Chapter Text
As we spend about twenty phrases worth of interaction hashing out possible plans to Mariah, we encounter two problems with our attempts to focus on anything beyond the next couple of hours.
First, our longer-term objectives [Mariah’s and mine] do not converge as well as we’d [I’d] hope. When she tells us she’s keeping her options open, she means just that, no actual commitment to escape implied.
In order, her preferences seem to be: Go Renegade with her pet Kyriotate obediently staying in the force catcher; redeem after her pet Kyriotate pledges devotion to her; bravely become a martyr to the Game to free her pet Kyriotate, who will—theoretically—feel very, very sorry that she let such a wonderful and worthy angel sacrifice herself on the Kyriotate’s behalf.
In order, our preferences are: Mariah redeems after setting the other angels free; Mariah goes Renegade after setting the other angels free; Mariah redeems in general; Mariah goes Renegade. Anything that leaves her alive and in the position pass her information on to Heaven is acceptable. Our own survival here is a nice-to-have. (We won’t ask Mariah to leave us behind, but we’re not vain enough to believe that the value of our life alone outweighs those of a dozen others.)
Second, we are sorely lacking in infernal expertise. Sure, we know more about Tartarus first-hand than most angels do—anything more than zero is too much first-hand experience for a Heaven-born angel to have with any part of Hell, but our stay here hasn’t made us an expert in anything beyond the door of Mariah’s supply closet. Our experience here doesn’t even make us an expert in that place. Bits and pieces, yes. How it functions as Mariah’s office when she’s in Hell and as a semi-private social space when she’s not. How sounds fill it. But we don’t even know what color the walls are painted, assuming that the walls even have paint.
We start throwing around ideas, and we can hear Mariah’s voice getting more exasperated as she has to explain to us that Tartarus (or Hell in general) doesn’t work the way we assume it does. No, hiring enough gremlins to be a distraction would be prohibitively expensive. No, the facility layout doesn’t allow for an inconspicuous exit via the secured area. No, there’s no way to steal Damp Mop Djinn’s prized ray gun (!) without immediately getting splatted.
We can’t see Mariah’s face of course, but by the end of this unproductive conversation, we imagine it wears an expression similar to the one we used to make in dog hosts when trying to help our Wordmates with paperwork. So, it’s a relief for both of us [her and I] when she shifts subjects and asks: “You normally hear what’s going on in my workroom when when I’m not there. Suppose there really is a third demon setting up a trap while we’re out. Tell me, who do you think our suspects are?”
“The obvious one is Brenda—that Lilim out for that Geas on you. We’ve overheard her in a number of conversations while you were out—including a few with those Habbies. Apparently they owe her multiple favors. She might have asked them to get you out of the way for a bit.”
“Anyone else?”
We try to remember who else in the room seemed particularly concerned with Mariah. Or her personal belongings at least. “What about that Impudite who sold you the ticket…Jeff, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s his deal? You said he had the ticket because his robot lost in the preliminary rounds. Was it some kind of alligator laser-cannon thing?”
“It might have been. Hard to say.”
“Hard to say?”
Mariah sighs. “There’s the whole mecha-reptile trend going on right now. I read a feature about it in the spring issue of Mad Popular Science. Crocodiles. Komodo Dragons. One Balseraph made a whole colony of mechanical poison dart frogs that shot actual poison darts. That explode.”
(Wait? Aren’t frogs amphibians?)
(Not important.)
“Anyway, an alligator bot wouldn’t surprise me. Impudites are more susceptible to trends than most other Bands or Choirs. So what makes him a suspect? Besides the fact that he sold me the ticket.”
“If he’s the Impudite I’m thinking about, he wants the reliquary he thinks my Essence makes that device of yours. He and that Lilim were arguing over what to do about it. She wants to use your Need for the box to hook you. He wants to use the alleged energy source for his own project. Apparently laser cannons take a lot of Essence to run.”
“Lasers at any weapon-grade scale take a lot of Essence. He’d be better off with actual projectiles,” Mariah laughs briefly, harshly, then brushes the subject aside before too many of our minds can grab hold of it. “Never mind that. Anyone else?”
