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It had happened slowly at first. The changes were small—Gabriel was tired, weak, dizzy—and it was so easy to dismiss them as inconveniences. Maybe he was getting sick (though he hadn’t been sick in decades). Maybe he was overworked (though it seemed he was spending less and less time in the field). Maybe he was just getting old (though he wasn’t that old ). So, he pushed through. He was fine.
Except that he wasn’t. Something was wrong , but Gabriel was either too stubborn or too stupid to believe it. The fatigue worsened. He couldn’t lift as much or run for quite as long. He grew weaker and weaker until, after returning from a particularly gruelling mission in the Cambodian rainforest, he collapsed in the shower.
He came to some time later—he didn’t know how long he was out, still doesn’t—bleeding from the temple where he had cracked it against the tile. His head ached. His limbs felt like they were made of lead. He couldn’t move. He just lay there, letting the hot water wash over him, dazed and confused.
It was there, lying paralysed on the floor, that he realised what he should have realised long ago, when all of this started. Because it always started the same: fatigue, muscle weakness, postural dizziness, confusion. It was so familiar to Gabriel. He should have recognised it immediately. He had seen it time and time again.
They were referred to as ‘failures’, those whose bodies rejected the chemical cocktail pumped into them during the Soldier Enhancement Program. Never recruits. Never soldiers. Never people . But Gabriel knew better. He watched them suffer. He watched them die.
And when asked, the lab techs always gave the same answer, clipped and apathetic: “There’s nothing anyone can do.”
So, Gabriel prayed. He prayed and prayed and prayed , until his voice was hoarse and his knees ached. He clutched his rosary so tightly that the crucifix was imprinted red and raw onto his palm.
But he didn’t get better. He didn’t regain his strength, nor did the dizziness stop. He couldn’t even keep water down. He began having to pull out of ops, because his mere presence in the field put every one of his agents at risk.
He started to wonder if God had abandoned him.
When prayer didn’t work, he swallowed his pride, his stubbornness, and searched for help a little closer to home. Angela couldn’t help him, no matter how brilliant she might be. She wouldn’t have been willing to do what needed to be done.
She was a good person—Gabriel didn’t want to put that on her.
Instead, he went to Moira. And Moira had smiled at him as if he had just presented her a fun new project to work on and she had agreed to help him.
All of that was months ago, now, though it feels like much longer. It’s been hard to keep track of time since Moira began her work.
Because her work is agonising .
It’s the worst pain Gabriel has ever felt; like fire coursing through his veins, like the marrow of his bones bubbling and boiling over, like being eaten alive from the inside. It’s like nothing he’s ever felt before, not the enhancements in the SEP, nor his numerous near-deaths during the Crisis. It’s something else altogether, something terrible and unholy and wrong . Like it’s his soul that’s being torn apart. And maybe it is.
His entire genetic code is being rewritten, Moira reminds him; it was never going to be easy.
But, God, does it hurt .
In the days following the sessions, Gabriel can barely move. He lies there in the dark, his mattress bare because even the sheets feel unbearable against his hypersensitive skin. He lies there and he sobs until the pain ebbs or exhaustion overtakes him, whichever should happen first. But those few, precious moments of peace are far and few between; as soon as he feels he can bear it, he returns to Moira for another session.
Because he’s dying . Because the chemicals they pumped into him in the SEP are eating him up inside, eroding his bones and rotting his organs. Because the program never considered the long-term effects of their enhancements, never considered a future for their subjects after the Crisis.
He’s dying and he’s afraid , but the more time Gabriel spends in his quarters, not even able to breathe , the more he starts to wonder if he’s chosen a fate worse than death.
The beads of his rosary click against the floor as they slip through his fingers. Why is this happening to me?
Things like this don’t happen to good people.
Perhaps it’s a kind of divine retribution. For trying to circumvent his own death, for meddling with his body, in the Program and now; for his lost faith, because if he had trusted in God, He might have saved him after all; for all the terrible things he has done for the right reasons, for justifying them to himself and sleeping well at night.
This must be his punishment. He deserves it, because the choices he has made have turned him into a monster. He can see it when he looks at himself in the mirror; there is something terrible in his eyes, something unholy. Gabriel has let the devil inside of himself and she’s eating him up from the inside.
His entire being has been pulled apart and pieced back together in Moira’s vision. Now, he can’t go a single training session without coughing up viscous black fluid that melts into the palm of his hand. Now, he spends his evenings in the dark of his rooms, pushing his fingers into his eyes just make it all stop .
But it never does.
From the crucifix on the wall above Gabriel’s bed, Christ meets his eye, tells him what he already knows: “You’re long past saving.”
And maybe it’s what he deserves.