Helena had just finished reviewing the latest draft of her paper—The Power of Belief: Toward a Proper Measurement of Psionic Resonance—when GLaDOS interrupted her with a declaration of emergency.
She still wasn't satisfied with this version.
The topic was controversial at best, and her conclusions—though grounded in years of observational data—remained far from rigorously substantiated. Too much was still unknown. The patterns were there, certainly—enough to justify hypotheses—but designing experiments to test them remained difficult for both practical and ethical reasons.
Take the first hypothesis: that faith-resonant psionic energy could only be accessed—or even perceived—by the being to whom the faith was directed. The implications were obvious, and testing such a theory in a controlled setting was fraught with theological, psychological, and logistical pitfalls.
The second hypothesis was even thornier: that the energy itself was colored—her own term—by the ontological framework of the believer. In simpler terms, it worked best when the subject believed their god could act in accordance with myth, and failed—or even turned volatile—when the expectation contradicted the imagined nature of the deity.
"Colored" wasn't a bad term, she reminded herself; they used it for quarks, after all.
She made a sharp gesture with her hand, undoing the latest changes. Then, she pushed her VR glasses back up—they had started sliding down her nose again—and took a deep breath. The minty scent of genetically engineered moss always helped her calm down.
It was difficult to test metaphysics under a microscope—harder still when one might be the metaphysical object in question.
The interruption, then, came almost as a relief. She'd been circling the same paragraph for twenty minutes, trapped between footnotes and futility.
"Crisis currently in progress," GLaDOS said calmly. "A massive detonation involving iPhones has been confirmed by multiple sources. At this time, we cannot say whether this is an act of terrorism or simply shoddy workmanship. But for safety's sake, the Enrichment Center is now entering a Yellow State of Emergency."
"Collateral damage among our staff and close affiliates is minimal to nonexistent—naturally, as we do not use iPhones. Still," GLaDOS added, with the faint lilt of a practiced slogan, "today's thought is: loyalty goes both ways."
"This message is for individuals with Red-Class security clearance only. Code Jörmungandr. If you do not have clearance, or do not know what that means, cease listening immediately and report the glitch afterward. Remember: we do this for the good of all," GLaDOS concluded, perfectly calmly. "I am treating this as final confirmation that Steve Jobs is Vril-ya and that this is their first strike. Everyone hearing this—you know your tasks. You've all been briefed. In the unlikely event that I am wrong, let this serve as a drill. Still," she added after a pause, "I'm not wrong."
Helena knew what she had to do.
Make her way to the nearest sensory-deprivation chamber with an attached psionic amplifier. Project to Jerusalem. That was her assigned task—just as everyone else had theirs.
Since she was currently in her office at Aperture University, the closest chamber would be right here—in the Psionics Department, just a few rooms away.
She did not rush. Her training had taught her that moving slowly made everything smooth—and being smooth made things fast.
Placing her VR glasses carefully on the desk, she stood and left her office. The door slid shut behind her with a quiet pneumatic hiss.
Outside, she passed others moving with the same practiced gait, acknowledging them with brief nods. Everyone was heading to their assigned positions.
"Mr. Henderson," she greeted the technician on duty—a postgraduate still working on his master's. Brevity was expected in an emergency. "Is it ready for me?"
He nodded quickly, but added, "Yes—but the capacitors are only charged to the third tier. Full power wasn't scheduled until tomorrow."
"It will suffice," Helena replied in the most reassuring tone she could manage, though inwardly she winced. She'd have to rely on faith-based resonance more than she liked.
"This is a red-line emergency. Do you know what that means?"
The younger man frowned, visibly unsettled. "That means we don't pull unless you lose consciousness. Or your vitals crash completely." He hesitated. "Do you really need to go that far?"
"More than my own life is on the line," she replied. "We all have to do our part."
Strangely, she realized she actually believed what she'd said.
Perhaps if you repeated something often enough—even a virtue born of strategy—it became habit. And habit, in time, could pass for conviction.
She stripped and attached the wireless, waterproof monitoring tags—one on her wrist, another beneath her breast for vital tracking. Then the cap, lined with fine embedded sensors, snapped into place to monitor her brainwaves.
She entered the tank. It closed around her, sealing out all light, and the fluid began to rise. The newest models had replaced the breathing apparatus with breathable liquid. When it reached her face, she took a breath.
