Angel Country - Couverture souple

Singer, Alex T.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1668216523 ISBN 13 : 9781668216521

Editeur : Saga Press, 2026

Synopsis

“Beautifully grotesque, fantastically creative.” —Hiron Ennes, author of The Works of Vermin

In an alternate early 1900s, a scientist hunts down her former research partner after he steals her life’s work before his greed reshapes the world in this darkly wondrous cosmic horror—perfect for fans of The Starving Saints and Ring Shout.

One morning in 1904, scientist Ada Franklin wakes up in her own grave. After clawing her way out, she discovers her lab abandoned and her research partner gone—along with her life’s work: a prototype designed to enable human-angel communication.

Angelic infestations have kept the original thirteen colonies from expanding for generations, but Manifest Destiny is a growing force in the new century. Whoever controls Ada’s invention may gain the power not only to communicate with angels, but to command them.

With no one else to trust, Ada resurrects her former lover, now monstrously altered by the entities they once studied. Together they pursue the man who betrayed her across a country warped by celestial horror, where angelic contact remakes both flesh and mind. But the closer Ada comes to reclaiming her work, the more she suspects humanity’s greed could prove more terrifying than the divine.

A fever dream mash-up of alternate history, dark fantasy, and eldritch horror, Angel Country delivers a morally complex tale that asks a chilling question: when faced with unimaginable power, who is truly the monster?

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Alex T. Singer lives in coastal Connecticut with her wife, daughter, and more sci-fi fantasy novels than she can count. She is the author of the graphic novel Mirrorverse: Belle. Her short stories have appeared in Luna Station Quarterly, Apparition Literary Magazine, Clarkesworld, and PseudoPod. Her short story, “Nothing but the Gods On Their Backs” was a finalist in the 2024 WSFA Small Press Award category for short fiction. For more of her work, visit LittleFoolery.com.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

In an alternate early 1900s, a scientist hunts down her former research partner after he steals her life’s work before his greed reshapes the world in this darkly wondrous cosmic horror.

One morning in 1904, scientist Ada Franklin wakes up in her own grave. Clawing her way out, she discovers her lab abandoned and her research partner gone—along with her life’s work: a prototype designed to enable human-angel communication. But Ada wasn’t completely unprepared. Missing specimens and stolen notes have long hinted at an increasingly tenuous partnership and hidden deals with the institutions funding their work.

Angelic infestations have kept the original thirteen colonies in place, halting westward expansion. Now, as Manifest Destiny gains momentum, Ada’s attempted murder suggests the ability to communicate with—and perhaps control—angels is a power worth killing for.

With no one else to trust, Ada allies with her ex-lover, now monstrously transformed by the forces they once studied. Together, they hunt down the man who betrayed her, racing to reclaim the prototype before his greed upends the nation.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

Chapter 1: Lady Lazarus CHAPTER 1 Lady Lazarus
TRANSCRIPT, [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], following the Grace Event known as “The Morrison Church Incident.”

• SPEAKER 1: Angelic emergence occurred via ocular, vocal, and nasal orifices. Evidence of divine tissue in cranial cavity, with evidence of movement down the cervical spine.
• SPEAKER 2: Cause?
• SPEAKER 1: Organist shifted from 120 to 130 and back again, I would consider this the source of the subject’s agitation.
• SPEAKER 2: Cognitive effects of Grace?
• SPEAKER 1: Late stage. Delusions. Patient was convinced they had made contact with the entities.
• SPEAKER 2: Just delusions? And you’re sure there wasn’t actual contact involved?
• SPEAKER 1: Absolutely. There’s no evidence of any real communication.
• SPEAKER 2: I’m not sure what more you could want.
• SPEAKER 1: A response.
• SPEAKER 2: You’ve had one.
• SPEAKER 1: A better one.

IF YOU WISH to know how I came to be here, know that it began in a grave.

My own, as it happens.