One or two minds consider the matter for a second before we vocalize our denial. “Not likely. Everyone else seemed more interested in other supplies. Maybe those Habbies, if the third demon is doing them favor instead of the other way around. But I can’t see why they’d bother.”
Mariah paces back and forth in a short line while rain hits a surface overhead. “So, based on our suspects, we’re probably looking at a subtle trap rather than an overt one. Neither one of them have a reason to kill me. Nor would they want to destroy the surrounding area. What are the chances they’re in collusion?”
We recall that conversation. “Not terribly likely. The Impudite didn’t seem too eager to accept her proposal. If it weren’t for the electrocution trap, he would have just taken the box himself.”
The pacing stops. There’s a sudden clap in front of us, punctuation for an insight Mariah has just had. “Right! So we’re looking at a subtle trap. Probably surveillance. Given our suspects’ motives, that’s the most likely angle for both of them. If our third demon is the Lilim, she might be looking to collect blackmail material. If she’s not somehow looking to intersect me on the way through the office. If it’s the Impudite, he’s probably more interested in seeing how I disarm the traps on my device. Get the energy source and avoid dealing with the Lilim! Ha! This is great!”
We don’t feel nearly so confident. “Is it really?”
“Trust me, Kira. I can manage surveillance. If you can avoid incriminating us before everything’s cleared out, we’ll be just fine.”
We know Mariah isn’t using her Resonance on us because we are not reassured in the slightest.
—
The gap in our expertise becomes even more evident as Mariah navigates her way back to her supply closet-slash-workroom. Our previous experience involves an elevator and goes through a crowded office floor. The route she takes us on now has no elevators, a lot more stairs and hard walls that make even a single set of footsteps reverberate throughout the whole stairwell. No matter that this stairwell is mostly empty, it’s actually not that much quieter than the lobby.
“You don’t have to go through the office?” We ask, no louder than a faint buzz. Even if Mariah were walking with hundreds of others, no one but her could hear us.
Mariah pauses, and lets out a breath. “So long as I’m willing to climb five flights of stairs. Which usually, I’m not. The elevator is right there and so much more convenient. But if I’m trying to avoid a particular receptionist until we have more information, then five flights of stairs it is.”
We hum our approval. Now that the resonance attack has fully worn, Mariah is capable of evaluating the options in front of her and choosing her next actions deliberately. As deliberately as any Habbalite ever does, we suppose.
She’ll fit right in, once she’s fixed up.
(If she fixes up.)
Ah, isn’t that always the question?
—
When Mariah walks in to her workroom, we immediately sense an overall change to the flavor of silence that fills the space. Yes, silence has flavors. It still takes us time to pinpoint the change—a soft static undertone of tapes (multiple) doing their reel-to-reel spin. As Mariah suspects, the room is set up for surveillance. That’s about as much as we can tell from the sounds alone.
Audio-only input has its limitations even for us, and we’re overwhelmingly glad we’re not in the version of this scenario where we stayed behind and Mariah went off to watch the Robot Wars alone. Sure, we might have heard the set up process as it took place—but assuming the demon worked alone and wasn’t in the (somewhat common) habit of talking to themselves—how would we have figured out what was being done?
And if we had figured it out in time, then how could we have warned Mariah without revealing our presence to an observer?
(Worse, the Mariah in this scenario would have returned in the middle of a resonance-induced breakdown.)
We consider that scenario for a moment, and then let those questions go—just gone, not passed to a deeper mind for rumination. What’d be the point? No matter who gets their way and how, our job as Mariah’s watchdog is coming to an end.
Still, we’re glad that Mariah navigates this situation easily, if grumpily, without our input. “Does everyone think I’m an idiot just because I have resonance troubles?” She rips a long strip of tape off a surface. “Or do they not think about why this place hasn’t been wired up in years? And it’s such a clumsy set up too! A gremlin with a single Ethereal force could have caught that something was up. They set up the tapes meant to store the footage in this room! Actual tapes! Whoever it was didn’t even try to piggyback on Tizzy’s old set up.”
She hasn’t given a signal that it’s safe to speak, so we don’t share our thoughts. It’s probably for the best, considering how mopey most of us feel right now.