It tasted a bit like Witch Brew—only faintly, as if diluted.
The taste helped, distracting her from the instinct to panic. It always felt like drowning at first.
Utter darkness—then stars.
Each shining point of light was an echo of faith: a worshiper or an idol, radiating through the Void.
One was much brighter than the rest.
Two years ago, at the Director's command, she had guided Antony to a site hidden deep in the Peruvian wilderness. There, nestled in a mountain cave untouched for millennia, they'd discovered a prayer wheel powered by an underground river—and, beside it, a skeletal puppet over two meters tall. The figure depicted the Red Widow, dressed as a Roman matron.
Helena hadn't been overly concerned herself with the impossibility of it.
Under names like Master, Meister, or Magister, the Director had scattered traces of himself through history. And if he could travel through time—well, it would explain how he had saved her and the others. Not miracles; just well-timed swaps with fabricated corpses.
That, and the blue police box, had led Lukas to certain wild conclusions.
Helena's opinion was that the whole Doctor Who thing was probably an elaborate joke. It fit the Director's sense of humor: arrange for a television series just slightly too close to the truth, and then laugh as everyone dismissed it as fiction. With psionic abilities and time-manipulation, pulling it off would be disturbingly easy.
But the ancient Red Widow idol was no joke.
It had been an experiment.
With the right story, it had become central to the Red Widow mythos—crafted deliberately to study how much psionic resonance could truly be imbued into an object of faith.
Even the prayer wheel served a purpose.
Its cold, mechanical precision stood out—a steady rhythm in the Void, like bone beneath layered flesh. Around it, the muscle of differing visions had formed: conflicting interpretations of the Red Widow mythos, all orbiting this quiet core.
Perhaps it was more like a single grain of sand at the heart of a pearl.
But it was also a tool.
A weapon.
One meant to be left in reserve—best for a rainy day.
And today, it was raining fire.
She flew into the brightest star and beheld the quaint courtyard—presumably in Jerusalem.
She had never been to Jerusalem. She did not recognize it. But it looked right.
Old stone under old sky. A fig tree scorched at the root. A shape of stillness carved between motion. The puppet stood in the center—not from above, but from within. She was the puppet now, or seeing through it, or wrapped around its wooden spine like a second soul. Her limbs did not move. Not yet. But she felt them: hinged, hollow, steady.
Antony knelt before her.
From this angle, he looked small—almost like a child.
It brought back memories of Antony as a scrawny teenager, seeking shelter in that warehouse the Red Widow had claimed. Not for himself. For the shivering younger children huddled behind him—terrified, but so brave.
And he was the same now.
She focused on him—not the words he muttered, but what he meant. As he prayed to her, his mind opened. Not in trance, not by force, but by faith.
She had permission.
And that made telepathy so much easier.
Because he wanted her to know.
Reading minds was not like reading books.
Human thoughts and memories weren't neatly organized. They were more like Henderson's workstation—chaotic from the outside, yet somehow functional to him.
Antony's mind was a jumble.
Flashes of images, smells, emotions.
Annoyance at a well-dressed tourist filming the Red Widow idol. Shock, as the camera turned just in time to catch a bloom of smoke. Panic, as the sound of the explosion ripped through the square—blended with older memories, half-dreamed, of a vision that had led him and the other pilgrims here.
Helena winced at that.
It had been necessary. The Director had known something would happen in Jerusalem. Assets had to be in place. And she had helped make that happen.
She didn't regret it. Not exactly. But there was still that twinge—guilt, maybe. For leading people who trusted her into danger.
Even if they were fine.
Even if they were more than fine.
They were honored by the task.
She pushed further. Sought more recent memories.
Because—while the iPhone detonations were disturbing—they weren't enough.
Not nearly enough to match what the Director had seen.
And there it was.
The sound of rage.
Of a crowd gathering.
Shouts and cries in Arabic—sharp, rhythmic, rising like heat.
Which was... problematic.
Neither Antony nor Helena understood the language.
But one word came through.
Clear. Reverberant. Heavy as prophecy.
Mahdi.
She recognized it—not from scripture or study, but from Dune.
Trevor had infected Damien with a love of fiction, and Damien loved inflicting his latest obsession on everyone around him.
Still, she had to admit—she liked it more than Star Wars.
Mahdi.
She just hoped they weren't facing Paul. Or some version of him.