The way it happened was frustratingly simple. I’d been suffering from a chronic condition as the result of the trials we’d been doing. As treatment, I’d chosen to undergo surgery and, while under sedation, Tennyson and the other associates took me off the table, out of the clinic, out into the marshes behind the lighthouse, and dumped my body into a square-shaped ditch they’d dug out the night before. One of the men from the docks prepared the hole. I know this, because they shot him and dumped him in there with me. He made for poor company when I woke up, but at least I knew from the way he lay which way was up.

As I clawed my way out, I imagined it a sight: scrawny woman that I had been, married to her research notes, weak from my operation, throwing hunks of stone aside as I burst snarling from my grave like some cherub from the heavens. The earth heaved. The marsh pooled and grasped at me, desperate to have me back, but I tore and twisted until it gave way, and I was free. Gasping among the grasses, I coughed up mud and snails and who knows what else. Before the project, before the trials, before the booster shots, I’d have been as dead as Tennyson had hoped.

I was a marvel of modern science, standing there in my muddied hospital gown, and I was too furious to revel in it. During my four-and-a-half-foot trip to the surface, I realized what they had done.

I hadn’t been wholly unaware, when I had undergone my operation.

“I wish you’d told us, Ada,” said Tennyson, as though he hadn’t known. As though we hadn’t been conspirators a lifetime ago. Maybe even friends, two lifetimes ago. “We’ve been worried. How are you?”

I couldn’t answer. He knew that. He lost interest in my health almost instantly.

“Secure the prototype,” said Tennyson.

“Are you sure—?” I heard Morton stumble. He did that a lot, towards the end. “I thought we were going to—it’s—”

Tennyson seemed to feed off the weakness in him. His voice hit a stern, authoritative timbre, the sort he’d never dared to use on me. “Do you want to tell the client why we were late?”

“That—”

“Or shall we have it out when we get to the Association?”

“No, no need for that…”

I remembered they took it. They took it, wrapped it, and put it in a box. They shoved me in a body bag, and they stole it. Oh, my love. You knew they’d do this. I’d been convinced they’d never dare. But you knew.

My life’s work…

But I digress.

I could still feel it, beating, distantly. Farther and growing farther. I’d done such dreadful things to create it, I’d made such terrible compromises, and now I was separated from it. The prototype. My prototype. Its absence burned like the crawling flesh in my abdomen, knitting back together, but sharp and prickling. I had created it to speak with the angels, and with any luck, hear their reply, now it was gone, gone, gone, and I could do nothing to stop them.

I made a poor attempt to resonate with it, right there on the beach. The seagrass stuck to my scraped ankles. The ocean’s froth bunched around the jagged stones, and I was no less sharp and miserable. The great flat backs of cherubim breached the whitecaps. A sailor might have thought it some wailing woman, screaming and screaming into the wind, which I suppose in that moment I was. I couldn’t find a tune, my throat was too full of grit. If I closed my eyes, all I saw was darkness. All I felt was cold, creaking movement.

Something. Not enough.

When I opened my eyes, I saw the marsh. I felt the prick of the sea spray on my filthy flesh.

But what did I expect from the Association? I expected I’d have more time. I’d expected Tennyson would have been thorough and meticulous in discrediting me. I didn’t think they’d surprise me while I was at my weakest, and I didn’t think the Association had gotten so desperate for results.

But I didn’t wholly count it out.

I took the clothes off that dead gravedigger. They were heavy with mud, but more substantial than my ruined hospital gown, and marginally less bloodied. The young man was as much a victim as me, but he had taken a job from a mysterious organization operating out of a long-abandoned lighthouse. He’d dug a ditch that just so happened to be the right size to fit an adult woman. He can’t have been completely blind to the circumstance. I certainly hadn’t been to my own. The clothes fit poorly, but it was at least something.

The tidal winds lashed at my back as I stumbled up the narrow path. The lighthouse. I needed to return to the lighthouse. It swam in my vision, that dark grey through the grey, stabbing through the low clouds like a pin made of bone, its pallid light pulsing as it did its turns against the mists.

There was no question that it would be my first stop. I had no desire to stumble into town in my condition. The townspeople would ask questions I wasn’t ready to answer. Besides, I had to know the extent of Tennyson’s betrayal.