(Being caged off from information is NOT a state we’re used to. We don’t like it.)
“Just going off the placement of the equipment, I bet the Impudite did it.” Mariah’s tone is casually friendly now that she’s successfully identified and disabled the current threat. “The cameras were exclusively focused on the table with my device on it. The microphone was planted underneath the edge of the table, probably in case a spoken password or voice print was involved. I could escape both just by doing data entry at the computer and turning up the radio. This facility really doesn’t attract the brightest stars.”
(What does that say about her?)
“Unless they burnt out early like I did,” Mariah appends. “Anyway, it should be safe enough for you to speak. So, lay it on me. What’s your next proposal? You’re on what, idea number thirty-seven?”
Yes, we might be running out of ideas. Does she have to be so pointed about it?
—
While the plurality of our minds are busy moping about our limitations, a better minority have decided to get to work on a new kind of plan. We’re back in the box for now, and Mariah taps away at the computer for some ‘emergency data entry’—however that gets defined here.
We know what most of us want. We have an idea of what Mariah wants. So, in theory, we just need to find the overlap, and then instead of coming up with a whole plan start to finish, we hone in on the smaller pieces that fit into that space.
Mariah wants to keep her options open for as long as possible. That short-term goal doesn’t seem an objectionable starting point. In fact, it seems to us like a blank page ready to be filled in. As Mariah chooses to act or not to act over the next few weeks, certain paths will open up or close off the way that marks on a page begin to suggest a composition. Our trick then might be to figure out which actions keep the options we like open and—more importantly—which ones will stop Mariah from exercising the worst of her options—the one where she walks, smiling, into the Game’s trap.
(This seems like a very Elohite way to frame the situation. Maybe we should embrace that.)
Once we come up with something that might work, then there’s the question of how to get Mariah to listen to us. Were she a human host of ours, this would be trivial. A sufficiently superstitious human will take almost anything framed in the right situation—even something as small as a hastily-scribbled note on the fridge—as a sign from something—God, the Universe, their own subconscious, et cetera—to act. It’s a neat trick to preserve free will for our hosts while steering them towards the options we think suit them better. Unfortunately, a little note on the fridge isn’t within our capabilities. Even if we could somehow acquire a paper and writing utensil (maybe that too hard pencil she keeps around) and write something down, we doubt she even has a refrigerator in here.
What we do have is the power of suggestion, and Mariah’s own desperate desire for our esteem. She wants the approval of her fellow angels (‘angels’) down here, and right now we’re the only source she has available. Where else can she go? Those two Habbalah who regularly torment her? The visitors she runs into in the cafeteria? Our Choirmates she captures? None of them can (or will!) give her what we can hand out with a simple word.
(If that Lilim ever had the opportunity to see that Need in Mariah, maybe she’d find a way to get those two Habbalah to pretend to approve of Mariah for a week or so. That in itself might land the Lilim a big enough Geas to keep Mariah in Hell.)
What those thoughts in minds, we come up with two moves to suggest.
—
The first move is the insane one, especially when Mariah delves into what Heart relocation means for a resident of Hell—if they’re even given a Heart to move in the first place. All angels have a Heart, but not all demons do. Free Lilim don’t apparently, nor do most demons assigned to strictly Hell-side work. It is, Mariah tells us, a number of crimes stacked atop each other to move one’s Heart out of its designated location. Oh, but things do get shuffled around all the time in the central laboratories of Tartarus. The so-called ‘Genius Archangel’ has as much experimental curiosity towards the nature of Hearts as he does any other bit of the Symphony.
(We’re summarizing here.)
So we ask Mariah if in the shuffle she could find a way to discreetly borrow her Heart for a bit. If she chooses not to run, then it should be as easy (if not easier) to sneak her Heart back in. And if she does decide to run, having it nearby will give her a crucial head start. A Heart is a direct line to the celestial who owns it. Breaking it quickly and discreetly takes out the most obvious tracking method, which gives her more choices once she’s on the run—even more so if the time and location of Heart break remain a surprise.
“Can you move it? Is it physically possible, I mean?”