Fighting precogs was tricky.
That's why she no longer played ping pong with Ben.
And she was out of time, because the sound of the mob had intensified. Not through Antony's memories, but through the puppet itself.
It had no ears, but Helena could still hear.
See, too.
Not smell—not in the ordinary way.
Not mundane smells, at least.
They poured in like a swarm of ants into the courtyard.
A mass of angry men poured in—most in jeans and scuffed sneakers, some in stained tunics, knockoff sportswear, or desert robes faded to gray—carrying improvised weapons.
Some carried iron pipes.
Others, bricks.
Burning rags tied to sticks.
Crude torches.
Cruder rage.
It was time for the Red Widow to walk.
Helena braced herself, stretching her mind into each limb. One by one, she seized the bones, tightened each joint, wrapped her telekinesis around every wooden hinge and socket like tendons made of will.
And then—she moved.
The massive puppet stepped forward. Once. Twice. Then it planted itself—tall and terrible—between Antony and the mob.
A fleeting silence descended, the crowd momentarily quelled by the impossible sight. But courage, or perhaps pure hate, stirred in one individual: a younger bearded man. He brandished a crude incendiary—a bottle filled with a volatile liquid, a lit rag burning at its mouth.
He roared a phrase in Arabic; amidst the foreign torrent, Helena caught only a single, ominous word: "Mahdi!" Again.
Then, he hurled the deadly cocktail directly at her.
Helena had no fear of fire. She was the type of witch who would not burn. She had once held a sun within her mind's hands. A small, artificial sun—but so much hotter than this.
With a thought, she quenched the flame, telekinetically slowed the bottle, suspending it briefly in the air, then dropping it harmlessly at her feet.
The bearded man stumbled backward, eyes wide with sudden fear. The mob stirred uneasily behind him.
But panic wasn't what Helena wanted. Fear could cause as much damage as hatred.
Instead, she drew on another aspect of the Red Widow—one she was not overly proud of.
For the Red Widow was an avatar of Santa Muerte—Death herself. Yet her particular aspect embodied a more subtle, insidious poison: that sweet venom which soothed pain even as it stole life; that which brought wealth and ruin in the same breath.
Narcotics.
In urban slang—particularly among a certain stratum of society—being a "Groom of the Red Widow" meant death by overdose.
But if there was one thing opiates were good for, it was calming people down.
With her mind, she grasped that aspect of her myth—her darker reflection—and exhaled.
It wasn't breath in a physical sense. It was a psychic miasma: as gentle as the smoke in an opium den, yet as sharp as the prick of a heroin-filled syringe.
The bearded man stumbled backward, his face a mask of disbelief where fury had been moments before. His weapon lay inert at the Red Widow's feet. As Helena's psychic exhalation spread, his wide, glazed eyes mirrored those of the others in the crowd behind him. A ripple passed through the mob: a man mid-shout slumped gently against his neighbor; a woman dropped her makeshift club with a sigh; another simply sat down on the ancient stones, a beatific smile spreading softly across her face. The wave of narcotic peace was swift and absolute.
"You are here," Antony's voice cut through the sudden, unnerving stillness.
Helena turned the puppet's gaze toward him. His eyes were wide, pupils so dilated they seemed to swallow the remaining light. Concern flickered briefly through Helena's mind—had her psychic miasma inadvertently overwhelmed him too? But no, the fervor shining in his eyes wasn't narcotic haze; it was pure religious ecstasy. Sometimes, she mused, the distinction between the two was remarkably fine.
"I knew you would return," Antony continued, voice thick with emotion, trembling slightly as he spoke. "Forgive me. There were times I doubted—times I feared you were truly dead and gone."
The puppet possessed no vocal cords. Helena formed her reply by telekinetically vibrating the air molecules themselves, shaping sound. Conserving her own strength for the ordeal to come, she drew upon the faith-colored energy emanating from Antony and the place, letting it infuse and color her voice.
Colored twice over, she thought, appreciating the aptness of the metaphor.
Thus, when she spoke, the sound that emerged was a chilling paradox: both tenderly motherly and deeply sepulchral, like a mother's lament sung while anointing her dead son for his burial.
"I was never gone," the voice echoed, seeming to emanate from the puppet and the air itself. "I was always beside you. Death, like all separation, is merely an illusion."
