Cassandra had never noticed when Ray had slipped a ring up her finger. Yes, she was still his wife but she was still Raphael's betrothed. She was to be mated all over again in the customs of her world. As Raphael was the king of her planet a higher authority had to declare them conjugated. Raphael's parents, Raphael senior and Fiona did not agree to their match. The highest authority was of Seventh heaven. That authority was the ruler of the Seventh heaven, Michael.
Raphael was afraid of Michael, or so it seemed. Cassandra, however, found little reason to be afraid of the man who was kind to her in her times of need and who was her husband‟s doppelganger. The mystery that remained was why such a powerful creature would go down to earth for her assistance.
Cassandra never told Raphael of her acquaintance with Michael but she looked forward to visiting him and knowing why he had helped her. She also wished to ask him something else. She wanted to ask him if she were sinning not that she didn't already know. But she couldn't hurt Ray in any way and she had already hurt him enough.
In another corner of the earth, a new plague was breaking out. That plague consisted of a new form of darkness, deception and crime. The world is always a balance of the good and the bad. When the bad outweighs the good things become exceedingly more and more dismal.
It all started with a tragic incident. A banker returned from work one evening. He had candlelight dinner with his loving wife Stella. While Stella was washing dishes the banker took out the Carving Knife from the cupboard and plunged it into Stella's back. He then wiped the knife with his handkerchief, went to the neighbour and knocked on their door. When the neighbour invited him in and asked about the blood he stabbed his neighbour fifteen times, took his neighbour's gun and went about shooting everyone in sight. Then he went back to his own back yard. There he gouged out his own eyes and cut out his tongue. The next day when the police found him he had already bled to death. The incident was wicked. The perpetrator disturbed. However, very few people can deny that such wicked and sick narratives make good business for prime time television. The media covered the news well. The live reporter managed to gain an exclusive on the murderer from just about everyone that had crossed his life. Everyone expressed their shock. Everyone vouched for the banker's polite and decent ways.
For an entire day, the world wondered what had happened to the good banker. The hype and hysteria did not last more than a day because more murderous rampage started. School children started shooting up their classes. A strip club owner was found hanging naked from the ceiling after he skinned all his employees. What gave these people such horrendous inspirations no one knew but the frequency of such incidents grew exponentially. No one was safe. Panic was everywhere. Gang wars became frequent. From where all the weapons came was a mystery. The police were lost in what to do. No one could be trusted. Humanity was evaporating from all mankind. Crime spread like a plague. Murder, rape, robbery, bombings, shootings and what not became rampant.
Ray had chosen to be human. The qualities that defined human were changing and going from bad to worse. He did not know how to cure humanity of this deadly plague. He prayed for a miracle to happen to stop the entire destruction of civilization but what he forgot was that God did not make miracles. Miracles are the names we give to God's work and He works through his own creations. A man was a creation of God and so was Ray.
Stanley soon came to join Ray in his home. Cassie's mating was fast approaching. Ray had his own demons to slay and the governments of the world had approached them for a means to contain the outbreak of crime. No legal system was able to contain the epidemic. Crime had taken the form of a disease. Inoculation was not an option.
One day Ray received news of a school being held captive by a group of terrorists. He had to intervene. When he reached the spot it was late in the evening. Already a ten-year-old boy had been slaughtered to death and pieces of his body had been thrown out of the window. There were reportedly eighty-seven more children inside the building held at gunpoint in the basement.
Ray knew that the children must already be traumatized, witnessing their friend being torn limb from limb. The amount of money that the terrorists claimed in return of the children's lives was nominal but along with the sum, they demanded the release of the most dangerous convicts of the nation. No government could agree to that. It was clear to everyone that these terrorists bore loyalty to no group for their demand fuelled only one sect, one group and that is evil itself.
Ray faced the odds of saving the children as he swooped down to the open window of the school building. The entire floor was empty save for one man standing guard at the front door. What had he been guarding in an empty floor? Whom did he wait for? Ray placed his gun against the man's forehead but the cold metal touching his forehead did not deter the man from bringing forth his own gun. He held an automatic rifle that emptied it's bullets into thin air as Ray teleported behind him and shot him at close range. By that time the firing of the gun had already alerted the others nearby. Two men carrying similar guns arrived at the scene. Each received a bullet at short range to the head. Ray continued to be invisible. He looked at the pathetic excuse for human beings and saw that their eyes were bleeding. Their entire body was wrapped in cloth, even their face. The cloth wrapped on their faces resembled bandages. Ray pulled the end of one of those bandages on his first opponent and revealed bare flesh. All of their skins had been removed. Ray felt sick at the scene but he had to move on. There had to be more from where these men, rather creatures, had come.
When Ray came down to the ground floor it was obvious that this was the place from where the child's body had been thrown. Blood soaked the blue school carpets a garish greenish colour. Clotted blood pooled in the corners. Ray looked inside every room. Still, there was no one. His next step was in the upper basement. Outside the basement door stood two more skinless creatures. Ray observed them this time. Yes, their eyes were bleeding. One of the two reached out a lizard-like tongue and licked the bloody tears. As soon as he pulled his tongue in a bullet went through the middle of his eyes and he slumped against the wall. The second guy didn't have time to register his comrade's fate before a similar bullet went through his head. Ray faced the door to the room that contained the innocent children. He could teleport himself across the door or he could open the door and create a scene. He chose to do the latter.
