“I wrote those logs.” Yushamin sat down at the table Kate and Apollyon had piled the books on. “I tore out the pages you figured out were missing and I hid the missing book. I assume you have questions.”

  “That is putting it mildly.” Kate took a deep breath. “Az, mind if we handle this?”

  Azazel shook her head. “I’m happy to pass that work to you. Just don’t create more work for me. Before I leave, I was wrong by the way. I’m gd you are still poking at this stuff.”

  “I must admit that Jolene pushed me this way, but hey, I’m gd you approve.”

  “Of course she’s involved. I’ll get some sleep, talk to you after I spoke with Yaldebaoth tomorrow.”

  “Sure.”

  Azazel teleported away.

  “So, Yushamin, correct?”

  “Yes. You are Kate, our new head librarian?”

  Kate nodded. “That’s me, yes.”

  “I saw you a few times while visiting recently.” She looked down at the table in shame. “I’m sorry for what I wrote back then. I used to hate humans and you were one. I’m gd that I was wrong about them.”

  “Not as wrong as you’d want to be. All those things you compined about are still there. Some things even got worse.”

  “That is… sad, honestly. I had such hopes that our guidance could lead them to a better future.”

  “Maybe we can still do that.”

  “Maybe. Let’s talk about what you found, anyway.”

  “Alright. Let’s just start from the beginning. I have a vague idea how the project went and what the joint research team did back then, but I want to hear your perspective. What happened during the time you wrote these.” Kate put her hand on one of the notebooks.

  “From the beginning you say? Okay. Yaldebaoth approached me after the pandemonic council had convened for the first time since abandoning Niflhel. I was told that it was decided to tinker with the rather promising hominids in the border world. The goal was to create a self-replenishing source of souls that unlike domesticated animals would take care of themselves while being intelligent enough to improve their own soul quality without our input. This entire endeavour would be a joint effort with the angels, who needed a simir source of souls. I agreed to help.

  "We decided to handle this in stages, first we would create a genetic tempte which would contain all baseline alterations we wanted to make. The original human tempte as we call it now. Then we would create a pair of humans from that tempte and allow them to procreate while studying them. Their children would then be allowed to procreate with non-tempte humans to ensure that our alterations remained dominant and would eventually eradicate their non-tempte counterpart genes. That way we would ensure that humanity as a whole would be as we desired. The final stage would then consist of fixing any errors that popped up during our tests and adding other changes if needed. Stage five would see the roll-out in specific human tribes, to not fully eradicate non-tempte humans from the start, in case we still missed something.

  "Stage one went as pnned. To begin stage two, we created two humans we named Adam and Eve. They had children, Cain and Abel. After Abel was killed, I was contacted by a person. I can’t tell you more about them, they never showed themselves properly only ever acting through a sort of armour. They insisted on a few additions to the tempte, mainly enforcing certain reactions to specific diseases and environmental concerns. As the project progressed through the next stages, they started to disapprove of the angel’s involvement. Then God found my office. I had constructed it in secret to meet with my contact and keep notes on everything that the official logs didn’t report on. When I arrived that cycle, God had been defeated by my contact who merely told me that their involvement would end right there. They had stopped some meddling but had lost faith in our ability to stop the angels from doing something they described as ‘unfortunate’. I suspect that led to the failure of the tempte.”

  “It did. God sabotaged it.”

  “Of course he did. Yaldebaoth and I grew distant. I never had the heart to confess everything to her but I had the feeling that the failure of the tempte was not our mistake but, as you said, sabotage.”

  “You should talk to her soon. She deserves the truth.”

  “I agree. I was just afraid… still am.”

  “I am sure she will understand. There is one thing I can clear up for you and one you need to clear up for me. That contact of yours was a fae. We recently met one of them and your description and the magical residue in your office match what we know of the fae. That hatred of humans though… why?”

