The Dead-Zone Repossession

The universe runs on thirty-year notes, and the collectors have arrived.Caspian Widdershins is a field agent for the Astral Lien & Recovery Bureau. He doesn’t slay monsters or decipher ancient prophecies. He is an exhausted repossession agent with an aching knee, an unlit clove cigarette, and a rusted flatbed truck. Equipped with a bureaucratic cloaking ward and a heavy tungsten wheel boot, Caspian spends his shifts tracking down expired miracles, unreturned relics, and minor prophets dodging their lease agreements.His latest assignment is an unmitigated disaster.Deep in the Mojave Desert, tucked inside a subterranean bunker where celestial law fails to take hold, sits a four-ton, seven-barrel Archangel Smite Cannon. It belongs to Burl Henderson, an engineer-turned-prepper who acquired the divine artillery through an obscure mail-order clearance three decades ago.The note matured at midnight. Burl refuses to pay, and he isn’t unlocking the blast doors.To make matters worse, heaven’s financial department is facing a deficit. Rather than waiting on paperwork, they have dispatched a twelve-story liquidation entity tasked with leveling the entire valley to reclaim raw materials.With the clock running down, an exasperated clerk who just wants to see his retirement and an armed recluse in a makeshift chalice helmet must figure out how to fire a dormant piece of celestial ordinance before they are wiped off the ledger for good.