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Life in darkness, that’s all it was now—nothing more, nothing less, just the darkness and the inevitable pain. This man, the darkness—it never ended. Time became meaningless and Lilly lost count of the days, weeks, months—for all she knew years. Time didn’t move down here. It was always the same and the pain could come at any moment. Sleep had become the sporadic moments between consciousness’s, nothing more.
Hope had long been given away, and even now an end didn’t seem to be in sight. She had no idea how many names the man called out, nor did she care—the suffering engulfed her, it became her, it tore her apart. Soon the suffering was translated into a good feeling; she expected—wanted it—felt she deserved it.
It was never going to end and she knew it. Her body wasn’t able to heal itself entirely anymore. So the pain the man inflicted slowly began to build on her body with scars, scabs, gashes, and burns. It was disfiguring, now she looked the part of the monster she had become. There was no longer an inch of space on her flesh that didn’t have some sort of disfigurement.
She couldn’t move from the cell if she wanted to, she couldn’t escape if she tried. And she damn sure wouldn’t be able to get another chance at a gun to defend her self—her body was done, weak, and useless. But not like the man cared. He still came in every day—well to her, every time she was awake—and mercilessly chiseled away at her body. The names, there were just so many, so many she killed—it was her fault, she brought this upon herself, she killed all those people and at the time thought it was just a joke, it was fun. Murder should never be fun, she could see that now.
“Get up.” It was the dreaded voice she came to hate, the dreaded voice she came to love—it was him. Lilly pulled her body into one of the corners and cringed. She no longer looked at what tool of destruction he had for the day—anticipation only made it worse. Cowering she held the arm with the Devils Touch in front of her. Even when he knew she could no longer pull a stunt like she did when he first touched the tender flesh, he still respected the fact that at least that arm was out of bounds.
The charred skin from the first and only time he burned that arm was long since gone but there was no flesh to replace it—instead there was a mixture of bone and whatever muscle was left right up to the elbow and the gray rot had finally reached to her shoulder and started down her back and chest ever so slightly. Even if this man never actually killed her, her body was slowly rotting. When the devil touched her he put a ticking curse on her body. She had no clue how much further the rot had to go before it killed her—or if it would kill her—or if eventually over the years she’d turn into even more of a monster than she is now—one of animated bone and nothing more.
“There will be no lashings today. Get up.” She didn’t believe him, he liked to make her feel safe before he beat her, tore her up, or whatever other sick plan he had for the day. Lilly pushed further into the corner and cringed as his arm came down over her. His fingers wrapped around her hair, which was torn, dirtied, and had chunks missing. The red highlights she once had were now long gone and thick knots that would be impossible to brush out filled her hair.
He caught one of those thick knots and pulled her up. He easily got her body to its feet, Lilly having lost a lot of weight as well as her appetite being stuck in the darkness for such a vast time. Even with her feet planted firmly on the ground they wouldn’t be able to support her on their own, the back ends of her knees were still slashed from a recent session and she hadn’t actually used her legs for weeks, months for all she knew.
Holding her hair firmly in his grip the man shoved four capsules into her face, unmarked white pills, “Take.” She didn’t ask questions, she just lifted up her good hand and grabbed at the pills. Her arm shook as she made contact with the pills and her fingers closed on the pile. During transit from his hand to her mouth one of the pills dropped but she quickly shoved the other three into her mouth. She cringed as she swallowed the bitter capsules, afraid that he’d hit her for dropping one. But no violence came.
As she felt the bitter drugs break up in her throat her head started spinning. Much against her own control she fell forward into the man’s arms, unable to keep herself backed against the wall. Once again her brain flashed over instances of suffering when she showed weakness and as much as she wanted to just pull away from him her body wouldn’t allow it. Then, there was nothing.
Then there was something, something entirely different than all the time in the darkness. Light, but not only light, also unconditional numbness. She couldn’t feel, but not only couldn’t she feel her skin, but she couldn’t feel her emotions, her mind, the light, cold, heat—nothing—just blissfully numb.
