Rook didn't know when the darkness came, or why. He'd been in Heaven, with its Angels and God and the marble and the blue, blue sky. And then he wasn't. And when he wasn't, well, he wasn't anything. Like he was asleep, or dead, properly, who knew? Not him.

And when the lights came on again, and with them his mind, he was in another place, a quiet place, pale blue, but dimly lit. The air felt cool and perhaps, clammy. And for a minute or two he stared at the pale blue wall, noticing small marks and imperfections, and then memories started up. He was, like, alive again. Or something.

It was all too strange. He didn't understand.

Then, quite abruptly, he recovered sensation. He felt things again. Like his hands resting on something hard, smooth and warm. And held there by straps. And there were other straps, across his chest, his thighs, maybe his ankles. He could feel pressure in all those places. And something was holding his head in place. He couldn't move it.

And then came a wave of something like pins and needles. It was excruciating, especially in his feet, and it took a good minute or two to start to ebb away. He was sweating by then, and very glad when it was over.

He stared at the pale blue wall. This wasn't the room he'd been in before, with Doctor Lisa Berryman. The feel of the chair was different. Or at least, he thought it was different. It was hard to be sure.

He tried to move despite the restraints. He felt stiff and uncomfortable. There was an itch between his shoulder blades, and he wriggled in the chair to try and rub that spot against the chairback.

Suddenly a red light started pulsing somewhere behind him and something gave a heavy little click nearby and something else whirred softly for a few seconds.

The red light continued to pulse, on for a couple of seconds, off for a couple of seconds. The red light dramatized the crack in the wall, making it dark and vaguely threatening, like a bolt of black lightning or something. There was a chip of paint missing, about the size of a fingernail, and just about dead center in the field of view. Maintenance should be informed, he thought.

Rook wondered where this room was located, and who had placed him here. What was going on? He'd been in Heaven, right? But he didn't seem to be dead. If you were dead did you have itchy spots in the middle of your back? When he'd been in Heaven he'd worn a polychromatic robe. But here he had his own clothes on, or some of them.

Then he heard a door open behind him and slam. He tried to turn his head to see who had just entered, but his head was way too tightly secured for that.

"Damn, what the fuck happened?" said a young male voice behind him. The red light stopped flashing. He heard the sound of a softouch keyboard, a quiet patter-spat-patter.

And everything went away again. Blackness for a few seconds and then nothing.

And then he came to in another space, or place, or God knew what, except that God, the gigantic angry God of the pristine, but terrifying Heaven, was there to keep him company.

A quick glance to left and right told him it was Heaven again. But now it was night time. There were great oil lamps blazing nearby, with Angels standing guard with spears and shields. Heaven Militant was the only way to think of this place. A soft. cool breeze wafted past and disturbed the flames of the great lamps and their reflected light shimmered on the marble walls.

"Welcome, my son," purred the Lord, now sitting right beside Rook in a huge, but simple chair made of some dark wood.

There was incense burning somewhere nearby, a spicy kind, sweetening the air.

"Why is God so huge?" Rook blurted out loud, without actually meaning to. He heard himself suck in a breath. What was his problem? Had he forgotten the sliding marble floors? The fire below, the hideous things?

But God was in a genial mood, and his response was a mild basso rumble.

"Because I am your Lord and Master, child, that is why."

"Oh, right, of course."

Phew, that'd been close.

Except, wait a second. Where had he been just before this? He had a memory. Blue wall. The long crack . The chip in the blue paint. A flashing red light.. A voice that was definitely earthly, human, male, and nothing to do with Heaven.

Wait a moment. How stupid was he supposed to be?

Then God spoke again. The voice was huge, but throttled back, like some great cathedral organ playing softly in the dark. It was hard not to listen. Not to think that this was God the Father, God the Lord of Hosts, God the Jehovah of the Old Testament.

"You are troubled, my child. You have many questions. "

Damned right he did. And anger boiled to the top of his thoughts and he spoke without thinking, without control.

"This is bullshit. This is just some kind of illusion. I'm in a hospital. I don't know where all this really is."

Whoops, he'd kind of burned his bridges. What the hell was going on? Why did he keep saying these things? Did he want to end up tossed into the fire?

But, God was ready for him. The huge voice purred smoothly. "Child, thou art confused. It is an aspect of the process of death. There are flashbacks. You think you are still in hospital. It is just your brain emptying itself, before the moment when you transcended and rose into Heaven."

Uh oh. Was that right? Was God on the level? Then he really was dead, and all this was really happening? He struggled to remember stuff. Like Doctor Berryman's chair, her cool voice adding data to his file. That was hospital?

The long dark crack in the paint. The missing chip. The red light flashing.

