Chapter Text
Mariah had been lucky—no, not lucky, capable and chosen by God—to be assigned to her lab. It wasn’t one of the super acclaimed, top-tier facilities where the right project could fast-track one to a distinction or even Word sponsorship, but it was prestigious enough that a series of good results there would guarantee a choice assignment in Hell or on the corporeal within a decade. Only students with the highest grades could even hope for a placement.
That had been Mariah a few years ago. As a seven-force angel in a class of mostly demonlings and eager to learn as much Science as she could, she hadn’t even needed to plagiarize most of her assignments to earn her ranking in the top two percentile.
Good grades in her classes had given Mariah her assignment here. Like all seven-force celestials (angels and demons alike) she had started out as an intern. She cleaned equipment, fetched supplies and coffee, and typed the research assistants’ shorthand into the room-sized computer that stored their data. Mariah’s hands were steady and her typing accurate, which should not have been a high standard at a lab of this caliber, but was anyway.
From that solid base, Mariah found success easy to maintain. Make her direct superiors look good, their rivals bad, and her peers less competent than herself in comparison. Use her free time to work extra hours on the menial data analysis that could get her name on a few of her seniors’ research papers.
So it hadn’t been too surprising to walk into the Lab Director’s office for her second annual performance review and see the Genius Archangel sitting in the Lab Director’s usual spot while she stood to the side with a faint smile of amusement on her face.
Mariah bowed deeply, and then presented herself to her Archangel with her best posture—spine straight, feet aligned, hands resting open-palmed on her thighs. This was only her second time meeting with him directly. The first time had been her own creation six years ago.
The Lab Director made the introduction. “Master, this is Mariah. She received the highest evaluation amongst the current crop of interns. The highest of any this decade, in fact.”
Mariah hadn’t known that. Of course, she had done well. She had worked hard, gone out of her way to do favors for her senior researchers, and followed what the voice of God had told her to do every step of the way, but she hadn’t known. Pride swelled within Mariah, and she couldn’t tell if that emotion belonged to her or if the Archangel had sunk it into her like metal claws.
“Mariah, is it?” She felt the gaze of her Archangel examining her through his eyepiece. It felt like being a specimen under a microscope, or perhaps like a machine being compared to an ideal schematic only her Archangel could see. “Step forward.”
She did. A patched finger traced an outline along her eyebrow and down her temple, where her LEDs were installed. At the touch, a new force—her eighth one—wrapped around her. Mariah could feel her eyes sharpen and her will strengthen into iron. The Genius Archangel had given her a Celestial Force.
“A resource and a responsibility.” Her Archangel explained. “I have high expectations of you. Use it in the forward march of Technology.”
“I will, sir.” A glowing feeling of Gratitude spread through her. It did not matter that the Genius Archangel was resonating it into her, her own emotions synchronized perfectly at this moment.
The Lab Director looked at her sharply. For an Impudite, she could be rather business- minded when managing her subordinates. “As of today, you are now a Junior Research Assistant. The database will be updated shortly with your new assignments. You are dismissed.”
“Thank you.” Mariah maintained her composure through one last bow before she turned to leave.
Mariah practically skipped through the hallway, fully delighted with that meeting. The Genius Archangel had recognized her greatness! Of all the interns assigned here, he had recognized Mariah as the best of the entire decade. And she was no longer an intern, but an actual Research Assistant.
Others were staring at her, and for once Mariah didn’t care. Let them. She recieved the good review and a new Force. If she kept up this trajectory, she would be the senior researcher before too long. Her Archangel had been proud of her.
If only she had known.
—
Mariah spent that last morning before her disaster reviewing the notes on her clipboard. The information on their latest specimen intrigued her. Heaven-angels were rare even for prestigious labs, and this would be only her second time directly interacting with one. Specimen: AGX-3902, Type: Kyriotate, Quantity: 10 Forces, Dissonance: 2 Notes. Fall Risk: Category 2, Low-to Moderate. Entries in the freeform section indicated a probable affiliation with Flowers and a withdrawn temperament. Typical.
When she was done reviewing the notes, Mariah took a styrofoam cup of black coffee from a passing intern’s tray. A flickering glance identified it as a Shedite who had become an intern a year after her. She sneered at it, silently judging. Two years after her promotion, and it was still fetching coffee and cleaning up lab messes. How much longer would the lab tolerate an underperformer like it?