  Yushamin shook her head. “It’s entirely irrational. I had the hopes that we could shape humanity, guide them away from being violent primitives. I felt like all we managed to do was teach them how to mask those urges. I know that humans are and always were more than that, even before our meddling, but it doesn’t sink in. And whenever I have tried to engage with humans to overcome that prejudice, they don’t make it easy. All those wars, all that genocide, over and over again and for what? There is never a reason outside the primal urge for power. I don’t understand it.”

  “But I understand you. More than you might have realized. I’m a Nightmare, I see human thoughts every cycle. Their minds are self-centred and filled with negativity. Someone once told me that indifference and hatred are mortal fws. It is in their nature to hate, to feel indifferent, to ignore. It’s what made them survive long enough for you to find them. Many don’t care to try to be better. I came to realize that I shouldn’t hate them, I should pity them.”

  “Wise words, especially for someone so young.”

  Kate grinned. “I have merely learned to listen and to connect what I’m given.”

  “That seems to have put you on a good path.”

  “I sure hope so. Let’s get back to your logs anyway. This has nothing to do with the troubles at hand, but that hematophage virus you wrote about, that’s the one that makes vampires, isn’t it?”

  “It is, yes.”

  “We have a friend who is one, she is turning into a demon slowly. I was just wondering if you have any experience with that.”

  “A vampire becoming a demon?” Yushamin shook her head. “Only hypothetically. The way that the transformation from human to demon works is that the expression of your human genes is more important than what is actually written in them. A fully matured vampire would become a type of demon that is only theoretical until now. She would keep her ability to feed on the blood of others while gaining a few more fun abilities. In research, we called that type a Therion.”

  “That’s actually really neat.”

  “You have that paper in this pce. Maybe your friend would appreciate knowing what will happen to her.”

  “Absolutely, thank you. Hold on. I know that we don’t know what the exact goal of God’s sabotage was, right?”

  “Yes?”

  “And to figure out what he actually did, we would need access to a tempte human.”

  “Yes.”

  “And those are basically extinct.”

  “Also yes.”

  “But you know how human DNA transtes to whatever the demonic equivalent is, right?”

  “Not entirely, no.”

  “But you can find out. We have three recently turned demons, two of which I know have some human DNA around to look at, and we have Evelyn, who is about to be turned very soon.”

  “And you want me to compare the before and after to see how things transte. Once we know that, we can transte the genes from the turned tempte humans back and compare that to what the tempte should have been. Clever.”

  “Exactly!”

  “And who do those DNA samples you spoke about belong to?”

  “Me and Lizzy. My mum kept my baby teeth and Lizzy kept the one I accidently knocked out that one time…”

  “And the third person?”

  “High Inquisitor Azazel. With luck, she kept something as well.”

  “I see. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you knock out your friend’s tooth?”

  “I hit her with a swing when I was like eight…” Kate blushed.

  “Ah. Anyway, your pn appears to be sound. Since I need to talk to Yaldebaoth anyway, I will ask her if she wants to help.”

  “Please do. One st question before I let you go.”

  “Of course, go ahead.”

  “We know Gabriel met with a demon in secret during the tempte project. I assume that wasn’t you?”

  “What? No, I never met with Gabriel, or any angel outside of our work in the bs. You are implying one of ours helped with the sabotage.”

  “Potentially. I can tell you aren’t lying, which is good. But you need to keep this conversation a secret as well. Wouldn’t want to alert our saboteur, if there is one.”

  “I understand.” Yushamin frowned. “How easy this would have been if my secrecy was the greatest of our worries. I will go through the research logs, my own diaries, everything we have. Maybe something jogs my mind enough to remember anything important for you. Right now, I couldn’t tell you if I saw something suspicious. After a while of keeping secrets of your own, everything becomes suspicious.”

  “Thank you for the help anyway. We actually are a bit closer to resolving all of this.”

  “It’s good that I could help at least in some way. I will leave now. I have to prepare myself for meeting with Yaldebaoth. Still don’t know what I want to say…”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thank you. I might need it.”