Abigail

Before either Abigail or Elias could respond, Giorgio grabbed them. The room spun, then dissolved into a whirl of colour. They landed on soft grass. It was no manicured lawn either. The grass or rather grasses, as there seemed to be multiple species, grew nearly two feet high.

"Where are we?" Elias asked, looking up at the palm trees swaying under the light of the setting sun.

A warm breeze caught loose strands of Abigail's hair. When she glanced behind, she realised they were at the edge of a beach. Waves, rolling over a sandbar, broke about a hundred metres from shore. There was plenty of foam out there, but the waves were spent by the time they reached land. Crystal clear, azure water lapped at white sand.

"Not a bad place for a weekend getaway. If the circumstances were different, of course." Abigail unzipped her windbreaker and pulled off her scarf — it might have been nearly nighttime here, but it was still twenty degrees warmer than in Bolivia. "Do you think there are sharks out there?"

"At this hour? Yes," Elias replied with a roll of his eyes. "Giorgio, what is this place?"

The angel made a slow three-sixty degree turn. His body was rigid.

"You wanted someone who might help you find Ramiel, I've brought you to him," he said. "Follow the path and forget you ever knew my name. Farewell."

One flap of his wings and Giorgio was gone.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" Elias groaned. "Angels are bloody —"

"Come on, there's a path," Abigail sighed and pointed to a barren strip of land between the wild grasses. "We had better get going before it's dark. I bet it's pitch black out here at night."

"I don't understand how you're not flipping out. We're not even in South America anymore. It's warm and the sun is setting; we are probably on some island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. At least there were other people in Bolivia."

You're being a drama queen enough for both of us. Abigail shrugged. "What's the point of getting angry right now? No one knows where we are and we have no supplies to keep us alive. Cough drops aren't going to cut it for long. We have to find whoever it is that Giorgio wants us to speak to, the faster the better."

"Fair point," Elias made a face, "I suppose."

The path was little more than an animal track. It meandered between trees and roots, sometimes swallowed by vegetation for several feet before re-emerging. Abigail drove as quick a pace as possible while watching that they didn't stray from the path, but her thoughts kept drifting to all that had happened since Ramiel had returned.

"You do believe that Ramiel is working for Heaven, right?" she said.

Elias raised an eyebrow. "What a good question to mull over before deciding to launch a rescue mission. A double-cross would go a long way towards explaining Ramiel's staggering lack of success so far."

"So you —"

"No, I don't think so. Why go to all that trouble with the two of us? And Raphael would've had to be in on it, wouldn't he? I doubt —"

Elias tripped on something and fell forward, his head just missing the ribbed trunk of a palm tree. Abigail offered him a hand, then glanced up. The sun had slipped beneath the horizon and the light was fading with every passing minute. She summoned a weak, but well-shaped light ball and grinned. Minute improvement, but improvement nonetheless.

"Get rid of that, please," Elias said.

"It's too dark now to be walking without a light. Unless you want to split open your forehead of course."

Elias started to say something, but then seemed to reconsider his words. Instead, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and switched on the phone's torch. Abigail smothered her light ball out of existence, but not two minutes later, the low battery warning flashed. She couldn't suppress her snicker.

"How much do you have left on yours?" Elias asked.

"Seventeen per cent. Why can't I just do it my way?"

"Ramiel said you practising in my vicinity is the reason my visions have become more frequent and incapacitating. Besides, you might need to use your abilities later. It's best you don't over-exert yourself now."

Incapacitating? She had noticed that her brother had been indulging in painkillers. Although he never took the pills when she was around, she had seen the empty packets in the rubbish more than once. But incapacitating? Abigail had thought it was just stress and a touch of insomnia.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realise," she said, handing her phone to Elias.

"You didn't know."

Elias moved past Abigail. He held the phone away from his body, trying to illuminate as much of their surroundings as possible. A hundred metres down the path, he turned back to Abigail.

"There's something ahead."