Not much longer, Mariah divine whim told her. Publish or perish.
The urge to resonate came reflexively, a test and a punishment both. Nothing big or shattering that would render it useless—the lab had rules against that—but a trace of Anxiety. A bit of not-good-enough that stemmed from the Shedite’s persistent mediocrity. If if it wasn’t aware of its precarious position, it should be.
The Shedite looked towards her, blinked, and scrambled away. As it should.
Her senior approached a few minutes later. He was a Choirmate, and his celestial form was tattooed with the patterns of neurons across his skin with threads of fiber optics sewn in places to simulate the effect of synapses firing. Mariah glanced down at the control bracelet settled on his bony wrist. Its mate would already be around the specimen. As the senior, he would be the one to control the proceedings while Mariah’s job would be to observe and take notes. Maybe if her senior was in a good mood, she might get permission to interact directly with the specimen.
“Ready?” he asked.
Mariah nodded. “Yes, sir.”
They entered the room in single file, Mariah behind her senior.
The specimen that awaited them was already contained within a clear cube made of thick acrylic glass. Various tubes and fixtures jutted out of it ready to accept a number of Scientific apparatuses. At about a meter per side, the cube took up the majority of the lab table in the center area of the room.
Even compressed, the captured Kyriotate had been the most beautiful thing Mariah had ever seen in her life, painted in subtle gradients of blue and violet she was sure Hell could only create in highly toxic chemical forms. Its body—as a specimen, it lost any claim it might have had to another pronoun—consisted of dozens of clusters of tiny flowers set within a softly glowing mist. At the center of each clustered blossom was a sparkling eye. Mariah added her own note about probable Word affiliation. Such details were usually unnecessary to the topic being researched, but thorough documentation was always a good practice.
Mariah couldn’t look away from the Heaven-angel. It was as strange as a Shedite but more delicate and gorgeous than any one of those could ever be. Compelling. She almost regretted the simple fact that it would need to break in one way or another. Maybe she would have the opportunity to capture visual footage before her senior went too deep into the process.
The morning had gone well. Mariah had observed while her senior used his resonance like a scalpel to pry at the specimen’s consciousness. She remembered this from a training film she’d been forced to watch on her first day as a Research Assistant. The first vivisection of a heaven-angel always had to be mental. A specimen needed to be removed from its own thoughts and emotions before the appropriate manner of celestial breakdown could be determined. They made good progress, and Mariah had already filled two full pages of with shorthand notes when her senior finally called for a break.
“I’ll be back in an hour.” He said in a friendlier tone than usual. That was another sign the morning had gone well. “Want anything from the snack bar?”
Mariah shook her head. Celestial forms never actually needed food or drink, and the opportunity to observe a Heaven-angel directly was already so rare; she didn’t want to waste it.
“Then make sure you get the equipment set up for this afternoon.” Her senior gave a jaunty wave and disappeared into the hallway. The door closed behind him, leaving Mariah alone in the room with the specimen.
She set herself to work. The list of requested equipment was right there on the clipboard, and one of the interns had already brought them into the lab prior to the morning session. All that was left for Mariah to do was the assembly.
“Please…” The voice from the box was barely audible.
Mariah was surprised. It was stronger than her initial impressions thought it would be. Most specimens undergoing this procedure were nowhere near coherent by this point. She grabbed the clipboard and prepared to make a note. “Please, what?”
“Help me…let me…go home….”
Or perhaps, the specimen was weak after all. Or it thought Mariah was weak. And Mariah could not let that stand.
Divine whim told Mariah what to do. She set out a deep instinctual sadness, a regret that the specimen would even think about asking Mariah to betray her Lab and her Archangel. The specimen would regret—
It bounced the resonance. That happened occasionally, and Mariah had that split second to decide how to handle the incoming backlash. Swallow the emotion and let herself ride it through. Her senior would understand. But the specimen…the specimen would think her weak. It might try asking again, and under the heavy blanket of sorrow, Mariah might just give in.