Was she dead? She had to be dead, he finally ended her life. He finally gave her the pills and knocked her out for good. But the brightness started to come into focus, it wasn’t the sun but a florescent bulb, a warming white light instead of the cold yellow she had gotten used to. Things focused around her as best as they could, tile, no windows, bright bulb—and there were people, lots of people.
She jerked up, suddenly aware and the people in the room noticed. She couldn’t see any of their faces, but could tell by their postures they were all men, the same hooded men she met in Cairo so long ago. The men all had long garments that went from head to toe and their faces were covered with dark sheets only leaving slits for their eyes. When they saw her come to the man with the disfigured face, the only one without a face cover, leaned over her.
“Now is your time to fight for us. We have a mission for you, a God-sent task.”
Everything around her was spinning, Lilly put one of her hands in front of her to see the bruises on her knuckled where he had broken them repetitively—why could she no longer feel them? Her bone arm was then pulled out in front of her and she slowly touched it with her good hand—nothing, no sensation. “Why, why can, can, can’t—” She realized speaking was incredibly difficult, her body being unable to tell where her tongue was in her mouth.
“Drugs, heavy sedation.” He pointed towards an empty white bag and the IV that ran off it and into her arm. “The effects will only last for four to six hours, but we know you can’t act under pain, the sedation should help. We need you to attack the world order in Germany. Time is very limited.” He made it clear he still had the button and that the bracelet was still very much active. She remembered him using the bracelet as a form of torture during the early days, before he realized it was designed to electrocute her into unconsciousness and discarded it as a torture tool for more effective and longer sustaining means.
She nodded her head in acknowledgment, being unable to speak due to the drugs pumping through her veins. “This is your ultimate mission, use every resource you can and take down every last person you find in that building.” He handed her a piece of paper, making sure no one else in the room but her saw it. On the paper was exact coordinates, the middle of nowhere. It was an empty plot of land in between a few hills and unseen by the public eyes, an underground empire that would have been nearly impossible to find if it hadn’t been for the direct directions.
She looked silently at him for a while, she knew her face looked much like his now, disfigured and broken. Her glare triggered something in him and he tossed her revolver onto the bed. She smiled at her old friend and the moment her fingers touched its cool metal she was gone.
Lilly wasn’t about to dive into a heavily guarded fort with an empty gun and her teeth—her first stop was her top-floor suite. She could tell the suite hadn’t been touched for months, everything was left the way she last saw it before she was taken in Cairo—not even Sin inhabited the place in her absence. She tried to contact him the moment she was out of the man’s grasp, but found the sedation numbed even her sensations, she had no way of making a connection—and even if the sedation wore off the oncoming pain wouldn’t help her any.
She rummaged through her things, finding a fresh coat to cover her entire body, untorn gloves, heavy boots, and even a dark sheet to cover her face—she didn’t want anyone to see her as she was, even if she was going to kill them all. This wasn’t the image she wanted to world to remember her as.
The drawer next to her bed still had plenty of bullets in it—she took a large handful—and her chain vest cape was still as favorable as it’s ever been. The metal saw blades at the end were speckled with rust and she noted a few holes in the cape itself, exposing the metal links below—but appearances aren’t what mattered, it’s how much the cape could protect her rear and how dangerous its hefty weight can be when swung around.
When she had all her essentials she jumped for one more stop, Sin. When she appeared in their pile of rubble Lilly first noticed the rotten smell, she then noticed the general lack of cleanliness that in habited the small space, trash mounted up everywhere—laundry was spread out at random, and it was nearly impossible to spot Tom huddled in the far end of the room.
“Where is he.” Lilly said in a stern voice, using her aura to force an answer—she didn’t have time for games.
“G-Germany. He went after you.” Thomas spat out, “Wait!” but she was already gone….
With directions the place was easy to find, but it was also heavily guarded. The convention was being held in a forest of sorts, ten foot walls spread a mile and every direction circling the meeting place and that wall had guard towers every hundred or so feet. Each guard tower was manned with half a dozen troops and enough firepower to blow a hole into a steel vault.
