In one ear, a commander’s voice barked orders; in the other ear, a quick, heavy beat overpowered a rap that flowed like a river with a heavy current. All of this was in sync with the soldier’s artillery shots, a cycle of gunshots that paused for a fraction of a second every dozen rounds or so—that’s how long it took him to stuff in the next cartridge. Tyson Scott couldn’t stand opera, but this was music to his ears.

The last cartridge went in and the last bullet fired, in time with the end of the rap and the commander’s orders. On the other side of the field, hundreds of dummies lay either supine or prostrate. Bullet holes riddled their heads, most of them perfect kill shots, along with some down their bodies and one right in the groin. Abbas fearlessly strolled onto the field and examined it with a smirk. Then he stomped on the dummy to press it deeper into the mud. Either bowing so low or staring into the sky with fearful expressions, the dummies looked like they were worshipping a god.

Soon, Tyson would become that god.

“Off the field, Hassan!” a lieutenant colonel hollered. “Scott still has two spare rounds!”

Abbas grinned at Tyson. “You saved some?”

An ivory-and-gold man—handsome enough to be a model but invisible to everyone but Abbas and Tyson—elbowed his god candidate good-naturedly. “He saved them just for you.”

“Aw, that’s sweet, Ty.”

Tyson rolled his eyes. Abbas and Balta could be a pain in the neck sometimes. At least his own angel remained demure, wings spread in six different directions like the universe’s largest, most horrifying flower; while Balta looked like he walked right out of a magazine, dark red buboes covered Tyson’s angel like rust or a plague. “Off the field, Hassan, or I really will shoot you.”

Abbas stuck out his tongue but obeyed. And since the lieutenant colonel was watching, Tyson flipped his artillery gun and whacked the side of Abbas’s head with the back end. “That’s for calling me Ty.”

Abbas rubbed the swelling area and scowled, but his dark gray eyes sparkled mischievously as he saluted and declared, “Sorry, Sergeant, it won’t happen again!”

It would definitely happen again.

Tyson switched the M240B for the more portable M11 and nodded at the old man organizing the drills. “We’re ready for the next round, Lieutenant Colonel.”

The dummies shivered and then righted themselves. Like zombies, they slid slowly across the mud while a new set emerged. There were only a couple dozen this time, but they all faced Abbas and Tyson, weapons ready—soldiers this time, not civilians. They still had duct tape patched over their old injuries, but if the soldiers were good with their shots, the bullets would tear through the tape cleanly.

Balta flew close circles around the rust-covered angel. “I love these drills. Don’t you love these drills, Muni? They work so well together.”

Muni’s voice bellowed to deaf ears; only Balta, Tyson, and Abbas could hear him. “Your play soldier is 20.2% slower than mine.”

“That’s ‘cause he’s thinking, Muni, dear.”

“What could a mere private be thinking about?”

“Only a little less than a sergeant.”

Abbas gave Tyson a pained smile. How awkward he looked when their angels gossiped about them and treated this all like a board game. Tyson didn’t feel awkward. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting Muni’s powerful voice fuel him.

He opened his eyes in time for the drill to begin.

He and Abbas cheated. They both unfurled their wings and flew to dodge the dummies’ plastic pellets. Their own metal bullets rang in their ears as they shot at the lieutenant colonel’s play soldiers, who spun and slid on the mud, the machines whirring to get a better angle. In one ear, the lieutenant colonel barked orders; in the other ear, foreign music provided a quick beat that matched the bullets. You’re as cautious as those pigeons in the park, huh? The value of “life” decided by somebody, somewhere—

Tyson thought of young men like Kira and Neo Kira. He didn’t agree with them, but he also understood them.

Abbas shot a dummy in the knee and ducked, letting Tyson leap over his back to finish it off.

For a moment, time froze. Tyson hovered almost sideways in the air, the M11 pointed at the dummy’s head. Another soldier had scribbled a terrorist’s name in red over the duct tape.

Tyson’s vision flashed red and blue with rage. The dummy soldier became a real soldier, shooting real bullets. Tyson killed him. He killed all of them. He and Abbas stood back-to-back as around them, Taliban war criminals lay on the ground either supine or prostate, like the dummy soldiers from the first round.

…

It was all over the news. Morning read the stories on his phone while taking the train. It was just like when Neo Kira first targeted god candidates, except this time, Mirai wore his costume, letting the other passengers take pictures and gossip. They only knew him as Venus’s maybe-boyfriend anyway.