No, she had to cast the emotion aside and take the dissonance. It shouldn’t be a big deal. Plenty of people occasionally carried a note or two when their resonance bounced or—for the Impudites—when a human soul in its presence had been accidentally disassembled ahead of schedule. A note of Dissonance could be handled with leave time and volunteer work. That might not be so bad, Mariah thought, to give her seldom used vessel a spin and do some work at the bottom locus of an affiliated tether.
Having made her choice, Mariah let the emotion dissolve and waited for that faint and irritating buzz to start. It didn’t.
Wait. It didn’t?
A sense of dread rose in her. She looked down. The lab coat covered most of her arms, but the sight of exposed hands told her the problem. The dissonance had become Discord. Murky patches spread under her skin and nails. It reminded Mariah of a fungal infection she had seen a few months ago while assisting a researcher in the Plague department.
Discordant? How? She’d only had the one note.
That could happen sometimes with bad enough luck. Yes, that had been it. Bad luck.
The specimen would pay for that. It would be sorry that it had ever tried to—
Except her resonance seized as she tried to invoke it. That specimen—no, that Kyriotate—was already suffering enough, would continue to suffer until they either died or Fell. Suddenly, Mariah couldn’t bear to add to that. She couldn’t set it free—didn’t want to, really—but her new Discord drew a bright clear line right at resonating and nothing but Mariah’s own will and essence on top of that would let her step over it.
What Mariah should have done was continue to set up the equipment for the next stages. Check the lines for the neurotoxin pumps. Set out the blades. Double check that the electrodes were dry and functional. Her Discord didn’t prevent any of those actions, never mind how much more suffering those could inflict compared to a trivial emotion that could burn itself out in a few minutes. She should have smoothed her expression into a semblance of calm before her senior returned and acted like nothing had happened. It wouldn’t have prevented her new Discord from being discovered, but it would have let the session go on as normal.
But she hadn’t.
Mariah had still been standing around in shock when her senior returned from his break. Stupid. The equipment wasn’t set up, and the nearly broken specimen had regressed towards coherence. Mariah couldn’t hide that something had gone terribly wrong in his absence.
Her senior’s eyes grew suddenly cold. And Mariah realized, this was what it felt like to be judged by a Habbalite and found weak. Any hopes that the afternoon would continue on were instantly dashed. He grabbed her by the wrist, fingers nearly bruising her celestial form. The trip to the Lab Director’s office managed to be both too long and too short.
Her senior didn’t even bother to knock. Just walked right in. Mariah gulped. This was the most trouble she had ever been in, in all eight years of her existence.
“Can’t you see I’m busy?” The Lab Director snapped. She didn’t even look up from her paperwork.
“Sorry for the bother, doctor.” her senior was perfectly amicable and polite, never mind the pressure on Mariah’s wrist, and the blazing crimson of her mood ring. “I’ll need a new assistant. This one had a bit of an incident this morning.”
The Lab Director looked up, her expression suddenly businesslike. “I see. Put in the replacement request the usual way. I’ll debrief this one. Depending on how this goes, you’ll either get it or not.”
Her senior—former senior—glared at Mariah as though to say, “Don’t fuck this up for me anymore than you already have,” and left.
The Lab Director turned her gaze towards Mariah, and her tone was suddenly friendly. “Tell me what happened, sweetheart.”
Deep down, Mariah knew she should be more afraid than she felt. This was not, could not be good for her. She was clearly in trouble. But the Lab Director was an Impudite, and when she smiled her brilliant, charming smile, Mariah felt—not like this hadn’t been a disaster, but like the Lab Director was on her side. Discord was not quite as common as dissonance, but it happened sometimes. A run of bad luck and no upcoming leave time sometimes left taking Discord as the only option. It wasn’t a fireable offense in and of itself. Demotable, maybe, depending on the nature of the Discord.
Mariah would explain the incident and the effects of the resulting Discord, the mistake she had made leading up to it and how she would do better in the future. If she cooperated, the Lab Director would probably put her on some kind of punishment work, and Mariah would work hard-enough and well-enough at that to eventually get enough credit that her Archangel would remove this blemish on her soul. It might take a few years, and that was a long time for a celestial Mariah’s age, but it wasn’t forever. She could recover.
How naive she had been. Some Discords apparently did merit instant termination.
—
The next day, she had been brought to the Central Lab to meet with the Genius Archangel himself.
Mariah had not been looking forward to the appointment, even less so when she learned it would be held in an examination room.
