Excerpt: The Guardian's Guide

Four years later, in June, a woman who referred to herself as A. Jane Doe – her middle and last names being common between her and her deceased cousin – arrived at The Tower, toying with one of The Doctor’s business cards. The ones where the zed in Zophiel was crossed with a halo and the iconic haloed letter was embossed on the background. She looked at him with unsettled grey eyes and asked, “Why would I want to save the world?”

He stroked his absurdly long scarf and smiled. She would be his masterpiece.

[...]

Jane, who had only recently begun to think of herself as Jane, all things considered, stared up at the tall building in front of her. She’d taken the train down to Washington, D.C., navigated the subway, and had ended up in front of what appeared to literally be an ivory tower.

The haloed zed announced that she was in the correct place – the headquarters for an organization calling itself Zophiel International. It wasn’t as tall as Jane had expected, but the grounds were lovingly landscaped and the windows were reassuringly large. The upper-most floor reflected the sky above it, revealing itself to be some sort of one-way glass. A pretty home for academics and idealists, Jane supposed.

Do you want to save the world, they’d asked. Each of them, as if it were a cult or a line from a script. Jane snorted at the memory, the same way she’d snorted at the time. No, Jane was not interested in saving the world. A world without Aisling was not worth saving. And yet …

And yet here she was, in front of the strangely lovely building, fingering the strange business card in her pocket. No name, just a title, of sorts: The Doctor. She’d met him once, and the lack of Converse high tops had almost convinced her that this wasn’t the grand delusion of a rabid television show fanatic.

Still, if he tried to tell her that his name was John Smith, she’d first laugh, then tell him that she already had one, thank you, and then she would leave and never think of this day again.

[...]

“Do you want to save the world?”

Will was discomfited by the question. What type of place was this? Of course, he probably should have suspected that something odd was going on when he was essentially recruited after being shot during a botched robbery. He didn’t quite remember it until he was getting dressed to leave the hospital and found the business card in his shirt pocket: “James Greyson, Guardian. Zophiel International” and an address.

Will knew the building; it was fairly close to the coffee shop, which was, he supposed, why Mr. Greyson had been there during the shooting. Will assumed it was a botched robbery, but the robber or gunman (whichever) had pointed his gun at a young woman Will vaguely remembered from his Western Philosophy class. Without thinking, Will had darted between her and the gun. He didn’t know why. He just did it. Maybe on some intrinsically psychological level he believed that she had more potential than he did – after all, as far as he knew, she was still in school, going by the textbooks and the sweatshirt with the university name across the chest. Maybe his family’s angry ranting phone calls, then voicemail messages, then answering machine messages, then emails, then physical letters … all of that, technology down grading as he refused to answer or acknowledge any of them … had sunk in.

Or maybe he did want to save the world after all.

“You know, I think I do.”