"Keeping Yaldaboath busy while we returned here to take down a satellite that can kill the whole of humanity, so are you in or out?"
Sharp is Norea's choice of words. Rush is her truth. There is no detour. There is no lure, only their deadly reality. They are all doomed. Norea flattens her lips even more when she sees the clueless people walking by. Those speaking on their phones, those texting with their babies mothered by a screen to give their actual parents a respite from their task.
"We have thirty minutes, Norea!" Adam reminds through a heavy bead of sweat and painful rasps. The commotion of their return still has a toll on him and he holds on his knees.
All it takes to bring them back is one bite. One sink of the teeth into an apple and as they shut their eyes, savouring through the taste of the mysterious fruit that leaves a red trace over their lips, their two bodies disappear.
Their bitten apples fall onto the floor in a silent sound, swallows into the sand of Eden in the shape of a wound. Everything becomes pain. A brain drain starting from the weight of the tiny food into their stomachs, dragging them further down, contracting their muscles into creating contortion art out of cramps.
Visceral, somatic aches that are the material world and this is how they land back into it with distrust greeting them.
"I repeat, where is Lilith?" Senoy asks, concern breaking his voice like it tears each of his syllables apart. They were the only obstacle on Norea and Adam's path, the three stubborn spear's heads pointing down at them. The SSS are loyal to Lilith and have waited patiently for her return at the empty location of what used to be her book shop.
Norea only squints her eyes to look at Senoy, his body creating a solar eclipse over her small folded frame. Yet she finds the strength in her to stand up to him, a sense of urgency coursing through her veins.
"You'll have to trust us or bear the consequences of the end of humanity on your shoulders to the Pleroma!"
The gleam of determination glows within Norea's wide eyes. Blazing out red flames over her black iris and flaring even more with blood dripping out of her nostrils over her shoelace as she ties it tighter in readiness for her last mission.
Putting away his weapon, Senoy asks, "Where is this satellite?"
"I had the exact GPS location on this piece of paper!" Adam retrieves from his pocket a ripped page.
Motioning at the stranger who has just talked, Sansenoi asks, "Who is he?"
"Adam!" Norea spits in bitterness. "The first and only one, Adam!"
"In theory, we are now AdamEve back into one same body and going by the pronouns 'they' please!"
The SSS gives him a curt nod while turning their attention back to Norea. Senoy speaking as their one joined voice, "We can take you anywhere by God' speed!"
"Then do it now, because we have less than thirty minutes from now on!"
Sammangelof snatches the paper from AdamEve's hand and scan it with his console, a mere piece of glass to earthborn eyes. Strange symbols glows over his face like a slow etching smirk, the SSS now circle closer AdamEve and Norea. Their beings create a white shield around them, a beam of light so intense that it flashes right before them, bringing them on their knees to another location on earth.
Their eyes blink and clear up to the sight of makeshift houses with each layers revealing out a bigger hell. Bones sticking out of fleshes from famine, civil war ravaging the land to spill the blood of the innocents. Those dress in used clothes from the richer north hemisphere, a place they can only dream of as the smell of death coat on them whole.
There is no mistake in the coordinations.
Poverty in its most abject form is what they stare at currently as they find themselves in Somalia, one of the poorest country of the world.
Did the Archons really hide their most destructive weapon under a human shield?
Did they really have no qualm in killing the poorest first?
Norea wraps her head with her hands, the fourth rivers of Eden flooding into her brain all at once. Her eyes remember the gold from the water of Pishon, the wealth of the world that the Archons own to enslave others. The part of a machinery that is guided by desire—a source well known to flow into the river of Gihon to output the required motion. The end result in the smell of its thin creek running out of Tigris.
They leave Norea with only her mouth to pray over the river of Euphrates for food to feed the poor.
Always.
Forever hoping for better days.
Her hate for the Archons and Yaldaboath's machination rage even stronger at these thoughts.
She has to stop it all and save everybody on earth from them.
Her fist tightens in impatience as her head shot towards Sammangelof. "Where is this satellite?"
