"I still have ties with this man, Ismael. Don't fight it too hard, just lay down the gun and breathe. Five seconds, like Gloria used to say."
"Basil, I'm going to shove this steel fire weapon in your throat and pull the trigger on your organs."
"I sincerely doubt that."
Ismael breaks the necklace and his shadowy figure turns white, taller than Basil in his human form, thin head shape with thick, long rings around his neck and shoulders. Long white hair and a pair of red eyes. Four wings and a somehow fit body.
"So that's him, huh. The angel of Ismael revealed himself. Pointing a gun at my direction? Like I didn't come prepared."
"Future movements sensed. In four seconds, aim at his right hip, he will drop the rifle due to pre-established underlying conditions. When he does, aim for the gap between his left arm and forearm."
"Thank you, Sebastian."
Basil Morgan thought for a second, "who is he talking to? I've noticed already his angel sees for him, but do they have an actual connection? Do they speak in their minds to each other?" And by the time he tried to figure out what happened, he held his rifle straight to Ismael who shot his right hip. Basil falls and by the time he falls, his excruciating pain makes him use his weapon to protect himself, revealing his left arm. Ismael fires up a few bullets at the spot and drops his entire forearm on the ground.
"This lunatic can absolutely talk to his angel. I hate it. Why? He doesn't deserve any of this."
"Basil Morgan. You are a failed experiment. You've lived a pathetic existence in crime and arrogance. You've tried to enhance yourself to push you capabilities further with the idea of controlling parts of this world. No such luck it seems. I would feel bad, but you dragged yourself into this. You thought I was crazy for pointing a gun at you. But see how you've gone low. Too far gone for me to retreive. This, is not a gun, this is your redemption, your salvation. It all stops here, Basil Morgan. With the terrible sound of a caliber nine."
"I'm far away, now. But I didn't kill Basil Morgan. I've shot just enough times and just at the right spots to put him down for a while. To make him crawl back to that guy on the mic. It wasn't the angel telling me to shoot and where, it was instinct. At the point where I am now, I can see them. The weak spots humans carry. Invisible to the average human eye, sky clear to me. Ever since that day, I've killed hundreds. The world is so much larger than I thought, so I travelled. Annihilating the lifeforms I disliked. I did not come back to Raven, but I've anticipated returning to the grave of my dead wife. Ambroise Ler is looking for me. I've heard his lap dog Basil screams at night, he imagined in his mind that engineering your own body to this extent would be a painless experience. I was the steel shot to reality. Not in a hundred years will they find me. Not in the greater eastern mountain villages, where I hid in a coat beneath a natural shelter from the rain. I can sleep, he can't. He's looking for me, I'm waiting for him. My angel never sleeps, always protects. I can sleep soundly while Ambroise is losing his mind trying to come up with a plan to discover my location. And within that time, I've learned more from him than he learned from me. It's a dead and blind sniper with an angel against a mad kid with advanced artificial intelligence. I can't see and he can't sleep. We will see which one outsmarts the other, Sebastian or Aeon."
Ismael learned since his own exile that he's not the main character of anything. He's not important or special. Other young men and women sell and buy weapons, traffick less and more. He's not anything we've never seen before under that regard. He's special because he's breathing as a dead man. A cadaver with a large coat on him, a large, heavier than himself, sniper rifle on his back, two pierced eyes and an angel with red eyes towering behind him. He sees through his eyes only, so when he walks, he has to control his angel as his way to watch his surroundings not just for the road in front of him but for any potential enemy. Even though killers under contracts usually don't target dead humans. The idea that through hatred humans can ressurect is insane enough for most people, and really is just fairy tale. No sane person would engage on a road of life just to fact check that rumor. So whenever someone sees Ismael and death is seen on his face, they have an instinctual sense of disgust and fall back on their chair or take three steps back. His large white coat was marked by a black swastika on which the top and bottom had a line going different directions. The one on the top went on the right, the one in the bottom went left. If you turn it to the left, you will see the number four, and if you look at it from the other side, you will see the number four also. His four friends who he will never be able to forget.
Mateni Tarima.
Basil Morgan.
Raven Perma.
Genova.
He did move on, regardless of what he lost. He sat by many old people from the northern eastern regions who exiled themselves to the highest mountains to reflect on their life. Some, as they said, to reach enlightenment. A state of being transcended from humanity which allows the person to see beyond the physical world and witness the spiritual one. This way of life challenged Ismael to the point of rendering him unrecognizable. He was told that it was the way of the humble that allows pain to change him that grants him the life of the enlighted. That such profanity, swearing, vanity, lack of control, greed, envy, pride, were killers of the mind. The spirit must fly, the body will endure and starve.
Another said: every man you killed was once a baby. No prayer can ever fix your mistakes. The context of a war does not forgive your actions. Conflicts arise but won't bring the dead back. You carry a dangerous weapon on your back, but you are not armed. You have become the weapon. You are steel. Sin burns you once and ashes you become. Eyeless, an angel you see with. Yet no wings attached to your back. You cannot fly, only the mind can.
And at the end of the beginning of his journey, a third old man told him: the reason you look for an escape is because you can feel the prison in your mind. Your friends die one by one, you mark yourself and hope for the best. If spirituality had a currency, you would be monetizing the very loss of your comrades.
And by finding a fourth top of mountain, he wondered. And wondered. "I did not bury Genova, I did not use my gift. Because I assumed she went to hell. Let's be realistic. If Mateni, who realized his own mistakes, went all the way down, Genova is even lower. I'll start there, then. Find her body and bury her. See what it really is."