As Katie and James were busy chatting, and Katie was having an odd moment of affection, not far away, Aaron quietly reached his hand under his collar and touched the trinket hanging down from his neck. It was a small, metal cross. The cold feeling of the trinket brought a little reassurance to the boy’s heart.

Just a little.

As his eyes stared suspiciously at a man walking a distance away, Aaron whispered something quietly.

Something Gadreel keenly noticed. The Angel hesitated for a brief moment before walking up to Aaron.

“You're praying?” Gadreel noted quietly, his tone far too certain for a question.

“Hmmm...yes.” Aaron glanced at the man in surprise. He thought he was quiet enough to keep those words to himself, but it seemed like he was mistaken. Nonetheless, he wasn’t too bothered.

But Gadreel wasn’t ready to let this go just yet.

“Don’t bother.” He declared coldly. “Praying doesn’t work.”

The college boy glanced at Gadreel once again, now a little more surprised than before. What was wrong with this man? This didn't even concern him!

“How...how do you know?” He tried to play it nice.

The Angel wanted to smirk. He wanted to scoff and return a snarky answer, but he couldn’t. It just didn't feel appropriate.

“Why would you even think God cares about you?” He finally asked, and he continued before Aaron could form an answer. “I mean...we’re talking about an omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent being. If he wants to, he can do anything and everything. He can get rid of every type of pain and suffering in this world. He can make every wish of his faithful come true. Hell? He can destroy it.”

He stared into Aaron’s eyes. “Yet, he didn't do any of those. He watched as humanity was engulfed in chaos and torment. For those that refused to grovel at his feet, he condemned them to the infernos of Hell. A being like that...is he worth praying to?”

The Angel has been alive for over a thousand years. He knew all too well about the attitude of God and his Angels toward humanity. The faith of humanity created God. The prayers of the faithful and the believers ignited the celestial flames of the Lord. And how did God return the favor? War. Suffering. He might not have facilitated all of them, but he certainly watched many of them unfold.

Countless faithful prayed for God’s mercy until the very end, only to die in agony.

And the so-called Heaven…

Even after the fall of Heaven, the Angels never intended on saving humanity from all the hostile factions that had been brutalizing the world. Instead, they were hell-bent on an impossible crusade to take back Heaven. To restore the glory of their fallen race. The few times they did engage factions like the Dark Pantheon was because they pushed the Angels too hard.

Humanity treated the Angels with all their love and infection, but the Angels saw Humanity as mere batteries.

And now, as Gadreel found himself facing the boy who, in the moment of utter despair, was still hoping for salvation from a now-gone God, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Not only so, he felt annoyed.

“Save your breath.” Gadreel concluded coldly. “In this world, no one will be here to save you. The only one you can trust, the only one that matters...is yourself.”

The Angel bit his lips. He was about to leave this conversation when, right beside him, the boy he was just lecturing to suddenly raised his voice.

“A few years ago, my mom got very sick. We took her to the hospital...to make a long story short, she had cancer. Terminal cancer. She...she was hopeless.”

Aaron’s voice was low as he recalled back to the horrible days.

“All the treatments given to her were ineffective. The doctors said she only had months to live. We...we were so desperate, and, of course, we started praying.”

Gadreel rolled his eyes. So...this is one of the stories where a miracle happened, right? He wanted to just walk away from this meaningless conversation once and for all, but out of respect, he remained. Plus, there was nothing else to do anyway. As he took another picture of two more pedestrians, Aaron continued.

“We prayed and prayed. My father. Me. My sisters. You may not know this, but our family has been long-time church-goers. My mother was especially religious. She literally keeps a tiny Bible around her at all times.”

Just as Gadreel expected a happy ending, Aaron snickered, and his tone made a 180-degree turn.

“Guess what? None of that worked. No Angel came down from the sky, and no miracle took place. My mom still died, slowly and painfully. Even in the last moments she was awake...she was still praying that she would end up in Heaven.”

Gadreel snapped around to the boy in shock. He wasn’t too surprised by the ending, considering Angels had rarely been sent to heal human beings. Sure, a decade ago, some Angels have been deployed to bring the religious back to health as a form of propaganda. All of those operations came to a halt ten years ago.

But shouldn’t someone with such an experience turn against faith?

“Does God exist? Is Heaven a thing? Are Angels no more than figments of imagination? No one knows.” The boy continued, unaware that he was talking to an Angel just this moment. “But we are human beings, Gadreel. We...we have so little control over our fate. We die. Our families die. Our friends die. In reality, we may be no more than products of chaos. Our existence may be no more than an accident.”

“Sometimes...we need a God to worship. We need to tell ourselves that everything will be fine, that we get to decide if we get into Heaven. We lie to ourselves, convincing ourselves that the evil and the wicked will be punished in a Hell that may or may not exist. Why? Because there’s nothing else we can do in this life.”

“Such...is the tragedy of mankind. No matter what we tell ourselves, we are powerless. We need to use things like God and Heaven just to cope with the cruelty of fate and mortality.”

He turned to Gadreel. The Angel could see that the boy, the same person who had remained calm for most of this horrifying experience, had a drop of tear sliding down his cheek.

“And that, Gadreel, is why I am faithful. I believe that, even though I’m stuck in this...this film, eventually, I will reach Heaven, and I will be reunited with my mother. Eventually...I will be reunited with all my families and friends and everyone that I care about. After all...what else am I supposed to believe?”

For a moment, Gadreel stood there, shaken. When he approached Aaron, he expected to be doing the lecture. After all, he was the 1,500 years old Angel, and Aaron was just a mere college student. The reality, and what Aaron just said, hit him like a brick.