Abigail jogged three steps to catch up. At first, Abigail thought Elias was merely pointing at another pair of palm trees, but once they drew closer, the hazy shapes became an archway overgrown in climbing plants.

"Stone." Elias palpated the sides of the arch. "Thin slabs are stacked on top of each other for the supports, then it gets more complicated along the top. I think anyway, I can't really reach up there."

Abigail took her phone back and pointed it through the arch, but saw nothing on the other side save the forest that surrounded them.

"At least we know we're not the first people to visit this place," she said.

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"It could've been an angel or demon that built this."

Abigail ran her hand over the arch, feeling the cold stone between the leaves and branches woven about it. "Do they build in stone, you think? I suppose Heaven and Hell must have walls. Never thought about it before."

"Neither have I," Elias replied. "Shall we go on then?"

Abigail tucked her phone back into her pocket and followed Elias through the arch.

Water swallowed her, crushing her body under its weight.

Panicking, Abigail gasped and swallowed several salty mouthfuls before her mind finally caught up.

It's just water, you idiot.

Abigail kicked. It didn't seem to do much, but she sent a flurry of bubbles up. Good, great. Up means air. She kicked harder and pressed her arms to the job. Years of coaches shouting about how she ought to move her limbs and position her body kicked in. Soon she felt warm air on her forearm. One more kick, her head was above water.

She clenched her eyes. The sun, high and golden in the cloudless sky, was blinding. Abigail tread water until her eyesight adjusted, then looked around. She was in the middle of the ocean, no sign of land in any direction.

"This is wonderful," she muttered. "And no Elias. First, Ramiel, then Harold and now..." She took a deep breath. "Hey, it's gonna be ok. It's got to be."

Trembling, Abigail leaned back until she was floating on her back. With her eyes closed, it did not seem so bad — a sunny day out in the water without rowdy teenagers yelling or seagulls being a nuisance. Except, with no land within reach, she could float out here until she died of exposure. It should only take a day or two. Less if a shark found her and decided to nibble on her legs. Or Abigail could choose one direction at random and swim until she no longer had the energy to move, then drown.

Suicide by drowning here and now was an option too, but Abigail would have to be inventive about that. She could tie her swimsuit around her legs so she couldn't swim. Speaking of... Abigail ran her hand over her torso. She wore an indigo training swimsuit with her club's name printed on it. Abigail had thrown out that swimsuit the day she quit swimming — shoved it into the bin by the pool car park.

Abigail surveyed the water again. It looked real enough and there was still no sign of land, but her hand caught something solid.

She drew it out and found herself holding a diver rope with plastic orange floats. The rope was taut, anchored to something solid, but she couldn't see what that was. The rope stretched out to the horizon. How many kilometres can a human eye see? I think I was supposed to learn that back in school. It doesn't matter really, it's obviously going to be a long swim.

Abigail took a deep breath and began stroking. As long as she kept the diver rope to her left, she would get somewhere sooner or later. Or she would pass out from exhaustion and drown, but Abigail tried not to focus on that possibility. This was a moment to suck it up and grunt through it, not to wallow about in self-pity.

The crawl had always been Abigail's favourite style. She fell into a smooth rhythm and the long strokes felt as natural as walking. However, after about ten minutes her lungs began to burn. It had been years since she spent serious hours in the pool. Breathing heavily, Abigail steadied herself on the diver rope, her hands clenching the old, orange floats.

She glanced around and winced. For all her effort, she was still out in open sea.

The moment she caught her breath, she resumed swimming.

Not three strokes later, Abigail's hand smacked into something solid. Eyes watering from the pain, she rolled sideways and found herself drifting under the diver rope, which was now rising above the water to anchor somewhere above her. She grabbed onto it and pulled herself up until she could see her surroundings.

