In that context, the delivery of the latest “this just in” stood apart for its solemnity and gravitas.
The story was broken by the highest-paid news anchor in the world, a kind of human comfort food delivered nightly to American living rooms, year after year, his youthful face changeless save for a subtle lengthening effect brought on by a slow-climbing hairline. He had dignity, and not just the faux kind created by a real-or-fake sprinkling of salt in his pepper, and, to his credit, if it hadn’t been for his willingness to use his clout in the service of journalistic ethics, things could have been far worse.
“My fellow Americans, citizens of Earth…” Oh, to be able to say that, Citizens of Earth!Lesser broadcasters trembled with envy. “This station has just come into possession of evidence that appears to validate the Visitors’ claims. You know what claims I mean. Early independent inquiry suggests these photographs are legitimate, though as you’ll see, many questions arise to which we do not yet have answers. I warn you. These images are not suitable for children.” Pause. Millions leaned forward, breath held. “They may not be suitable for anyone, but this is our world, and we cannot look away.”
And no one did, and very few sent their children from the room as, without further preamble, he showed the pictures in silence.
In living rooms across the nation, and in bars and offices and dorm commons and fire stations and the basement laboratories of the National Museum of Natural History and everywhere else, when the first image appeared, brows furrowed.
This was the grace period—the furrowing of brows, the knee-jerk disbelief—but it didn’t last long. Knee-jerk disbelief had, over the past forty-eight hours, been knuckled under by credulity. Many people were newly learning how to believe. And so, swiftly and in a great wave, viewer cognition swept from What the hell?to Oh my god, and panic on Earth met its new high-water mark.
Demon.
It was Ziri, though of course no one knew his name, or wondered at it, the way Eliza had.
The personals ad Zuzana and Mik had composed for the Kirin in flight was something along the lines of: “Heroic sweetheart currently occupying smoking-hot maniac body in order to save the world. Would sacrifice everything for love, but hopefully won’t have to. I really deserve a happy ending.”
In a fairy tale, Zuzana had argued, he would get one for sure. The pure of heart always prevail. There was, between her and Mik, a fairy-tale promise: that when he had performed three heroic tasks, he could ask for her hand. She’d meant it in jest, but he’d taken it to heart, and was only one task down out of three—though secretly Zuzana accepted his fixing the air-conditioning in their last hotel room as a heroic act and counted it.
Ziri’s sacrifice of his born flesh absolutely qualified as heroism, but life so very much is not a fairy tale, and furthermore, it sometimes goes out of its way to prove just how un-fairy-tale-like it can be.
As now.
Far away, something happened. It was a connection no one would or could make, in either world. What happened in Eretz, happened in Eretz, and the same went for Earth. No one was auditing the time lines for coincidence. But this… it almost suggested a synchronism between the worlds.
At the same moment that the image of Ziri’s discarded Kirin body made its debut on human airwaves—the same moment exactly—in Eretz, a Dominion blade… pierced him through the heart.
If there wereother worlds beyond these two, maybe they were linked, and maybe echoes of his story were playing out in all of them, shadows of shadows of shadows of shadows. Or maybe it was just coincidence. Brutal. Uncanny. While the image of Ziri’s corpse burned itself into the human consciousness— demon!—he died again.
The pain was far worse this time, and no one was there to hold him, and there were no stars to look at, either, as life ebbed. He was alone, and then very quickly he was dead, and no one was near with a thurible. He’d promised Karou he would name a safety, but he hadn’t. There just hadn’t been time.
And now there never would be.
When Karou had felt Ziri’s soul unskinned, back at the pit, when it had brushed against her senses, she had felt in it a rare purity—the high, surging winds of the Adelphas Mountains; home—and it was fitting that that was where he shed the White Wolf’s hated body and slipped free of the clashing swords and howling all around him. There was no sound, in this state. Only light.
And Ziri’s soul was home.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the anchorman from his desk in New York City. His voice was very grave, without a hint of morbid delight. “This body was unearthed only yesterday from a mass grave at the edge of the Sahara Desert. It is one of many corpses found, no two alike, and none alive. It is unknown who killed them, though preliminary estimates put the deaths at as recently as three days ago.”
More corpses, and of all the many pictures taken at the site—by Eliza—this array seemed curated for maximal horror: the most gruesome of the slashed throats, close-ups on the most monstrous jaws, studies of decomposition and curdled faces, eyes collapsing into sockets. Bloated tongues.
In fact, Morgan Toth had forwarded only the grimmest of her shots to the network—directly from her e-mail account, of course. There had been a poetry and poignancy in many of her pictures of the dead beasts; dignity. These he had left out.
Leaning against a doorjamb in the museum sublevels now, he observed the reactions of his colleagues with a supercilious smirk. I did this, he thought, enjoying himself immensely. And of course, the best was yet to come. He didn’t trust the idiots at the news station to put two and two together regarding the identity of their source, so he’d attached a helpful message. That had been the best part, he thought. Giving public voice to Eliza’s private torment.
Dear Sirs and Madams, he had written, as her.
Oh, Eliza.He was feeling something like tenderness for her. Pity. Really, so much made sense now that he knew who she was. Of course, the only breed of pity Morgan Toth was capable of generating was the sort a cat might feel for the mouse between its paws. Oh, you little thing, you never had a chance.Sometimes cats grow bored, and allow their prey to feeble themselves to safety, but they never do it out of mercy, and Morgan wasn’t getting bored anytime soon.
Dear Sirs and Madams, he had typed. You may remember me. Seven years I have been lost, and while on the surface, the path that I have taken in that time may seem surprising, I assure you it has all been part of a greater plan. God’s plan.
Just a couple of days ago she had said to him, with insupportable condescension, “There aren’t many things that people will gladly kill and die for, but this is the big one.”
No, Eliza, Morgan thought now. This is the big one. Enjoy.
In the service of His will, he had written to the station, I would gladly kill and die, and so gladly, too, do I defy the efforts of our government and others to conceal from the people the truth of this unholy ignominy.
Ignominywas a good word. Morgan worried that he’d made Eliza sound too smart, but consoled himself that it couldn’t be helped.
I couldn’t sound stupid if I tried.
His colleagues were pressed in so close to the TV screens that he couldn’t see the images, but that was fine. He’d had leisure to study them up close— thank you, thank you, Gabriel Edinger, and thank you, naive Eliza, for not passcode-locking your phone—and he had no doubt that after today it would be heand not she who would be continuing this momentous work with Dr. Chaudhary. As soon as Eliza’s name came out, her time would be up.