“Come in, come in.” Her Archangel was amicable when she showed up to the door accompanied by a surly Djinn. Mariah could almost believe everything would be fine. She was only brought to this place to have her Discord removed and examined. It was an unusual Discord after all.
If Mariah were a Balseraph, maybe she could make herself believe that.
No. That was the thought process of a weakling. She knew what was coming, and she would face it head on. Mariah fixed a blank expression on her face, and let the Djinn walk her over to the examination table.
“Let’s make her comfortable for the coming discussion.”
The Djinn pushed her down on to the examination chair with one monstrous paw, and another assistant—a fellow Punisher—tightened the straps. Two for each of her arms and legs, and two across her torso, as though Mariah would try to escape her Archangel.
The Genius Archangel merely observed this set up and only spoke again when she was properly fastened in. “This is your first slip up, Mariah. Even Angels make mistakes, even those of our own choir. However, it’s an established fact that your Discord renders you useless for your current research trajectory.”
The voice might have been soothing, but the Choir resonance that accompanied it spoke of terror and remorse. Those emotions rose in Mariah to a degree that the straps were a gift or else she might curl up and cry in the corner. Tartarus had plenty of uses for the weak, none of them pleasant, and Mariah couldn’t deny it. She had been weak with that Kyriotate. She couldn’t even make the promise to do better next time because how that blessed Discord bound her. She was useless now. She deserved to be the subject of her Archangel’s next experiment, no matter how painful. She should be grateful, even, that she could be of any use to him at all.
Still, she flinched when his fingers dragged along the wire running alongside her jawbone.
“I had such high expectations for you. And now…” He gave a little tut. “What a waste of your training.” A pair of calipers touched her head, temple to temple, and the terror dropped to the pit of her stomach. “Fortunately for you, there’s a job opening at one of our test-subject procurement centers. It’ll even include some corporeal work. You were requesting a corporeal post for your next assignment, yes?”
Mariah nodded. “I would be happy to take this new job.” She didn’t even need to hear what it was. Anything to survive this meeting and prove herself again was good enough.
“Good. Then, we can hold off on the extensive experimentation until your next failure.”
He gave her a second of a relief. It lasted just long enough for Mariah to wonder if he might command his assistant to release her, no experiments done. No. She wouldn’t be that lucky. The next wave of resonance hit again. Fear and desperate love mixed together. She would do anything for her Archangel to make up for failing him so badly, if only he would let her try.
“However, since you’re here, it would be a waste to let you leave without indulging in a bit of scientific inquiry.”
Mariah willed herself to not flinch. She could survive a little pain. She was an angel, and she would remain strong in front of her Archangel.
“Your forces were put together with your previous job in mind, leaving only the one Corporeal force required to animate your vessel. That’s not quite enough. So in consideration of your most recent failure and the resulting position change, we are going to perform just one little experiment. If it all goes well, you’ll walk away from this more suited for your new duty.”
Her face remained steady, but her hands shook.
“And if not…we can consider that your next failure. Either way, we’ll all learn a lesson about the separate nature of Forces and how to turn one kind of Force into another.”
Mariah gulped. Her fingers gripped the arms of the chairs. Those weak, useless and soft appendages couldn’t quite dig in enough to steady her and she would fix that the next opportunity she had to update her celestial form. That was her last coherent thought. Then the procedure started, and, for a little while at least, Mariah completely forgot about how weak she must have appeared to her Archangel.
Pain could do that, even to angels.
—
The Genius Archangel had no time for her once the Science was completed. He left the room immediately, still strapped down and barely sewn back together. It was one of his lab assistants, a fellow Horror, who came back and unbound Mariah from the chair some hours later and escorted her to her new workplace.
She spent the trip feeling for what had been lost.
Intellectually, she knew the procedure had not diminished her. Eight Forces before, eight Forces after. But the Celestial part of her, built see the emotions of the weak and to instruct them how to feel, felt wispy and hollow. No longer was it just the Discord shackling her, but her own capabilities as well. The mood ring on her finger showed her escort’s contempt for her. Stories would get around, and if not the full story, then the Discord itself remained a stain on her celestial body. It would be obvious to anyone in the know.
Could she hide it? Could she modify her body somehow to make the Discords’ effects look like a choice? Was this a test, to see if she could not just persevere but overcome her situation?
