Corby pressed his forehead in frustration against the window glass, and then bumped his head several times against it, growling. The night had passed. Oh, what a night it had been! The buildings outside were beginning to catch the gold of the early morning light already.

Thinking about it, he sighed. Man! He couldn’t believe it actually happened to him, couldn’t stop thinking about it. Mostly he couldn’t stop thinking about the boy. He fell from the sky on him, quite literally. Arrived from outer space in his golden carapace.

Where did General even take him? Corby didn’t know. Not a clue! He didn’t get much sleep last night; his mind was hazy. He felt both tired and wired at the same time, and he hated it. He wanted to be more alert, more present for this, something important was happening. Something that didn’t happen to him every day. His heart thumped uneasily in his chest, ready to vault at the slightest inconvenience.

What if the boy needed him? He didn’t know where he was, or what they were doing to him. It was difficult to let go. Come to think of it, he didn’t think he actually wanted to let go, not at all. He made a mistake last night letting him go, didn’t he? He should have tried and stopped them. If he thought he could, he would though. But, frankly, he wasn’t in his best shape. He shook his head. No, it was probably best he didn’t try. Between the General and her baboon soldiers, they would have no doubt tackled him. That way of thinking was a no-go. Whatever he’d done or didn’t do, now it was all in the past. Little to no point thinking about it.

He sighed the second time, glumly. He did the right thing! He knew that. The best he could do at the time. The boy was probably…likely enough, in good hands. Besides, he didn’t know the first thing about him, how was he supposed to be any better? How was he supposed to help him if he didn’t know who he was and why or how he came here? General Monroe probably did know. He did the right thing letting him go, he knew that.

Yet, it didn’t feel right. It didn’t sit well with him. Something was gnawing at him, quite persistently, a feeling. Like something was wrong. Like he overlooked something. He bit his thumb woefully, trying his best to guess what it was. But he just couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

He sighed the third time, and finally turning away from the window, arms akimbo, gave his apartment a once over. The service bots did well. They’d patched up most of the damage. For a flat fee, they’d taken care of almost everything. Good thing Corby now had five thousand dollars worth of reparation from the government. Bad thing, money couldn’t clear up the mess he’d made out of his life. But it was nice to know, at least, his cooperation was valued. Because the last time he was this cooperative, they gave him the boot from the military.

Things were looking up now, at least. It was all getting better. He had the money. His apartment was fine. He got an actual job offer. And he was no longer contemplating suicide. It was fine, right? Everything was peachy.

So why in the world didn’t he feel peachy then? Why didn’t he feel all warm and fuzzy inside? He felt like crap. He felt worse than yesterday actually. At least yesterday he had a solid plan. It was a shit plan, granted, but at least he knew what he was doing. And now, what was he even doing now? He shook his head, getting tired of himself. He shouldn’t have let the boy go. That was what was wrong with this picture. He shouldn’t have let Monroe take him.

He guessed, his old habits kicked in, her being here, he was suddenly back to where it started, him taking her orders, taking a hundred percent of her crap. Whatever she had to give to him, he’d take it. That was how it’d been. Always. He was so used to it. Only now he didn’t have to take orders from her anymore. She was no longer in command of him. He was his own man. He was free to do anything he wanted. And yet, there he was, taking crap from her again. He chewed on his lip. Just a force of habit, that’s all it was. For too many years he followed her orders, so blindly it was suddenly hard not to. She trained him well!

He rubbed his eyes wearily; he needed some sleep. But she was wrong! Back when she kicked him out of the military, back when that thing happened, she was wrong. He was following her command back then, knowing damn well she was wrong. And yet he couldn’t stop himself from going through with it. He growled angrily, raising his eyes to the ceiling. He was back again thinking about it, and he’d wasted enough time thinking about it already. He should have let it go. Only he couldn’t let it go. Back then, he should have gone with what his gut was telling him. Because his gut was telling him she was wrong. And right now his gut was telling him she didn’t know what she was doing with the boy either. He ought to get him from her, that was the only way to make sure he was safe.

Just as the resolve hardened in him, the doorbell rang, distracting him from his doleful thoughts.

Someone was at his door. Again?

For months he had literally no visitors. Nobody was interested in him. And now, all of a sudden, he was getting so many. He narrowed his eyes at the door. Good things don’t ring your doorbell, he thought. They crash through your ceiling.

In the meantime, waiting in the hallway behind the closed door was priest Vitto Carnellius, accompanied by his young (twenty-two) boyfriend David. Fresh off the plane from Egypt, the two were in desperate need of catching their breaths, especially Vitto. It was a rough twelve hours for them, let’s just say that. But they were back home finally, yet they couldn’t even go home, to their apartment, not yet, not even for a minute, not even to take a shit. They had to go straight to one Major Corby Dallas’s apartment. They had to ascend fifty-two flights of stairs by foot on their way there too. Or was it fifty-three…? Vitto couldn’t remember. All elevators in the building were out of order, probably due to the meteorite.

But it was beside the point. The point was Vitto was a man over forty, and a priest. He was not made for this. But if taking the stairs was what he needed to do to get here, he was going to do it, without second thought and pretty much without complaint. He was a man on a mission now, more so than he had been before. To hell, it was for real now! He was now certain it was all real. And climbing the stairs was the least he could do if you put things into perspective. It was a small price to pay to save the world. Which was what he needed to do now. He sorta had to do it before too, but shit got real now.

