Stirring from the realm of unconsciousness, Azrael swung his head in a groggy arc. “Where am I?”

  Blinking the sleep out his eyes, he adjusted to the dim light. He took in the peculiar sight of the room he had found himself within. The bare lamp above cast eerie shadows across the walls, its faint glow exposing the transparent plastic wrapped about every nook and cranny, emulating the insides of a cocoon cordoned off from the rest of the world. He drew in a shaky, arid breath, tickling his nostrils with the pungent stench of chemicals lingering about.

  His limbs were leaden, simmering panic above a racing mind, rushing to make sense of where he was and how he had ended up in his current situation.

  A never-ending conundrum.

  “Finally come to it?” asked a feminine voice. Stabbing a wooden chair in front of him, she rested her elbows and steepled her fingers over the back of the chair.

  “Where am I?” repeated Azrael, trying to move his hands and feet, struggling against the bonds binding him to the seat.

  “I see you’re wrapped up cosily. Now tell me, what had happened back there, in that prison of yours?” The woman leaned in close, scrutinizing Azrael’s face. A length of magenta fell over her temple, which she swept aside, fancying her latest catch. “If you’re as mortal as you appear, something doesn’t add up.”

  “Wait, by prison, do you mean Mol’okh’s?”

  “Aye. Unless you’ve been imprisoned elsewhere till you got to Zenith.”

  “How’d you know about the prison? Are you in cahoots with Mol’okh!?”

  “With that guy? No, I’m a gun for hire. My client wanted him dead but luckily you rushed the process along.” She took a moment, sizing him up and down. Narrowing her gaze, she continued. “Now, back to the original question: what happened in that prison?”

  The redhead knit his eyebrows, furrowing them in tangles. “I was tossed in a cell, made to clean up some cadavers, and…” The last of his words were caught in his throat. His voice cracked as though a scalpel was stuck in his throat, breaking his line of thought.

  “Water?”

  He nodded past a coughing fit.

  The woman picked up a bottle by her foot. She unfastened the cap and touched the rim to his lips.

  Breathing in the drink he was offered, the liquid dribbled down his chin, wetting his clothes and binds. But it mattered little to Azrael. He took the moment to relish the freshness of his bountiful offering. Gasping in a bout of gratitude, he nodded his head.

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  “Things weren’t as friendly back in prison. Mostly, physical and mental mutilation. Though I’m not sure what had happened in the end, but I remember killing Mol’okh with my own hands.” He cocked his head to the side, besieged by a wave of bewilderment. “I killed him.” An expressionless passivity smoothened his features. He thought of his final moments at the orphanage. A distant memory, fading with the march of time. “Does it usually feel so hollow when you take a life?”

  “Eh? Is that how you feel?” The woman rocked back and forth in her chair, her cerise eyes unblinkingly studying him. “As an assassin, I’ve taken far too many lives to give my feelings much thought.” She shrugged her shoulders, leaning forward in her chair, balancing her wooden piece on the tiptoes of its hindlegs. “Say, can’t you produce miasma?”

  “My asthma sounds familiar. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have any breathing issues.”

  “Not asthma, I meant, miasma. M-I-A-S-M-A. You certainly don’t know jack about demons, do you?”

  “After that fight, I realised all you people have a supernatural edge granting you certain abilities. Mol’okh and his shadows, that eyepatch guy and his mind tricks. I’m assuming the energy fuelling all of you should be this miasma, you speak of?”

  “Seems like you’ve gotten the gist of it. Though think of it more as a manifestation of the essence of our being. The truest expression of who we are.”

  “An energy source that brings your essence to reality?” Azrael hung his head, tracing a tear in the plastic wrapped floor with a toe sticking out what should’ve been the tattered remnants of a shoe. “I doubt this will make much sense, but before I killed Mol’okh I had a strange vision.”

  The woman raised an eyebrow, rocking her chair forwards and back. “Go on. There’s more to your story, isn’t there?”

  Taking in a dreary breath, he recounted the happenings of his supposed encounter with Requiem.

  A hefty silence hung over the space dividing the redhead from his cerise-eyed abductor.

  Five blinks passed.

  Then ten.

  Finally, a span nearly lasting an eternity went by, trailed by a quick succession of blinks, alongside bated breath.

  “So, let me get this straight,” said the woman, rupturing through the silence. “You think a celestial creature, embedded somewhere in you, might have granted you the ability to revive yourself?” She narrowed her eyes, cradling her chin atop her fingers. “You’re sure you weren’t hallucinating from all the blood loss?”

  “It is a bit complicated,” admitted Azrael, sheepishly. “I have no way of proving it either. Even if you handed me a cadaver, I’m not sure if there’s a manual I can rely on for this sort of… situation.”

  “First time I’ve heard a story so absurd. I’m not sure if you’re touched in the head or spewing mindless jargon. Though, if you could harness the power of a dragon…”

  “A dragon?”

  “Aye. What else do you think the celestial being was?”

  A perplexed expression flickered across his face, briefly adrift in contemplation.

  “Oi.” The woman tapped Azrael’s cheekbone, stirring him from his musing. “You know what? This isn’t getting us anywhere.” Holding up an index finger, the woman cocked the digit at him, hovering over him, with the weighty dread posed by a loaded gun.

  “What’re you doing?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. Pupils widened. He began struggling against his bonds. It did little to topple his chair over, nor wriggle him free of his binds. He couldn’t help but look for a way out than accept his fate, as he sat stock still.

  Wordlessly, a cerise flicker tore through space.