Inside there were five more creatures. These were somehow different. Their skins were intact only covered with some kind of mark. These were not the markings of an Angel but appeared to be the branding of some kind. These creatures had been branded with evil.
As Ray entered the basement he could feel the evil surrounding the room. No children were inside the room. The room was empty save for the five pillars of evil that stood in the middle each carrying a different weapon and a different mark.
The first one nearest to the door carried a hack saw and was swinging it widely around him periodically and methodically whether for practising or whether anticipating his invisible attacker Ray couldn't confirm. Ray had been directing his light away from himself for a long time and it made him feel weak. Suddenly he stood before the first guard but the guard did not even flinch. He went on hacking the air. Ray patiently stood in front of him. Another one of the creatures came towards him with an axe. A bullet soon went through his heart stopping him in his tracks. Ray suddenly realized that he was out of bullets. Then the first guard, before whom Ray stood, tried to strike a blow at Ray's arm. Ray dodged the attack but was rattled by the suddenness of it. That did not prevent him from decapitating the man with his sword of light. As soon as the sword was unsheathed the other creatures fell to the ground in fear. The marks on their bodies disappeared. They were hysterical and begging for mercy. Ray tied them up with a rope that lay nearby.
Ray opened another door to a storeroom in the far end of the basement where the children remained. Even the children had been touched by the surrounding evil. They were cursing, fighting, masturbating. No one was praying; no one was sitting quietly, no one seemed to be scared. There were children from five to fifteen and none of them had a single tear in their eyes. Ray unsheathed his sword one more time. The light that filled the room reveals marks on each of the children. Ray called forth his power of redemption and reached out to each and every heart. As soon as Ray touched them with the Holy Spirit the children started howling with fear wanting to go home. Ray walked out of the building with the three terrorists and the horde of children. The parents were rejoicing. The media was ecstatic but no one noticed the melancholy on Ray's face. What had the world come to?
Back in his laboratory, Ray had the dead bodies of the skinless creature laid out on a table in front of him. Ray had the least idea of anatomy but Stanley had been a Biotechnology Graduate and knew his fair share. However, the creature that lay on the table defied all his knowledge.
A creature's heart is what keeps one up and active but in place of the heart, there was a black box concealed in a purplish flesh. The creature's skull too was vacant save for a few microchips and some interconnecting mesh of copper wires. If this was man's latest attempt at impersonating nature and creating artificial intelligence it was a very good attempt indeed but something told Ray that this technology was not from his world. Ray pulled out the microchips and tried to study them while Stanley was busily deciphering the cell structure of the organism that they now knew to be definitely not human.
The creatures with the marks were however different. They were definitely human or at least had been once. Their brains were structurally different from that of humans. Their hearts were on their right sides of their body. They also had their minds manipulated and controlled by an external force. Ray needed to know what that force was for if he knew the source and if he could eliminate it he would be able to eliminate all the evil that his world had been facing because of the plague.
Ray needed to figure out how this plague was spreading. Every infection needs a vector to carry it forward and Ray needed to figure out what could be used to spread crime. These creatures may be an artificial vector but they were quite unlikely to be the cause of the spreading. The first culprit in the spread of any infection is contact. But contact gives access to the body but not the mind. For the mind to be corrupted a force needs to penetrate the thought processes.
Entertainment media was the first of Ray's suspects. The blood and gore aired on prime time news channel across the television broadcast spectrum had to influence the people somehow. What happens when you witness evil? The first thing that happens is fear. Fear is followed by hopelessness and then panic. Panic can always lead to crime. But what was there to amplify that panic into the level of inhuman standards?
The creatures were here for a reason but before these creatures could be removed from the society there had to be a way to stop their effectiveness. The justice system was falling apart. The toughest policeman failed to tolerate the gruesomeness of the crimes that went all around. They were beyond humane comprehension. Raping of infants had become a new rage for those fresh out of the wombs did not have the fortitude of pointing out their assailants in a line up much alone survive the attacks on their tender bodies. Children had suddenly started to join armed gangs and were being handed guns without any proper training. No more video games were played for these children. The streets were their game world and blood and bodies were their prizes. The question remained as to who was handing these guns to these children and why. The whys were all adding up to a huge pile of the unknown and any man of science feared the unknown.
While Ray was failing to decipher the pattern and progress of these crimes Stanley was having the time of his life among the unique specimens that he got to study. The first great realization he had that the microchips found in the brain were connected not to the nerves of the creatures but to the blood vessel. On further investigation, it was found out that these chips did not transmit electrical pulses to control the creatures but rather chemical messengers. The hormones that are a mere control factor in human behaviour was enhanced to the level where sending complex commands was not impossible. But these commands had to be transmitted to the chips via some electromagnetic transmission medium. If it were an electromagnetic wave Ray should be able to control it or at least scramble it. However, Ray was having no luck with the transmission of those microchips.