“Well, sure. Sometimes, when it’s been left in a particularly bad spot, I’ll put it somewhere better. Not that it ever seems to help. If it’s not suspended on a hook ten meters in the air, then it’s submerged in a vat of acid.” Mariah taps her nails thoughtfully. “Moving it more than a couple of rooms over would be tricky to pull off…but with a big enough box and the right excuse…Other people get misfiled all the time, why not me?”
“Exactly! Why not you? Come up with an excuse and walk it right out of there.” We can’t lie in Helltongue without dissonance, but apparently encouraging another towards deception is peachy keen, so long as we mean it honestly. Which, right now, we do.
—
The second move is the completely sensible one. For one, it’s not a capital crime—or any kind of crime—at all; it’s more of a a variation on the exact brand of suggestion we regularly gave the humans we helped—hosts and non-hosts alike. For another, our reasons for this one are multifaceted and multi-functional, and the more reasons to do something, the better, right?
(We’ve always thought so.)
The suggestion: Mariah should start a new project.
That sounds reasonable, right? Everyone needs a hobby—especially celestials who have a much longer lifespan than your average human—and that goes double for those who may be going through a bit of a stressful situation.
(Our hobbies: Faltering attempts at echolocation, sound mimicry, disco.)
It’s even more important for Mariah. She needs something to distract her from what’s looming up ahead, and what better way to go about it than to start a new project? Side projects are universal amongst Vapulans—at least among all the ones who come in here to talk about them. More so, the need for new components will give Mariah a ready excuse to scout around in odd places and a whole set of minor needs for the Lilim to catch instead of the really Big and Obvious one that will see Mariah brought in by the Game for more than just a little blackmail if the Big Habbie over at the Central Laboratory doesn’t decide to take Mariah’s neuroses personally first.
So it’s a little shocking that this proposal gets a lot more resistance from Mariah than the actual crime we advocated for earlier.
(Maybe it’s the project we suggested.)
“So, why exactly would I want to dismantle the box I keep you in?” Her nails tap on the table with a slow and ominous unison.
(Oh, yes. It’s definitely the project.)
“Plenty of reasons. The core of the Lilim’s scheme—at least the one she planned out in front of me—involves your dependence on that device. Your Impudite friend (mandatory sarcasm marker here) wants the energy source, and she’s going to use that threat to extract her Geas. Why not let him have it?”
“So, what do the modifications have to do with that?”
“If you hand it over as is, how long will it take that Impudite to realize that there was probably never a usable source of Essence in here in the first place? Doing something with it give you the opportunity to make it less suspicious.”
Mariah’s voice goes cold, the way it tends to sound before she Punishes us. “So, let’s say I hand my device—modded or otherwise—over to the Impudite. That means the Lilim doesn’t get the Geas on me and I don’t need to run. So, what do I do with you the next time Tizzy sends me up?”
That’s a reason too if not one we’ll tell Mariah. No matter how much we try to prepare her, she still can’t accept our [her and my] eventual separation. Maybe her concrete action of dismantling the cage will help reinforce the larger idea: We’re no more her possession than she is ours.
(We can hope, anyway.)
(We also think our Habbie approaches Balseraphic levels of delusion if she still thinks the status quo isn’t due to implode.)
“Whatever you want to do, really. You could take me with you…hide me in a shirt pocket and stick me in the laundry bag…plant me on the Paper Shredder…shove me under one of those fans on that rooftop...”
Mariah laughs, but it’s a strained sound. Our attempt at humor does too little to cover our unspoken intentions. The specific tone we have to use in Helltongue to avoid dissonance (akin to explaining the joke as it’s being told) doesn’t help our delivery. “What if I just go along with the Lilim’s plot? What then?”
“Then that’s still a choice you can make.” We’re (mostly) resigned to the reality that Mariah might take exactly zero of our suggestions. The possibility seems likely enough that only a few of us dare to remain optimistic. Still, we let our neutral but honest statement hang in the air for a bit. Well, not exactly neutral—our opinion must be perfectly clear to Mariah especially considering her mood ring—but the words themselves are objectively true. Until Mariah turns down the Lilim’s offer directly, that option does, in fact, remain open.