I didn’t meet anyone along the way. I knew I wouldn’t. Residents ignored the marshes if they could, especially when the skies were grey, while the Pequot who lived on the point kept to their sentry. They watched for what came out of the marshes, not what wandered about inside it.

This land belonged to the angels. Though, most in the marsh itself were fairly low ranked in the celestial host. A few minor “putti,” as they would say in the south, but, to the uneducated or the pious, even the smallest member of the host is an intimidating encounter—and encounter them I did. They pushed their way out from under the marsh, their radiant eyes rolling in their sockets, their slippery wings buzzing in the mud. They sensed the blood on my clothes. They might have smelled the remnants of my modifications, too. It’s hard to know the ways of angels, and anyway I smashed a few of them with a rock and they fled quickly back into the oozing marshes from which they’d come. How luminous their blood was as it sank among the sea spray and the marsh, but I gave no pause as I marched on.

I was weak from my surgery, but not that weak.

The lighthouse was a wreck—more of one than usual. The lights wouldn’t switch on. The first floor, where we’d done most of our trial work, lay bare. The second floor, where we’d done our messier exams, equally so. They’d taken most of the portable equipment. They’d cleared the bookshelves. They’d carried off most of the supply chests, and even a few of the comfier chairs. I swore. Of course they’d taken the cushions. Wretched men. Lazy men.

Anything of immediate use or, in Dolokov’s case, comfort, was gone. All they’d left were a couple of the larger tables—drawers emptied, of course—and some of the heavier wall installations. The cables and battery equipment that had operated those installations were gone. Tennyson’s second floor office was the cleanest I’d seen in a year. The safe door hung open. Unlocked. Wiped even of dust. Keys he kept in his desk, the ones that opened the doors to the basement and the observation deck, gone. I checked the living quarters on the third floor. Morton’s liquor cabinet was emptied of its contents, no surprises there. No books on any of the shelves. Sheets stripped from the beds. Everything left barren as though no one had ever lived there.

Except for my bed.

That they’d overturned.

Thieves. Bastards. Con men. Oh what I would have done if they’d been in front of me in that moment. They deserved nothing as beautiful as an angel’s maw but I might have made an exception if I could have gutted them with my newfound strength oh I would have I digress.

The nerve of it. The sheer nerve. They’d taken my clothes, and all my textbooks—even my illustrated primer on human biology, written for children. I’d only kept it out of sentimental value, but Tennyson must have believed I’d hidden something in it. He wasn’t wrong. I did hide things, which is why I checked the third-floor washroom, which only I’d been allowed to use. Well, Agenos and I, but Agenos had been too insulted to take the men up on their “gentlemanly” gesture. I was fine with the privacy. I’d used it to my benefit. I checked behind the mirrors and inside the tank of the toilet.

The bottle of wine and medical kit I’d kept behind the mirrors were still there.

The copied notes I’d put in the tank, though, those were gone.

Tennyson had kept a closer eye on me than I’d realized.

I did what anyone would have done in that circumstance. I walked back down to Tennyson’s office, took a hold of his desk, used my newfound strength to shove it out the door, and pushed it over the rails of the stairwell. It smashed down into the center of the first floor, splintering into a thousand pieces. I imagined I’d dropped it on his head and laughed. After a while, though, my throat started to hurt, and a light came on up in the observation deck.

Lantern light. Shaky and white.

“Dr. Tennyson?” called a reedy voice, from above.

I’d forgotten, in the lighthouse, not everyone would have left. The shadows went sideways, and the light went cold. The scent of burning wires overwhelmed me. I went dizzy with it.

“No, Keeper,” I answered, my voice shaky and hoarse from shouting—and from the dirt in my throat. I didn’t realize I’d swallowed so much. I coughed as I tried to speak. “Dr. Franklin. It’s Dr. Franklin.”

The shadows returned to their proper shape.

“Ada?” burbled the Lighthouse Keeper. She poured down the steps, her sickly white eyes wide in confusion, her hands clasped to her chest in surprise at the sight of me. “Oh, my dear, what happened?”

I fell into her arms. All four of them.

