THREE DAYS AFTER HE WAS MURDERED, RICHARD PRATT BEGAN TO FEEL MUCH BETTER...
A seemingly random act of violence propels Professor Richard Pratt into The Hereafter. It is a strange, muted, netherworld of the dead-a world in which he is forced to bear...
As the Stone in the Stream crumbled, the shock wave of the Wanderer's demise rolled out, like a sonic boom across the Hereafter.
As the wave reached Salt Lake City, the carnage ended as suddenly as it had begun. Hundreds of Drouillard's angels were ejected from their hosts, and sent sprawling into the streets and the living rooms and the parks of the city, only to shatter moments later as the resetting of their ghostly bodies took hold. What they left behind them were hundreds of their hosts, many in the middle of the acts of violence that had terrorized the city. They stood stunned, looking down at the faces of their victims, or those who had nearly become their victims.
Thousands of screams of anguish echoed throughout the city for those few minutes, as the dead were reset, making a sound over the city that was worse than any imagined in the darkest circles of hell. But the sound, though terrifying, was brief. In mere moments, every ghost in Salt Lake, both the innocent and the damned, were reset to the places of their deaths.
And what they found waiting for them was the Sixth Gift.
Like thousands of shimmering circles of light, the passageways of the dead hung in space, calling them home with an almost unbearable siren song. As soon as they were able, most of the dead rushed into them with gratitude; especially the innocent ghosts who had been helplessly watching the devastation of Salt Lake unfold, and had been driven nearly mad with their own despair. One by one, the ghosts walked or dove or fell into those shimmering crystal mirrors, and one by one, they disappeared.
The stars in the Hereafter began to wink out.
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On top of the Wells Fargo Building, Morgan Jensen opened her eyes, shocked that the bullet she had been expecting had not taken her life. Instead, she saw the soldier with the assault weapon staggering and pitching back and forth, as if she was drunk, or hit with a sudden bout of vertigo. The woman came very near to pitching over the edge, but then she simply collapsed onto the roof.
Despite Morgan's fear, she rushed to the woman, who was already regaining consciousness, and was looking around at her surroundings as if she had awoken from a dream. As Morgan held the trembling woman, she was moaning and saying things that made no sense to the reporter. But still she listened and tried to understand.
"Commander Deary," the woman said. "Please... Put down the gun. Please sir, for God's sake...."
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