He scrolled through killings in first and third-world countries alike as Venus and the General ravaged their would-be worshippers: Venus targeted so-called ugly people while the General killed dozens—maybe hundreds—of terrorists in the Middle East, carrying America’s war. Mirai had deduced that the General had been chosen by an Ophanim like Nasse, who flitted around the train car, cramping his style.

First, after some research, Mirai learned that shortly after the angels’ arrival, an America squadron stationed in Syria went berserk, resulting in not-so-friendly “friendly” fire but also a small victory for America. The General made the same mistake as Kira.

Ever since then, the American army had been functioning like an automaton, and Islamic terrorists kept dying by assassination or heart attack.

Nasse giggled. “Coincidence?”

Mirai glanced up at her, narrowing his eyes. I think not.

Then, he reached a news story that stood out: a suicide-murder in Uryu Armories’s main lab resulting in the deaths of both Uryu heirs, one who was already frozen in a vegetative state. The writer made it seem like the older child broke the machine preserving his little sister and then committed suicide. Mirai’s eyes widened. It looked like the work of a god candidate with Red Arrows—but who could have done it?

The General served America, making him Japan’s ally at least for now. Also, Uryu Armories provided the American army with almost a fourth of its weapons supply. It couldn’t be the General.

The Uryu family was exceptionally wealthy and good-looking. They exemplified the kind of world Venus wanted. It couldn’t be Venus.

Along with making weapons, Uryu Armories also invested in cryotherapy and pharmaceuticals in the hope of restoring the younger Uryu child. Neo Kira promoted science; at least, that’s what Mirai assumed, because Neo Kira gave heart attacks to people against science the way Kira had given heart attacks to criminals and Santa supposedly gave coal to bad children. No, it couldn’t be Neo Kira. Besides, the edgy god candidate with the equally edgy angel had been quiet lately. No recent heart attacks or other suspicious deaths could be attributed to him.

Maybe this is a coincidence, Mirai thought. After all, god candidates weren’t the only mentally deranged killers on the planet. Maybe this really was a suicide-murder like the tabloids claimed.

Even as he thought it, he leaned toward his gut feeling: this was the work of a god candidate. But who? And why?

The only reason he could think of was that the Uryu heir was Neo Kira.

And then it all made sense.

…

Alone in his barracks, Tyson leaned back on the old metal chair the army provided and spun his new ring on the steel desk. The sound of metal on metal echoed, amplified by the concrete walls. It grated his nerves, almost as much as Neo Kira had. At first, Tyson could tolerate the arrogant rich kid—Neo Kira could only be a rich brat; even with the mask, Tyson knew Neo Kira looked at people like he wanted to spit on them. Tyson thought the other god candidate wasted his White Arrows killing people who didn’t matter, but as long as he wasn’t an enemy of the state…

And then Neo Kira murdered Tyson’s father.

Old Pops Scott was obese, alcoholic, and all kinds of nasty, but still. He attended an anti-vaccine protest, drawing Neo Kira’s attention, but still. He chortled as he dumped Tylenol into the stew after Tyson lost his football scholarship three and a half years ago due to academic integrity issues, the ugly laughter wet with phlegm as he tried to “spare both their dignities” but only ended up sending both of them to the hospital and incurring a massive debt that Tyson’s military service had only just paid off a few months ago. But. Still.

Tyson couldn’t let Neo Kira get away with murdering his father, no matter how depraved the old man had been. Right after he sent Abbas to eliminate the other god candidate, he realized, Old Pops Scott could have died from a natural heart attack.

If Tyson had the same kind of justice as the new L, he would have gone after Abbas to stop him. But that was too much effort, and besides, they could all benefit from Neo Kira’s death. The General let his Soldier run amuck.

The next morning, the gray-eyed soldier returned with an odd gift.

“A trophy,” Tyson had remarked, “like those Indians who chopped off their enemies’ heads.”

“A gift,” Abbas corrected him. “And you got the wrong kind of Indian. And I’m Pakistani.”

Tyson ignored him, picking up the ring. “This is far prettier than Neo Kira’s ugly head.”

“He was actually quite handsome.”

“A ring is also more convenient than a head. Where would I keep a severed head?”

“On our shelf? Or you could donate it to the dining hall back home; the cadets would love it.”