Linton Laremy brought his spouse

To keep Port Warren’s Old Lighthouse

But which was which no one could say…

SO WENT THE dockworker’s song, and so the Keeper sang it, too. She sang it while she worked. She sang it while she puttered about. She liked it, though she could no longer wholly confirm what was true and what wasn’t. But if you listened, you could hear it through the very stones, as ever present as the Keeper herself. As ever present as the lighthouse and all it stood for.

For as long as anyone in the town of Anton’s Bell could remember, there’d been a lighthouse, and as long as there had been a lighthouse, there’d been a keeper. There had to be, to keep the lamp burning.

Marvelous. Luminous. Everything I could have ever hoped for from a being of this nature. How smug Tennyson had been when he’d returned from the survey, still carrying his medicine bag and bells, the equipment I’d packed for him, while I lay in a starched hospital bed waiting for lab results.

“Yes, we’ve spoken,” he said. His eyes dancing with the quiet stab of And you haven’t.

The project had initially progressed under my direction. The survey should have been mine to conduct, the initial interviews, the fantastic first contact I could only read in transcript. My diagnosis had rendered me unable to be there myself. But he had gone ahead to the lighthouse. He had spoken to her first. The reversal of roles had been his first taste of true power, and I should have known he’d get drunk on it. Why didn’t I know? Why had I assumed it would stay the way it had always been. The difference between a mouse and a rat is canniness and he had always been clever. Idiot, idiot, idiot—

I digress.

The Keeper is a saint—a human so full of Grace they canonized, reformed by their intense devotion to the angels. As such, her form was altered to reflect such Grace. It is a shape that can admittedly cause alarm in those who do not understand the concept. After collecting rent, the Lighthouse Keeper prefers to leave her tenants in peace. In the normal way, I’d have never bothered her to the extent I had, but as was the nature of my illness, I’d started noticing her lurking in the corner of my eye. Agenos had stopped speaking with me by then, but the Keeper didn’t seem to mind the company.

She didn’t mind it now, either. She helped me bathe, found me fresh clothes, and located the bottle of brandy that escaped Morton’s notice and let me drink it as she tended my wounds. My new nature meant I healed quickly, but my rough treatment after surgery had left injuries severe enough it took time for the flesh to knit back together. I’d been so angry I hadn’t noticed how much it hurt. I noticed now. I drank directly from that dusty bottle, while my friend stitched me up the rest of the way.

I told her what happened to me.

“I thought it was sudden,” croaked the Keeper. “It’s been days, did you know?”

“Days?” How long had it taken me to wake up?

“Yes, yes,” said the Keeper, her dead white eyes blinking rapidly as she poured alcohol over one of my wounds. I hissed, but she was firm and efficient with her needle. I couldn’t help but be grateful for her speed. The associates had taken all the anesthetics. “Days since they packed up. Days since you left to see the doctor. I thought you left with them, or I thought they left with you. Didn’t say what it was. They were very rude about it. Left such a mess in the cellars. I see now why. Oh, Ada, how I wish I’d known!”

How I wish I’d known. The doctor, the Keeper said. She had meant the surgeon. The man had been nowhere in sight when Tennyson and the other associates had arrived at my bedside. Neither him nor the nurse had been around to stop them. They could have wanted to give me my privacy.

Or Tennyson had paid them off.

“How far ahead of me was he,” I muttered. “How far ahead—I didn’t—I thought—how could I have—”

The Keeper rested one of her appendages on my shoulder to still me.

“Men are snakes,” she said emphatically.

“Didn’t you used to be one?” I managed to ask, with a ragged smile.

“Perhaps,” garbled the Keeper, the wrinkles of her face lifting into what I’d come to recognize as a smile. “All the more reason I would know!”

Despite everything, I laughed. Then I downed more of the brandy.

Through the Keeper I learned a little bit more about the associates’ departure. It had been sudden. Inspired, it seemed, by a telegram that had reached at the lighthouse sometime after dawn. Tennyson had been meeting with Dolokov when Morton, red-faced as usual, arrived with it. Tennyson had read it absently then dismissed Dolokov soon after. Never mind Dolokov was the senior associate—he wasn’t the head of the project, and it was easy for Tennyson to pull rank. He’d done it more and more, in the last stages of our work. That warning sign I’d at least heeded. We’d all been sick of Tennyson’s newborn pretensions.

