in the same place Helios Thanatos shits.”
Haley’s gaze flickers to the words that had been repeatedly cut into Benedict’s chest.
Humanfucker.
“You slept with a human ?”
“I fell in love with a human.”
“Oh–”
“Helios has a pet Demon on his staff.” If Benedict notices Haley bristle at the word Demon he doesn’t acknowledge it. “Helios gives our bodies to the sick fuck for his medical experiments.”
“What are the experiments ?”
“No idea. I think he's just bored. The anesthetics work on humans. It's not bad for you. Don’t try to be a hero,” Benedict inclines his head to the paralyzed men on the hospital beds in the center of the room. “Those men tried to fight back a year ago. Took out two guards but then my brothers--the Helions came in. They've been in those beds ever since.”
***
Haley doesn’t sleep that night. He can’t rest his mind. He had so many question and Benedict didn’t seem to want to do anymore explaining.
He’s lying awake when a pregnant Helion woman glides down the basement steps.
She was too pretty and clean to be in the filthy basement. She had a fresh face of dewy makeup and bronze hair that spilled down her back in lush barrel curls. The pristine white floor length gown accentuated her small baby bump.
A misplaced jealousy winds it’s way through Haley’s heart.
He wanted to look beautiful just one more time.
Wanted to have someone to be beautiful for.
The Helion woman attends to the men in the beds and then flits from cell to cell, setting down two large white apples she pulls from the leather diaper bag draped over her shoulder.
She stops short at Haley and Benedict’s cell. Her bright auburn gaze flickers to Benedict. “ I can't believe they’ve finally given you a roommate.”
Her tone is almost playful.
“He’s a homosexual. I think they thought he would rape me,” Benedict says dryly.
The Helion woman rolls her last apple through the small gap between the cell and the floor. Before Haley can get any ideas, Benedict grabs the apple and bites into the crisp flesh, clear juice run down his chin. “How are my boys?”
The woman sighs. She sits on the ground next to their cell. She smells as beautifully as she looked. “They’re training Dion with the weapons…Ezekiel will be right behind him.”
“How do the others treat them ?”
The woman frowns. Her tone turns icy. “The other men are good to them. Helios is still telling everyone you were honorably killed in the line of duty. My sisters think he's too afraid to let the others know the truth in case they get ideas....Ariadne is good too…if you even care at all about her.”
“I do care, she’s the mother of my childre–”
“Helios hasn’t remarried her. But we think it’s coming since she had boys. The good husband options are gone. She wants to get out.”
“There is no out.”
“Maybe not yet. Heracles talks sometimes. He said New Aeterna wasn't what was promised. I doubt he’s alone in thinking that.”
She takes a tampon out of her bag and opens the applicator to reveal a small stack of pills that she pushes through the cell door.
“Human,” she calls to Haley. “What’s your name ?”
“Haley.”
“I’m Charisa. Pass me that cup, Haley.”
He pushes the red plastic cup Benedict had offered him on his first day towards Charisa. She opens a bottle labeled prenatal vitamins and pours liquid morphine from it into the cup. She tops it with water from a glass water bottle.
“I didn’t know they had a new prisoner. I’ll bring enough for two next time.”
“Where do you get that ?,” Haley asks.
“The hospital. My sisters and I take what we can when we go to doctor visits and give it to the prisoners in the castle.”
“You visit the children prison too ?”
She nods. “Not me. Another of my sisters.”
“Is there a Sailor or Nova with the children ?”
Haley had hoped that Nova wouldn't have let Sailor starve to death. That they'd turn themselves in so they'd atleast be alive.
“I don’t know…We don’t know many names.”
“Can you sneak into the city for me, I have two kids and–”
“I can’t, I’m sorry,” she offers weakly. “All I can offer is stolen medicine."
“I don’t have a strong immune system,” Haley explains. “I need antiretrovirals… I’m scared I’ll die down here without them.”
She exchanges a glance with Benedict. “I can try.”
***
Charisa sneaks into the cells at least once a week. Haley is never sure how she manages to get in without anyone noticing or how she came to have this job.
She never has the medication he needs but always brings enough of the strange white apples to supplement the daily ration of a protein shake and uncooked oatmeal packets. They have to eat the apples whole, devouring every stem and seed to hide from the guards.