But these guard towers were simply not enough, inside the walled off sector was a small army, platoons of anywhere up to a hundred soldiers marched around the territory in two-minute rotations, leaving not a strand of land out of sight for more than a few minutes. Beyond the walls was yet another army, even larger than the one inside—these troops were just as heavily armed and speckled the land for miles in all directions.
If this simply wasn’t enough, it was common knowledge various troops had heart bombs implanted, making her ghouls particularly useless for long. But then there was actually inside—which she was lucky enough to see due to the all-glass roof, a keen idea in fact, since they know she’s sensitive to the sun, and has eyesight to lack problems in the darkness. A simple lights-off situation in a dark room would have been easy, but turning off the sun was not an option.
Below the glass roof were rows upon rows of seating, hundreds if not thousands of people were gathered of all different types of skin and dress. Those men and women were the targets, but their defense was just as many, if not more, troops armed to the teeth surrounded the delegates. Lilly could see shotguns, grenades, machine guns, and was sure some of those men down there had the heart bomb implants, making getting close to create ghouls a particularly dangerous situation.
But of the thousand plus troops and the thousand plus delegates she saw one she recognized, Lucas. He was off to the far side, behind the large stage set up in the middle. But he wasn’t looking at the Asian man shouting out various demands at the podium. He was looking up—directly at her. When her eyes connected with his he waved to her twice and turned to vanish down the dark hall behind him.
How did he know she was there? She looked up, at the roof, and saw a camera that was aimed right at her. They knew she was here, they knew she’s been there for quite some time, she’s been there for minutes scoping out the room before she realized the camera was there. Why hadn’t the room been notified, why hadn’t they evacuated? She had to move, now, before they were warned.
She let her body fizzle into haze just long enough to slip through the glass and she dropped right into the middle of thousand plus rulers, officials, and various other important people. Game on.
***
Close, he’s been getting close—he had to save her, be with her. Sin no longer cared who saw him and had already dispatched of two or three squadrons he’d found on his wild search through the forest. He knew with killing those squads he’d been spotted by half a dozen more, but simply didn’t have the time to be cleaning up the mess—he just needed Lilly. This was the first whiff of her in months and he wasn’t about to lose her scent again.
The hills and trees seemed to go on forever and were covered in soldiers much more heavily here than the rest of the country—he knew he had to be close. Then he felt it, he wasn’t sure what it was—but it started—the attack. She was in there alone. Her senses were painfully numb to him—it was the first time since she first connected with him that he’d found it nearly impossible to feel her. At least with the pain there was something always there, but this—it was almost like she was the wind blowing around his senses and he chased that wind blindly never sure if it was her he was feeling or the looming weather.
***
The first forty-five seconds was easy, while her body maintained itself out of existence her poisoned tipped teeth swung around the crowded room like unstoppable bullets, slicing deep into dozens, if not hundreds of bodies in the seconds that passed. Chaos broke out, people scattered into a thousand directions. She saw immediately after her extended jump that this room had several dozen exits, it was designed with her attack in mind, allowing for the best possible methods of escape.
Only seconds passed after she fully rematerialized and the room was almost completely abandoned with the exception of the hundred or so people she hit and the several thousand armed guards surrounding them. There wasn’t even a flitch or hesitation from the guards as they circled and her new born ghouls and began unloading their shotguns—ripping the bodies apart before they could even rise again. Lilly was out of the circle the moment she heard gunfire and on the stage, looking fanatically around. More than ever she wanted Lucas.
Though she couldn’t feel any pain Lilly felt her arm shaking, she looked down to see a dozen or so pellet sized holes filling her good hand and her fingers were hardly able to keep the gun from dropping out. She’d been hit. Yet, the painkillers were doing their job wonderfully—even so she couldn’t figure out why her arm was shaking, the shotgun pelts wouldn’t do that if she couldn’t feel them—she should have no reaction except the agony when the painkillers finally did run out.