And that was why they were here, standing in front of this stranger’s apartment, ringing his doorbell, trying futilely to catch their breaths, especially Vitto, especially futilely. The two were transporting valuable cargo. That was the reason they were here. The moment Vitto heard the news about an alien ship exploding in the atmosphere, a weird-looking ship, he knew he had to grab the stones and get here. The one piece of debris that had fallen on New York must have been the fifth element. If there was anything able to survive the explosion and the fall on board, that must have been it. Him! It must have been him. It was still hard to believe he was real though, and he was here, on Earth, walking among them for the first time in five thousand years. But it was all true. Vitto was certain now. There was no more room for doubt.

The spaceship in the news matched the description of the gods’ spaceship from the manuscript exactly. It was the one they’d been waiting for; he’d been waiting for. But if it really exploded something must have gone terribly wrong with the divine plan. Someone fucked up, big time! And to think they’d been waiting for it for five millennia. Now something must have been done (and quick) about it. The Doomsday was upon them.

Standing in front of Corby’s apartment, ringing his bell, Vitto was going through a whole range of emotions, and a list of things that needed to be done was building up in his head, all part of a plan. Though he didn’t really have a plan, not yet. And usually, he was good at this, the planning, the conjuring up of ideas, project management. He cracked under pressure though, usually. Having to think straight under circumstances like these was driving him into a low-key hysteria. He was very delicate that way. He didn’t expect to be thrown right into the thick of things. He wanted to shut down, shut out the world, and crawl under the covers. Together with David maybe. Only he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t shut down, shut out the world, and use David to make his stay in the do-not-care-ville comfortable. Life in the entire galaxy depended on him. The future of the entire human race was in his hands. And at the moment, his hands were trembling.

He had the stones with him, thank God. Tucked away safely in David’s backpack. His duty, as a member of the order, was to chaperone the fifth element to the location of the stones, make sure they wound up together. Originally, they were supposed to be less than a hundred yards from one another, of course. But since the fifth element had landed in New York instead of Egypt, he was going to have to take the stones to him.

Corby Dallas’s profile was all over the Internet, as a small chunk of the spaceship was considered to have landed in his apartment, the others destroyed in the upper atmosphere. For everybody else, it could have been anything as trivial as a toilet seat. But for Vitto, he had little doubt it was the fifth element. Comforted by the fact of its safe landing… His! His safe landing, although he’d been designed to survive anything, Vitto was at the same time discomforted by the ex-marine. He didn’t know what to make of him. He wasn’t a part of the divine plan. And military folk were rough around the edges oftentimes. Vitto bit his lower lip. He didn’t know if he could trust him with something like this, if he was the right kind of person to divulge this secret to. But unfortunately, there was nobody else.

Major Dallas opened the door and looked curiously at the pair before him. One of the two was, apparently, a priest, a man in his forties dressed in a flowing brown soutane, belted tight at the waist. The belt plaque was made entirely out of gold, it seemed, and had a series of symbols etched prominently on it. Symbols Corby didn’t recognize. An unorthodox religion maybe? A sect? What would an unorthodox priest be doing at his doorstep? Corby frowned. He wasn’t a religious type. Was it the priest General Monroe was talking about? So what, now he’d found him first?

The lines on Corby’s forehead deepened, all the while the face of the man in front of him became tomato-red. Corby raised his eyes at them questioningly.

“Yes?” he asked, very curious to what the priest had to say.

“Major Dallas?” the priest asked. “Corby Dallas?”

“Yes.”

“Oh good! Then we’ve come to the right place.”

The priest exhaled with relief, then cocked his head to the side awkwardly and peeked behind Corby. Was he actually trying to take a look into Corby’s apartment while Corby was still there, looking at him? If he was trying to be inconspicuous, he failed.

“They’ve already taken him away, Father,” Corby said, point blank. And the priest seemed to have deflated.

“Oh, have they? I was really hoping to find him here,” he murmured nervously, and then looked at his feet, apparently not sure what else to say.

“I knew finding him would have been difficult but I wasn’t prepared to be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he suddenly said, confiding in Corby.

Corby narrowed his eyes at him. How did he know the boy was here in the first place?

“How can I help you, Father?” Corby asked tentatively, having decided he was going to let him talk first, then ask questions later, if necessary. The man seemed very fidgety for a priest. And Corby’s idea of a priest was to be calm and composed. Maybe he wasn’t a priest at all? Maybe he was pretending to be a priest. But then again, why would he be pretending? At any rate, something was off. Tired of addressing questions to himself he decided it was best to just let the man talk. After all, wasn’t it in his job description to provide people with answers?

“Mr. Dallas,” the priest started carefully. “We’re here because...”

And then he trailed off.

“I’m not really sure how to explain it exactly. May we come in?”

Corby twisted his mouth. “You seem to be very eager to get into my apartment, Father.”

“Please, Mr. Dallas. It’s very important! I could explain everything. Just not here.”

He must have really been the priest, Corby thought. He was being vague and insistent.

“Sure,” he sighed. “Come on in!”

Letting them in, he figured he could always shoot them if they presented a problem.