“No, I’d keep it on my floor as a footstool. Or on your pillow to keep you company, Hassan. You could whisper pretty nothings to it like you and Balta already do with each other, and I’ll be damned when it whispers back.”

Abbas laughed softly, reaching out but pausing when Tyson glared at him. His smile didn’t waver as he said, “We’re both already damned. Besides, like you said, I have Balta; now you have your ring to talk to. Not like it talks back, though.”

But it does. Tyson read the engraving. Better to reign in Hell. And on the inside: Better still to reign in Heaven.

A week later, he continued to repeat it in his mind like a mantra as the ring spun on the steel desk. Better still to reign in Heaven. Better still to reign. Better still… It sounded even louder without Abbas’s god-awful cheery voice twittering over it. Abbas was out training, with Balta to act as cheerleader. Angels chose their god candidates well, from what Tyson knew. Of course a flirtatious angel would choose someone like Abbas Hassan. And Meyza, with her bloody eye sockets, would choose an edgelord teenager like Kanade Uryu, who called himself Neo Kira. And Muni, Angel of Destruction, had chosen him.

Tyson slapped his hand over the ring to silence it. Small knife marks nicked his right wrist, forming tallies that went all the way around and up his arm, usually covered by his army jacket. A thousand paper cuts. One for each day since he recovered from his father’s pathetic attempt at a suicide-murder and had to start paying off the hospital bill, which was a far worse robbery than anything he’d witnessed since joining the army. He also redid them as they faded. And on the thousandth day, September 23, with his debt paid off, Tyson took the knife and viciously slashed across his wrist and then his arm. He closed his eyes, remembering the cold blade and peeling skin from the tip of his middle finger to the crook of his elbow. The two deep slashes formed a bleeding cross over the smaller cuts. But before he could bleed out, an ivory-and-gold monster covered in buboes like scars appeared before him.

The two slashes didn’t even leave a scar, though the thousand smaller cuts remained.

Muni looked at him. Unlike Balta, he rarely spoke. It suited Tyson fine, because Tyson also didn’t like to talk. But now, with the Uryu heirs’ funeral announced—Uryu Armories supplied a good portion of the U.S. army’s weapons, and Tyson wouldn’t have sent Abbas if he had known; Abbas was either too obedient or too stupid, maybe both—he couldn’t stop wondering.

“Why would a rich kid in a rich country try to kill himself?”

Muni didn’t answer.

Tyson continued, “He’s rich, smart, and handsome. He had everything. And he lived in a country where even if he didn’t have everything, he’d still have a comfortable life.”

Muni still didn’t answer, but his mouth quirked up in a half smile, one of his buboes popping and scarring his sharp jaw.

Tyson rambled, feeling as dumb as Abbas. “And even though Old Pops Scott was buck poor and I had a fucking crippling debt, I’m not the worst off. And even the sad morons living in a war zone in the mercy of future gods who hate them aren’t the worst off.”

Muni finally spoke. “None of them are god candidates.”

“And—wait, what?” Muni gazed evenly at Tyson, not bothering to repeat himself. “But they’re more desperate.”

Muni raised a hairless eyebrow.

Tyson swallowed. “What about the absolute poor? People who actually have nothing? The sad folks who truly need the opportunity—”

“What makes you think we choose someone based on something so human like need? Angels don’t have compassion, soldier boy. The day an Ophanim feels emotion for a human is the day that Ophanim transcends to become God.”

“God has no pity,” Tyson spat.

“God is human too. He has as much empathy as one of your kind.”

“So none.”

Muni smirked. “But just now, you believed power should be given to those without power, hope to those without hope.”

Tyson gritted his teeth, trying not to show his embarrassment. He put on Kanade Uryu’s platinum ring, which soothed him. Calmer now, he asked, “So how does an angel choose the next God?”

Muni raised three long white fingers. “First, the candidate must be a human person. What constitutes a human person depends on the current god.”

“So if they’re racist…” Tyson remembered the little Black girl that Neo Kira killed in China on Halloween. “This one isn’t racist at least.”

“Race is a more recent construct. The old god is, as you say, colorblind. But humans have looked different in past eras, and you lot are far uglier now, despite the old god’s attempts at making you look decent.”

Tyson muttered, “I liked it better when you didn’t talk so much.”

“I’m not done. Second, the candidate must attempt suicide 99 human days before God retires.”

