Chapter 11

Clarice stared around the front room of the cabin fondly as she exited the portal. Even though it had only been a few weeks since they had been there, the return of her memories made it seem like a lifetime ago. The first thing she noticed as she returned to the mortal realm was the lack of light density. She felt like a heroin addict going through withdrawals. She had been through this before though and knew she would acclimate in a few hours.

“Ug,” Mandy groaned as she felt the drop in light density. “Need. More. Light.”

“It takes a few hours to acclimate,” Aria warned them as she stepped through. “It will be a rough couple of hours though.”

“Yeah…” Lexi agreed with a wince. “This sucks.”

There was a blur and then their parents were suddenly in the room with them. It was strange thinking of them as her parents while also remembering them as Cherubim in their old memories.

“You’re finally back!” their mother exclaimed, her eyes filled with quicksilver tears as she pulled Aria into a hug while their father pulled Clarice into a hug. “We hadn’t heard from you in so long that we were getting worried.”

“Sorry about that, Mom,” Aria apologized soothingly. “We were stuck in limbo on the source realm for a few weeks. The light field is so intense there that it incapacitates you for a while.”

Devon and Tamra had entered the room as well. They were staring at the four Seraphim in awe as they felt the power of their auras crash around the room like a wrecking ball.

“I take it you have full recall now,” Devon noted as their parents swapped daughters. “Are you fully ascended now?”

“Yep,” Clarice grinned at him, remembering him in both sets of memories. “It’s weird seeing you all with both sets of memories now. I remember you from before mortality just as well as I remember you from my mortal life.”

“Really?” Tamra asked curiously, her eyes fascinated. “What was I like before?”

“Let’s just wait until your memories return,” Clarice answered with an awkward smile. “Angels acted funny around Seraphim because some of our number were egomaniacs. Aria, Calypso and I didn’t spend a lot of time with angels, so we didn’t realize how much you had all been indoctrinated by the other Seraphim. We’ve removed two of those number and replaced them with Mandy and Lexi. We were planning to do the same with Mom and Dad.”

“You want us to be Seraphim?” their father asked in surprise.

“Yep,” Aria and Clarice confirmed simultaneously. Clarice winked at Aria and got a wink in return. Aria was far less shy, now that she had her memories back.

“Why us?” their mother asked curiously. “Because we are your mortal parents?”

“That’s a large part of the reason,” Aria nodded, gazing at them affectionately. “We have had a chance to see what good people you are without the memories of your past. We remember you from before too, though, and would make the same choice even if we had never known you as our mortal parents. We should have done this as soon as we learned about the other Seraphim causing trouble. We just didn’t think they would actually do something so drastic.”

“I feel like I’m in the presence of a deity,” Tamra commented as she studied them in awe. “You really have a strong presence, don’t you?”

Clarice pulled her aura in and sensed the others do the same. “Better?”

Tamra blinked as all trace of the powerful Seraphim auras vanished. They just looked like regular angels now, if you didn’t look at their swirling vortex eyes. “So, you can just hide your aura completely now, huh?”

Clarice shimmered and shifted, suddenly appearing just like she had as a mortal. “Yep, we can pretty much do anything.”

Their parents stared at her in surprise. Their father wiped suddenly wet eyes as he looked at her fondly. “It feels like it’s been years since I’ve seen the regular human version of my daughters.”

“We need to go fetch the last piece of Clarice’s soul,” Aria informed them briskly. “Now that she has her memories back, she’s really feeling its absence.”

“Ok,” their mother couldn’t stop staring at Clarice, her eyes also misting over. “What can we do to help?”

“We’ve got this,” Aria smiled appreciatively at their parents.

“Do you know where it is?” their father asked curiously.

“This way,” Clarice answered, opening a portal to the mountains in Northern Utah. “It feels like it’s over here somewhere.”

She went through the portal and started walking in the direction she could feel her soul tugging her. The others followed her through, looking around curiously at the thickly wooded area. There were primitive structures built among the trees, from small dwellings to more complex structures. It looked like a bushcraft enthusiast or a scout camp. There wasn’t any sign of people around. She scanned the place with her spiritual vision and located an energy signature inside of a cave nearby. She marched through the trees toward the mountain side. The anticipation to retrieve the last piece of her soul was enough to make her hands shake.