At least, I thought we’d all been sick of it.

Regardless, Tennyson put on his travel coat, procured a pistol, and set out to Anton’s Bell. He’d returned by noon with moving materials. I suspect him and Morton paid me their visit as soon as the breakdown was done. But the weapon. Where had he gotten it? Agenos had managed all our security material. Why had she not asked him what he intended with it? Why had she allowed him to load it? Not her. Not her, too. Had I truly fallen so far in her esteem that she would give me up as well—damnit damnit damnit.

I digress.

“The telegram…” I managed.

“Took it with him,” said the Keeper, “along with other things. Foolish little Tenny. Poor little mouse. Forgetting to pay his respects to his landlord. Didn’t notice I’d read it, though. Don’t mind telling you. There’d been a call for him down in Anton’s Bell. He went to answer it. Does that help at all?”

“It’s something,” I said, hazily. “Thank you.”

“It is the least I can do, my dear,” said the Keeper, stroking my hair comfortingly as she finished bandaging my stomach. “You can hold a conversation. I have missed conversation. Eeh, conversation without all the screaming and the writhing, that is…”

A call. A call. Who would have placed a call? The Association, perhaps, but then why would he have asked Dolokov to leave the room? And why would he have been so eager to leave? Why would it have inspired him to kill me before leaving? There would have been easier ways to discredit me. They just would have taken longer.

So many other questions unanswered, but at that time, I only asked the Keeper one:

“May I borrow the keys to the cellar?” I asked. “I left something there.”

The Keeper paused in her irritated undulations to peer at me.

“You can,” she hummed, in a voice that sounded all at once wetter and flutier, “but you should know that Tennyson did not return his keys, and he did not pay the last month’s rent—”

I held out my wrist.

“I’ll pay it,” I said.

But the Keeper wrapped her wet hand around mine and pushed it down.

“Ada,” she garbled, reprovingly. Her bulging eyes rolled in her sockets. “Don’t be dramatic. You’ve little enough blood to spare. I was only going to ask for a small memory. Something sweet. Something tasty, maybe? It has been a long time since I have had a tongue that could taste sweet!”

I CANNOT RECALL which birthday I gave the Keeper, drawn from a patch of skin above my wrist, but there were many years my aunt made me lemon cakes to celebrate. She sprinkled sugar on them, so I know the Keeper’s conditions were met. I took the keys, an old oil lantern, and a broken-off leg of one of the tables.

The key felt cold in my hand. It always did. No matter the temperature, the keys never warmed up. Tennyson had been careful not to let the other associates touch his set, but there were occasions where he made exceptions. I recognized the coldness. I was ready for the way the metal sang and whispered when it met with the lock.

The associates came to avoid the lighthouse cellar. In the early days we went there often. We had to. Since it was cold and dark, it was a convenient place to store the materials for our early trials. The Association had granted us a generous supply of relics, all housing angelic material they’d hoped would aid us in our work: Putti preserved in bottles. Jars full of bobbing eyes of indeterminate but winged origin—potentially seraphic. One case held the middle talon of what Dolokov believed was a cherub. All of these were arranged carefully along the wall closest to the stairs. Each was labeled, with a date, a specimen number, a name, and a little book to log any changes in their condition.

These items were still there when I descended those aching wooden steps. In the light from my lantern, and from the open door, the floating eyes seemed to rotate in my direction.

I moved quickly. I didn’t have far to go. The lighthouse cellar was more like a jam cellar than a catacomb. The ceiling was low enough a man like Morton would have had to crouch when he entered, lest he hit his head on the heavy crossbeams. I never had any such issues. It gave me a maneuverability the others did not have. I could move past the floating eyes before I could become overly fascinated by them. I could step over the twitching shadows without stumbling into them. The associates relied on that, in the early days: Send Ada to retrieve the materials we need. Send Ada to update the logs.

Send Ada to store the latest failure.