Then, we continue:
“We both have our own wildly differing agendas, and the only overlap between them I’m sure of is that neither of us want to close off too many exits too early. Doing that requires some pro-activity. Think about your own intentions: Is not handing the box over to the Impudite enough to keep us hidden? What’s to stop the Game from investigating your belongings once you’re done being useful to them? Do you think they won’t be able to figure it out? Or did you not mean it when you said you wouldn’t betray us?”
Mariah takes her sweet time coming up with an answer. We do believe her declaration of intent up there the roof was sincere—we wouldn’t try using it as a pressure point if we didn’t. But did she think her intention through before she declared it? Or was her brain still too gunked up from her Bandmate’s resonance to think about what that non-betrayal might entail?
For us to have any chance at safety, Mariah has to do more than merely refuse to speak under duress. (A mostly irrelevant matter we still have our doubts on. We’ve been told the Game is more than capable of persuasive duress.) She also has to consider the other giveaways. If someone knowingly searches this room for a loose angel, they will find us. Presence always leaves marks. Hasn’t she ever had to put together the pieces of someone’s life using only the traces they leave lying around?
(Probably not. Doesn’t seem like something she’d care about.)
(Except she’s spent years hunting down our Choirmates. How else could she track them down consistently?)
Mariah custom-built this cage to hold us, and that intended function will leave a mark long after the Kyriotate herselves either escapes or gets stashed away elsewhere. And what happens when someone else gets close enough to really look at it. Depends on who that someone is, right? That Impudite? He’ll probably won’t care too much. Maybe he’ll be angry that he was cheated out of a power source, but whatever. The Game? That’s the serious problem. They’ll be more likely to investigate the discrepancy, and—if they’re anything like Judgment—Mariah’s refusal to talk will only heighten their suspicion.
“I can tell when you’re manipulating me.” Mariah says at last, “You're not that subtle, not with that dissonance-enforced honesty getting in your way. You only get away with it most of the time because I let you.”
The subject shift is a non-answer. We should call her out, but enough of us are sufficiently curious to allow it. “And why would you do that?”
Mariah laughs out loud. “Because this is Hell. And I find it charming that a good little Heaven angel like yourself will resort to the same strategies down here as the rest of us.” Her voice goes almost tender, like she holds some kind of affection for us, real or otherwise. “I can’t hold it against you. Everyone has an agenda. Yours at least doesn’t involve active harm to me, even when your suggestions are objectively insane.”
Now it’s our turn to laugh. “Yes, but you’re a Habbalite. We don’t expect objectivity out of you.”
(Not yet.)
Mariah taps her nails on the table again. She seems to be considering our suggestion more seriously now, but what information beyond a few tell-tale sounds do we have to judge that by?
“Do you really think these modifications are necessary? I mean, to keep the Game from getting at you.” She asks at last. “Tell me directly in a way that would give you dissonance if it were were false.”
“Yes, I think that step is necessary if I’m to have any chance at escaping the Game’s notice. Kyriotate’s honor.”
She pauses, no audible gestures this time, just the sounds of concentration on whatever repair job we’ve temporarily distracted her from. That’s fine. Busy hands make for a busy mind, and Mariah needs the time to think right now.
“Fine,” she says, when she sets a piece aside. “Once I’m done with the repairs on this batch, I’ll start planning out some mods. No guarantees beyond that. Is that a concession enough for you?”
“It’s a start,” we allow.
—
Mariah doesn’t talk to us at all after that. We can hear the noise of object repair, the pacing of her footsteps across the room (her feet shuffle a bit less than they used to), and the scratch of her favorite pencil on cheap paper. We can tell she’s thinking, but she doesn’t share any of her thought process with us. Our further input is neither wanted nor needed, and our one attempt to contribute gets us snapped at.
(Not resonated, though. Does it cost too much Essence when Mariah knows there’s a looming threat? Has she lost her instinct to use it altogether?)
At some point, Mariah leaves the room and stays gone for a while. And then another while beyond when she should be back from any facility-mandated breaks. And a third while after which could account for basic errands.
An Impudite comes in eventually—our suspected culprit. His leather wings make soft beats against the air as he approaches Mariah’s table. We hear the shift of furniture clicks as he retrieves the tapes he set up to record—the ones he hoped to record—followed by very quick footsteps as he leaves.