The cave entrance was just wide enough for one person to enter at a time. Before she could go inside, Aria darted ahead of her, looking over her shoulder with a challenging look. Clarice sighed and reigned in her enthusiasm.

“Wait!” Mandy called out from behind them.

Aria paused before entering and turned to face Mandy curiously.

“Didn’t the other guy try to lure us into a cave in Tibet?” Mandy asked warily. “Do we really need to go inside of the cave? Can’t we just tear the mountain apart until we reach your soul?”

Clarice shared a rueful look with Aria and Calypso. “Mandy, you might be the youngest soul here, but you are definitely the wisest.”

Mandy grinned and shrugged nonchalantly. “Like I said, new and improved.”

Clarice and the other Seraphim laughed as they moved back away from the mountain.

Clarice stared through the rock of the mountain at the energy signature of another non-demon but also non-angel entity. Its name was a mess of energy lines that looked like nonsense. She started blasting the side of the mountain with angel fire, using large surgical blasts to vaporize the walls around the cave, enlarging it quickly. It didn’t take long to vaporize a large hole into the mountain that left the entity standing in shock as daylight suddenly shone down on it.

“You must be Madjack,” Clarice remarked with a dangerous glint in her eyes. “You have something that belongs to me, Madjack.”

“You have it backwards,” Madjack responded slyly, eyeing her hungrily. “I have something of mine and you are the rest of it. Finders keepers, losers weepers. Come to papa.”

Aria nearly shot forward, but Clarice laid a hand on her arm to calm her furious sister. Clarice studied him with her spiritual sight, noting the aberrations in his meridians. The man had some kind of deformity in his immortal body that was making him appear somewhere between a demon and angel, similar to Redgart. It looked like the renegade Seraphim had been doing more experimenting on living people.

“There’s no point in playing his game,” Clarice declared firmly. She opened a gateway beneath the spot where she could feel her missing piece of soul and let it drop into her hand. There was an inverted boom as she felt the piece of her soul get absorbed back into the rest of her soul, finally completing her. She sucked in a deep breath as she finally felt whole. It felt like she had just been given the use of a missing leg after decades of living without it. Tears filled her eyes as she was finally able to experience the unification of her soul. The world became crystal clear, as if she had been seeing through a fog and her brain had been stuffed with wool.

Madjack let out a roar of anger and charged toward her with murder in his eyes. A portal opened up beneath him, dropping him down into a pit a dozen feet deep. Clarice glanced over at their mother questioningly.

“Just an experiment I tried a little while ago to see if there was a safe way to contain someone without hurting them too badly,” their mother explained in satisfaction.

Madjack stood on the other side of a portal that was flush with the ground inside of a cylindrical pit. He ran at the wall several times to try jumping up without any success.

“You belong to me!” he snarled in rage, the whites of his eyes visible as he ranted. “I’m going to take you to-”

There was a white flash of angel fire and Madjack was no more. Clarice glanced over at Aria to see her trembling with rage. She stood looking down in the pit, her face filled with fury.

“You okay, Aria?” Clarice asked her worriedly.

“His thoughts were beyond despicable,” Aria growled, her eyes filled with loathing. “There was no way I was going to let him live.”

Clarice hadn’t even tried to link up with Madjack’s thought node. “What do you mean?”

“The things he wanted to do to you,” Aria responded in a sick voice. “He was no better than those pieces of shit in Beverly Hills. There’s no redemption for such as them.”

Clarice grimaced and nodded. “Agreed.”

“How did he get his hands on your piece of soul?” Lexi asked in disgust.

“Rendimus,” Aria hissed, her eyes blazing as she looked back at Clarice with fire in her eyes. “It’s time for Mom and Dad to become Seraphim. Then it’s time to pay Rendimus and the others a visit.”

“We should see if Lucifer has found the rest of his pieces as well,” Clarice suggested with a cold smile. “Then we can just begin the rewrite immediately. Don’t forget how many worlds are living hells right now.”

Aria took a deep calming breath and nodded. “You’re right. I can’t get hung up on vengeance when so many people are suffering.”

