It is good to be alive.

  This is the line that tethers Peter to the moment. The life preserver, the only mooring his consciousness has to his life. When the line surfaces in his mind, it tugs his subjective experience up to the surface with it, briefly, to periscope around at his new surroundings, only to submerge again a second, a minute, an hour later. The memories, the context briefly preceding that line, they stick with him sometimes. It’s the closest he comes to a consistent internal timeline these days. These days being the only days, really. Everything before “these days” is just yawning emptiness, a void that feeble half-images sometimes drift from.

  He surfaces briefly, at dawn. He is driving a car. The sunrise on the road ahead is beautiful. He has a drink from the gas station, a diet soda, and it is cold and refreshing. A nice song is on the radio. Somewhere behind him, muffled by a bulletproof partition, one of the other Apostles is humming.

  It is good to be alive, he thinks, then, and sips, and goes back under.

  He thinks it again, later, watching Blessed Above heal another sick man. The man, Peter doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, he wasn’t present for that part, it had slicked away from his memory like nearly everything does these days, but the man is wretched and sad on the floor. Blessed Above, his Santa-Claus (who?) face alight with one of his brilliant smiles, touches the man on the head. The man pauses, lurches, gulps. The cloudiness in the man’s eyes lifts. He pulls himself to his feet, stares down at his legs in disbelief. The man’s sister (wife, probably? why assume sister?) bursts into sobs, embraces the man. Blessed Above laughs, hearty.

  It is good to be alive, he thinks, eyes dewy.

  He sits across a long table from Bouchard. Other Apostles sit around the table with him, some paying attention, others clearly submerged in their own fogs. Bouchard, he’s a hard man, a drill instructor (mental fumble over the word drill, picturing a power tool, knowing that makes no sense). He scowls as he talks about the Girl, and whoever this girl is, she’s an enemy, and Bouchard acts strong but he’s scared of her. He mentions something about eyewitness sightings, about casualties, about driving only at night from now on.

  He explains that Blessed Above needs his Apostles to be stronger. He explains that they came here, to this city, because something about it makes people like the Apostles stronger. He explains that they need to eat (cartoon mental image of a big pot, a snarky rabbit relaxing inside while cannibals dice vegetables into the water) heretics, that taking their energy for Blessed Above will make them stronger. Will make their abilities better.

  This is exciting. Like a scavenger hunt (“this is the best birthday ever, Pete”). He likes using his gifts, likes the thrilling fights with the heretics, even if sometimes he doesn’t win, and they get away, or they shock or burn or punch him.

  It is good to be alive, he thinks, raring to get started.

  A ray of green light scythes through the Apostle’s face, as he cowers next to him, behind the dumpster. It makes Peter afraid. Before the Apostle (don’t know his name, wasn’t present for when he must have learned it) slumps over, Peter glimpses the inside of the Apostle’s brain. His head has been sliced cleanly in two, and the insides: sinuses and tongue and grey matter, glitter greenly in the night before falling out of view.

  Peter draws energy from the huge battery strapped to his back, muscle memory so much less foggy than his actual memory, draws the lightning inside, transforms it into force, puts the force in his feet, throws himself away. He catapults through the night air, and briefly, below, he catches a glimpse: green light and red liquid and screams. A small, feral form, clad in all black, darts from Apostle to Apostle, footsoldier to footsoldier, only pausing for just a moment at each in the dizzy melee (slo-mo footage on a tv in a classroom, a hornet, systematically executing honeybees).

  He lands. The woman (the Girl?) puts her hand through another Apostle’s midsection, punches through her torso, effortless, waving guts and bone away like she was dismissing a puff of smoke. The Apostle screams, a woman he knows he knows but does not know. The Girl (it must be, Bouchard, he was scared of her), glances up at Peter. Her face is missing. No. She is wearing a black hood, and beneath it, some sort of mask covers her entire face. There are no eye holes, no mouth, just a featureless green slab of fabric.