At that moment, Gadreel wanted to say something. He really did. His knowledge of this cinema was limited, but as far as he could see, the victims here wouldn’t reach Heaven...even if Heaven still existed. They wouldn’t even rest in peace. Instead, as their bodies rot, their souls would be forever bound to this building, enslaved for an eternity by the same entity that first tortured and killed them.

The human could retreat into the cover of reassuring lies, but the Angel had to face the brutal truth.

But ultimately, Gadreel remained silent. This is not your problem! He quietly told himself as he walked away from Aaron without another word. Gadreel...calm down. The boy is irrelevant. You didn't save him in front of the cinema, so why would you want to save him now? Just...just try to walk away from this mess the same way you walked away from your people and your duty!

Much like what he told Aaron...the only thing that mattered was himself.

There was some brief commotion from the side, and Gadreel turned around and found Katie marching away from James with a look of annoyance. This made Gadreel mildly amused. What could make the girl that had been smiling the entire time this annoyed?

But he didn't have time for gossip, because while the four of them have been chatting, the fifth member of the group was running into quite the trouble.

KJ stood there in silence. He could distinctly hear the others in the group talking, but deep down, he just didn't care.

Not far away, a mother and a daughter were walking across the grass field. The mother looked like she was barely 30 years old, and her daughter was eight or nine. Two cute french braids hang down from her head. The two were talking as they walked, with the mother looking down at her daughter with a loving smile. It was the smile of a parent who would fulfill her child’s every demand. A parent who would do anything to keep her daughter safe.

KJ quickly snapped a picture of the pair. It was an action he had gotten very familiar with in the past few hours. Ok...checked. There was nothing wrong with the two. Their images looked perfectly fine in the picture.

KJ was just about to turn his attention elsewhere when he suddenly heard the daughter speak up.

“Mom, can we go to the Starbucks down the street?”

“Starbucks? Why?”

“I just want a bottle of orange juice!”

“Wait...they sell orange juice in Starbucks?"

"Yeah!"

"Well...in that case, sure!"

As the two got closer, KJ’s heart sank and he felt chills down his spine. The Starbucks...there was only one Starbucks in the proximity, and it was the cafe that six of them entered and five of them left. Yes...it was the cafe that spelled the end of Luke. The same cafe where the customers and employees alike were indifferent to a dead body in their bathroom.

Yes...those people were cleared by the App, but…something was off with them. And the wraith that killed Luke might still be in there!

Ok...calm down, KJ! The boy held his fist tight as he did his best to stay silent. These people are just some extras in a movie! Sure, they act the same as any other living, breathing human being, and they look and sound the same...but they’re different! They...they have to be!

Plus, even if they are human beings...worry about yourself first, KJ! You don’t have the right to be sympathetic! Not if you want to live through this! What can you even do? Go up to the mother and daughter and tell them that they are in a movie, and that the Starbucks may be infested with wraiths? They will call 911 before listening to you!

KJ had a thousand reasons not to act. He still vividly remembered what that girl Katie said. Since when had sympathetic people in horror movies received well endings? Never! If he couldn’t keep his head down, then he might very likely be the second victim!

The mother and daughter got very close to KJ. The daughter looked at KJ sweetly, still a little too young to sense what was wrong with this boy. But her mother, keenly noticing KJ’s tight fists and deviating gaze, quietly grabbed onto her daughter and pulled her away from the clearly unstable boy.

Finally, just as the mother and daughter crossed paths with KJ, the boy made up his mind.

He had a thousand reasons to do nothing, but he had one to act, and that was all he needed.

And if he died because of this...then so be it. He has made his decision. There was just no way he could stay silent while a child dies.

“Excuse me! I’m sorry!” He called out to the pair of women as he quickly ran up and caught on with the two. He made sure to stay a safe distance away from them so they wouldn’t feel threatened. “Please...listen to me! Just...just give me a second!”

Seeing KJ’s actions, the mother quickly wrapped her arms around her daughter, keeping her back from the suspicious boy who looked like he was either on drugs or really mentally unstable.

“What is it?” She demanded, ready to fight or flee if KJ made the slightest of wrong moves.

KJ took a deep breath. He could distinctly see that, on the side, the other four have noticed his behaviors. Aaron and Gadreel walked over, stopping a safe distance away. James wanted to get closer, but Katie grabbed onto his arm and held him back with an iron grip. She looked at KJ like he was a dead man.

KJ wasn’t too insulted by their concerns, nor did he even expect them to stand side by side with him. In fact, he preferred it this way. If he screwed up, the last thing he wanted was for his friends to be dead because of this.

“I heard you two are going to the Starbucks.” Turning back to the pair, KJ did his best to quickly explain what was going on to the mother. “Please don’t. I mean...I can’t tell you why, just don’t. In fact…” He looked around. The look of concern on his face was clear. “in fact, if it’s possible, just get out of this city! Maybe come after a day or two!”

In a day or two, he would either be out of this movie or dead, and hopefully, everything would have settled down by then.

The mother nodded slowly. She didn't ask any questions, nor did she demand further explanations. All she did was tilt her head...and smile.

It was at that moment that KJ knew he was screwed.

As the woman reached out with lightning speed and removed KJ’s head, the boy still had no idea how this was happening. Yes...he did do something stupid, but the mother did appear normal in the Ghostscanner App! So...how come she was a wraith?

Unless...as everything went black and pain consumed him once and for all, KJ finally realized the trap behind this whole movie.

Ghostscanner. Ghostscanner! Ghostscanner...indeed.

Unfortunately for him, it was too late. Then again, it had been too late for him since a long time ago.