“They've started sabotaging our weapons, sir. We're going to have to get a new supply.”

Seth sighs, takes out his pistol and inspects it. The gun is fine, but a detailed examination reveals issues with the bullets. Potentially deadly issues if he got into a fight. The poisonings were easy enough to work around; there were always alternative sources of food after all. The spies too were easy to dispatch, as even a glance with the tabagascope would reveal their links to the enemy. Missiles can be shot down, and angels can't reach here. Heaven and their loyalists are persistent though, and it only takes one slip up for someone to wind up dead. The weapons are a serious problem. Remaining vulnerable while it's sorted out is not an option. Time to move on once more, see how long the secret lasts this time.

Being forced to leave the town you’ve lived in all your life can’t have been easy for Seth. Yet the ties of family and friends were strained before the accusations began in earnest; it would have been harder to stay. Especially being confined so thoroughly to one side of the rift. Manatana would without a doubt have taken personal pleasure in ensuring his demise, even if the other angels might at least try to extract the truth from him first.

Family.

Seth has both more and less family than he knew.

His brother, Sebastian. His brother, a demon. A complicated relationship. He had helped Seth many times. Yet could he ever be sure, could he ever trust him, after all he had done?

His sibling, Wren. Another maelstrom of betrayal and hurt. The things he had done to them, beyond what even they knew. Were the Marlowe siblings destined only to hurt each other?

His mother, of course. A woman who had lied to him his whole life. Who had been lied to by him for so much of his life. Like mother, like son. But still she left Bexgate to see him on his travels. She even travelled with him, for a while. She had her own ties back to Bexgate, but she refused to let her son, the child she had offered up such a great price for, fade out of her life. No matter what he had done. They caught up on each other’s lives in snippets. They spoiled Fido and Fidon’t and took them on long walks. They look to the future. And, in their own way, they are happy.

While the government of the Khamvali Republic made many claims about the motivations of the Wicked Witch of the East during the period of his asylum there which have since entered the popular consciousness, we must be careful to distinguish these from the claims made by Marlowe himself on the topic, which are few and far between. The claim that he wanted to give freedom from the Commission is supported by direct interviews[23], but the more specific political objectives claimed align suspiciously well with Khamvali's agenda at the time, particularly as they pertain to…
— an extract from Before Bereavement Day by Marie-Josèphe D'Albaton, published 4027

They say it's safe enough to go outside now. The negotiations have gone well, but not quite so well that going outside doesn't involve a final phone call to make sure, and then a bodyguard to accompany Seth at all times. The fresh air isn't what it once was, but these days it's familiar enough to seem friendly in comparison to stuffy bunker air at least. Today, it's just a walk, getting long-missed exercise and getting out of the city, away from the gawkers, the autograph requests and death glares, into the scrub-land beyond. Tomorrow perhaps, an official dinner, or just a visit to the shops to see the technological marvels that leap ahead without Heaven to reign them in. A new approximation of a normal life, a little closer than before, one step at a time.