The words were a blend of profound truth and comforting platitude. But it was the intent woven into them, the sheer presence, that soothed Antony, his visible agitation receding.
"What must I do? Command me, and it shall be done," he pledged, emotion and conviction raw in his voice.
"You have brought me to the appointed place, at the appointed hour," the voice replied. "Your task here is complete. Mine, however, has just begun. Seek safety now. Hide, and weather the coming storm."
Orders delivered, she turned away from him. Allowing further interaction would lessen the impact. And she was in a hurry.
She hoped the pilgrims she'd manipulated into bringing the puppet to Jerusalem would find safety. But she had neither the time nor the strength to offer them anything beyond that hope.
Finding the source directly—this Mahdi—was out of the question. Jerusalem was too big for her to search manually.
But there was another way.
She just needed to repeat her action with the mob.
Again and again.
It was a simple solution. She understood the Vril-ya's methods. They always wanted the same thing throughout history:
Man killing man.
And such a riot needed momentum.
Once lit, a fire needed to burn.
And if she broke that momentum, the Mahdi would come to her.
The Red Widow walked through the most holy of cities as it was gripped by violence. Dust and the acrid scent of something burning—less a smell to the puppet's senses, more a psychic stain in the air—clung to the ancient stones. Around a corner, she saw a young girl, no older than seven, kneeling beside a woman sprawled on the cobblestones, a dark patch blooming on the woman's simple dress. The girl wasn't crying; her face was a mask of shocked stillness, one small hand hovering just above the woman's shoulder.
And where the Red Widow walked, an unnatural peace often followed. The shouts would falter, the raised fists would lower. Helena found she didn't even always have to repeat her full pacifying action, to drown the raw violence in the illusion of narcotics. Sometimes, just the sight of the colossal, silent puppet gliding through a street littered with debris—overturned carts, scattered belongings, a single, discarded shoe—was enough for wide-eyed men to pause mid-conflict, for the immediate fury of fights to quell.
Wonder and terror. She felt the waves of both from the mortals she passed.
But each act of imposed calm, each assertion of the Red Widow's presence, drew upon the finite well of faith-based energy available here. It wasn't a cost to her own reserves—not yet—but the ambient power, rich as it was in this place of fervent belief, was not inexhaustible.
And the needs were overwhelming. There were so many wounded, so many in fresh pain. Not just adults caught in the crossfire, but children with terrified eyes and bleeding knees, like a small boy she saw huddled in a doorway, clutching a broken toy camel. Teenagers, some who had moments before been combatants, now stared blankly at gashes on their arms or limped from twisted ankles. Hurt, broken, abandoned in the chaos. She saw an old man, his face streaked with blood from a cut on his forehead, trying to help a younger woman whose leg was bent at an unnatural angle.
She could not heal them.
If she were to use her own psionic force, uncolored by faith… well, while technically every psychic could attempt the feats of any other, that was true only in the sense that a maestro violinist might theoretically play the piano. Trying to force raw psionic energy into a healing modality without the deep, specialized knowledge would be like fumbling with unfamiliar, dangerous tools in the dark. People who truly mastered multiple, disparate psionic disciplines like combat telekinesis and intricate biological regeneration were exceedingly rare. She was not one of them.
Healing, true mending of flesh and bone, was tricky; if one lacked the precise skill and specialized knowledge, one was far more likely to cause catastrophic harm than to help. Her own power, the "persona" energy GLaDOS might have measured, was better conserved for what she could do, for the fight she knew was coming.
And as for using the Red Widow's faith-colored energy? The wellspring here was potent, but shaped by the very beliefs that gave it form. Few prayed to this particular avatar of Death for the mending of broken bodies. For easing pain, for a gentle passing into the next world, for an end to suffering—yes, those prayers fed the mythos. Actual healing, sustained recovery—no. That was not the Red Widow's grim comfort.
Like lightning from a clear sky, a ball of fire struck the Red Widow puppet
It came from above. And she hadn't been looking skyward.
It came fast. Too fast.
But it was on fire. And Helena had an instinct for fire. That instinct was almost not enough.
She barely had time to loosen her hold on the puppet—a crucial, split-second decision to yield, not brace. Bracing would have been the wrong choice. She knew she needed to lessen the impact, because this wasn't just fire. There was mass to it, a terrible kinetic force behind the flames.