She couldn’t go on like this, she couldn’t even control that arm. She switched her gun to her left hand. She hated using the bone hand with a weapon, it felt so wrong, but she had no other choice—there was something wrong with her trigger fingers. She spotted the passage Lucas went down and jumped for it before the troops could turn and start firing their shotguns indiscriminately at her.
There was a steel door in place where the dark tunnel was before, but that didn’t stop her—if anything it protected her from the noisy death in the main hall. As she appeared on the other side of the door she could hear screams, her ghouls were getting back up, followed by several loud explosions. A slow inhale and exhale and she started forward. The passage was long and dark, a single dim bulb some distance away and another even further than that. The tunnel of concrete seemed to go on forever and had no exit other than whatever was at the end.
She started running forward, she should be able to easily catch him, but was caught off guard by a thin layer of plastic that covered the hall a few hundred steps in. The moment she hit the plastic some kind of fume spouted into the air and her entire world stopped for just that second.
In the moment of stillness everything imploded around her at once, all of a sudden thousands of voices were in her head, thousands of screams, of tastes, feelings, smells. She took in a deep breath, as if she’d been holding it in for some time, even if only a second passed. A chill ran down her body and the air around her changed, something was different, something was wrong.
***
The wind that he’d been following it just changed. Suddenly there was no breeze the air was still, stale. Lilly was gone, just gone. Then ten thousand things happened and in a moment the air was crowded and rotten. There were explosions everywhere, screams, gunfire, death. A blur went past him and another was on top of him—snarling yellow teeth clamping at his neck.
In quick reaction he pulled his bladed finger up, cutting through the monster on top of him like a knife through warm butter—once the blade got to the beasts head and its brain was exposed the two parts fell to their sides, stiff. The explosions all around him grew more intense and the blurs started to crowd the forest, all leading in one direction. Most ignored him but he couldn’t turn away from where they were coming from because every so often one would decide he appeared to be a great dinner.
Sin held his blade out in front of him as he ran in the direction of the Ghouls. He swung blindly at one of the blurs and an arm hit the ground—he threw his bladed finger out at another and saw the top of a head slip off before the rest of its body crashed into a tree. Behind that tree the Ghoul hit was a wall—a massive wall. He was getting close.
***
She couldn’t feel at all—this time it wasn’t just the numbness but literally everything. She was broken away from everything. There was always some kind of sense in the back of her mind, her connection to Sin, to the Ghouls, but suddenly all that was gone. Everything was gone. This was wrong, truly wrong. And her hand wouldn’t stop shaking, why wouldn’t it stop shaking—were those shotgun pellets poisoned, she couldn’t keep it still.
Forward, there was nowhere else to go—she had to finish this once and for all. She sprinted down the hall as fast as it took her to hit the plastic veil and hesitate. As far as she could see there were no other exits, only the one in front of her, a hatch in the roof of sorts—kind of like the bottom end of a sewer pipe.
She pushed, it wasn’t locked. She threw it open quickly jumping into the room—there was no need for a surprise. What she appeared in was just that, a room, an empty room. The room was a perfect square with no doors or exits, only the single hatch in its center. Twelve thick pillars held the roof up, lining up six by six in two columns down the center of the structure.
Then there was a man, huge, at least twice her size. This man lacked a shirt and bulged out like the body builders seen in wrestling contests. As he flexed his body sweat ran down his back and he snarled at Lilly letting her see several of his teeth were missing. This built blond German certainly wasn’t Lucas.
The man had in his arm a beast of a weapon, a harpoon of sorts, with hundreds of feet of what looked like steel cable hanging out of its bottom. The front of this weapon had a barb and the back of it appeared to be opened along with a separate shaft where the cable laying of the floor fed into the weapon.
The brute aimed his beast of a gun at Lilly and pulled the trigger. Lilly easily jumped to the side, dodging the harpoon as it violently went past her. The entire weapon screeched horribly as the cable extended further out and actually fired out of both sides instead of just one. Lilly watched as the metal cable feeding into the contraption was seared in half to make up for the required cable of both ends of the weapon. The front end hit the wall first and the second followed hitting the wall behind him. The middle of the weapon grew white hot and he pulled it down, the top of the weapon’s barrel split and half and the cable, freshly welded together detached itself from it.
