Page 20 of Fable for the End of the World

My stammering is cut off as Keres steps toward me, close enough that she’s within arm’s reach. Her blouse is sleeveless, exposing the scars that ring her wrists and elbows. The ones thatlook so ugly on me but never seemed anything less than beautiful on her. Very slowly she reaches her hands up, until she’s holding my face.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she almost sounds like herself again, with just the faintest tremor in her voice. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t—”

The door slides open, and we both flinch. Keres drops her hands. Azrael is standing in the threshold.

He takes in the scene, and his eyes narrow. It’s rare for him to look truly angry; he’s the one who’s supposed to teach us apathy, after all. So the emotion fades quickly, replaced by his usual cool, unflappable expression.

“Keres,” he says, “what are you doing here?”

Her gaze clouds again. Her brow furrows, and she replies, in that distant, childlike voice, “I don’t know.”

I try to capture her stare, but she won’t look at me. She doesn’t recognize me anymore.

The pit in my stomach widens and deepens. Azrael puts his arm around Keres’s shoulders and leads her gently toward the door. Her steps are clumsy, staggering, like a patient still half anesthetized. She doesn’t turn back. Not even for a second.

When Azrael returns, I’m sitting on the stool with my elbows balanced on my knees, hunched over. I feel sick, but there’s nothing in me to vomit. In preparation for the Gauntlet, I’ve had nothing but intravenous fluids.

“Melinoë.”

I don’t look up.

He steps toward me. “That was a mistake. Keres should never have been able to get in here. I’ve removed all her biometrics now. It won’t happen again.”

I still don’t move or speak.

“She shouldn’t have been able to get to the basement in the first place. I’ve asked Karl to keep her on a tighter leash.” He must mean her husband. More gently, Azrael goes on, “You know how it is sometimes, with the Wipes. They don’t take completely. The old memories are stubborn. She seemed to be slipping in and out of awareness. I’m sorry if it alarmed you, but there’s nothing to worry about. There will be another Wipe, and then another, if need be.”

I look up. “No.”

Azrael frowns. “What was that?”

“You lied.” I can only manage a whisper. “You said she chose to be decommissioned, but she didn’t. Shewouldn’t. She wouldn’t leave me.”

Azrael’s gaze doesn’t shift. His gray eyes look frozen solid, like chips of ice. And that unflinching silence is my answer.

I’ll never know how many times he’s lied to me. How many memories of mine he’s stolen. Maybe I watched him haul Keres from her room, latch her to the table, jam the syringe into her throat. Maybe I saw it all, heard her screams echoing through the empty halls. And maybe then he slammedmedown onto the table, shoved the needle through my skin, and tookthatmemory, too.

We stare at each other without speaking. Moments tick by, like droplets from a tincture.

And then, at last, he says, “It was for her own good. Keres was compromised.”

I think my body is collapsing in on itself. I feel pressure on my throat, as if someone is crushing my windpipe. Isthisa memory? The slow squeezing of my throat by strange hands? Has it happened to me before? It seems familiar, somehow, just like the desperate, gasping breaths I have to take so I can stammer out, “W-why?”

Azrael regards me without emotion, but when he speaks, his voice is gentle.

“She could no longer cope with the rigors of the job,” he says, and this is corporate talk, boardroom talk. He even switches to Damish. “It was better for everyone that she was able to retire gracefully and discreetly.”

“Better foryou.” I shock myself with the venom of my words.

The Angel program is Azrael’s invention, his brainchild. I don’t know much about his past except that he was once a midlevel Caerus employee, and it was this idea—the Lamb’s Gauntlet—that propelled him upward through the company’s ranks. The CEO has always been a big fan of the Gauntlet, considering how much ad revenue the live streams bring in, but even more for the message they send. They keep New Amsterdam both riveted and cowed. Entertained and subjugated.

But Azrael’s position is dependent on the Gauntlet’s success. Onoursuccess. The CEO hears dozens of pitches every day. He’s equal parts capricious and unsentimental. He could choose, at any point, to pull all his funding and support. And after my lastperformance, I’m sure it’s more than crossed his mind.

Then, astonishingly, Azrael lowers himself to the ground. He kneels, so we’re at eye level—I think it must be for the first time in my life.

“Keres was good,” he says softly, “but she was imperfect. Over the years, I’ve refined my technique and made each successive Angel better than the last. It has been the work of my life. And all of it, leading up to this. To you, Melinoë. You are my perfect creation.”

I open my mouth to protest, but he goes on. “I was the one to fail you, not the other way around. You never should have been on that Gauntlet. But I’ve learned from my mistake. This is my chance for redemption. You won’t fail again.”

---