Fryga Olsen jolts to wakefulness at the sound of a thunderous explosion. Head aching, she unfastens her seatbelt and forces the driver's side door open. Stumbling out, she breathes in a lungful of dust and doubles over. She coughs violently and tries to get her bearings. An apartment building explodes, sending glass and debris flying in every direction. The smell of burning rubber fills her nostrils. Through watery eyes, she sees the bodies slumped in the van.

It all comes back to her: The boat, the bridge, the bodies. The invasion, the hellspurs. Maria, Amelia, Emily and Elijah. She goes to the van's side door and pulls on the handle. It doesn't budge. She knocks on the glass.

"Wake up," she grumbles.

"Hey, do you need help?" a cautious bass voice asks.

Fryga spins around, hellfire bubbling under her skin. A handsome black man and a young Asian kid stand behind her, hands raised. They are covered in soot. The boy looks harmless, scared. The man has a shotgun slung over his shoulder by a strap. Behind them are others, beat down and tired.

"Stay the fuck back," Fryga growls.

"We just want to help, lady."

"You heard me." Spikes begin to break the surface of her skin, tiny barbs meant to scare them away. She can't afford to fully shift with nowhere to rest afterwards.

"Careful. This one is feisty." This time the voice is that of a southern gentlewoman.

"Your fucking possessed! Stay back, you might be contagious." One of the strangers chuckled.

"Look, there's safety in numbers and we can all use safe harbor."

An explosion rocks the street and half the block is lost in a shower of glass and stone. They all take cover as an abrasive cloud blows past, cutting and biting as it envelopes them. Fryga squeezes her eyes closed against the scraping cloud, but listens for any sound of the strangers trying to get to her van and its cargo.

They come out from cover as the cloud thins, but Fryga is distracted by a new sound. The sound of yelling. She turns to the van where silhouettes move behind dust-caked windows.

"Daddy, wake-up!"

"Elijah! Elijah!"

"Daddy," Fryga whispers as she turns to the van door, but she's not thinking about the desperate father whose boat saved her life. She thinks of the father who was never there for her, who beat her mom, whose grave she danced on. She tugs on the handle and the door groans, but doesn't budge. "Help."

Despite having their own wounded, the group of strangers don't hesitate to lend a hand. The woman with them, beautiful and brown, is the one who suggests going in through the rear door. They carefully remove the supplies, without giving them a second glance. Fryga wonders if they're just genuinely good people.

I've run into too many since the end of the world... makes my skin crawl.

"He's not breathing," Emily shouts, snapping Fryga out of her musings.

"Daddy!"

Maria jerks awake, her head and hair slick with blood and the glass from the windshield. Part of Fryga wants to go to her, the other still holds a grudge and knows you can't trust a cop.

"Do any of you know first aid?" she asks.

"I do," the brown beauty and the guy with the pistol says in tandem.

"Good. Can we move him?"

"We need to try," says the possessed guy. "The fighting is spreading this way."

They lower the back seat and carefully pull Elijah out and onto the asphalt. Emily kneels beside him, gripping his hand. Everyone except the two with medical experience gives them space. Fryga looks over their little group, better to look at anything else rather than stare at the piece of rebar sticking out of Elijah's chest. It isn't the kind of shit you just walk away from.

A jittery man with a gross cough. An injured man with tattoos. The man with the ghost riding his ass. The black guy with the nice ass, cutting Elijah's shirt off with a knife. The black girl with the nice ass who stinks like an animus. The kid. A strange group if there ever was one, but her own group was no better.

"We'll have to get moving soon if we want to stay ahead of the demon army," says the man who seems to be the leader.

His eyes turn yellow. "We're picking up strays if you people want to tag along."

"I'm not the one in charge," Fryga responds.

Maria finally gets the passenger door open and stumbles out. Fryga wrestles with the urge to go to her side, remembering her four years behind bars.

Fuck it. We're all going to die anyway.

She goes around Elijah and the group working hard to resuscitate him, and grabs Maria.

"You okay?"

"I didn't think you cared."

"I don't. Now stay still and let me look at you."

They lock eyes and Fryga admits to herself that she's fallen for Maria Duran for the second time. Despite it leaving a sour taste in her mouth, she doesn't fight it. She examines Maria, careful not to make the gash in her forehead any worse. Maria continues to stare at her, a goofy expression spreading across her face.

"I told you to stop looking at me like that."

Fryga spots Amelia, still seated in the back row of the van and staring out at her dead father. Emily begins to cry and tears well up in Maria's eyes.

Shit.

Fryga looks away from the girl and the Demi-Angel she loves. The guy with the ghost catches her attention. He gestures uptown, away from the fighting and the lost city.