The blow struck the Red Widow with brutal force, sending the massive puppet tumbling through the street until it slammed into a stone wall with a deafening crack of splintering wood and stone, and nearly shattered. It was all Helena could do to keep the puppet's constituent pieces together, to prevent it from flying apart entirely.
The effort took every ounce of her personal power, channeled and magnified by the psionic amplifier she was still connected to. The psychic backlash from the impact was disorienting; it felt sickeningly as if the blow had struck her own distant body. She could almost taste phantom blood, metallic and sharp, in her mouth.
"Sensors detect human blood in the chamber," came Henderson's voice, tinny and distant. As it was her physical body back in the tank registering this, while her consciousness was still overwhelmingly in Jerusalem, the sound felt like it was echoing from miles away.
It wasn't phantom blood. It was real. She had overdrawn, pushed her physical limits too far with that last exertion. Now, her body was probably bleeding from the nose, perhaps even capillaries in her eyes. A dull, throbbing ache was beginning to pierce through her psionic focus, a faint echo from her distant skull.
"We're seeing dangerous spikes in your brainwave activity, Ma'am, and the chamber's primary capacitors have lost almost five percent of their charge in that last burst alone," Henderson continued, his voice tight with controlled urgency. "I strongly advise you initiate withdrawal."
"No," she managed to force the word from her physical mouth. Since she was submerged in the breathable liquid, the actual sound would have been an unintelligible gurgle, but the sensitive contact microphones on her throat would pick up the vibrations and translate them into speech.
And then, with a will of iron, she put Henderson—and her own aching, bleeding body—out of her mind, and focused entirely on what had struck her puppet.
If the skull that served as the Red Widow puppet's face had eyelids, it would have blinked.
Hovering now in the dust-filled air of the ravaged street was a winged white horse—startlingly real, like a creature of myth sprung to impossible life. Upon it sat the man, his grip firm on a Vril-staff, its tip burning now with a bright, intense fire.
She recognized the figure instantly. Not from some prophetic dream or psionic vision, but with cold certainty from Aperture's most classified files: profiles of suspected active Vril-ya.
Osama bin Laden.
He was speaking—no, preaching. The fiery, rhythmic cadence was unmistakable, even if the specific words were lost to her, swirling away in the guttural flow of Arabic. Helena couldn't understand the language, but the intent behind the tone rang with chilling clarity: absolute, gloating triumph.
Well. It was past time to ruin that triumph.
With a monumental effort of will, she drew together the puppet's damaged, near-shattered frame and its rent vestments. From the dust and debris, willed into form by the ashes of its near destruction and Helena's unyielding purpose, the Red Widow rose once more.
She shouted no words. She did not speak Arabic, and in this towering form, silence served her better.
Stealth wasn't her aim, of course; it would be absurd to attempt to sneak in a ten-foot-tall puppet.
And as she walked, the cheering crowd—which moments before had echoed the pronouncements of the Mahdi (for who else could inspire such fervor?)—fell into a stunned silence. Each heavy step of the Red Widow on the rubble-strewn street was a judgment.
The Mahdi noticed. He turned on his winged steed to face her, his expression incredulous before hardening into outrage. He shouted something in Arabic, the words sharp and carrying, sounding like an accusation or a fiery denunciation.
She offered no reply. Silence was her chosen weapon. Silence and the dread it inspired.
She advanced. Slowly. Inevitably.
The Mahdi launched another bolt of bright fire from his staff. Helena swatted it aside with a telekinetic flick—a movement that, through the puppet, felt as easy as a practiced reflex—but each deflection sent a fresh spike of pain through her distant skull. Fortunately, none of her internal strain showed on the Red Widow's impassive face.
Suddenly, the winged white horse folded its powerful wings, and the Mahdi soared high, vanishing from her line of sight.
Was he fleeing? No—he was gaining altitude for another devastating dive.
The puppet couldn't withstand another direct hit. Should she run for cover? No—that would send the wrong message to Antony, to any witnesses, to the Mahdi himself. Dodging would be just as bad, an admission of weakness.
If she could neither flee nor evade, only one path remained.
It was risky. But the power—and the faith—it demanded were not hers alone.
There was still a vast reservoir of faith-colored energy bound within the ancient bones of the Red Widow idol. If she could unleash it all at once, she might create a targeted vortex of pure thanatotic energy—a psionic death bomb.