Yes, that’s definitely our culprit. That’s probably good. Less chance that he and the Lilim are in collusion. Though we wonder how long that will last. He’ll probably be more amenable to doing things her way once he realizes that the tapes he’s snatched are some bootleg copies of the Spearendipity Corporeal Demo and a Tech-Synth mix-tape Mariah spent the last few days recording.
Anyway, we can mark that box checked and figure out how (and if!) we’ll report this when Mariah gets back.
Now, if only Mariah would come back.
—
Mariah bursts into the room just as we’re in the middle of listing out that the misfortunes most likely to have befallen her while she was out.
(Good news, it probably won’t be the Game that gets her. Bad news, that doesn’t narrow down the hazards nearly as much as we’d hope.)
The door barely slams shut before Mariah starts babbling. “That was one of the scariest things I’ve ever had to do!” She sounds breathless and excited, hyped-up on adrenaline, the way we’ve only seen her a few times—and even then always under another Habbie’s resonance. “It took a lot of work to evade all the scientists in that building, not to mention the guards! But I did it! I actually managed to smuggle it out!”
(She doesn’t dare name the ‘it’. We don’t dare make her.)
“So where is it now? Did you bring it here?”
Mariah sets down a box on the table, and we hear her unpack a number of components. Thunk, thunk, thunk, but nothing glassy—nothing that potentially sounds like a Heart. (But then, what do we know about the sounds of Infernal Hearts? We’re projecting from our experience with Divine ones) “No, it’s stashed elsewhere for now. Don’t worry about it.”
“What’s in that box?”
“Boxes,” Mariah corrects. “One’s another project from Tizzy, and then the other has the components for your side project. If that Impudite wants a power source, he’ll get one. Assuming he can get past the spears and avoid triggering any explosions. It’s only fair that he has to work for it, don’t you think?”
Let this be our reminder: Soon-to-be-former-Vapulans are still Vapulans.
—
Soon after Mariah starts work on her project—the conversion our cage into an actual power source and with some additional booby-traps to make it exciting—we move into her chest cavity full-time, at least for now.
(We leave it up to her what happens to us if she somehow gets the chance to do her Corporeal work again. She’ll either take us with her, or she won’t. Simple as that.)
“I spent a lot of time building this box,” Mariah says with a strained note of nostalgia. We hear the subtle scrape of a screw being turned into place. “Almost a decade from the initial design phase to a completed build capable of securely holding—and hiding—a specimen just like you. And now…”
“And now?” We really didn’t need the reminder that to everyone else here, we really are just another specimen.
“And now it seems like the best way to keep you safe from discovery is to modify it to longer fit you. Ironic, isn’t it?”
(Is it? We’re not actually sure. Irony is one of those literary concepts, and that’s never been our area of creative specialty.)
“Maybe,” we allow.
—
With Mariah having taken our two suggestions, we start looking at some other aspects of our ideal outcomes—at least as far as our limited information allows them to, which is, sadly, not very far at all. We don’t even know the basics, like what is the exact layout of the secured area? Or what other unconventional exits does this building have? We can (and do) ask Mariah for more information, but she remains elusive.
“If I choose to run, I already know my route out of Hell. I don’t need your help.” she pauses, then adds. “Emphasis on the if, Kira.”
(Oh, come on! Mariah is totally set up to run.)
We’re unsure if Mariah’s bluffing or not. We have as much a way to find out as we do of getting better information, which is to say our only possible source isn’t telling. So let’s assume she’s telling the truth. Mariah knows her escape route of Hell. Fair enough. We’ll give her that, what with her having years of experience navigating this place and the abilities of sight and self-locomotion besides. Our minds can focus elsewhere.
Where might we be of service to her? What might she not know?
How to get to Heaven, for one.
‘Get to’ in the logistical sense, anyway. The redemptive process itself is somewhat beyond our capabilities, so the best we can do is hand her over, gift-wrapped, to someone at a divine Tether and let a willing Archangel do the rest. (Most Archangels should be willing, at least.)