“Let’s go pay Lucifer a visit,” Clarice opened a gateway to the location she could feel his consciousness weighing down the mortal realm with his presence. As a fully restored Seraph, Lucifer appeared like a bowling ball on a trampoline compared to the grains of sand everywhere else in the web of psychic energy overlaying the mortal realm.

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The gateway led to a large office building in Hong Kong. Clarice shapeshifted into her human form and went through. There were cubicles filling the inner office space filled with office workers working on computers. There were cubicles filling the inner office space filled with office workers working on computers. She walked toward the office at the end of the hallway of cubicles. The employees near the gateway gaped as she passed them. She waved with a friendly smile as she moved passed them, followed by four human looking Seraphim and four Cherubim looking Cherubim. There was a steady stream of gasps and startled exclamations as office workers saw the four Cherubim walk past their desks. Clarice wondered what Lucifer was doing in an office building in the middle of Hong Kong.

“Clarice,” Mandy called up to her in an urgent tone.

Clarice stopped and turned to face her expectantly.

“Something is off,” Mandy told her nervously. “I can’t explain it, but don’t go in there.”

Clarice turned to look at the door through which she felt Lucifer’s presence, then turned back to face Mandy. Aria was suddenly on high alert, staring around the office warily. “Something to do with Lucifer?”

“I don’t know,” Mandy grimaced in frustration. “Every sense in my soul is telling me there is something bad waiting on the other side of that door though.”

Clarice turned to face one of the office workers. They were staring at the Cherubim in awe, most of them pulling out phones to film them. “What is this place?” Clarice asked the nearest employee in flawless Cantonese. “What company do you work for and what kind of business do you do here?”

The employee, Ming, was a middle-aged man nearly half a foot shorter than her. He looked back and forth between her and the Cherubim before deciding she was probably important enough to answer.

“Our company is Knewcell,” he answered hesitantly, glancing at the Cherubim nervously. “We design and manufacture biotechnology.”

“What kind of biotechnology?” Aria asked intently, stepping up next to Clarice. “Nanobots?”

“I’m afraid that information is classified,” Ming answered stiffly, glancing back at the Cherubim with a hint of fear in his eyes.

Clarice warped and changed into her Seraph form, letting her aura wash over him at full strength. “I’m going to need that information, Ming, classified or not.”

The blood drained from his face as he gaped at her true form. He began trembling violently as the power of her aura shook his soul like a leaf. Clarice shifted back to her human form and stared into his eyes intently. She could see the fear in his eyes at her question. She spoke the rune of reset, flushing his biological system back to its root blueprints. He gasped and staggered as the physiological changes resulted in a loss of equilibrium.

“There are no more nanobots in your system,” Clarice told him gently. “You are free to speak without fear of retribution now.”

His eyes widened at her words. He licked his lips and looked around. The room was silent as all eyes focused on the angels in their midst. He shifted nervously as he saw all of the faces watching him.

“We can protect your family as well,” Aria assured him confidently. She had been listening to his thoughts. “We can turn all of you into immortal angels, which is what you will become even if you die.”

“Not here,” Ming breathed nervously, looking around the room anxiously again.

“Cabin,” Clarice told the others, then took his shoulder and teleported them to the veranda in the cabin.

The others appeared a second later. Ming stared around in shock, his eyes wide.

“We are in a safe place for you to talk now,” Clarice told him reassuringly. “What can you tell me about what’s going on at Knewcell?”

“I only know some of it,” Ming responded cautiously. “They limit how much anyone knows. You seem to know about the nanobot injections already.”

“I know firsthand about the nanobot injections,” their uncle Devon growled angrily. “I had those little bastards slithering around beneath my skin for decades.”

“Our primary research is to interface the nanobots with a command center,” Ming began, looking relieved to actually be telling someone about it. “We were initially told it was part of a singularity project to merge humans with AI. They needed a detailed map of the human body for the AI to get enough data to understand how to interface with consciousness. They used a pandemic with a virulent cold and convinced everyone to take nanobot injections several years ago. The main purpose was to gather more data on consciousness for the AI. Things got weird about a year ago though, when some of us started going places and doing things but having no memory of it. We could see video of ourselves doing things we had no memory of, so we started to get suspicious that the AI was somehow learning to take control of us and shutting down our conscious mind.”