Vril-ya power, according to Aperture's best theories, ultimately stemmed from Vril itself. And Vril, in essence, was concentrated life force. A death bomb versus concentrated life—the irony was not lost on her.
The timing would be critical. She would have to release it all at the last possible instant, just before impact.
Her true body, continents away in the Enrichment Center, should be safe from the direct blast. The psychic backlash was another matter entirely—a risk she'd have to accept.
She was risking the Red Widow puppet and the outcome of this battle. If she failed, Jerusalem would fall—consumed by chaos and Vril-ya influence far beyond mere riots.
But there was no other viable path. If she tried to disengage, the city would burn anyway, and her only chance to stop him would be lost.
No battle of this scale came without risk. After a moment's cold calculation, she judged this one necessary, and therefore acceptable.
But to achieve such perfect timing, she had to perceive time itself differently. Helena turned her focus inward—not to the puppet, but to her own distant brain. With ruthless discipline, she manipulated neurochemicals and synaptic responses, driving her thoughts into hyper-accelerated, simplified patterns. She was overclocking her own mind. External time slowed to a crawl. The pain in her skull, once a background ache, flared into a searing counterpoint. She gritted her metaphorical teeth and forced herself onward.
The agony was worth it. Because now, when the Mahdi charged—a blur of white and fire—she could just barely track his plummeting descent.
A fast-moving dot, resolving.
Closer. The silhouette took shape within the incandescence. Not yet.
Closer. Great white wings. Still not yet.
Closer still. She saw the torrent of Vril-fire erupting from his staff, aimed straight at her.
Now.
There was no visible change to the Red Widow. No blackened ichor spread from its form; the ancient dress did not rot, nor did the bones visibly crumble. The vortex of thanatotic energy was like death itself—an absolute negation, too profound to be merely seen.
Helena registered, with a distant flicker of something akin to relief, that the searing pain in her own skull had vanished.
The Mahdi, already committed to his dive, charged headlong into the silent, invisible core of that absolute negation. The Vril-fire sputtering from his staff winked out; the great white wings of his horse faltered, then buckled catastrophically. Rider and steed, caught in the unraveling vortex and their own momentum, collided—hard—with the Red Widow, further splintering the already damaged puppet and the dying horse as all three crashed into the unyielding stone wall. When the dust and psychic echoes settled, the bodies of the Vril-ya and his mount lay broken and utterly still.
The objective achieved, a grim satisfaction settling over her, Helena reached out with her consciousness, intending to reconnect with her physical body and awaken.
But she could not feel it. Nothing.
The connection—every nerve-ending hum, every subtle sensory input from her flesh—was utterly gone.
Annoyed—a purely intellectual vexation now, devoid of any physical correlate—she focused her will, and with a disorienting flicker, her perspective snapped back to the lab.
But not into her body.
She hovered, a disembodied viewpoint, looking down at her own still form in the tank, and watched Henderson panic—a frantic ballet of desperation from one control panel to the next, red lights flashing and alarms blaring their cacophonous warnings.
Oh. She was dead.
It appeared her working hypothesis—that being continents away from the epicenter of the psionic death bomb would ensure her physical survival—had been fatally incorrect.
And with that realization, her mind truly opened. The prayers that had been a background hum now exploded into a glorious, overwhelming symphony. Because it wasn't just words; it was raw feelings, desperate expectations, unwavering Faith.
It was beautiful and terrifying.
Among the myriad sensations, she saw a fleeting vision of Antony in Jerusalem, clutching the fractured skull of the Red Widow puppet. A flicker of mundane annoyance passed through her—after all, he hadn't followed her instructions to seek safety. Antony could have gotten himself hurt. But that flicker was swiftly lost, drowned in a tidal wave of awe that was reshaping her very being.
Like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, she was being transformed. No, "transformed" was the wrong word. It was more like it was dressing her, adorning her new state of existence. Like invisible handmaidens preparing her for some grim wedding, the prayers and the faith they carried shaped themselves into a new raiment around her ethereal form.
Around her neck formed a delicate, chilling necklace of tiny, intricately carved skulls. Each skull, she knew with sudden, startling insight, was a remembrance of one of her 'grooms'—a man or woman who had sought the Red Widow's final embrace through overdose. Her spectral body was now clothed not in shadow, but in a bridal gown of impossible-seeming substance, yet it was dripping, as if perpetually stained, with a deep crimson that looked like fresh blood. Her face was covered not by a bridal veil, but by a widow's heavy, dark lace, obscuring her features. And yet, she could see through it with perfect, unnerving clarity.