It felt like his head was spinning. God let him alone for a long minute or so, before speaking again in that superhumanly warm purr.

"Child, I must help you. The jewel of thy soul is clouded by corruption."

"What?" Hey, God, I'm not one of them! he wanted to say. Compared to the legacy cops he was clean. In fact compared to anyone he was clean. He'd always steered clear of anything like that. But this time he managed to throttle back his indignation.

God realized that there'd been miscommunication. "It is not corruption of the gross material sort, my son. Thou art clean in that respect. However, I can feel the presence in you of the demon. Thou art possessed by it."

"Demon?"

"A thing made by my enemy. A fragment of evil, designed to corrupt men's minds and enslave them."

What? Had he heard that correctly? Enslaved by a demon?

"Believe, child, demons are real."

"Well, if you say so."

What was all this about? Who was doing this? Why? How could this really be God? Why would God have a physical shape like this? The questions wouldn't go away.

"Child, believe." God sounded a mite put out at being doubted. "I am your Lord God. Your spirit sits in my hand. My heart tells me you belong here, in Heaven, among the chosen and the saved. But I see evidence to the contrary, and possession by a demon can lead even a good spirit astray."

"Demon?"

"Foul things of mine enemy, the serpent. They are like unto worms and other vermin, creeping into the hearts of men. And once nested deep they work their evil, turning men's thoughts to carnality and weakness."

What the hell was all this about? Demons?

"Yeah?" he said.

"Thou hast been enslaved by a succuba."

A what?

And suddenly in his mind there bloomed an image of Plesur, with the long blonde hair, the big blue eyes, the small turned up nose, the immense, sexy lips, except....

Except that there was something a little off. She turned towards him, wearing a tight fitting scrap of red material that might have been a dress, except that it was so insubstantial. Her smile was the familiar, sexy grin, but the turn of her nose was just a little different. The cast of the eyes was wrong too, a subtle thing, but he caught it right away. There was more seductress, less innocence in that gaze than in Plesur's. Strange. It was both Plesur, and Not-Plesur at the same time.

But his thoughts scattered before a sudden boom from God's mighty voice.

"This is the thing that possesses thou. See its true nature!"

And the almost Plesur looked at him and in her eyes was nothing but come hither, and it was obviously time for her to help man. And she moved, and every sway of her hips, every glance from those luminous eyes seemed to explode in his brain, and he knew he had hardened, for this was woman incarnate and the sexual message was irresistible, and when she glanced down and then looked in his eyes and smiled he felt as if something was melting inside him. In her look now there was an unmistakeable sense of satisfaction. Like any other heterosexual man he had responded to her in the natural way, exactly as she expected.

And she danced and her hips moved in the rhythmn of the earth, and her breasts swung back and forth and with them went his gaze and he knew his mouth was dry and his mind was overwhelmed.

"See, child, thou art clay in its hands. But it is not what it appears to be."

And now the pretty features began to morph, sliding, slipping into a harsh angular pattern, as if this pleasure model had aged thirty years in a few seconds, but it didn't stop there. The jaw began to protrude, the teeth turning into tusks and fangs, the face collapsing back into something like an antique monkey. The lips remained, and now a thick tongue licked them and drool spilled from the grinning mouth Rook turned his head away, closed his eyes, but the image remained. And he realized that it wasn't something he was seeing, but something that was being fed directly into his brain.

God could do that, couldn't he?

But so could Doctor Lisa Berryman.

And now the grotesque became peculiarly horrifying, for the pleasure model began to strip lasciviously. First baring her breasts for a moment, then covering them with an arm, while she wobbled and wiggled in place. One hand pulled down her skirt, she swayed around, bent over a little and shook her perfect derriere while her dress came halfway down those smooth curves. Then she was facing forward again, and the dissonance between her superripe body and the hideous monkey features broke like a wave on rocks in his brain and Rook shivered with disgust.

And when the tiny scrap of fabric had been artfully removed, the creature began to pump its belly and crotch towards him while summoning him with crooked fingers and a horrible leer.

Rook would've closed his eyes, but the image wasn't coming through his optic nerve, so that would be pointless. It was so realistic, so lifelike, it was horribly compelling.

"Please, stop it.," he said, whether to God or no one in particular was unclear.

And thankfully the image did fade, growing faint and then evaporating completely.

God laid a finger the size of a cucumber on Rook's shoulder. It felt real, and warm, and heavy. How could God not be real?

"That creature has dug deep into your soul, my child," said God, his huge voice throttled down to a rumble. "With brazen carnality it works its spell. You are in thrall to the thing. To save your soul you must remove it from your mind, root and branch."

