CHAPTER I

Bramley peered at his reflection and did his level best not to throttle the man hovering next to him. The tailor had taken up an inordinate amount of his time, during which an impatient Bramley had been poked, prodded, and pricked to within an inch of his life.

He chuckled to himself at the saying. An inch of my life, he thought, allowing the smallest of grins to tug at the corner of his mouth. They've yet to come up with a unit of measurement equal to my lifespan.

As he tried to come up with a name for the length of time he had lived so far, he felt yet another sharp pain under his arm. The tailor had jabbed him again. Bramley tried. He really did. The man stammered his apologies and then promptly stuck the pin in Bramley's ribcage. He jabbered incoherently as his shaking hands removed the offending pin.

Bramley lost it.

The coffee was too hot. Bramley twirled his finger over the steaming mug on the table as he scanned the front page of the morning paper. The coffee seemed to stir itself, keeping pace with his circling finger. Bramley's finger froze in mid-air as a headline caught his eye. The coffee, too, halted its rotation. He picked up the paper and brought it up close to his face. As he read, a smile began to spread across his face until he was positively beaming.

"LOCAL SHOP BURNS TO THE GROUND", the headline read.

What followed was a brief but--to Bramley, anyway--highly entertaining story of a poor tailor who could only watch in despair as his beloved shop went up in flames. By the time the fire department had arrived, the fire's orange fingers had already grasped the entire structure, and the flames were hungrily consuming it. When questioned, the tailor had only been able to stutter a few unintelligible words before collapsing in a heap.

Pleased with his behavior and its disastrous effects, Bramley folded the paper and took a sip of his coffee.

"Now, what's on the schedule for today?" he asked the empty room, stroking his chin with a manicured finger. His expensive leather shoes tapped the tile floor impatiently. He glanced out the window at the city below him. From his penthouse, he could see far across London; it teemed with life. He quite liked this city, crawling with criminals as it was. The number of homicides had decreased of late, but the instances of rape, battery, and theft continued to rise, and the racists were out in force. What high hopes he had for this place.

He had even taken on a British accent. This had been many years ago, of course, when the city was first taking shape, but Bramley had adapted to the evolving culture and had altered his manner of speaking accordingly. He took a few sips of coffee, stood, and straightened his tie. "Ezekiel!" he called over his shoulder, admiring his reflection in a hall mirror. "I'll be gone for the next couple of hours, all right?" He adjusted his tie again. "My my my, what a good looking bloke you are, Bramley! And may I compliment you on your very fashionable suit?" he said to his blue-eyed reflection, winking. "Zeke? Did you hear me?"

A flash of white light shot from the back room and came to rest on Bramley's shoulder. A tiny man dressed in a long white robe looked up at him; Bramley could just see him out of the corner of his eye. A small set of wings unfolded behind him. "There's my little darling!" Bramley cooed. "I'll just be gone for a bit, okay? We've got some work to do before we can head back home." His real name--from the Beginning--was Malach HaMavet, but Bramley often called him by the shortened version of his English name. Ezekiel was much easier to remember.

Zeke made a chirping noise. "Yes, I know," Bramley said. "Earth is rather a dismal place, isn't it? Yes, heaven is far better, I'm aware; I created it, you don't have to tell me that! Now. I really must be going. You be a good little angel, and before you know it, we'll be back home safe and sound."

Bramley picked up a sleek briefcase from the table, and Zeke drifted from his shoulder to the counter. With a wave over his shoulder, Bramley strode out the front door. It clicked shut behind him, and the locks twirled into place. Out in the hallway, Bramley pinched the bridge of his nose as he waited for the elevator. He made a list in his head and quickly ran through it. His schedule had been growing more and more complicated by the day, and it was already January; he was falling behind. Try as he might, Bramley still had not managed to be in two places at once. After a moment's thought, he added that to the list.

The elevator doors pinged open. Bramley stepped inside and pushed the button for the parking garage. The elevator did not stop at any other floor on the way down. Bramley bypassed every waiting door with an impatient wave of his hand; he was far too busy to deal with the other residents' agendas. He strode quickly through the garage, digging his keys out of his pocket as he went. He clicked the unlock button. A shiny silver BMW flashed its lights in the back corner. Sliding happily into the car's plush front seat, Bramley tossed his briefcase and keys onto the seat next to him. He only carried the keys for appearances' sake; they were never actually put to use. He patted the dashboard lovingly.