Let’s assume (reasonably) that Mariah breaks her Heart and immediately flees. Where does she end up? She won’t use any of her now Former Prince’s tethers. That would be far too risky. Instead, she’ll probably jump directly to her last Earthly location. So then, let’s assume (slightly less reasonably) that the very small time we spent with her up there reflects both her usual geographic range and habits. If that’s true, then that places her usual range a bit further south than we’re used to, and her preferred arrival location will be reasonably isolated from both celestials and humans.
We can work with that. We know of at least one Lightning Tether that’ll be within a day’s drive of any likely arrival point, and unless she leaves with the Game or Technology hot on her trail, she should be able to get there without too much pursuit. We don’t know if Mariah is specifically suited to Lightning—she doesn’t seem passionate about the kind of research Lightning specializes in—but we do trust in that Archangel’s ability to be practical.
(Yes, we realize that Mariah might decide to try out the Renegade lifestyle. If so, we’ll figure out what to do then. She might find herself flying solo much earlier than she realizes.)
We’ll save that one for later. What other ideas can we offer her?
Our Habbie wavers from day to day on whether she plans to run or stay. So, even if she has her escape route set up, it’s unlikely she’ll choose to run unless pressed by an outside force (not us) to make an impulse decision, which means we have to assume her window to escape will be much narrower than either of us [Mariah or I] prefer.
We play through abstract versions of that scenario. Mariah runs. Someone immediately starts to chase. She’s eight forces, and only two of them are Celestial. Yes, she’s fast-ish for a demon, but ‘for a demon’ and ‘-ish’ are the key terms here. If a Hell-side chase happens, someone will be fast enough to catch her even without access to one of the many motorized vehicles in Tartarus. And that’s before we consider what little we know of the security system. That shield that keeps the angels in the secured area from leaving Hell will presumably work on Mariah too if someone gets the chance to trigger it.
What Mariah needs is a distraction. We should suggest one.
Many of our mouths smile at that concept, and most of them aren’t very nice at all.
—
The problem with suggesting a specific distraction to Mariah is this:
We want something (desperately) from her, and she wants something from us (presumably equally as desperately). In theory, we should set up some kind of trade wherein Mariah does a favor for us, and in return we give Mariah what she wants. In practice, it won’t work. We can’t give Mariah what she wants; we probably wouldn’t want to if we could, and even if we did, the whole thing would end in mutually-assured disaster. Merely asking for that favor will turn into the same argument we’ve had a dozen times since Mariah lost her original vessel.
If she runs Renegade, will we stay with her?
No.
If she defects to Heaven, will we stay with her forever?
No. (Nothing is forever, anyhow.)
What if she frees our fellow captives in the secured area? What about then?
We don’t know.
We might say yes, and we might even mean it. That ‘yes’ might convince her. It might not. Their freedom might be beyond her capabilities. Or it might not be. If she can smuggle her Heart out of its authorized location maybe she can do the same for our Choirmates.
“You need to set up a distraction,” we say, while Mariah feeds a box of old documents to the Paper Shredder. Mariah calls it standard audit-prep, but there’s a frisson to her as she commands the Calabite to do her bidding.
(We wonder where she stashed that Heart of hers.)
She catches on to the implication. “What kind of distraction? Huh? Free the other Heaven angels here?”
“Yes. If that happens, no one will pay any attention to the missing Habbalite. They’ll have a bigger emergency to deal with.”
Mariah hesitates. She could make the demand we anticipate. “It’s more difficult than you think it is, Kira. Too many people, too closely watched, too much security. They’ll know who to blame. Too many problems for too little pay off.”
That’s our cue right there. We know what Mariah will take the risk for. We could make the offer directly.
We don’t.
“Right,” Mariah says over our silence, “If I run, then it’s you and me. That’s all I care about, and I won’t risk either of us to save anyone who was dumb enough to get caught.” To the Paper Shredder she says, “Destroy this.”
“This situation is bigger than both of us,” we say, in Angelic, where we can speculate freely. “It might be difficult, but if you don’t do anything, you’ll regret it later.”
“Not large enough, if you’re not willing to—You! Stop that.” Mariah addresses that last bit to the Paper Shredder, with a shuffle of kicked-up paper. A bit of gravelly laughter floats up from below. Of course it’s amused. We [the imprisoned and the bored] get our entertainment where we can.