Stanley figured that those microchips were perhaps not controlled through radiation but through pre-embedded instructions. Those were robots on their own accord without having to follow any external command. Just as the mother and sends the ants to harvest for food so had something or someone send off these artificial intelligence devices to forage for evil. That, however, did not explain how the microchip controlled hormone levels in the body. Whatever be reality was that whatever was controlling these was beyond the grasp of any administration. The threat wasn't from any global power around.
While the plague of the crime spread rampantly among Ray's adoptive home his real home lay under sieze of a different kind. The seventh heaven was having a hard time dealing with immigrants from lower planets. The surge of immigrants had never seen numbers of this sort because it seemed as if the lower planets were losing their integral governing bodies to sensual indulgence and selfish attitudes. Also seen were a number of crimes that pervaded the region. Angel after angel was deported to earth to serve their time but no further contacts were made with those. No one could guess that on being exposed to the environment of the earth their heavenly bodies became contaminated and mutilated and they were turned into ghastly creatures out of nightmares, the creatures that Ray was struggling against. The thing that remained a mystery was the nature of the poison that corrupted their basic DNA.
What Ray did not expect was how the very proximity with evil would be powerful enough to mutate the human DNA. However, the mark developing on Stanley's arm was something of an alarm.
Emotions are what drive the lesser-known passions of our body, mad rages, carnal urges, depressions, all stem from hormonal signals. Those were the emotions that the evil targeted but with Stanley, there had to be something that made him susceptible to the mischief of the evil. Ray confined Stanley to an isolation chamber while he himself went inside his library and shut himself in. Days went by and there he remained.
Ray had realized that the forces invading earth were beyond his comprehension and he sought the help of the white star to determine the cause of the infection. The white star allowed him to decipher the different marks that he had observed on the various bodies including the mark on Stanley. To Ray's surprise, he found out that those were not pictures but rather words, written in a language more ancient than the seven heavens. It was written in the language of the first angel and that language was forbidden for all other creatures to know. Ray had his answer but he couldn't understand. The white star allowed him to tap into the consciousness of God. He could borrow knowledge from the omniscient entity but he was not made privy to the forbidden knowledge.
Angels, unlike humans, were those creations of God that did not bite into the forbidden fruit. They followed the law to the T and those laws were their limits. Ray Michael, the heir to the seventh heaven, was limited by those laws from assimilating the knowledge of the ancient heavens.
Soon Ray gave up. He gave up trying to be an angel and he bowed down in prayer. He knew that what God, the creator could deny in His justice, God, the Father would grant in His love.
Father,
You are all merciful and all kind. There is nothing that is beyond you yet you listen to our blind requests in quiet indulgence. I am ignorant in that I do not know your grace and I do not know your greatness but I have faith and I have hope that you will make all things eminent in time at your own will. I need to know more about this plague that is spreading through your creation, threatening everything that is precious and holy. I need to realize the threat that lies before my two homes, destroying creatures from both worlds. I need to know so that I can be your instrument again evil, your force against destruction, and your wrath against injustice. Help me, Father, for I am your son.
Amen
When Ray opened his eyes after saying his prayer he did not feel the rush of knowledge as he did when he connected with the white star. There was no great revelation that met him. But he had faith that God would be with him in his endeavour. And he knew one thing that his Father in Heaven would not deny and that was a chance for his friend. The Lord had answered his prayer through one whispered word in his heart, redemption.
Ray went over to Stanley's isolation chamber and saw that the mark was growing on his skin. Not only was it growing but it was slowly and steadily eating into the flesh underneath. The isolation chamber was locked for fear of contamination. Ray entered the locked room.
It had been Stanley's idea to lock the room. "Ray, please step outside. You don't know what you are up against." Each word Stanley pronounced was an effort. The pain was eating through him. Stanley refused to go on drugs fearing that the drugs may further his dementia into the hands of evil.
Ray took a steady step towards him. His face was solemn and his eyes were glowing with light. Stanley was panicking. "Stop Ray, This is not something you can superhero your way out of. If this gets you, controls your powers, the world is doomed."
Ray reached out a hand towards Stanley. "Your sins are forgiven you." He said. With that touch and his words, the light from his eyes spread all over Stanley who was cocooned in the power. Stanley was blinded by the light. But the mark was gone from his hand.
"I can't see Ray." He said.
"It is alright Stanley. All you need to do is repent all your sins and your sight will be returned to you." Ray said.
"What are you saying man? Have you gone nuts? You need to be a scientist and a superhero, not a preacher right now. Do you know how much the world needs you?" Stanley said panicking again.
"The world does not need me. The world needs a miracle of God to believe in His mercy. Once that is achieved evil will lose its hold on the minds of the people and fear will relinquish its grasp over their hearts. God did not choose me to be the miracle. He chose you, Stanley because you are human and the most beloved of all creatures of God. Repent and be forgiven. I have a wedding to conduct." Ray said and disappeared.