“Very well, Saon, you are in position, so call forth your inner desires. Speak your spirit out and let it enslave that of your animals. Some people need to sing their favorite song, meditate , or give a speech to do this. Please, refrain from doing so unless absolutely necessary, your… particular record taken into consideration.” Amaldia’s voice came through the loudspeaker. It was clear that she wanted this to end as soon as possible: Saon had a reputation, for several things—speaking about Saon in third person counted among them.

  “Can I strip and perform, then?”

  “No!” her statement was firm, but a hint of trembling betrayed the overwhelming fear in her voice. Only a flimsy uniform and a one-way mirror separated her from the fury of the fashionful glitter demons I battled to keep contained for the sake of humanity.

  “Can I give a speech to my pets?” I pleaded, and I was tempted to use the puppy eyes, to seem genuinely concerned at the impending demise of my crows.

  “If, and only if, it helps. Make haste if possible,” she said, and punctuated it with a sigh.

  “Thanks. I’ll get to it, then.”

  I joined my hands in front of my chest and slowly spread them toward my ostensibly beloved birds. “My dear employees, you may be wondering why we are reunited here today…” I began, and shoving my hands behind my back I turned around to regard them all in equal measure.

  In the silence of Amaldia one could almost hear her sobs, the cocking of a gun and the kiss of her lips on the canon, all to escape the torture of supervising yours truly. Almost.

  “… and the truth is, that today marks the day that we stop being a company, a disorganized and unhappy little murder, and become one big family. As you may have heard with you feather-covered timpani many times, there’s no ‘you’ in team, but there’s ‘I’ in essential.” The ensuing caws meant agreement. Marvelous, I had them feeding from the palm of my hand. “From today onwards, we will work as one towards a common goal: keeping my rear safe. You will care for me and I, in turn, will care for me, too.” The caws increased in intensity, my public demanding more and more of my hypnotic honeyed words. “Now, this all means that there will be hard times. Demanding times. But families stay together through hard times. Would you abandon a terminally ill child? I would. But you are not me, and that’s the best you can be: not me.”

  “All the Murdered Gods, end it.”

  “Avaunt, demon. Mine is a mounting symphony of corpo-speech and manipulative tactics. A carefully woven tapestry of sublime bullshit. I am in my groove and you won’t ruin the third most important moment in the story of mankind. First being my conception or my birth. Cannot decide, really.” I regarded my crows once more, hands spread and began spinning in place. “Welcome to the family, everyone! A family where no matter how we fuck up, nobody eats crow!” That, by the way, was a pun six years in the making: To deal with Saon Ladius is to deal with a very meticulous man.

  The cries stopped, the stares of the crows growing absent. They began kvetching, like a cat trying to expel a hairball, and after a few seconds, every one of my pets went limp, fell dead. From their mouths miniature versions of themselves pushed out, souls given form with my will.

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  “See Officer Amaldia? my plans for this moment are like your daughter!” I claimed before every little white bird flew towards my torax and rammed me, from the front, from the back, intruding my body like a stab, but leaving no wound nor mark behind. I coughed a bit, stunned by what had happened. Breathed in. Breathed out. I had a task to finish, even as I sat on the bloodied floor, besides the corpses of the triplets. “Long laid!”

  I lay on the marble floor, sprawled of arms and legs, breathing heavily, feeling something wiggle, steer and crash against newfound walls inside my being. I felt how some of the souls took the form of the modules, and closed my eyes as I visualized the gradual formation of my Sacromotor. I began moving my arms and legs rhythmically, as if making a mud angel. No, I had never touched snow. Dead crows and blood would have to do for the time being.

  The three siblings screeched for nobody else to hear them. It was a weird but welcome sensation, listening to your heartbeat and breath with your ears, while you listened to the prisoners of your metaphysical self with your soul. Screams and silence, coexisting, mingling in your brain without ever getting confused one with the other. My fingers twitched. No. It was the wrong thing I was trying to action. I visualized my newly-formed modules, all infused with the essence and personalities of the crows whose souls made them up. It was like learning to move a muscle you had never had before. A blind child cured, seeing for the first time, trying to make sense of shape and color. The images that came from the depths of my spirit superimposed with those of the material world: my Sacromotor, drawn in all its glory over the white ceiling. One processed by the brain, by the me who hungered and suffered, and another by the energy that dons this flesh.

  And, going on a tangent, I suppose one always wonders, while alive, who is one: Am I my soul, or am I my brain? Or somehow both? Because it could be not precisely in my best interest to make sacrifices for the sake of the soul if I am merely the brain, for example. If all I am will get simply copied over into the energy formation, if the death of the flesh is the death of the ego and all that remains is an eternal record, why should I care for the fate of a mere backup?

  If one’s both, the death of the body leaves one incomplete, dysfunctional, which I am not willing to consider a positive result, nor necessarily better than full on obliteration of the being —depending, of course, on the grade of dysfunctionality.

  Amaldia entered the room, her heavy boots protesting against the marble as she approached. “Congratulations on your graduation, rookie. And, just so you are well informed, my daughter already has a son.”

  “Well, yes, my comment was about how people often get their kitchen filled with smoke, so, I was right: she got laid long ago.”

  Pro tip: do not mock your superiors while you are in a perfect position to get your ribs kicked. The burning pain wasn’t worth it. I could have spent the energy needed to roll away, and I immediately regretted not doing so.

  Amaldia, however, hadn’t intended to truly harm me, and thus the hit was only a painful nuisance, rather than something that needed tending to.

  “I hereby welcome you to the official ranks of the Retrievers, rookie. From today onwards, you and your team will be eligible to be assigned field work, and arrangements will be made so officers experts on the disciplines you choose guide you through the steep curve of learning to use your sacromotor. Any remaining questions?” She stood before me like a an angel who didn’t know shit about skin care ready to punish a demon with her steel-tipped boots.

  “Yes.” I said, struggling to stead my breath despite the pain on my side. “Can I strip now?”

  Several individuals took exception to that comment. One was Amaldia. The others were neatly assembled above my diaphragm, and after a few moments, almost neatly disassembled.