"Beneath our feet!"
That is his answer, and Norea's chin quivers at it.
"How are we going to get there and how are we going to do it without causing no harm to anybody?"
Senoy traces a circle with the tip of his spear over the sand ground around the five of them. Precise movements executed with one steady hand and in an even lower-pitched voice he answers her, "It's do or die, Norea. We only have one shot at it!"
They are now all on the same boat.
Raising his arms to the sky, Senoy makes them all fall down beneath the ground, leaving only the howling of a wind behind.
Another teleportation, a new journey and here they are in the mind of a long circular shaped tunnel, the trompe oeil with lightening claw marks on each side that falsely promises them an exit from a rabbit hole. The cleanest of the place blinds them and its quietness is even more deafening until the sound of a squeak bounces all over the tunnel's walls, increasing its intensity into a wave of suppressed chuckling.
They are the hailing of an army of all black-clad guards creeping out from each end of the tunnel to surround them. The SSS are quick to get their spears out in hands, ready to protect the weaker humans with them, while Norea only has one question hanging on her tongue.
"Humans or Archons?"
"All Archons and we have less than twenty minutes now," Adam answers. With this information, Norea calls out for her whip and with a series of fast elaborated lashings, she burns a myriad of them to the ground. Cold is her blood, gone is her fear of them, forgotten is their threat on her. This new Norea confirms the reason they are after her all along. She is the most powerful living weapon on earth.
Norea digs effortlessly a path for them all under a rain of ashes, with no sight of an injury grazing her. The dangerous and crowded road that takes them right into an empty cockpit with row after row of control boards and only one vast screen in front of them showing a timer with five minutes left.
"How are we going to do it?" Fear suddenly possesses Norea and stutters for her. "How we are going to find out which command to stop this bloody satellite?" She chokes on her words, tears now exploding out of her eyes after the SSS seal the entrance behind them. They, too, are left clueless by her question.
"Five minutes!" AdamEve's say with their eyes scanning over every keyboard and flashing light in the room. "We have five minutes and there are five of us, so I suggest destroying each row until the last one, with the hope it will stop everything in time."
It's an unexpected thought, a mad solution, but they have nothing left to lose and execute the plan right away. Control boards blast of flame under Norea's touch. Others are crushed by AdamEve strong granite hands and, for the rest, the SSS dismantle any of them to pieces.
The clock ticks on the wall in its red of urgency with the slow image of the satellite revealing itself suspended into space. Shaking her head, a feeling of defeat rules over Norea. There are still so many tables left with nothing to ease the growing tiredness from their impossible toll.
One minute left, and the satellite is now brighter than ever on its screen. A robotic voice announces its final activation, leaving them all frozen on the spot, powerless to their fates. Norea weeps louder as the Archons soldiers storm in to seize her and her friends.
She sniffs, unable to forgive herself for dying this way.
Her gaze falls to the ground. This is the beginning of another dark age where all knowledge will be lost again to fear. The loss and oppression of the perfect race of human, made at his image and of sparkle from souls. Norea surrenders, annihilated by a machination bigger than herself while they drag her body to the exit.
Zero seconds left.
Silence becomes unbearable, time slows down at each of her ashamed steps until a loud bang echoes into the room. With a gasp, Norea looks back to see the satellite burst into space—a new junk orbiting the earth yet its death mark the beginning of a new era.
Pushing back the Archons that hold her, Norea rushes into AdamEve's arms to cry of joy with the SSS. They are a ray of light above the mingles of dark water below, the minute of a spark that makes the SSS disappear from their sight.
Soon everything around them is gone too, leaving Norea and AdamEve lying over a bed of sand with the sun warming their faces.
A new Pangaea has been unearthed, and they are left alone on a secluded island.
A new world saved by a serpent and yet Norea can't help but sob at this outcome.
Her eyes lock into the image in the sky of a changed Lilith from another dimension. Only sadness makes her human, the same feelings shared by Norea, who can only stretch out her arm to stroke over the distant face of her lover—the solemn promise that this is not the end of them.