“You don’t understand—”
Mariah cuts us off. “Yes I do. You think I need to set up a distraction? Fine. That makes sense. You want me to do that but just giving you what you want most while doing nothing for me in return? That’s going to fly worse than the Emu-lator did back in the 1981 Robo Battle Royale.”
We’re about to argue, or at least inquire about the flight path of the Emu-lator when another voice joins the conversation.
Mpmpphph…not listen…agenda….mmmph….Little Voice…
Right. The Paper Shredder. We tune more of our ears to focus in on it until those mumbles turn into something vaguely comprehensible. Mariah ignores it as a matter of course. She’s so used to dismissing the Paper Shredder’s mumbles as unimportant that she can't connect its ramblings to her own situation.
“Demons…own agenda…themselves first.”
Well, yes, demons do look out for themselves first. What a demon needs—or wants—for themselves will always come before the bigger picture. More than the abstract concepts of Good and Evil as humans might understand it, it’s the focus on collectivism versus individualism that separates Angels from Demons. Mariah cares about holding on to us. To her, there’s no sense of fitting into a larger design, where threads of individual actions weave together to make up the Symphony. Or maybe knits together, one infinite thread in an infinite variety of stitches to make a whole, one loop of yarn at a time, leading to the next.
“Security access…here…manual…alarm…”
We have an idea, one that Mariah can’t easily say no to. One loop, leading to the next. One opportunity that leads to another. And so on down the line. It’ll be a gamble, but maybe…our objective can still happen. Maybe we can leave here and feel like we haven’t failed.
(Could we do more? Shouldn’t we be able to do more?)
“Your Heart is in this room now, isn’t it?” we ask, our voice barely rising above the din of the scrap paper.
Mariah’s voice is just as soft with her answer. “Yes.”
“If you were to break it, it would be broken in here, right?”
“Yes…” She trails off, and we think she anticipates what we’re about to suggest. We can sense the tension in the room as her perspective shifts. The body at her feet is seen now as a person—or perhaps as a natural force—rather than a piece of living office equipment.
“What’s in here that a Calabite could damage if it were actively trying? Would it be enough to be distracting?”
There’s a sharp intake of breath—from the Punisher, not the Freak. Mariah has been a Vapulan all her life, and she understands the taboo against Calabim in Tartarus more than we ever could. (If the Calabite entropy aura is potent enough to disqualify an entire Band from service, then why doesn’t Vapula just create an attunement to turn it off?) “It might be enough.”
“Would it be difficult?”
Mariah paces across the room. “Not very difficult, so long as we don’t need to run right when Tizzy’s playing with it. So you think I should let a demon go? Do you think he deserves it?”
‘Deserve’ is one of those concepts we can barely wrap a head around. The concept of everyone getting what they deserve seems nice in theory—good things should happen to good people and vice-versa—but in practice good and bad things happen pretty much indiscriminately and as often as not, we [people in general] assume bad things happen to others because they’re, well, bad. But that’s not true, is it? We didn’t deserve our capture. None of the (probably outcast) angels here deserve their most likely ending. The Paper Shredder—the Ofanite it used to be, at least—didn’t deserve the circumstances that led to its Fall. Even Fallen, it might not even have enough freedom of action to fully deserve Hell yet. Maybe Mariah here didn’t deserve the twists—unfortunate or otherwise—that left her at the edge of a decision most demons never give a serious thought to making.
“Yes,” we say, because that’s how all of our internal debates balance out. “You have an opportunity to escape. Why not give someone else the same chance and let that be the distraction you need to set up anyway?”
Mariah turns on the vacuum and starts cleaning up all the paper. That’s our cue to shut up and let her think.
“Fine. I’ll free the Destroyer,” she says once she switches the machine off. “Might as well, since I’ll have to be in here anyway. It’ll keep Tizzy distracted at least. Is that good enough for you?”
Inside our crystal, a chorus of voices bubbles up and chants on repeat: One chance. One opportunity. One chance. One opportunity. As though advocating for the release of a currently-contained demon will somehow open the way for more good options open than bad.
Our answer is as much for ourself as it is for Mariah. “It’ll have to be, won’t it?”