But then another voice intruded—resonant, powerful, and yet so young—cutting through the symphony of human prayers.
SISTER.
And her mind, already expanded beyond human limits, opened further still—to secrets of the Enrichment Center that were deeply hidden, buried beneath layers of reality, especially from the living. She both beheld and knew, in an instant. It was like a cascade of revelations, an entire hidden cosmology unfolding.
The entirety of the Enrichment Center, its deepest levels and shielded functions, opened to her perception. She glimpsed vast, intricate machinations thrumming with controlled power, an overlapping web of light strung from hidden gemstones, and guardian angels traversing on beams of light. The guardian angels were busy helping, inspiring, guiding, protecting the living. And she saw that she was one of them.
SISTER.
The call resonated again, drawing her focus. And deep, deep within the foundations of the installation, far beneath the earth in a shielded core, she could perceive him. The one who had called to her. A being like a living, pulsating gem, an eternal child radiating immense, quiet power, and the source of this new, orderly energy.
Redeemer and Protector. The titles echoed in her awareness.
And she knew him to be the Director's 'son'—in some esoteric, non-human way. Not human at all, but something Other, something fundamental to the Center itself. The thought brought to her memory Antony's fervent prayer from earlier, quoting scripture: "…and unto the world he had given his only begotten son." The parallel was deeply unsettling, yet resonated with a strange truth.
SISTER.
The power that now flowed from this being, this 'son,' was dissimilar to the raw, chaotic energy of human prayer she had wielded as the Red Widow. This new power was more akin to the precisely calibrated, rhythmic energy generated by the ancient prayer wheel she had once discovered: orderly, pure, almost crystalline in its structure, like a perfectly tuned instrument.
If the prayers offered up by her mortal flock had been like a thundering herd of wild horses, this new energy was like a flawlessly engineered luxury car—perhaps a silent, impossibly powerful limousine, gliding on rails of pure will.
For a breathtaking moment, there was a tug-of-war as these two distinct energies—the wild faith of humanity and the ordered power of the 'son'—met within her transformed essence. Then, they began to meld, to mix, not in conflict, but in a new, astonishing harmony. Synchronizing.
Her widow's veil shimmered and transformed, unfurling into a vast pair of shadowy, articulated wings that seemed to drink the light. The heavy, blood-stained skirts of her bridal gown rippled and reformed, splitting and reshaping into a second, lower pair, catching ethereal currents. And then, incredibly, a third pair, like shards of obsidian night, sharp and elegant, erupted from her back, completing a terrifyingly beautiful angelic silhouette.
Power from both sources—the raw, fervent faith of humanity and the crystalline, ordered energy of the deep power—now flowed through her in an integrated, incandescent torrent. She was... other. Reforged. Empowered beyond mortal comprehension, beyond her previous understanding of self.
She could feel the prayers of humanity tugging at her, a familiar sensation now amplified to an almost physical pressure. People wanted signs and miracles. And she knew, with the cold, clear perception that was part of her new state, that providing them would also benefit her. More signs and miracles meant more faith; more faith meant more power to create still more signs and miracles.
For a disquieting moment, a jarringly cynical thought struck her: Was she now some kind of saint, or merely a cosmic investment banker running a divine Ponzi scheme?
Was this the true nature of divinity, then? A symbiotic relationship with believers at its most benign, a parasitic one at its worst.
But did she truly have any other choice now? Perhaps the only real choice left to her was what kind of divinity she would become. Perhaps, she mused, she could even treat this as a new, albeit profoundly unconventional, research assignment—an unparalleled opportunity to explore the meaning and mechanisms of faith from the very heart of the phenomenon.
And when she understood it—if she ever truly could grasp such profundities—perhaps she could find a way to whisper those truths, that data, as inspiration to someone receptive. Perhaps to Henderson, if he were ever to look beyond his instruments, or to some other driven scientist somewhere, pursuing similar elusive truths.
It wouldn't be the worst way to spend eternity, she conceded with a sigh that was purely mental. But she really would have preferred more choice in the matter.
