The Divine Dissimulation [Complete]

Chapter 38 A Childhood Nightmare

Lucifer slept restlessly and was cold-sweating; he was having one of his recurring nightmares. In the dream, he was a young child and today was the day he entered adulthood. Everyone was looking at him when he took the oath that his childhood was over, and he swore to serve and protect Master Abraham for the rest of his life. A man was brought in to him. He was chained and severely beaten. The man was pleading for mercy. Lucifer's mentor gave Lucifer a loaded gun and told him to kill the prisoner in front of him to prove his loyalty to Master Abraham. Lucifer felt sick, he had never killed before and he did not know, that this was one his tasks. He searched the room for his best friend, but there were no children in the hall today; only adult Angels screaming for blood. Lucifer raised the pistol and screamed his lungs out and shot the prisoner with many bullets. With blood on his face, Lucifer caught the gaze of the dying prisoner before he passed away. Lucifer swallowed the vomit that was coming up from his throat, he could not allow himself to show weakness.

Lucifer woke up, and he could still see the gaze of the murdered prisoner staring into his soul and he could taste the vomit and the blood mixed in his mouth. The events that took place during his adulthood ceremony had scarred him for life, and he had never shared his feelings with anyone.

For Lucifer, his adulthood ceremony was a shocking revelation on how his life was meant to be. He was brought up in the Angel program, and this was all he knew about, but until that day he was taught mostly physical perfection and science, so he thought he would work in science. Lucifer's mentor told him that Master Abraham had selected Lucifer to be one of his guardians which were a fancy title for a bodyguard / trained murderer.

An Angel was considered adult and eligible for active duty at the age of 13 although for practical reasons they usually started active duty when they were around 20. During his years on Earth Lucifer had killed countless individuals for Abraham, and yet it was always the first murder that came back to haunt him.

What bothered Lucifer was that he never found out why he killed the prisoner on his adulthood ceremony. There was no record explaining why they had killed him. This was often the case with people that he and the other guardians murdered; the angels killed on direct orders of Abraham Goldstein, and there was no reason to keep records. After all, too much record-keeping could expose what they were doing. Lucifer never bothered to find out what his other victims had done, but the first one was a splinter in his mind that he could not heal.

Not finding peace Lucifer entered a cryogenic tank and set the timer for six months. Hopefully, such long time in the tank would get his mind off the matter. Regardless, he was not needed in the day-to-day operation of Eden now that everything was up and running and the others would wake him up if he was needed. He could feel the cold of the helium mixture flowing in before it was a snap, and everything turned dark.

To be cryogenically frozen was like being killed and then resuscitated upon waking up.  As no decay could happen on the cellular level in the near absolute zero temperatures of the tank, this was a way to preserve a person indefinitely. While older technology sometimes failed to resuscitate the user, the ones used in the 29th century were very safe.