Page 129 of White Lights
“No thanks,” Dez says.
The Maintenance Crew arrives, as they always do, trudging through the slush. It’s horrifying, the mundanity with which everyone else treats these lost souls. Dez watches, her heart wrenching, as the men drop the frozen, lifeless body into the body bag, tying it with practiced motions.
“Oh, Pet?” Jet’s voice sings from the door of the Vault.
Dez narrows her eyes as Simon perks up.
“Gotta go,” he says, blowing Dez a kiss before he hurries off to his mentor.
Settling into her Lens, Dez lets out her breath. She knows Simon’s partly right: Sheishere to become an angel. She agreed to stay at Acheron because she wanted to have something to show for leaving her brother like she did.
If she pulls it off, it might be worth it. Maybe she does need to start thinking more like one of them.
But recently, she finds herself increasingly seeking the opposite. What she wants more of these days is the human. Maybe it’s becauseof how Simon’s changed since his ascension, or because her nights in bed with Rafe are far from mortal comprehension, but Dez is most comfortable now in the Vault. Spending time with her subjects and their simple human lives.
Their flaws and fragile health. Their capacity for pain. Their senses of humor and fears of death. Their physical limitations. Their faith in a distant, unknowable God. Inside her Lens, Dez doesn’t have to worry about angels. She gets to wrap herself in humanity like a cloak.
Near midnight, she lights the match to send her latest film to the Distribution Department. For the first time since she’s been at Acheron, Dez completed a full day’s work. Nine films. Nine mortal souls she’s helped slip the surly bonds of earth.
She’s still behind the other first-years, but she wants to celebrate this one small victory. And she doesn’t want to do it alone.
She opens her Lens and pulls up Asher’s Lifeline. She takes herself to that moment on the beach. The one she made for the two of them. She hasn’t watched it in weeks, not since she first put herself inside it. When the scene plays now, Dez notices something amazing. Where before, there were traces of splicing, the background that didn’t exactly sync up between the stale Dairy Barn parking lot and the soft sands of Ventura—now it’s as if Dez hasgrowninto the scene with Asher. She’s taken off her combat boots. There’s sand between her toes. Her hair whips in the ocean wind, like it never did in Death Valley.
It’s like she belongs there, walking toward Asher. Like she was there all along.
When they reach each other, their embrace is so real, Dez can sense it on her skin inside the Lens. His hands. How right they feel on her body. She steps closer, to be nearer to him, as close as she can get without falling into the abyss below. And when Asher looks in her eyes, Dez senses that the recognition—the ease he feels withher—is rooted in the actual time they spent together the day they shot her film.
You don’t hug someone like that unless the day before it existed.
It’s not in his Lifeline, but it is in Asher’s soul.
Dez needs to see that day again, to live it through Asher’s eyes. Sheneedsthat missing scene, wherever it is. She pauses his Lifeline. Asher’s point of view is close on her face. She studies this spliced version of herself, who doesn’t belong on the beach that night, who broke the rules, jumped a Lifeline, and somehow, miraculously, made it work. What doesthisDez know that she can learn from?
Where is that original scene?
Dives like this do have the best atmosphere, Eri told her at the bar.
Dives like this.
And then Dez hears another voice in her mind. Rafe, standing right here, months ago, telling her:Dive in.
Dez looks down. Her toes dance at the cracked edge of the platform. She’d watched him dive from here. Into the abyss below.
And a halo containing Asherwasdown there. Rafe grabbed hold of it. And Dez saw Asher on the half-pipe.
What if Eri meantthisdive? Not her dive bar. Not the deep, icy river behind it. But the dive that had been right under Dez’s nose all along.
The last time she went down there with Rafe, Dez thought Asher’s halo was the same thing as his Lifeline up in her Lens.
But maybe they’re different. Maybe one is censored, one is not.
If she goes down today, Rafe won’t be there to rescue her. She can’t let what happened last time happen again. She can’t fall.
She inches farther toward the edge, trying to remember everything Rafe told her. She has to jump—no, dive into it. She has to clear her mind of everything but the dive. When she finds Asher’s halo, she must grab it. Bring it with her carefully to the safety of her platform.
Before she can second-guess herself, Dez dives in.
Dark wind whips her hair. The air’s so thin she can barely breathe. She passes black metal towers holding untold orbs of light. She has no control over her tumble into the vast essence of humanity, but she does have her intuition. She feels it sharpened from months of working telepathically in the Vault. She knows what she wants, and she can make it happen.
