Adrenaline soared through my body as my mind tried to fathom the hideous death to come.

What followed then, dear Jacob, was truly a miracle.

In the midst of my terror, my being was suddenly overcome by a strange, yet familiar feeling—a feeling of utter calm. It was the same feeling I had experienced in my childhood as Michael Gabriel, when the treacherous T’quan had pinned me down by the edge of the Yucatán well.

It was the same feeling I had whenever I remote-viewed.

I stopped struggling, allowing my mind to enter the void.

The cathedral appeared to brighten. Above, the winged Devlin seemed frozen, his unchanging expression—a mask of rage.

My heart pumped in my ears, and I could feel my muscles growing stronger. In one fluid motion, I yanked my arms free from the worshipers’ grip and jumped to my feet.

Devlin stared past me through half-closed eyes, his pout-mouth halfway in sentence. For a fleeting moment, I felt the urge to leap into the air and tear those wings from his spine, to rip his throat apart—

—until I felt the icy presence of another pair of eyes upon me.

It was Lilith.

Her mouth never moved, but her telepathic voice made me cringe. I feel you, One Hunahpu. I’ve been waiting for your arrival for a very long time.

Her words seemed to pierce my soul, injecting me with a fear so intense that I nearly leapt out of my tingling skin. Still naked, I pushed through invisible waves of energy and raced out of the alien chapel, every muscle in my body burning with lactic acid, the voice of the Succubus cooing to me from the void—

—while Bill Raby’s consciousness screamed at me for abandoning his Jude.

I ran from that ungodly chapel, racing through the streets of New Eden at inhuman speed, continuing until I arrived at the home of Christopher Coburn, a close friend and agricultural scientist known within the Guardian’s inner circles as Viracocha. Leaping from the void, I pounded on his door, my overwrought muscles burning with lactic acid.

Chris dragged me inside, sending an encoded warning through the Guardian ‘grapevine’ while I hurriedly dressed. Then we ran from his dwelling, making our way to the spaceship.

Devlin’s people were scouring the city, hunting us like vermin. Those caught were publicly eviscerated and crucified, the children thrown into labor camps for ‘retraining.’

Only twenty-four Guardian made it off New Eden alive.

Omnipotence in the hands of a sociopath is a dangerous thing. As challenges are vanquished, boredom sets in. Eventually, even the private orgies and human sacrifices become trivial.

I suppose I always knew what Devlin was planning, ever since the day I first discovered the posthuman arena. Mabus and his mother coveted immortality, and the godlike powers of the higher realms were a temptation too strong to avoid.