"I think that guy is a hunter," she says.

Maria wipes her eyes and looks to see who Fryga is referring to. The pair walk around the grieving widow and join the others.

"Tenemus Lineam." Maria says the words and the man salutes.

"Malcolm Aldrige, Brooklyn."

"Maria Duran, also Brooklyn."

"I'm shocked you people don't know each other." Fryga can't help herself.

"The name sounds familiar," the Other Malcolm remarks.

Fryga cringes and shakes her head. Earthbound spirits were rarely friendly or benevolent.

"We're trying to leave the city on foot which means heading Upstate," Malcolm says as distant explosions demolish upper Manhattan and South Bronx. "You people are welcome to travel with us."

Fryga looks to Maria. She'd meant to make a run for it on her own, then she saw something in Amelia and found Maria in a shopping cart. Something told her to stay with Elijah and, as always, Fryga followed her gut. Now that he's dead, she doesn't quite know what to do.

"I think-" she begins.

"Amy, baby, stay back," Emily pleads. "You shouldn't see this."

She'll see worse soon enough...

Amelia takes slow tentative steps towards her parents, each feeling like a needle jab to Fryga's heart. Everyone watches, no one moves to stop her. As tears stream down her face, Amy's steps falter. It's the teenager who finally goes to her, blocking her way just before she can get a clear view of what's left of Elijah. She looks up to meet his eyes and time freezes.

...

The air between them burns like the heart of the sun, churning superheated gasses.

Wings erupt from Maria's back, silver and light in a peacock flourish that ruins the back of her shirt.

A blue halo appears over the head of the man kneeling beside Elijah's corpse, wisps of blue energy dance from his fingertips and into the dead man's chest.

A sound like a chorus of soprano voices surrounds them.

...

Amy and the boy take each other's hand and divine energy washes over the car cluttered street. Dust swirls around them but doesn't enter their bubble of light. Fryga watches in awe as dove wings tear through the back of Amy's hoodie. A double set destroys the boy's shirt. On his chest glows characters in angelic and demonic. She can't understand it, but Fryga can sense they are both a warning and invitation.

The gash across Maria's head closes, the bloodstains fading as if they were never there. She brims with so much light, Fryga can feel it from a foot away.

"The Heaven Sent," Maria whispers, staring at the two children.

For their part, they both seem lost in each other's eyes.

Elijah cries out as the man with the blue halo yanks the metal out of his chest. The light stitches the wound closed, leaving the skin as good as new. Emily throws her arms around him and the two embrace. Fryga wipes an angry tear from her eyes, happy that the man is alive.

The chorus dies and the strange fire is suddenly gone. Amy and the boy fall to the ground, holding hands. The only signs of their wings are the impressions baked into the asphalt. Fryga looks around at a loss for words.

The man with the tattoos drops to his knees and recites The Lord's Prayer, hands held up to the heavens. The animus and the demi-angel with the blue halo join Malcolm, Fryga, and Maria. Maria seems to be the only one not in shock.

"We're just going to act like that didn't just happen?" shouts the man with the shifty eyes. "Those kids had wings! That hispanic chick has wings!. This guy was dead! What the fuck is happening!" He backs away until he stumbles over a hunk of masonry and falls to the ground. Not bothering to get up, he merely stares at Emily and Elijah in a way Fryga does not like at all.

She decides to tell him exactly how much she dislikes it when Other Malcolm interrupts by asking the question that is on her mind.

"What are The Heaven Sent?"

"I don't know much, but I know they were a secret project worked on by rogue angels operating outside of the control of The Choirs. The Organization believed they were some kind of battery or power source."

"The Organization was right," confirms the man with the blue halo. "I was working on fumes, not even enough to close my own scrapes and scratches, but just now I... I brought a man back from the dead. His heart had stopped, he was gone and I saved him." The way he looks into Malcolm's eyes, it is clear there is something romantic between them. "Even having done that, I'm still brimming with the light."

"Okay... so the kid is a battery? How come she couldn't do that before?" Fryga watches Emily and Elijah cradle the unconscious children.

"Hawk never did anything like that before either," Malcolm confirms.

"Clearly they interacted with each other," Other Malcolm adds, making the whole situation even more weird.

"Oh my god," the wild eyed man shrieks.

Everyone turns to the man. His mouth agape, he points downtown.

"Is that a nuke?

Fryga follows his gesture and sees it. A ball of fire rising into the air. The clouds rush away. Heat and dust rolls up the street, shattering windows and throwing garbage into the air.

"Take cover!" Malcolm shouts.