Rebellion

“Ah. Humour. Yes.”

“Never mind. What’s up?”

“I think, perhaps, it would be wise for you to go home.”

“What? But I just...”

“I don’t think you understand. This is not to do with you. It’s to do with them.” He pointed to the door with a long, slender finger. “There’s trouble coming.”

“Fallen? They’re coming? Here?”

“Why not? The riots are, broadly speaking, their doing. They have watched them build and build, and they have been there through them all. This one will be no different, and it will happen right outside the door. You shouldn’t be here.” He saw her open her mouth to reply and shook his head, raising his hand to stop her. “I said: this is not to do with you, per se. This is about my responsibility, on every level. You are part of my staff, and I am responsible for your safety. I made a promise...”

“A promise?”

“A promise which is none of your business, but which is a promise nevertheless.”

“And if I don’t want to go?”

He shrugged. “Of course, that would be your choice...”

“What about you?”

“Me?” He seemed genuinely taken aback by her interruption.

“You. Where will you go?”

“To work, Alice. To work.”

ALICE WAS STILL trying to decide what to do when she saw the first police van. It drove up the road slowly, trundling past the wreckage. It was another riot van, with black metal guards across the windows. “Well, that can’t be a good sign,” she said to no-one in particular. Should she go, she wondered? Adriel wanted the office empty, but on the other hand, he’d as good as said that the Fallen were coming. And if they were coming, then how could she run? He was trying to protect his staff: after all, he’d said they were all normal. Human. But she wasn’t, was she? She stared out of the window at the van, watching as the doors swung open and a dozen police officers jumped out, already half in their riot gear. They held round perspex shields and black helmets. One of them – a tall blond – carried a baton, which he swung experimentally... almost hitting one of his colleagues in the process. “That definitely can’t be good,” she muttered.

“What’ve you seen?” Toby was walking down the corridor from the kitchen. He had changed out of his dark suit, and was now wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a pair of tatty white trainers. He leaned around her to peer out of the window, and she caught the smell of hair gel. That was the thing about people – they smelled like people. Angels smelled... different.

“Oh,” he said when he spotted the van. “Yeah, that’s not good.” As they watched, another van ground to a halt behind the first... and another. “Not good at all.” For the first time, it occurred to Alice that this was really happening.

She was relatively cavalier about the Fallen, but this was something else. The Fallen were other, somehow; set apart from the real world. The Fallen were hell and battles and the stuff of nightmares – and despite the fact she was working for Adriel, despite the fact she’d seen them on the streets herself, knowing they were coming here, and were in the day-to-day world and trying to bend it to their own will... it was wrong. It was frightening.

A sudden pressure on her hand made her look down. Without her realising it, her hand and Toby’s had tangled together, their fingers intertwined. She was about to pull away when it dawned on her that he didn’t seem to have noticed either. And if he hadn’t noticed, it wasn’t like he’d done it on purpose, was it? And he was as afraid as she was, more so, even. She could feel it. So they stood there, hand in hand, watching the police lines form right outside the window, amid the bricks and the glass and the wreckage.

And then they heard the shouting.

It came from somewhere out of sight: voices raised in rage and hate and nothing more. It wasn’t a battle chant, it wasn’t a cheer. It was a howl, empty and hollow and furious. And Alice had heard something like it once before, echoing through the lower levels of hell.

Toby’s fingers tightened around hers.

There were footsteps then – Adriel, hurrying back out of the office with a stony expression, and looking as close to an angel as Alice had ever seen him; his wings barely concealed in a shadowy haze around his shoulders. But he looked through her, and spoke to Toby. “You need to leave. Now. Go.” At the far end of the corridor, the back door swung open.

The voices got louder.

“Come on!” Toby tugged on Alice’s hand, but found her utterly immovable.

“I... can’t,” she said, barely recognising the voice that passed her lips.

“What?” Toby turned and stared at her.

“I need to stay.”

“You need to what?”

“I have to stay. I can’t explain. I just... I have to.”

“Are you crazy? I mean, really? You want to stay. Don’t you know what’s coming? Five minutes and it’s going to be a fucking warzone out there.”

“You should go.”

“Without you? Not a chance.”

“Toby!” Alice snapped. “Go. Just go. I’m not going to explain myself to you. I barely even know you, and you certainly don’t know me. So whatever you think this is,” she gestured to the space between them, “you can guess again. Now just leave me alone, alright?”

She saw the anger flash across his face before he could hide it, but she felt it all the same, boiling under her skin just as fiercely as it did under his. She had hurt him.

She felt his fingers slacken with horrible deliberation and pull away from hers. Adriel, framed in the doorway, watched but said nothing.

There was silence inside, rising chaos outside; shouting, the sound of running footsteps and the rhythmic beat of the police batons on shields.

Toby took a step back and looked her up and down. She felt his gaze travel every inch of her, and she hated it. He looked so coldly at her, this man who only a moment before had held her hand in his. Then he shook his head once and his lip curled into a half-sneer... and without another word he turned and was gone. The back door slammed behind him.

“Interesting approach,” said Adriel.

Alice swallowed the lump that was building in her throat. “Worked, didn’t it?”

“And you...?”

“I’m fine. And I’m not going anywhere.”

“On your own head be it, Alice.”

“I’m a big girl, thanks.”

SHE TURNED BACK to the window and looked out – and there, on the far side of the street, half-hidden behind a shattered bus shelter and watching her, was a man with black hair and dark-ringed eyes and a white brand around his wrist.

Rimmon.

ADRIEL OPENED THE door, and the sound of shouting and jeering grew louder. He sighed, and suddenly looked sad.

“You pushed Toby away to keep him safe,” he said. “But at what cost? What cost to you, and what cost to him?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. All our choices... all your choices, they matter.”

“I lost enough people I care about to the Fallen. I don’t want to lose any more.”