“Mind control,” their uncle Devon sighed in resignation. “I told you it was the holy grail of all governments.”

“Why is Lucifer involved with this research?” Clarice asked suspiciously. “Why hasn’t he told us anything about it?”

“I do not know this Lucifer,” Ming frowned as he spoke. “The man in the office you were on your way to see though...we were pretty sure he wasn’t human. He was involved in a lot of the experimentation on humans in the early years of the project. He doesn’t seem to sleep, and nobody has ever seen him eat.”

“I’m starting to feel a little suspicious about Lucifer,” Mandy commented uncertainly. “I know you said Grodek helped you, but how much did you trust Lucifer when you were building the universe?”

Clarice shared a troubled look with Calypso and Aria. Calypso frowned as she looked back at Mandy.

“There was a time when he tried to convince me to make the divine instrument safeguard only require two instruments,” Calypso murmured with another troubled glance at Aria and Clarice. “We worked with him for billions of years, but relationships were different before we experienced mortality. Things like loyalty and emotional connections were very shallow. Lucifer had been more interested in the mechanism for controlling the actions of people with the divine instruments, rather than their ability to alter the whole of reality. I’m concerned about this project to link consciousness with AI. This sounds like the time he asked if I knew of a way to use the GoD as a kind of AI we could use to monitor and control reality in real-time, rather than designing a reality and letting it evolve on its own. He didn’t understand enough about how the GoD works to comprehend what he was asking. It didn’t trouble me at the time because the three of us didn’t spend any time interacting with our creations. Now that I’ve been through mortality so many times, it is extremely troubling to think of some of the projects he was interested in.”

“If he wanted two divine instruments to work in place of four, he must have another Seraph he is working with,” Aria realized, her eyes widening. “Could Grodek have been working with him this whole time? Or would it just have been Rendimus or one of the others?”

“Mandy, this is the third time you’ve saved our asses,” Clarice told her with a smile of appreciation. “You were definitely a good choice.”

“Was I though?” Mandy asked, her eyes clouded with sudden doubt. “Lucifer is the one that created the template I was forged from. What if I am some kind of trap as well? What if he’s done something to listen through me? I can’t help but be suspicious of my nature if he was the one who created me.”

“It’s time for some drastic actions,” Clarice declared firmly. “Ming, I’m going to leave you with my uncle Devon and Tamra until we return. They’ll take you somewhere safe.” Clarice turned to their uncle and Tamra. “Can you portal him somewhere none of the rest of us know about? We’ll be back in a few weeks at most.”

“Where are you going?” their Uncle asked curiously.

“I’d rather not say,” Clarice replied blandly. “Let’s just say that it’s time to exercise some Seraphim power.”

He nodded slowly as he studied her, worry in his eyes. “Be careful.”

“Of course,” Clarice grinned mischievously. “I’m always careful.”

Their uncle Devon shook his head ruefully. He placed a hand on Tamra’s shoulder and another hand on Ming’s shoulder, then teleported away.

“Be ready for anything,” Clarice warned her companions. “Mom, Dad, you’re going to be in lala land for a little while.”

“Huh?” their father questioned, his eyes uncomprehending.

She unfurled her aura and wrapped it around her parents and fellow Seraphim, then teleported.

Her parents gasped, their eyes going wide with ecstasy as the ultra-dense light field flooded their systems. Clarice shivered in her own ecstasy but remained alert. They had been here recently enough that the overpowering light field didn’t overwhelm her.

“Are we inside the GoD?” Lexi gasped in awe.

“Yep,” Clarice nodded with a grin. “Welcome to the Generator of Data source.” She turned to Calypso. “You know what I need?”

Calypso nodded, removing her divine instrument from her soul space. Aria did the same, followed by Clarice.

“What are we doing?” Lexi asked absently as she studied the structure around them. It looked like they were in cave, except the surfaces of the wall, ceilings, and floor were a grainy wood material rather than rock. There was a softly glowing opening at one end of the hallway.

“This is the entrance to the inner world of the GoD,” Clarice informed them. “Calypso is going to do some work on the divine instruments. Lexi and Mandy, you are welcome to go with her. I’ll stay with our parents.”

“I noticed an odd linguistic quirk in your speech,” Mandy told Clarice and Aria. “I never hear either of you refer to your parents or uncle in the singular. You always say our parents or our uncle.”