The other Habbalite dragged her into a new building, not quite on the outside borders of Tartarus, but less central than her previous lab. No, not a lab, more like an office building that did public outreach on its lowest floor. The lab assistant took Mariah up an elevator and spoke with a receptionist about something involving security clearances. They waited a bit until Mariah could be passed off to another Habbalite. This one escorted her up a flight of stairs and into an office where a Djinn who looked like a hybrid of a ragged, drenched owl and a warty toad waited for them.
Waited might have been a strong word, as the Djinn didn’t even look up.
Her latest escort pushed Mariah hard enough that she stumbled to remain on her feet. “Your new assistant. Let’s hope this one lasts longer than the previous few.”
He turned to Mariah. “Your new boss, Tizzy.”
Then he left without another word or even a hit of resonance.
Mariah expected some sort of reaction when the Djinn finally glanced up at her—a question or an order or even a threat, but the Djinn, Tizzy, just shrugged her wings and croaked noncommittally, obviously more concerned with her current task than a new assistant. The mood ring said…apathetic. A pen dragged across a page in a book, white squares on a black background while the Djinn muttered. “Eight letters—Empty Calories for Haagenti.”
Everything went quiet, and Mariah wondered if she should speak. “Oblivion?”
Tizzy looked up and really looked at Mariah for the first time. The Djinn’s eyes were dull and enormous—too big for the face. A mouth that didn’t know what it wanted to be—beak or lips—clicked down. “Do not. Spoil. The crossword.” Then, Tizzy hunched over the crossword again, all thoughts of her new assistant seemingly forgotten.
Mariah wondered if she should do something. Move. Look around. Leave her new supervisor to the puzzle and explore her new workplace, maybe find someone with a little initiative who could just tell her what her job was. Pleasant wasn’t expected, but just waiting for the exact sub-type of unpleasant was getting old. Boring. Even delivering coffee would be an improvement.
She settled for looking at the bookshelves while Tizzy muttered another clue to herself (Lucifer’s favorite fashion house, 5 letters). At least half of the books looked like completed volumes of puzzle books. Most of the rest were references for engineering, electronics, and artifact design, nothing that Mariah would have considered useful in her old job. Her eyes went to a volume bound in gray-purple letter, the script on the spine not in any kind of Helltongue but actual angelic script. She reached out to take it for a closer look. Her finger almost hooked the ridge of the spine, ready to pull it—
That caught the Djinn’s attention. A webbed hand grabbed her wrist. Talons dug into her skin. “Don’t touch anything. Stand in front of the desk and wait for orders.”
So Mariah stood in the designated spot, and observed the office. It was half modern lab office and half a direct export of Kronos’s archive with all the bookshelves and filing cabinets. At the far end was a heavy-looking door with a keypad and an actual warning sign. Entering without the proper codes is lethal. A window beside it on the same wall looked deeper into a brightly lit hallway, and when she observed an Impudite rearranging his hair, Mariah realized it was one of those one-way windows like the ones in the some of the observation rooms at her previous lab. To the side was a door with a key hanging beside it. A supply closet, based on the placard next to it.
It was hours before Tizzy deigned speak to her again.
“I suppose you need to know what you’re going to be doing.” Tizzy spoke like this was a burden upon her Djinnish shoulders, never mind that she had requested the new assistant.
Mariah nodded.
Tizzy pushed forward a black zippered pouch. “Capture at least one Kyriotate specimen within the next corporeal year and return it to me. Any questions?”
Mariah unzipped the pouch and saw a number of crystals wrapped with wires and threaded onto chains—Force Catchers—and realized how dangerous this new assignment could get.
“What’s the best way to—”
Tizzy cut her off. “If you survive, we’ll discuss further training. Do you understand?”
“Yes ma’am,” Mariah said, and did not bother to point out that the Djinn had asked for questions. If it was unfair to be cut off, that was simply how this new job would work. Mariah may not have had a clue how about to accomplish her latest task, but she understood so much more about reality than she had even two days ago.
This was a test. She would survive. She would be strong. She would overcome, and if she couldn’t impress this Djinn, she would find someone else to impress. Favored or not, Mariah was still one of God’s Chosen in Hell after all.
She kept chanting that to herself until she could believe it.