He turned and aimed at Lilly with this gun once more and grunted, “You deal with me.” He pulled the trigger a second time, she easily dodged as the cable repeated its process once more, being spliced in half, shot both directions, binding into walls, and welding itself into one long steel cord. Is this guy kidding? He’s so big and slow with that he’d never catch her with it—and the cable seemed exceedingly a waste of time and effort. It will be easy jumping on this guy and dispatching him like the overconfident grunt he was.
She jumped towards him. He moved and his finger squeezed the trigger.
***
He saw the building, but couldn’t see or feel her. The ghouls were everywhere now. Every single guard tower was unloading its ammunition faster than they could load it back up, all aimed at the blurred army closing in quickly. Every time one of the infamous heart bombs went off the ground shock, but the troops in here were so condensed compared to the ones outside the walls he found himself fighting with the troops as much as he fought with the ghouls. And close combat when a heart bomb can be in any one of the men was exceedingly dangerous. He preferred to dodge the troops entirely, which made him a running visible target for everyone around him to shoot at—never hitting but getting very close.
He had no idea where to go to actually find Lilly—she wasn’t dead, but she was nowhere—he thought if he just ran around the grounds and was able to get close enough maybe a connection could be reestablished, maybe he could find her once more. He had to.
***
She was out of the way before his finger even finished squeezing. But he didn’t stop there—some lever at the bottom of the beast of a weapon was flipped and he fired it again, before the first cable was even finished extending its first time.
This caught Lilly off guard, her mind flashed to her trembling trigger hand and she didn’t look where she was going, allowing her throat to make contact with one of the cables, flipping her body onto the ground, hard. When her rear slammed into the ground she gagged for air, but found none. How could she make such a stupid mistake, how could she be so careless? This wasn’t like her at all; she’s normally very aware of her surroundings—was it the painkillers? The shaking arm—was it the loss of her senses in the hall?
She was seriously off her game, she knew she couldn’t fight this man, she couldn’t, not now. But something wouldn’t connect. She couldn’t feel how wrong this was. Deep inside her mind she wanted to run—she knew she had to run—but the blank slate inside her kept saying everything was fine—that this man should be easy. He should be easy. Then why did he get the jump on her. Why can’t she get close to him?
His body appeared over hers, the harpoon aimed now down at her, the two shots he pulled off were now stretched across the room, most of them only a forth of a cable, so his gun can tear the cable in to many pieces for multiple shots—how small can it make the cable?
Air came back to her. The world came back to her. She slid away as he fired and turned to fire at her again. She jumped to avoid the second shot and when she reappeared she found her bone arm stuck. She looked over and a cable went right through it, splicing through the center of the two bones. Even with the painkillers it was such an immense shock she actually felt it. Her eyes teared up as she managed to turn the arm into smoke, pulling the cable out of it. Her revolver dropped out of her hand and hit the ground.
But the brute didn’t give her the time to recover or reacquire her gun, he just stomped heavily around the pillars and fired again, and again causing Lilly to dodge the spiked points over and over.
Leave the room, leave the room, leave the room—she had to leave the room. Lilly went for a wall and jumped in an attempt to escape. She expected air but instead got a face full of cement. On her way down from the shocked fall one of the harpoon tips pierced her calf—not going directly through but enough slit it open and cause her to crumble to one side. Even with the painkillers some of the tendons in her leg were cut, making it impossible to use. There was no escape.
She crawled along the floor leaving a trail of blood while trying to hide behind the pillars as he continued to follow her and fire. The shaft—maybe if she could get back down in the tunnel she could escape down that and jump far, far away—to safety. Using mainly her arms she pulled herself around the room, doing small jumps to dodge the cables when they came.