The solid object she had slammed her hand into turned out to be the wall at the deep end of a swimming pool. Abigail scooped up a handful of water. It smelled, even felt different to the water she had been struggling through previously, yet she hadn't noticed the change from salt water to chlorine. If that weren't proof enough that someone was toying with her, the swimming pool complex was no place that ever existed. The tiling around the swimming pool belonged to the local pool where Abigail had first learned to swim and that place had been torn down half a decade ago. The stands looked like the ones at the UNSW pool and the curved ceiling could only be the Ian Thorpe Centre.

Abigail made her way to the ladder, ducking her way under the ropes. She had to rely on just one hand to navigate the sleek, slippery ladder, her other hand still throbbed.

Once she had her feet planted on the cold tiles, she was at a loss. The swimming centre, although brightly lit and with the air conditioning pumped to the max, stood empty. Abigail walked along the length of the pool, listening for any signs of life. Nothing. Not Elias, not an angel, not even a mosquito buzzing about. For the lack of a better idea, Abigail pushed open the door of the emergency exit and stepped out onto the balcony.

Large, plastic tables and matching, once-white chairs — the cheapest outdoor furniture to be found for sale — crowded the small space. Abigail pushed the chairs out of her way as she worked her way to the edge of the balcony.

Abigail peered over the edge and found the grey tarmac of a three-lane highway. She frowned. As far as she remembered, she had never visited any pool situated above a highway.

She glanced around. The swimming pool was gone and she stood on an overpass. The peeling iron railing of the swimming pool balcony had become a solid, concrete barrier and the smooth flagstones under Abigail's feet had morphed into cracked asphalt. Yet Abigail remained dressed in her old swimsuit and water still dripped from her hair. A cold wind rushed along the overpass, ripping all heat from Abigail's skin.

Why an over...

Suspicion immediately verging on nausea, Abigail leaned as far over the barrier as she could. A lonely figure, his limbs splayed at unnatural angles, lay in the shadow of the overpass. Abigail covered her mouth with her hand and tried to swallow the bile in her throat.

"Max? I —"

"That's not me," came the reply behind her.

Abigail spun around. A man in his mid-twenties stood in the middle of the road. A piercing in his left eyebrow caught the light of the sun. He looked so familiar — chin like Elias', nose like their father's and dark eyes so very much like Abigail's own. Even the way he slouched, his weight all on one foot and hands sunk into his pockets, was unmistakable.

"Max?"

He grinned. "Heya, Abby. You need a new suit, this one's getting old."

Abigail started, but couldn't manage a single word. There were so many things to say. She rubbed away the tears welling up in her eyes and tried again.

"Why this place?" she asked. "Why did you..."

"This was as good a place as any."

"What does that mean? You were walking by and thought... I don't even know what you were thinking. How could you? You've no idea what you did to mum and dad."

"You know what I was thinking; you've danced around the same thoughts from time to time," Max replied. He rubbed his finger over his pierced eyebrow. "A few years less, a few years more. It doesn't matter in the end. For the sake of public decency, emergency services hosed the blood away before morning peak-hour began. Maggots got to my body long ago. Even the road was resurfaced two years ago. I'm gone and it doesn't matter. None of this matters."

Abigail crossed the few feet of space between them and drew her brother into an embrace. He was still stiff at first, but soon relaxed.

"Elias and I remember you," she said. "You'll never be gone for us."

"You'll be gone soon too. And I told you before, that isn't me down there."

Max pulled Abigail's hands off him and turned her around, then guided her back to the barrier.

"What are you doing!" she said as Max pushed her to lean further over the barrier.

The body below looked as broken and miserable as before, but a new detail caught Abigail's eye. Among the blood, she could make out locks of blond hair.

"That's Elias!" Abigail forced herself out of Max's grip. "We need... He's already dead, isn't he?"

"Everyone's dead in the end."

Abigail shook her head, backing away from her brother. "No. This isn't real, this can't be. Eli wouldn't do that."

"Isn't that what they said about me?"

"This is not real. None of this." Abigail grit her teeth. "And who...whoever is playing these games, enough, please. Elias and I meant no offence. We are just here because Ramiel needs help."

The world exploded in a flash of pure light.