Over time, the row of materials we kept along the wall closest to the door grew larger. In addition to the preserved specimens, we began storing objects of our own creation. Crates that smelled like acid. Jars full of indeterminate but twitching pieces of skin. Over time, our specimens became more solid, more whole. The jars got bigger, the crates more heavily secured. We stacked them first along the next nearest walls, then in the center of the room, then, much to everyone’s anxiety, in the back of the cellar—about thirty feet from the entrance. Morton flat out refused to walk in this far, and even Agenos loaded her pistol before making that trip. Not that they often had to. Just send Ada.

I never minded.

Tennyson and the associates left such material behind because they didn’t have the time or the courage to make the trip. The door was locked. The preservatives would keep most of the specimens pure for at least five to ten more years. Any remaining keys were with the Lighthouse Keeper. Who would have known to look down here? Who would’ve had any business here, with the prototype complete and the project finished?

The cellar would keep its own secrets. It would keep Tennyson’s secrets.

It would keep my secrets.

After all, who would’ve known I’d kept something extra along that back wall? Something I’d hidden from the other associates, even Tennyson. I was the only one who’d walk that far into the cellar.

Even a few days with no gramophone had left it fetid and overgrown. The shadows grasped at my ankles, but I stepped over them. Once or twice, something dropped from the ceiling. I’d step back. It would splatter on the floor in front of me. Reformed, it reached for me, before I beat it back with the table leg. By the time I’d reached that wall, most of the specimens were awake and murmuring. The eyes blinked at me. A cherub’s talon flexed. Even the putti showed signs of life, their heads bobbing up and down in their solution.

I paid them no notice. My interest lay only with the chest I kept in the far corner, on the left. It looked just like the others. It smelled as much like angels and marshes as anything else in the room, but it was guarded only by a simple padlock.

This key I’d kept in a pack of bandages in my first aid kit. Tennyson had taken anything that looked like it might be important. A wad of cloth wasn’t one of those things.

I dragged the chest out from its corner. The lock didn’t take much time. The lid might’ve been heavy once, but in my present condition I lifted it without any effort at all. The straps securing the contents took some time, especially when one of the nearby specimens broke out of its tube and tried to strangle me, but I punched my hand through its chest cavity. It was easy. I pretended it was Tennyson. There were some advantages to my ordeal, I suppose.

I dislodged my hand from its still-pulsing body. It slithered to the side, its song choked off into a hiss. After that, there was a great skittering of feet and shivering of tubes. The others left me to my work.

I punctured the preservatives bag with a nail. The solution oozed and sizzled as it was released. I cut, carefully, along the center, pulling the pieces of slippery fabric aside. Shoving my hand inside, the solution was warm and singing. The subject inside was heavy and alive.

Correct amount of appendages. Correct amount of sensory orifices. Closed chest cavity. Heartbeat. Relief. Oh, good. Thank you thank you thank you. Of all the things that had gone wrong at least it was still there.

I gripped the edges of the chest. I slipped to my knees. The specimens groaned. The shadows shivered. My lantern guttered once or twice. The solution pooled around me, a mix of old blood and preservatives. It soaked into the clean clothes the Keeper had given me, but, for a moment, I didn’t care. For a moment, I couldn’t do anything but look—really look—at what I’d found inside that chest.

“Blake,” I whispered. “Oh, my love.”

I was so glad to see him again.

And in the last shivering cell of my body, that shall remain true.

Even after you kill me for what I’ve done.
INTERLUDE: THE ANATOMY OF ANGELS
[FROM THE ARCHIVIST: Beginnings. Beginnings. Where did it begin? I have pondered for some time, how I might begin to dissect my own broken mind. Perhaps:]

Date: 12.6.1872

The SUBJECT is a mid-class ELOHITE of the CLEMENTINE variant, secured by M. Dolokov from the Ojibwe’s Great Sea in the Chippewa treaty territories. Silver thread has been used to secure its ventral limbs. 0.50 mg of laudanum administered orally to each of its five mouths. Pulse of its three detected hearts have remained resting at 60 bpm. Priest has read rites and offered dispensation. First cut is made at 0815.1

Regenerative response remains stalled at 0.06 mm per second. We will proceed.

