“Hello, ladies and gentlemen, I am Sergeant Bishop of the United States Army. Welcome to Camp Matthews, I hope that you’ve had a pleasant evening.”

A small group of us were sitting in a briefing room, while Sergeant Bishop stood at the front, beside a large screen and projector. He was pudgy with thin blond hair. Clutching a clipboard in one hand, he smiled at all of us. No doubt he thought it was charming and friendly; considering our situation, it felt forced and fake.

Walking into this room with twenty-plus Changed had been difficult, like when I went into the cafeteria. However, the sensation died down after a while to just a dull yearning. It was distracting and annoying, but I found if I focused I could tune most of it out. God, I hoped I would get better at this soon.

At least it wasn’t just me. I could see everyone around me fidgeting uncomfortably, crossing and uncrossing their legs. If it wasn’t so frustrating it probably would have been funny.

But what did it mean? Why did we react so strongly to each other? What was the point? I mean, getting weird powers at all was pretty fucked up, but why did it have this added kick in the teeth?

Bishop continued, unaware or unconcerned with our discomfort. “As most of you know by now, we’ve brought you here because you are special. You have, or will, somehow developed abilities that set you apart from the rest of humanity.” That caused some ripples amongst my fellow recruits. I noticed people looking at each other, appraising each other with new eyes. I guess it’s not every day you are told you are in a room full of people with superpowers.

“We want to help you learn to use those abilities: how to master them and make use of them.”

I wasn’t sure how much book learning I was going to need to ‘master’ not dying. So far it seemed pretty self-explanatory. I tried not to snicker. What did this gym teacher think he was going to teach us? It’s not like they had any more experience with this than we did.

Bishop, deadly earnest, pointed his pen at us. “Why do we want to do this? Why does the United States government want to work with you? Why do we want to spend so much time, money, and other resources, nurturing all of you?”

Actually, that was a pretty reasonable set of questions.

“Because your country NEEDS you. Hell, the world needs you. That’s why we’re doing this. We are under threat from something unlike anything ever encountered in the history of mankind. We are facing an enemy that is cold, calculating, and utterly without remorse.” He pulled a controller out of his pocket and pushed a button. The screen came to life, showing an image that, while blurry, could not be mistaken.

It was a glowing, beautiful man with wings. He would have been captivating if the picture were not captured the moment he was pulling a woman in half with his bare hands. Several people gasped or cried out. My stomach rolled over and my lunch started looking for a way back up.

“I apologize for the graphic nature of the images I am going to show you. Unfortunately, it is absolutely imperative that you realize the true extent of what we are dealing with if you do not already know. This next bit of footage was retrieved from a damaged camera found next to the body of a victim. This happened at the soccer match in Brazil you may have heard about in the news.”

A video clip began playing; a shaky hand-cam image of someone inside a stadium of some sort. The cameraperson had just zoomed out and was focusing on a bright glow amongst the crowd. When the light receded, a beautiful armored angel stood there amongst the people. There was no sound, but I could imagine there were some screams and cries of dismay and surprise, joy, and fear. Some people were starting to stand up; whether to move closer or further away I do not know.

This was the first time I’d really had to look at an angel since...the incident. Of course, like everyone on earth, I’d seen angels before, both the beautiful and the alien. But back then I didn’t know what they were really like, I didn’t know what they were. Now I wanted to take it all in, I wanted to understand these bastards. This angel was nothing like the one I saw. It was tall, maybe seven or eight feet tall. Its body was broad and muscular. Silver armor covered almost every part of its body, except its face. Like ‘my’ angel, it had large, white, feathered wings that unfurled behind it like a billowing cape. They had to be about ten feet long each. I couldn’t really make out the details of its face, other than just that artificial perfection most of them seemed to have.

I couldn’t help but think of the angel as an ‘it’. I didn’t, couldn’t know if their appearances matched our genders. Even if they did, they weren’t anything like us. They were monsters.

Before we could see it clearly in focus the angel was already killing people. He moved like lightning through the crowd, flinging bodies ten, twenty feet into the air. The footage was slowed down so we could see what happened as the angel flew into the crowd. His wings severed limbs, heads, and torsos like paper while he smashed people to paste with his fists.

Behind me, someone retched. Cold chills crept up my back. The sick feeling had been burned away by icy rage.

I don’t think the person holding the camera was actually aware of what was going on. The footage only lasted a few seconds, not enough time for them to really figure out what it was they were seeing. I think they were just following the shining light as it moved, with no real clue as to what it was they were recording. At least, that’s what I hoped had happened. I hoped the poor bastard was not able to really take in what was happening around them in those few seconds. It was too cruel to think otherwise.

The angel changed course, heading up the stands. People, or at least parts of people, exploded out of the stadium chairs, rocketing up into the air around the deadly missile. It continued towards the camera person, bursting through bodies as it went. There was a flash of the angel as it was upon the person holding the camera and then the camera was falling, the lens splattered with blood. It hit the ground and the screen went to static.

When the film ended, none of us said anything, not even Bishop. Some people were crying; others were muttering, maybe praying, under their breath. Most just looked stunned. Clenching my hands and jaw, I imagined I looked quite different.

Coughing, Bishop began to speak again. “I’m sorry about that. Unfortunately, as I said, you all must understand exactly what we are dealing with. I’d like to rewind and show you a specific moment, one that occurred right as the entity was about to attack the cameraman. He pushed a button and the video backed up to a single frame, and he froze it there. The angel was tearing through the crowd, looking right at the camera.

The face of the angel was utterly calm, utterly serene. It looked beatific, as though in a moment of pure joy. It was killing everyone it passed.

And it was smiling.