Guilt clawed at Haley every time he ate, but he couldn’t let his body get weaker. He was rarely taken out of cell but when he was he always felt depleted when he came back.
He never came face to face with the alleged demon doctor. None of them did. The demon only came in to the operating room after everyone was unconscious.
Charisa spends extra time at his cell, giving Benedict an update on his two boys, their shared acquaintances and the Regime.
Haley always listens but acts like he isn’t.
He’s able to put together that the Helion women use the term Angel. That there are Demons. That one of Benedict’s boys is six and one is five. That Benedict had been married to an unwilling Helion named Ariadne. That he had became disillusioned with New Aeterna when he fell in love with a human working in the castle. He was caught and imprisoned in this cell three years ago. The human woman was killed.
Haley counts time by Charisa’s growing belly, which is soon replaced by small baby boy who she eventually stops bringing because he is walking.
At first, Haley tries to ration the morphine out.
He takes only enough to take the edge off the pain.
Then enough to make all the pain go away.
And eventually, enough to make him forget where he is and what he’d left behind.
***
“Tell…me something.”
Haley’s words come out slow. The respiratory trouble had started...at some point. He wasn't sure but he was always covered in sweat, his body unable to fight the endless fevers.
“What ?”
“About…the…past.”
He didn’t talk to Benedict much, despite them being imprisoned in the cell together for over a year.
Or maybe it had been over two years. Possibly longer.
Haley had stopped keeping track of time when Charisa had told him she’d said someone had seen Luce’s record and it said he’d been killed for insubordination.
He’d always known deep down that Luce was gone.
But having it confirmed by records had crushed his last bit of hope. He’d joined the other prisoners in getting through their imprisonment with a heavy dose of morphine to numb the hours away.
A few new prisoners came in. Some of them had tried to organize despite Benedict's warnings. The men were easily subdued by the Helions and had their legs amputated. One man had died from an infection from the amputation. The corpse had been left in the middle of the cells for a month as a warning. Now maggots were a constant presence in the prison.
“Why are you asking me about the past?,” Benedict asked.
“I’m…going to die soon…,” Haley reminded him. He felt like he’d said this before. “and I know you're older…than you look. I want to know about…being…”
His words fade because he’d never quite knew the word for what the Helions were. Immortal ? Magic ? Supernatural ?
“You're just going through withdrawal,” Benedict tells him. He motions to the moaning, suffering men caged around them.
Charisa’s near daily visits had abruptly stopped in the last few weeks and all the men felt the absence of morphine.
But he knew this wasn’t just withdrawal. He'd suspected he'd finally gotten an infection his body couldn't fight. Every breath felt like his last.
“I want… to know something. To take to my grave. Something…about the past ?”
“I don’t have anything to tell. We didn’t live lives. It was just obedience to Helios and war…New Aeterna was supposed to be our paradise. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“What…does flying feel like ?”
“I honestly don’t remember,” Benedict answers. “Charisa said things are changing in the castle...I think you should hold on. I think something is happening.”
Something was happening. And Haley was glad he wasn’t going to live to see it.
Charisa had said that there were whispers of challenges to the Regime's power. High ranking humans and even some MS were starting to defect. There was a terrorist group growing in the city and resources were stretched thin.
It was why the already unlivable conditions in the prison had only gotten worse. Food only came once a week and the weekly hosing down of the cells hadn’t happened in months.
Haley was tired of fighting. There was nothing here that made it worth it.
Benedict handed him an oat packet he'd been hiding behind the remains of his wings. "You can have this."
There was only a corner of water softened oats left in the packet. Small maggots crawled on top of the oats but that didn't turn Haley off--they'd all resorted to eating them when it got desperate.
Haley shakes his head. "No. I'm done."
“Don’t you think about leaving me in here with your corpse," Benedict tells him gruffly. "You know they won’t move it. We may get out…see our children again.”
“My children are gone,” Haley reminds him. He’d felt it innately and hoped there was some place on the other side where he could see them again and apologize for not giving them the life they deserved.
“Fine," Benedict says. "I’ll tell you a story from my homeland. But you have to try to live. It’s a blasphemous story but Whitney liked it so you might too.”
“Whitney?”