While most angelic specimens are abstract in form, the ELOHITE class is the most symmetrical observed type, often resembling vertebrates of this world. CLEMENTINE2 variants appear similar to humans in structure, with occasional extra flight or grasping limbs. The current specimen possesses four main trunk limbs, two variant wings located ventrally for flight, and two more located in the lower dorsal area, half-formed.

We will proceed, however, with the main core exploratory surgery, as the wing responses to incisions and injection have been well-documented, see also KLEIN, 1861.

Here, M. Dolokov and the Nations representative advise speed.3

SUBJECT’s flesh resembles CETACEAN specimens, but more delicate once removed from main body. Skin is known to turn transparent when removed.

No bones or skeletal structure have been observed. Some cartilaginous frameworks can be found around area approximated to be the thoracic cavity. Chambers resembling swim bladders have been found near ventral flight appendages.

Upon removal these chambers collapsed and showed signs of movement. 0.24 mg laudanum administered subcutaneously.4

Three aortic arches have been located in the lower cavity. First resembles invertebrate species such as the common earthworm.

Second contains a two-chambered heart resembling that found in aquatic species like North Atlantic salmon.

The third has four chambers, and evidence of connective tissue, resembling—5

An eye has been located in the thoracic cavity. It appears to be fully mobile and connected to what is understood to be the angel’s spinal column.

Here we ask the priest to stop singing hymns.

Priest has denied singing hymns.

Operating theater is asked to remain quiet during the extraction.

A second eye has been discovered in the thoracic cavity.

A third eye has been discovered in the thoracic cavity.

Regeneration rate has increased to 0.08 per second.

Elevated pulse of first two hearts detected at 75 bpm, 82 bpm, 92 bpm.

Second dose of 0.50 mg laudanum administered subcutaneously.

A fourth eye has been discovered in the thoracic cavity.

A child has been discovered drumming on the observation glass of the operating theater.6 The priest has resumed singing. Signs of affliction have appeared among medical staff.

M. Dolokov has asked all women and children to leave the theater. One M. Rosalind and two children were removed at 0845, at which point SUBJECT has shown increased agitation and responsiveness to exploratory incisions.

Elevated activity noted in SUBJECT extant eyes.

ELOHIM are not known to have eyes.

ELOHIM are not known to have mouths. ELOHIM are not known to sing. Extant vocal cords have been discovered in new, fourth aortic arch. Regeneration rate detected at 0.1 mm per second, and rising, rising, rising.

But onwards, my extant brothers. Onwards, my soldiers.

Here, the Nations representative has been observed reaching for their spear.

DOLOKOV, please contain the savage.

onWards we shall7

END TRANSCRIPT

1. 1. Of course what is not in the good doctor’s notes is the cognitive effect that angels hold on those in their presence. See: SYMPTOMS of CANONIZATION. As soon as that first cut was made, exposure occurred. Often the subject is not immediately aware of it. The mind seems in perfect order, but for a rise in feeling that can range from unease to a sense of warm accomplishment. As you might imagine, my love, this gentleman must have been of the second set.
2. 2. Ecclesiastical taxonomy. I’ve never been fond of it. Allegedly, the first man-shaped angels were encountered by Pope Clement I.
3. 3. Sound advice. Regeneration is only one sign of an angel’s awakening. Our good doctor wore a mask, but he played no music and administered no ivory constructs in restraint. His cognitive abilities had not yet been affected, but perhaps that warmth spurred him forward.
4. 4. Ineffective. You may also notice, my love, that perception of time grows strange. As the mind divides, like a paper and its footnotes, so, too, does the chronology of the thoughts and how we experience them. Am I in my grave? Am I beside you? Am I in the operating theater, watching a man cut into an angel with nothing to save him but his own crumbling ego?
5. 5. Oh, I know this one. It would have looked human, Doctor. It would have looked just like yours.
6. 6. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, How I Wonder What You Are. Oh, Blake, my love, you cannot say I did not try for him.
7. 7. And here, the good Doctor found his end. But here, my love, is where I began.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Saga Press
• Date d'édition: 2026
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1668216523
• ISBN 13: 9781668216521
• Reliure: Broché
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 448
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible