"Mr. Indalecio Gabriel. We are here representing the Eternal Sphere Corporation. We'll skip the preliminaries. You are the absolute apex of the most advanced civilisation currently in existence. Certain activities you were recently discovered to have been conducting are in breach of our Terms and Conditions, Section 10, Clause 5b, 'Illegally Modifying the Universe'. You will be given twenty four hours to halt all research, distribution and production, recall and destroy all products in circulation, delete your blueprints and sign a cease and desist order, or we will delete yourself, your entire operation and all sectors of space found to contain any traces of your activities."

"You know who I am, hm?" a thin, twisted smile spread over Gabriel's already pale, sad-eyed face. His slender cheekbones were framed by wavy red shoulder-length hair.

He regarded the three intruders who had suddenly appeared in his Command Centre on the top floor of Phynal Tower, apparently warping straight through the energy shields as though they weren't there, tripping no alarms and alerting nobody on the lower floors. He had reacted quickly, slamming his hand down on the security button, but their leader had simply lifted a finger and caused the space around the button to somehow phase out of existence. The amount of symbological energy involved in that seemingly effortless gesture had shorted out one of the meters he had running in the background, monitoring his most recent attempt to correctly align the Sphere of Annihilation. There had been a tiny amount of success during this run. He wondered if that fact and the sudden appearance of these eerie-looking, immensely powerful beings who spoke like lawyers, were in any way related. He knew people were coming for him. He had been presented with video footage of his underlings on the floors below disposing of them in a selection of cruel and unusual ways. He hadn't expected anything like this. He supposed their Godlike power and lawyerish ways should intimidate him a little more, except that they were being remarkably stupid.

"Yes, Mr. Indalecio, we have known you since you were still known as Professor Gabriel Lantis," said the leader, an ageless blonde woman with three pairs of avian wings, dressed in an archaic helmet and armoured black robes. She reminded Gabriel of a classical depiction of an angel of Tria, the kind he saw on large, pretentious paintings displayed in Princebridge art gallery. The two beings who hovered at either side of him, their looming forms more sinister in appearance than their superior, shadowy and faceless with bright points of light for eyes and decaying wings. He guessed that these were meant to be the heavies of the operation, an unvoiced but blatant threat, such as if he were to be so crude as to walk into a room accompanied by Michael.

Still, the use of that name, the human whose uploaded memories his personality was based upon, caused him to raise one eyebrow. Almost reflexively, he replied, "I am not he."

"You may choose to claim so, it is of no concern to us. But we know you possess his memories. You must remember the day that we presented ourselves at one of your conferences. It was a day that shook the entire Nedian civilisation. Arrangements were made. Those arrangements were never reneged by the Nedian Government but they were broken repeatedly by the splinter organisation known as the Ten Sages. As this organisation was clearly criminal, we decided to overlook the transgression and even volunteer technology designed specifically to assist in containing this mutual enemy. On the condition that they would actually carry out the interception, containment and preferably deletion. It seems they performed only a shoddy and ultimately failed attempt."

"And so you came to finish the job?"

"To negotiate with what is now the superior power."

"Your threats do not sound like negotiation to me," said Gabriel, resting his elbow lazily on his chin as he lounged on his desk, tapping his pen in irritation, "So far, you have admitted to plotting my destruction, then threatened to delete what amounts to the entire Universe. My response is… this is a sight I would like to see. Please feel free to demonstrate your ability to carry out your threat, by all means. It seems we have a common goal. Maybe we can learn from each other, possibly even put aside our differences. After all, the Nede we seem to be arguing over has been gone for four billion years, no longer worthy of remembering."

The angelic being paused mid-expression, like a digital image suffering buffering problems. Gabriel added, "By the way, I can also clearly see that you are some sort of puppet controlled by a master. In future, I would appreciate being contacted by an actual person."

"No, Mr. Gabriel, you really would not want that," replied the emissary, its voice clear and bright in a way that was almost a child's voice, but with no innocence except maybe that of a brainwashed cultist, "And you would not want the Eternal Sphere to demonstrate what we can do. You see, the deletion I am talking about is not like your plan to destroy everything from the inside, using that primitively constructed hacking tool of yours. We will delete you while standing from the outside, with as much effort and emotion as we would any other faulty computer program. Then we might replace you with a working version of yourself, or we might just give up and remove any record of your existence."

"I find myself unwilling to believe that your existence is completely removed from the Universe," replied Gabriel, "And, while I do not appreciate being called faulty, I am not moved by your pointing out that I am a computer program. Either you have a similar plan to me and you are completely delusional in thinking that you would survive, or you are simply threatening me personally with deletion. As I cannot perform my function if I am deleted, and I do not trust you to be sane enough to come up with a working plan of your own, I will have to defend myself, fascinated as I am by your plan to outdo me."

"If co-operation is not your wish, then so be it," the emissary sounded sad. He snapped his fingers and the black-wreathed beings began to shift forwards, again, as if they were rather jerkily clipping through other objects in a digital environment. Gabriel's hand moved to his book, the focus for all his personal defense symbology.

Quite suddenly, the angel froze again, this time for good. Its lack of movement also halted its servants, who turned around and gave it questioning looks. Its face briefly twitched, then it contorted into a slightly different posture and continued moving as though nothing had happened. However, it immediately called off the attack, returning the other two figures to its sides.

"Cyril Lucifer is present," said the angelic being, its speech pattern now slightly different, although nothing about the sound of the voice had changed.

"Yes, I assume he is," said Gabriel, unable to hide his confusion at the sudden mention of his second in command. Unlike himself, Cyril Lucifer had never existed for any other reason than as a central point of control for the other Wise Men. There was no need for these visitors, obviously something to do with antiquated Nedian politics, to be interested in the irritating, obnoxious man.

"Tell us where he is."

"He has no authority outside of or above my own," said Gabriel.

"Scans show that he is on the floor below," said the emissary, before vanishing as abruptly it had arrived, taking the other two with it.

Gabriel tried the security button again, to no avail. He tried the door to find it as inaccessible as if it did not truly exist and neither did anything outside of it.


"There is an intruder in the building," declared Lucifer.

"I know," replied Haniel, "Frankly, I don't understand what's going on. The sensors say they exist…"

"Yes, I'm aware of what happened," replied the cruel-faced, lilac-haired man. According to the security system, the intruders appeared inside Gabriel's office without warning. There was no point of entry, the alarm never went off and Camael's database had absolutely no information on them. The signal appearing on the scanner was as meaningless as an error message. Only white noise appeared on the cameras. Haniel had attempted to rush up to the top floor only to find all the doors on lockdown, both elevators and emergency stairs. Teleportation was also being redirected. Gabriel himself was still on the radar, meaning that he was still alive, but this did little to reassure the Fifth Floor guardian. As leader of the intelligence team, he despised having any information kept from him, "And all too aware of what it signifies."

"I have a feeling that our leader isn't just seeing an important guest in private."

"Your instincts are correct. Stay away from this, Haniel," warned Lucifer, "Where is Michael?"

"At prayer," he replied.

Lucifer glowered at him, as he always did when Haniel's partner was not somewhere he could easily be watched and, at least theoretically, his arsonist urges kept in check. The way that Lucifer treated Michael, as though he was nothing more than a particularly deadly and rather unstable weapon, and not a person capable of thinking for himself, never mind a fellow Wise Man of equal rank to Haniel, made the re-education specialist want to demonstrate firsthand exactly what 're-education' actually meant. He had a regime planned out for him, involving Mind Blast followed by a quick workover with a hammer and chisel, and maybe reviving him again and telling Michael he could do whatever he liked to the man. For instance, Lucifer knew that Michael was a devout Trian and that his request for the occasional day off for spiritual observation had been approved by Gabriel but he still frowned upon Michael being granted any freedom at all. He did not know where Michael actually went to pray, mostly because his partner kept the little chapel on the outskirts of the restricted zone on Energy Nede a closely guarded secret, only known to Haniel and possibly Gabriel. Haniel had seen the place once and it was almost completely lacking in scorch marks, meaning that Michael showed the kind of self control he normally only reserved for not setting Haniel on fire. The chapel, and presumably the relationship with Tria that it signified, was probably the only thing that Michael actually valued in the Universe other than Haniel and fire.

"Find him," Lucifer snapped, "Bring him back. If he was to meet with them unexpectedly, it would be disastrous."

"For the fifth time today, I do not control Michael."

"It would be more disastrous for him than anyone else. You're concerned for his safety, aren't you?" demanded Lucifer, "You should keep yourself far away from them, too. If you value the other six, get them out of harm's way."

"You're being unusually considerate of our wellbeing today," observed Haniel, "And you seem to know rather a lot about our mysterious visitors. Is there something you should be telling us? Such as, what exactly you are so afraid of that you don't think all eight of us could deal with it? Or maybe you're lying as usual."

"You really want to know, don't you?" Lucifer let out a flat, humourless laugh, "I was only interested in the security of this place. I wanted eight more bodies still remaining between me and any potential enemies. But, you know, feel free to ignore my warning. I'm sure the other seven will do as they like anyway."

"You presume to know a lot about the state of the ranks below mine, seeing as you never deign to visit them."

"I'm a very busy man these days," said Lucifer, "You know, I think that Michael might be the smartest among you at this precise moment."

"A compliment for Michael? Whatever brought this on?"

"If you want to poke your nose into this business, you'd better start praying to Tria for deliverance."