“I expect,” Jehovah began, “that this crisis will not end until either Sniper’s death or Mine, and also that, if Sniper is victor, then Earth will continue to depend on that… cowardly and addictive evil named O.S. Therefore it seems I must seek Sniper’s death. Yet I believe, in all deeds, knowledge should be as complete as possible, especially in homicide, for death is irreparable. The torture of regretting having killed is atrocissima… too cruel. Therefore I will not have any kill for Me who does not know as much Truth as it is in My power to share, nor will I have Sniper die, though Sniper is My enemy, without the dignity of understanding. I therefore command all whom I have the power to command, and request of those I do not, that no one slay Sniper until the history I am currently having prepared is done. It seeks to explain the events which led to O.S.’s exposure and Sniper’s act. When you have read it, then, those who still wish to may, if My consent conjoins with that of Romanova’s law, help Me remove O.S.”

Chagatai smiled, a proud, parental smile, not out of place on she who, despite Jehovah’s many fathers, is the one to welcome Him home after long, strange nights.

“Ask Me whether Sniper killed Me,” the Visitor commanded.

A frown now. “No, TM, not if you’re going to talk about resurrection.”

“If you ask Me, I must answer sic et non.”

“What?”

“Yes and no. Here virtue ethics opposes deontology.”

Chagatai sighed. “You’re talking about deed versus intent?”

“The Sniper who now lives bears the skill that killed Me, and the intent to have killed Me, but not the finger that sped the bullet home. Bridger was real.”

Not only Chagatai, but all within the room froze speechless.

Even Jehovah, though Jehovah is never truly within rooms.

It was not His words that stunned us. His black eyes, like everybody’s, shifted their focus suddenly far from this room, far from this city, to the news which rose in His lenses. “Sanctum… conrupt’est?”

I saw it too, in my news feed. I saw a world away, far out of reach, the first too-tiny plumes of smoke against the spotless marble.

“Ecce, Mycroft,” this foreign God called softly to me. “All material things are mortal after all.”

I zoomed in on the feed. A dark wound, that’s what others have said they saw, a tight incision sliced into the side of Alexandria’s great lighthouse tower, which bled irregular bursts of black smoke, clumpy like bubbles leaking from a sinking ship. I did not see a dribble, but a deluge, filth-black blood pouring from the wounded lighthouse, an endless torrent of living—no—un-living, moving black, as if this injury at last revealed the great reservoir from which are born all the specter trails and war-cancers that Tully Mardi leaks.