The engine purred.

Sunlight glinted off the windshield as the BMW sped out of the parking garage and onto a quiet side street--as much as Bramley reveled in the chaos spiraling throughout the city, he did not enjoy driving in it. He fumbled around for his sunglasses and slipped them on. Warm sunny weather? In early January?

"Not good," Bramley muttered to himself. He veered around a corner. "Not good at all…"

A tall office building loomed on his right. Bramley swung into the driveway leading to a small car park, left his car in a back corner, and strode through the front doors unobstructed.

Thomas Landsing sat up with a start as the phone on his desk rang loudly. Wincing, he answered it with a groggy, "Hullo?" and wiped a small puddle of drool from the desk with his sleeve.

"Tom. Where the hell are you?" the voice on the phone demanded.

"What?"

"The meeting started ten minutes ago! Get up here. Now."

Exactly seven minutes later, Tom exited the elevator on the twelfth floor. He shuffled down the hallway and pushed open a heavy wooden door with his foot. Backing into the room, he then turned and met the eyes of the nine men--and one woman--seated at the conference table. Another man stood at the head of the table. He had been gesturing wildly at the screen behind him when Tom walked in. He now fixed his son with a penetrating gaze. Tom gulped.

"You're late," Mr. Landsing growled. Tom opened his mouth to apologize, but his father held up a hand and cut him off. "Well?" he said, "Go on."

Tom distributed the coffee he had brought in without a word. He slunk out of the room, and the presentation continued behind him. Inside the elevator, he stared blankly at his reflection in the mirrored surface. On the eighth floor, the doors slid open, and a tall man stepped in. Tom didn't pay too much attention to this man, but he did notice the tailored suit, expensive Italian shoes, and dark grey hair, oddly out of place for such a young, handsome face. The man turned his head slightly, winked a startlingly blue eye at Tom, and then exited the elevator on the third floor.

By the time Tom made it back to his desk on the second floor, an unarticulated thought had begun to form in his tired brain. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but something about the man had left him deeply unsettled.

For the next few hours, Tom stared mindlessly at his computer screen, eyes sliding across lines of text but never really retaining any of the information. At 12:30, he got up from his desk and shuffled to the small break room down the hall. He poured himself a cup of lukewarm coffee and drank it as quickly as he could; it almost tasted as though someone had put dirt in the coffee maker instead of ground coffee, but Tom needed the caffeine. Tossing back the last few drops, he pulled a face and set the mug down on the counter.

"I hate my job," he muttered. "Jesus Christ I hate my job." Tom wasn't even sure why he was here. He knew how he came to be here, but the why was a different story entirely. "Maybe there isn't a why," he said aloud. Tom didn't seem to mind talking to the empty break room.

His father, the great Harry Landsing, had a reputation for being one of the most ruthless investigative reporters in London. Tom wasn't even entirely sure what his father did all day, but he was quite certain that it couldn't be anything good. Even still, when Harry Landsing gets you a job, no matter how much you'd rather be doing absolutely anything else on the planet, no matter how deeply you loathed journalism, you take it. Especially if you were a poor twenty-two year old with no other career prospects and no ambition to speak of.

Tom poured himself another cup of the questionable coffee. "I don't even like journalism," he said, sulking. He realized that he was acting like a petulant child, but he was so completely dissatisfied with his current surroundings that he no longer cared. Through the window in the break room, he could see rows of cubicles, behind the walls of which countless other "journalists" sat bent over noisy, outdated keyboards and peered at blinking computer screens. Tom didn't know what everyone else with their time, but he rarely did anything productive. He justified this through simple facts. His wages were so slim that he wondered why he was paid at all. And his assignments were the sort one would assign to a monkey. Regardless of what his job title was on paper, Tom knew that he was an errand boy. He fetched other people's coffee, for Christ's sake.

"Decent coffee," he mumbled into the mud-looking substance in his mug.

Unfortunately for Tom, his complaints were cut short when the floor underneath him wrenched sideways, suddenly, violently. He dropped his mug, and it shattered at his feet as he brought up his hands to shield his ears from the deafening boom that shook the building.

It seemed there had been an explosion upstairs.