Radicle (Terminal trilogy #2, can stand alone)

19: Handwritten

And then she spoke.

19.5-

"When you told me Alexander Scott, our great CEO and enigma of a leader, was actually immortal and looked like a kid, I wasn't surprised in the slightest. I already knew it.

I've told you before how, when I was a kid, my parents were collected the cycle before. But since I was already born the year the cycles always click back to, I was left still existing but very parentless. I was taken in after this. Raised by the Schulman's, my new parents, and pretty soon got to sorting files and collecting blackmail. Whatever, right?

But the trick here is that, well, I was born before the cycles started. I'm a universal constant. And I had a life before the cycles. And even though I was eight, I remember my life before hand pretty well.

It's really freaky, sometimes, to consider I've always had a life in each of the cycles. Like, I entirely existed. And there's a chance other demons out in the city knew me in one of those previous cycles, but I'd never have a way of remembering them. It kind of freaks me out. And makes me sad- I was taken in cycle nine. I had eight other lives before this, with my parents.

I'm not the first to have the landmark realization that in a world that keeps cycling itself but losing people, the world is going to be quite different each time around. Hell's long kept a squad of people who collected newspapers and videos and whatever each cycle's end to document what went where each cycle. Not much has ever been done with these files. But I've read them.

And it's through them that I discovered myself: a snippet of myself in a newspaper, written before the cycles even started.

Yes, there was a time before cycles. Think of it- there's only been nine of them. What, it's been one hundred and seventy-six years? Before the cycles, life was a different sort of pastime. And a less confusing one.

I want to just read this to you, but wow, I'm pretty nervous about it. So instead, here's this- another report by A. P. Scott. Also known as, by the way, Alexander Phineus Scott.

'I decided to sell my soul today-' That's the file, by the way, not me speaking- 'It's been long enough, and I'm still human. I was seventeen when I came to Hell. Twenty-one when I started my experiments. And now, at thirty-six, I think I'm starting to regret it.

I went in to check on my subjects for the first time in a long time. Hell's been keeping me busy enough. I don't know. I don't have an excuse. But it's the first time in a long time, and that's all that matters to me right now.

And I saw Michael there. And he looked so old and so happy to see me. He's younger than me, always has been, even if that's a pointless fact to state. But somehow he's always been meant to look much younger than me. And thirty-four does not suit him.

We've been keeping all our Grace experimentees (or is it just experiments?) in the lower levels. There's lots of room there, from construction I'd guess, and we really can fit a couple thousand down there. We have them doing some very boring work. Otherwise the people in the city might complain about all the resources I've been allocating towards them. Not like they don't complain enough already. Demons, though- what can you do?

The experiments have been moving pretty slowly. I have a couple aides who check in, of course, but otherwise we're not seeing much. Michael keeps the others together. Most of them seem to like him alright, but a good number have become quite disillusioned after fifteen years of this.

Despite Michael's insisting his following is... 'a boy's club' (those were literally his words) we've found a couple girls. He's excused one or two as being 'the girlfriend of a brother' or 'the younger sister of a girlfriend of a brother' but there's a good three others who we found disguised as boys. They claim gender shouldn't factor in following your faith. Alright. I'm just glad we now have some data on the effects of Grace on women. There's no difference in effect, by the way. That was the data we got.

So. Anyways. On the matter of selling souls, specifically mine: I was looking at Michael, and he was looking at me, and I started to feel all sappy and regretful and weak. M hasn't been around for a number of years. Real regret there. M would've punched me in the face and snapped me out of it.

I can't really explain what was going through my head. But I turned to my aide- her name was Stephanie Clearwater, a scientist and, regrettably, a succubus- and said something like:

'I wish everything was fixed. All this experimenting, all these years, reset back to the very start of it all. The core of this problem. I just want everything to be like how it used to be. Back before the experiments. And back before Michael was like this. I want time to atone. And everything to just be better. Again.'

It was really goddamn sappy. But then, in my state of terrible, I insisted Stephanie take my soul and make my wish true. And I mean, I'm not a incubus. I don't have the first clue on how souls work, or even what a soul is. I've been researching it for however many years, and I still don't know.

But I do know I was an idiot. Because there were a strange couple moments where my head went all dizzy. And next thing's next, I'm twenty-one again. The experiments have gone missing- all of them. And I've heard reports there's a great pit that's opened up on level five.'