Tyson had counted a thousand days to pay off his debt. Being God must be his destiny. And Abbas was along for the ride because every general needs soldiers. Poor Private Jimmy Creek, who had committed suicide on September 22, had been unlucky.

Or maybe poor Private Creek had been very lucky, since he had escaped becoming a shinigami.

“And lastly,” Muni went on, “the candidate must have felt desperation—not need—being deprived when they have so much. Take Kanade Uryu, for example. Heir to a massive weapons company, grew up in Tokyo, consistently performs at the top of his class. Loved by his peers and his precious little sister, whose neck was snapped by their angry father when his stocks suffered.”

Tyson fidgeted with the ring. He regretted killing Kanade ever since finding out his father’s affiliation with the U.S. army. Now his dumb human heart wished he could have saved him.

Muni’s voice became more energetic. “‘It’s better this way,’ Mr. Uryu said, trying in vain to justify what he did. ‘Now she’ll never have to live in poverty,’ not that they were ever poor. ‘It’s only temporary. She’s not really dead. We’ll freeze her body so we can recover our wealth.’ From one hundred billion yen to the usual one hundred fourteen billion yen. Little did he know, her soul had already passed.”

Tyson gasped like a little kid enthralled by a story. “To Heaven?”

Muni just looked at him. Tyson no longer wanted to know. If an innocent little kid couldn’t get to Heaven, they were all screwed. Poor Private Creek was very, very unlucky.

Muni continued, “So the Uryu family stuck a child’s corpse into a high-powered freezer and gave Kanade false hope. ‘We have the money, we have the tech, we have everything. It’s better this way, really. She’s better off this way, Kanade. This is what family does. We look after each other.’”

“The old man killed his daughter.”

Muni smiled, bursting more buboes. Tyson’s stomach turned. Muni said, “So how can someone with everything decide he has nothing? You already know the answer to that, my soldier. Most god candidates are from Japan, China, or South Korea, followed by North America. Your soldier boy toy is a bit of an anomaly, but then again, Balta—”

“Don’t talk about Abbas that way.”

“So now you decide to care. If you had cared a long time ago, you both would have been saved.”

That day marked one year that Abbas Hassan had been in the army. He was used to being rejected by men and being discriminated because of his ethnicity, but he didn’t expect the army—people who should have been his new family—to intersect the two. The other soldiers hated that he looked like the enemy, and they despised that he could fall in love with them. They beat him. They mocked him. They were all kinds of nasty, but now, Tyson thinks, Isn’t this what family does?

Tyson thought it was wrong, but he didn’t want to speak up himself. He’d be slandered. So when poor Private Creek asked him for help in training, Tyson told him to be nice to his fellow soldiers, even the losers no one else liked, and that was how to do well in the army. Because if you’re nice to your fellow soldiers, even the losers, they’ll owe you favors. And you’ll do well in the army.

Then rumors began spreading that Creek was like Hassan. Apparently Abbas asked him out. Creek rejected him, but that wasn’t enough. He was too nice. He no longer did well in the army.

Unable to bear the stain to his reputation, Creek took a shotgun, put it into his mouth, angled it upward, and fired.

Brain matter splattered across the canteen walls. Blood mixed with the sloppy joes. An eye burst out of the socket and rolled across the grimy floor until it bumped into Tyson’s boot. The dark iris stared up at him, unseeing but accusing, and Tyson discreetly crushed it.

The night after, Tyson walked past Abbas alone in the gym. Abbas had a shotgun in his mouth like Creek. Tyson paused.

Abbas hadn’t seen him. Tyson continued walking away, pulling out his favorite knife to finish the thousandth cut in the restroom. Just before the door closed, he heard the gunshot.

Tyson roared and punched Muni’s torso, bursting more buboes that splattered rust like blood that burned like Arrows.

“Man, you good?” Abbas remarked. He had a towel slung across his bare shoulders, which glistened bronze. Shower droplets dripped from his spiky black hair.

Tyson shook his head. Abbas hung up the towel and put on a white muscle shirt, tucking it into his baggy cargo pants. “Take a walk with me, Ty. Just us, no angels.”