“That’s because they think of themselves as two separate entities of a greater whole,” Calypso explained with a fond smile at Aria and Clarice. “I think it’s the result of how long they’ve been together added to growing up as mortals together. I had also noticed and found it to be absolutely adorable.”

Clarice frowned as she thought back to all of her conversations throughout her life. It was true; she always included Aria when she thought in the possessive. She never thought of things as hers. Things were always ours.

Aria was smiling back at her with a twinkle in her eyes. “We even share our girlfriend.”

Clarice giggled as she stared back at Aria with her heart in her eyes. “It’s true. Aria really is like another half of me. I can’t imagine a life without her in it.”

Aria was suddenly in front of her, pulling her into a tight embrace as tears filled her eyes. Clarice knew she had triggered the memory of that awful splinter reality. She held Aria tightly, running her fingers through her hair comfortingly. They stood in each other's arms with no intent of letting go as the other three Seraphim entered the inner universe of the GoD.

“Even with all of the memories of eternity available to me again, there isn’t anything that diminishes that sense of loss I felt,” Aria whispered as she clung to Clarice possessively. “It’s even more poignant now, remembering how long we’ve been together.”

“I know,” Clarice agreed soothingly. “It’s like a wound in your soul that won’t heal. It’s something that will always be with us. At least we know that it can never happen again, now that my soul is intertwined with yours. You’re stuck with me for the rest of eternity.”

Clarice felt Aria’s cheeks flex against her neck as she smiled. “You have no idea how much that comforts me.”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Clarice replied, inhaling deeply. “I can feel it in our souls.”

Aria pulled her had back and looked into her dark brown eyes with an expression of pure love. “I know that you know this already, but I love you so much, Clarice.”

Clarice smiled at her radiantly, her dark brown eyes filled with love. “I do know it, but I still love to hear it from your mouth. I love you too, Aria.”

Aria leaned forward and pressed her lips to Clarice’s lips, feeling a towering inferno of passion begging to be unleashed. Clarice could feel the raging torrent of need inside of Aria, just as powerful as her own. She was so tempted to use the divine instruments to recreate reality with a vacation island and a week away from all of the problems in the cosmos where they could finally become one with each other. There was nothing in her memories that suggested time travel was viable, or stepping outside of time itself. Unless they really were in a simulation, anyway.

Aria finally pulled away with a groan of displeasure at the injustice of it all. Clarice could practically hear her thoughts through their soul link, her frustration as great as her own.

“I’m so pissed off at Lucifer right now,” Aria growled as she stared longingly into Clarice’s eyes. “I can’t believe how trusting we were before mortality. We were so naive.”

“We really were like children,” Clarice agreed ruefully. “We just wanted to keep playing with our creation toys. We had no concept of love or hate. It’s funny, sometimes I miss that innocence. I would never trade it back, having what we have now, but I miss how simple life was when all we were doing was decoding a divine computer and designing universes.”

“Who would have thought that a few emotions would turn out to be so much more complex than creating reality,” Aria chuckled wryly. “I’m going to build a bubble reality outside of time that we can escape to next time.”

“Funny you should say that,” Clarice grinned. “I was just lamenting the fact that none of my memories have unlocked any kind of time manipulation abilities.”

“I’m not sure I can accept that,” Aria frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe there is a way after all.”

“Really?” Clarice stared into Aria’s swirling eyes hopefully. “What are you thinking?”

“You know how we set a frequency as the metric that everything is attuned to in the mortal and light realms?” Aria asked with a contemplative crease to her brows. “What if we set the base for one of the realms to a much higher frequency? Think about how fast ants, bees, and other creatures move since we attuned them to a different base frequency than the other creatures. If we were to create a pocket realm where we increased that frequency significantly, and attuned our soul to it, the time that mortals and most angels are attuned to would seem to come to a stop. Time would still be there, but so much slower that it would virtually be like it was stopped.”

“Like when we have to overclock our minds to move at full speed,” Clarice realized with a dumbfounded grin. “We would have our pocket universe to escape to any time we wanted!”

“We just need some divine instruments to make it happen,” Aria noted with an eager smile. “I hope Calypso works fast.”