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  Peter knows he needs to get stronger, for Blessed. He wants to run but that is not allowed. His limbs move on their own (not muscle memory--something much worse) and he’s hurtling toward her. More energy from the battery, turned into heat this time, thrown out in a jet toward her. So hot, he did well, he converted efficiently. The asphalt where the Girl had been standing a moment ago is blasted, scorched, almost glassed with the intensity of it.

  The Girl is far away. She dodged before he’d even begun thinking of attacking. She’s across the highway, now, tearing a door from one of their downed cars, sending it shrieking through the night, wrenching an approaching SUV in half. Men spill out from the car, start lobbing gas grenades. Bouchard is with them, masked, crouched on the pavement with his hand raised, glowing with the nauseating gold light only he knows how to make. The Girl steps back, hisses (“be gentle, Peter, you can’t tug her tail like that”), flings herself into the woods.

  A few moments pass, and the force compelling him to pursue her drops away. He has control of his own body again. His heart slams in his ears. She could have turned and killed him, but she didn’t.

  It is good to be alive, Peter reminds himself, trying to memorize the smell of the air, the lights on the road. Reminding himself, always, to be grateful.

  He goes dark, awakens again: he’s bursting out of the back gate, sprinting into the garden. His legs pump beneath him, burning, his chest heaves. He reaches the fence and is about to spring over it, about to use the little eddies of energy still lingering in his depleted Aura to jump, when he locks up. His body freezes mid-stride, and he lands, hard, on his face. The grass is cool and dewy.

  Minutes pass. Tears flow from his unblinking eyes, itching his cheeks. He is unsure why exactly he’s crying. He grows short of breath, unable to inhale.

  Footsteps approach from behind, soft, slow. A fatherly voice speaks.

  “Where were you off to, just then?”

  Peter can’t answer.

  “Oh, of course, how silly of me.”

  Peter is released, from the neck up. He gulps in breath, so sharp and hard that his throat catches (“it’s okay, Pete, we’ll get through this. I got through it. It’s not a death sentence.”) and he feels ashamed.

  “I was- I was running, Blessed Above,” Peter croaks.

  “Well that’s obvious enough,” Phoenix chuckles. “But where were you running to? I don’t expect you have pressing business in Saint Paul all of a sudden?”

  “No.” Peter struggles to remember. The reason for his flight is hidden, obscured by the black void in between vignettes. “I don’t know.”

  “Why are you crying, son?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Are you unhappy here?”

  “No, Blessed,” Peter lies.

  A hand plucks him from the floor, sets him on his feet. The invisible hold on his limbs is released. Phoenix Above wraps him in a tight hug, hard enough to make his ribs creak. It is deeply uncomfortable.

  “Tell me what’s wrong, son. Or I’ll start to feel cross.”

  “I think,” Peter’s voice catches. “I think I miss someone?”

  “Who would that be?”

  “I don’t know,” Peter sobs. It’s a sound of defeat. “I don’t know.”

  “Hey. There, there.” Phoenix’s hand is a mallet on Peter’s back. “You have nothing to despair for, anymore. All of the pain, that’s in the past, and I’ve taken that away.”

  “Right,” he blubbers. “You’re right.”

  “Remember always to be grateful. What is it I tell you to say?”

  Peter, for once, remembers something effortlessly. “It is good to be alive.”

  Phoenix pulls away, grabs Peter by the shoulders, stares him in the eye. Peter notes, absently, that Phoenix’s eyes are bloodshot (“wow, pull another all-nighter, hun?”).

  “And why, son, are you alive?”

  “Because of you,” Peter says. Gratitude, unbidden, wells in him. “Because you willed it.”

  “That’s right.” Phoenix smiles, a doting grandfather, a preening conqueror. “You will forget so much more, my boy, but never forget that.”

  Peter isn’t sure he could even if he tried.