Muni scowled, but Balta smiled and gave the two men a friendly wave of his fingers. Tyson put on his army jacket to cover the cuts. Abbas glanced at Tyson’s arm but said nothing as he pulled on a pair of olive-green armbands lined with small knives and razors. As they strolled on the frozen ground, only 90 percent sure there were no land mines in the area, Abbas played with the razors, whipping them out and twirling them to catch the wintry sunlight. “You heard about the Uryu funeral, right?”

“I heard that they’re making it public and inviting as many people as they can to mourn the heirs. And that they’re hiring us to vamp up security.”

“They also want us to attend the funeral and pretend to mourn the kids. They’re paying us to do it.”

“That’s disgusting. I don’t need a bribe to feel sad that two kids died like that.”

Abbas glanced at him, his eyes as silver as his razors in the sun. “Do you actually mourn them, Tyson?”

“Muni told me their story. Angels are sworn to neutrality, but after the god candidate dies, they leak intel better than actual spies.” Tyson whirled around to stand in front of Abbas. “It was terrible, Abbas. I don’t want the Uryu family’s dirty money.”

Abbas glanced down. “Neither do I, but I can’t deny that it’d help out my mom a lot. She’s raising three more kids on her own after our dad went to jail for ‘honor killing.’ The church we joined helps out once in a while, but it’s not enough. Any bit of money would help.”

Tyson heard the unsaid request. If you don’t want it, I’ll take it. He pushed past Abbas to return to the bunk.

They needed to get ready for the funeral.

…

Tyson adjusted Abbas’s hat while Abbas helped fix his tie. Abbas murmured prayers to a god that Tyson struggled to believe in, even after knowing he himself would become that god by the end of the year. When they finished, neither took a step back. They were just an inch apart in height, and Abbas stared up at him from under long lashes that looked darkened from mascara.

Balta cooed. “The two of you look darling. Humans make the best funeral clothes.”

Abbas beamed. “You really think so?”

“Absolutely.”

Tyson rolled his eyes, feeling chattier after sending a Red-Arrow-struck soldier to dispatch a foolish god candidate called Tomas Rodriguez. “No other species in the universe has funerals.”

“Angels have lamenting choirs,” Balta argued.

“Only in media. Don’t pretend you actually mourn and sing.”

Balta clicked his tongue with a smile and made finger guns. “You got me there. Half of it anyway; believe it or not, angels actually do sing, just not what you might think of as music.”

“All right, enough chatter. It’s almost time, and poor Hassan looks like he might have a heart attack despite being immune to White Arrows.”

Abbas stared at Balta, who clicked his tongue again and placed a hollow ivory hand on his god candidate’s face. “Are you disappointed in the Heaven your family recently started believing in? Aw, but they still find solace in it, no?”

Muni scoffed. “As for you, you’re already screwed.”

Balta glanced at the Angel of Destruction in surprise. “Which one of us were you talking to?”

Muni ignored him and led the funeral procession, an invisible, sickly pillar. Balta took the rear. An interpreter spoke in hushed tones with the brigadier general and Mr. and Mrs. Uryu. Tyson noticed a Japanese teenager, probably one of Kanade’s classmates, leave the funeral before it even began. He wondered what Kanade’s classmates had thought of the wealthy heir whose parents made a business arming foreign states.

The church bells gonged, but heavy rock played in Tyson’s mind as he gazed up at the stained glass, trying to make out the images. He had grown up learning about these stories, but now he felt nothing until he reached the two coffins. The girl’s coffin stayed closed, heavy perfumes barely concealing the decay. Kanade’s coffin remained open, his eyelids lightly shadowed with lilac. Tyson tried not to glare at Kanade’s parents. As a shinigami, Kanade could have the vengeance he wanted. But Kanade Uryu must be waiting, because nothing big had happened in the few days since his death. Tyson at least expected a horrific death for Abbas Hassan—even more gruesome than Abbas’s attempted suicide—but nothing happened. Were god candidates immune to shinigami powers?

Tyson searched for Muni to see his expression; the Angel of Destruction’s face rarely gave anything away, but rather his buboes moved and popped when he wanted to express something.

Instead of the plague-covered angel or Abbas’s tall, happy-go-lucky angel, Tyson saw a petite ivory-and-gold girl he recognized from the bridge video. She glanced at him and giggled but averted her gaze before she gave him away.

Morning strode in, as confident as a grim reaper. He was younger and smaller than Tyson had thought from the rumors and videos. His silver-speckled blue cloak billowed around him like a shroud. And he stopped right in front of Tyson.