She saw her gun there, next to the shaft; she had dropped it pretty close. She went for it; her arm’s shaking was now violent and uncontrollable. She literally only had her bone hand with its enormous discomfort to drag her entire body around. She got to the gun. The man was right behind her with his cable launcher. She closed her fingers around the gun and spun around—pulling herself up against one of the pillars for better support.
A loud noise was heard and everything went silent, his harpoon went still and his eyes grew wide while Lilly slowly set her gun down on her legs with a soft smile caressing her face.
***
Everything stopped, and then everything went in fast-forward as if to catch up. Sin’s body slammed into the body of a heavily armed man, he flew off the man and hurled himself into yet another who managed to catch him. Half a dozen guns were point into Sin’s direction as the air went stiff and still.
Seconds slowed, gunfire froze, dirt hit the ground from the last explosion nearby, and a bird tweeted innocently somewhere above. “Hold!” The man above Sin yelled at those around him. The weapons were lowered and the man turned Sin around in his arms, dropping to a knee to help support him. Sin’s eyes were flickering with recognition and his lips were slowly moving. Words, they were words.
The commander lowered his ear close to Sin’s lips to hear the whispers, “Help me… Help me… Help me…” The commander looked up at his troops which were standing quite confused around him. A second ago this boy was speeding around with the monsters blindly slaughtering everything that came to close to him with that, finger of his. The next he’s in the commanders arms whispering into his ear.
The commander looked up and shook his head to his fellow troops, “He’s asking for help,” he reassured his men. The movement of Sin’s lips changed and the commander once again lowered his ear.
“She, she, she made me do so, so many horrible things. She made me suffer. She, she made me hate… she made me kill. She made me love her, get me away…. Help, help me….”
Despite the fact this kid was an enemy just moments ago the commander wrapped his arm around Sin’s limp body, “It’s alright son, you’re safe now.” When the commander pulled away Sin’s eyes were looking into his and tears were coming out.
“I’m afraid…” he whispered loud enough for the commander to hear without putting his ear close, “I’m so afraid, I don’t want to die…”
Without knowing what suddenly got into him the commander was tearing trying to comfort the boy, “It’s alright son, death isn’t so bad—you’ll see all of us there soon.” The man pounded his chest once, “We planted goodness in our hearts to fight against the unstoppable evil, a goodness that will eventually kill us all. Death ain’t all that bad, its freedom from this cruel, cruel world.”
Without moving his tearing eyes Sin responded, “No, not for me…”
***
The amount of blood in that small amount of time was outrageous. But she looked down at her chest—the pronged harpoon went directly through the center. Breathing was already hard but at least the harpoon stopped the shaking and knocked her senses back into her. She smiled. She could feel Sin again for the first time in months—one last time. All she really wanted was to feel him one more time and he felt so good.
The man put down his harpoon gun. It was pretty obvious she was done. He put out a tough large hand, signaling a handshake, she raised hers to follow and grabbed his hand. He shuck her arm up and down twice hard, “Well played my Lady. Well fought. I salute you.” He stuck four fingers to his head and withdrew them in a military fashion. She could tell this complete stranger had great respect for her.
“What’s your name?” She managed to speak what she knew would be her last words, every last ounce of strength now gone.
“Vicktor. Vicktor Amsgetten.” He saluted her once more.
Everything around her was starting to fade, but Lilly had one last request. With her now still hand she gently grabbed the gun off her lap and held it up as much as she could handle first for Vicktor. She looked down at her left hand as she held out the gun with the other, catching how smooth and innocent her flesh looked, knowing she would be giving it up at this very moment. He got the cue and took the gun from her limp fingers.
He opened the cylinder and looked inside, four of the five chambers sparkled like a brand new weapon while the fifth, bullet already inside, was as black as midnight—that single chamber must have been used hundreds of times. He closed the weapon, making sure the single bullet lined up with the barrel.
He pointed the gun at Lilly’s head and she looked right up into it. It was finally time to finish what should have been done so, so long ago. Vicktor pulled the trigger, that wonderful crack of her revolver filled her ears one last time.