Benedict traces the words on his chest. He’d never said the name of the human woman he'd fallen in love with and landed him in the prison.
Haley closes his eyes and lays down in the cell. He decides to try but he won't fight oblivion if it comes. Benedict's soft voice fills the tiny void in their cell.
“It starts in a place untouched by time. Homeland. Lucifer’s citadel sits in the middle of a grassy field and his son stands before it. When suddenly out of the corner of his eyes he sees a flash of molten white feathers…”
----
-2-
Ophelia had always yearned for more. But due to not being human, she'd stayed quietly in the background. Watching as generations of carless men inherited the land she’d worked her very soul into.
The nightmare of New Aeterna had given her one thing; the knowledge that she could lead.
No.
It had also given her Mikayla.
The knowledge that she could love.
She hoped some part of her other self held on to that.
She’d given the workers the day off. They were suspicious but hadn’t asked questions.
Then she spent the afternoon, alone, in the processing plant; choosing the best of the livestock, thanking each animal for it’s nourishment before butchering a dozen of the finest cuts.
She saw the questioning expressions when they all sat for a dinner of grilled meat and vegetables. She reassured everyone that nothing bad had happened.
Just that change was on the horizon.
She’d pushed the men and women’s tables into one so they were all sitting together.
The angels, who she’d started to think of as her sisters.
Their children, the first promise of a new generation.
The MS defectors, who gave her some faith that those in the Regime could be saved.
And the two humans.
They had kept their distance from the others since Mikayla’s funeral. Neither had returned to an assigned bunk, instead sleeping in a makeshift lean-to outside. During the cold months Ophelia had let them sleep in the medic cabin as a small mercy.
Humans had always intrigued Ophelia. She’d love to be human if not for the terrifyingly short lifespans. The angels and, likely, the MS, could wait out Helios' Regime for a few centuries if they needed to.
The young humans didn’t have that kind of time.
But if the coded message Pathos has passed on to her was right, none of that mattered.
That sly demon prince had found the Tempest.
“I want to toast to us,” she says, lifting her glass over the extravagant feast. “The morning may look different. This is a truly shitty situation and we’ve made it work. I hope we meet again in another lifetime. Or the next.”
The angels exchange quizzical looks but say nothing. She could have told about the Prince’s Tempest plan but decided to save the angels from the mindfuck of knowing their children would, essentially, cease to exist in a matter of hours.
When the sun sets, Ophelia climbs to the top of her trailer to wait, to see if she’ll experience the shift or just just wake up on the Amtrak she’d taken to New York City with no memories of this life.
Her heart sinks as the moon begins it’s slow descent in the sky.
It was supposed to have all been done well before sunrise.
In the distance, a winged figure cuts through the night air towards her. Ophelia wonders if it is the Tempest. As it gets closer she makes out a familiar shape.
“Pathos.”
He’s carrying an angel woman on his back and two weeping angel children in his arms. They were barefoot and in sleep clothes.
“They failed ?” Ophelia asks when he lands on the slanted trailer roof.
“No, ma’am. Not yet.”
The angel woman scrambles for purchase, gripping her children to her. Pathos holds her steady on the uneven roof.
“The plan changed… The Resistance is trying to take the castle, I need to get more women and children out...it’s going to get ugly–”
Ophelia gestures to the cage binding her wings. “Get this off me. I know how SGI fight, I can help–”
“No! There is no time!,” the angel screams. Pathos tightens his hold on her waist and she pushes him away. “Go back, Pathos! You need to get my sisters out. They’re using them as bait–”
“Fuck. She’s right, Pathos” Ophelia concedes. She’d forgotten how quickly Helios resorted to using innocence as a shield in war. “Go. And watch your back, you might be made.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says extending his wings. He kisses the shaking angel woman on the cheek and the two little girls become hysterical when they realize he was about to take flight. “Please keep them safe.”
Ophelia nods. “I have a cellar under the slaughterhouse. Bring me as many as you can.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“End this, Pathos. All of it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A/N
When I wrote this I forgot that I also wrote Haley being imprisoned in Bright Lines and Sunshine. But Lile wrote about humans being prisoners in New Aeterna and I have not been able to let it go.
Also, it's so funny that NA was written close to a decade ago at this point and no matter what it always seems to parallel real world events.