Root and branch? What did that mean?

"This is overkill," muttered Rook. "She's just a kid," he said aloud.

There was a chilly silence. God was not pleased.

"Child, the thing is not human. Canst thou not grasp this?"

That again. And now from God, of all, ur, people. Was God people? Wasn't there that line about God creating Man in his own image and so on? It spurred Rook to object.

"Just a moment, like, it says that you, ur, Lord, you created us in your own image, right?"

"Child thou art the fruit of the labor of my own hands."

"There you go, yeah, right. And, like, Plesur, she's a kind of manufactured person, made from human genes, right?"

"Abomination, child. 'Tis unclean in My Sight."

"Hold on, uh, Lord. Just let me think this through, okay?"

Again the ominous, enormous silence. Rook knew he was pushing it, that ordinary people didn't usually talk to the Lord God this way, but he couldn't help trying to make this point. Maybe it would be important for all the pleasure models, of either sex, that were out there.

"If you made us, and we made them, then haven't you, indirectly, made them too?"

"What do you mean, child?" God was sounding close to an eruption.

"Well, these pleasure models. They're human beings really, but with some of their genes, uh, modified. So they aren't smarter than us, or anything really embarrassing, right?"

"Child, thou art lost. These things are the Serpent's work, canst thou not see that? Unclean, abomination, they must be destroyed."

Rook squeezed his eyes shut. The visual image of the giant God, the cool, clear, marble, the great oil lamps, the Angels holding their spears and shields, the dark sky above with stars glittering in their millions-- it all stayed in his mind. Eyes open or shut, it didn't matter.

He knew then. There couldn't be any doubt. They were playing him, nothing more. They had a keyboard or something that was linked right into his head. This was all virt, like some game.

"The demon must be extirpated!" God was back to the usual boom.

Two could play, Rook thought. "Okay, why don't you, uh, you know, give her a heart attack, or a brain aneurism? She'd be dead with a snap of your fingers."

Once again the heavy silence fell, and lingered. Rook understood that it was intended to frighten him. Rook decided he was past being frightened by this freak show, however they were doing it.

"You must help me, child," said God, in a much more reasonable tone.

"How?" murmured Rook, playing along.

"Think, child. Where would it be hiding now?"

Hiding? What was this? What was all this about?

"Come child, you must know. The thing must be destroyed."

Plesur? Destroyed?

"How can a child be a demon?" said Rook suddenly. That sudden speaking out was weird too. Like some part of his brain would load up and then fire off without his giving the orders.

"It is not a child," said God in an icey tone of voice. "It was never a child. It is a monster. It has taken a grip on your soul. I must cleanse you of it with the Holy Fire."

Plesur was a monster?

Rook rebelled. He knew Plesur. A kid with a wild, girlish laugh, trying to tickle him in his house. A kid with sudden seriousness in her eyes as she struggled to hold the wounded Oakes upright on the street in lower Manhattan.

She was not a monster. God, whoever, or whatever God might be, would know that little Plesur was a being in His or Her universe that deserved all the divine love and care that any other being deserved. Plesur might have come out of a test tube, but she was still human, and any decent God worthy of that august title, would know it.

"Where is the thing, child. Tell me now!"

And Rook laughed. He had to. Because he had no idea where she was.

"How should I know that? You know where I left her. If she isn't there, in Sangacha's apartment, then she could be anywhere, anywhere at all."

"Child, thou canst not lie to Me, I am Thy Lord God."

And something in Rook's head snapped, or evaporated. Either way he felt free now, without any restraints. They were going to kill him anyway, why play their games any more?

"But I'm not lying. You are, whoever you are." And now Rook did laugh, at the preposterousness of this whole mad charade.

"You dare to laugh in my presence?" the Lord snarled and there was genuine rage in that enormous voice. This was the Lord of Hosts, who could summon his Angels to hurl sinners down to Hell whenever he felt like it. But Rook didn't care. This was virt, nothing more.

"Oh, fuck you. I know this is just a game you're running in my head. I even remember that face now. You're that southern fuck that came in while they were digging around in my memories. You don't fool me with this shit."

God was silent now. The temperature in Heaven had fallen about five hundred degrees.

"You're not God. God isn't some huge guy with a thunderous voice. God doesn't throw decent people into fires. I mean, I don't know much about God, never was religious, but this virt you're running on me, it doesn't do it. Got that?"

God drew back, and disappeared. Just like that. Pop. Gone, like a bubble that had burst.

Heaven was still there. The militant Angels with their spears, the oil lamps, the smell of incense. At any moment, Rook expected the marble floor to roll back and reveal the hellish horror underneath.

And then -- snap-- everything went black.