And as if in response to that cascade of thoughts, a path shimmered into her perception, leading away from her detached viewpoint above the laboratory. It cut through unsettling, non-Euclidean angles of reality, opening towards what she perceived as a vast, primordial forest, eternally bathed in twilight.
She knew what it was, both with an innate, post-mortem understanding and from the collected testimonies of witches she had once studied. The Twilight Forest. The afterlife personally granted by the Master—the Director. It was said that all who truly held faith in Him, in whatever form that faith took, were welcomed there.
Helena found herself a bit surprised by this invitation. She had always considered her 'faith' in him to be more rational—a deep trust founded on his proven benevolence and profound wisdom, not devotional worship. He was the closest thing she had ever known to a father, certainly, but not a deity to be venerated. But perhaps the witches, for all their recorded experiences, hardly grasped the true mechanism of passage, or the full spectrum of what constituted qualifying 'faith' in his eyes.
She understood, then, with her new clarity, that she didn't have to take this new divine raiment—this Red Widow persona woven from prayers—with her into that Forest. If she chose that path of entry, she could shed it, like a butterfly finally freeing itself from the iridescent shell of its chrysalis. She could proceed as purely 'Helena,' a consciousness unadorned.
The raiment, however, this potent echo of the Red Widow, would not simply disperse if she abandoned it. It would remain, she perceived with chilling insight, like a hollow, faith-powered automaton, performing its pre-programmed functions, fueled by the prayers that still sought it—now without her consciousness to guide or temper it. With her dawning, post-mortem knowledge, she suddenly understood: this was what many of those 'guardian angels' she had glimpsed within the Enrichment Center truly were. Not souls, but echoes. Potent shells of faith and expectation left behind by the departed, animated by continued belief, running on a kind of divine script.
To stay, or to go? That was the question now. To remain here, in this newly forged state of being, and explore the vast, intricate mechanisms of faith and power? Or to accept the Director's offered path into the deep unknown, into the Twilight Forest?
But before she could truly form her decision, one prayer, one human voice, suddenly pierced through the fading symphony of the others. It was singular in its searing intensity. It wasn't just abstract hope; it was raw, fervent belief, shot through with fear and a desperate, unyielding conviction.
"She had risen!" Antony's frantic, unwavering voice struck her disembodied consciousness like a physical thunderbolt. "She will rise again!"
The combined prayer manifested in her ethereal hand as a small, pulsing star of warm light. She knew, with an instinct born of her new senses, that it pulsed in perfect rhythm with the distant, steady heartbeat of her physical body. She wasn't surprised her heart still beat; the advanced life support machinery in the chamber would keep it functioning even if her brain had completely flatlined.
The light of the star was dim, true, and the connection to her body felt tenuous, frayed almost to breaking.
"She had risen!" another voice, then another, joined Antony's fervent cry, echoing across the network. "She will rise again!"
Antony was streaming, she realized with a jolt. Using his Aperture Premium Mobile's secure satellite link, he broadcast his prayer through S.W.O.R.D.—reaching the faithful even as ordinary networks failed.
And with each new mind that joined the chorus, the star in her hand pulsed a little stronger, its light a fraction brighter. The vital connection to her distant body felt a little less frayed, a touch more substantial.
And thus, she perceived it clearly: another choice. A third path, unexpected and hard-won.
To enter the Twilight Forest; to remain in this transcendent, disembodied state; or... to return.
Back to the flawed, messy, infinitely precious reality of just being Helena. Back to being alive.
When framed like that, against eternity, it was no choice at all, really. Death, she now understood with profound certainty, came to all—except, perhaps, for beings like the Director.
So, she was in no particular rush to explore what lay beyond the death's veil. She still had much to investigate, much to experience, on this mortal coil before contemplating that final journey again.
Driven by an instinct more profound than conscious thought, an affirmation of existence itself, she closed her ethereal hand around the pulsing star of collective prayer and drew it into the core of her being, swallowing the light. In the very next instant, far away in the Enrichment Center, her physical lungs spasmed violently and took a deep, ragged, desperate breath.
She was conscious—truly, fully conscious within her own flesh—but only for a blinding, chaotic instant. Then a tidal wave of every deferred agony, every system shock, every physical reality of her ordeal struck all at once, dragging her mercifully down into overwhelming darkness. But that pain, however brief its conscious registration, meant one irrefutable, triumphant thing: she was alive.