It started with a beep.

The recording that came after it, was what changed everything.

…

…

…

"Welcome To The Waste Management Center of Newark, New Jersey – The Department Of Squeaky Cleanup! Unfortunately, There Is No One Available At Present, Please Leave Your Name And Contact Details Or Visit The Newark Town Hall After The Beep."

[beep]

"…"

"…"

"…fuck am I doing?"

(thud, clatter)

"Is… is this really real? I… um… is this the BPRD department, please?"

"…"

"Hello? Hello? I need…" (breathing)

"Please." (crying sounds) "Please, please let me in. You have to be there. I don't know anymore. I… I can't remember if this is real."

"Please, I have to talk to Hellboy. If he's there. He has to be." (louder weeping)

"what the fuck am – beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep"

The beep shuddered out, as the Head of Special Operations, FBI, towered over the wide meeting table, his jowls twitching. He hadn't been in the best moods lately, and this day was emerging to be brightest side… of a sewage farm.

"Technician."

A lankish man stepped forwards, pulling his floppish brown hair with nail-bitten fingers nervously. "Uh, this recording was taken this morning at 8.43am, and it took four hours to clean up the static from the voice recording. The video recording is unusable, and" he swallowed, "due to not triggering any warnings because of its state, a trace command was not put on the, ah, visitor?"

The jowlled man waited for a heartbeat, then snapped. "And?"

The certificated geek jumped. "Sorry, sir, Mr Manning… because of its state, it was deemed classifiable for Section 51 due to the nature of its contents, and, well…" he flicked his eyes to the audience, and back to the table.

Manning's cheeks flushed red, alerting the end of his short patience. "Enough…" he paused. "Technician. Sit down."

The technician sat down hurriedly, glad to be out of the spotlight. Manning turned to the audience, and narrowed his eyes at one particular member.

"Well?"

"Sorry to disappoint." A deep, rumbling voice that reminded of warm brass chunks in caverns, accompanied by a burst of purplish smoke, "but I don't have the foggiest idea what you're yapping about."

Manning inhaled angrily, but a secondary member of the audience spoke.

His voice was barely above a whisper, yet it echoed as clear as a bell, This particular voice might remind one of the deep thumping slaps of seawater against rock, so quiet until you listened to it.

"Mr Paul Byron… may I have the recording, please?"

The technician jumped at his name, the fingernail he was chewing on skittering out of his mouth and grazing his chin, which needed a 6'olock shave. He half turned to Manning, as if to seek permission, then quickly rethought it and scuttled out of his chair over to the audio player.

Removing the disc, the increasingly nervous Paul Byron walked towards the second audience member. It was only his third meeting with the fre – ah, top agents of BPRD, but his first time actually talking to them. He sure as hell was so nervous he was going to be fingernail-less for the next month, but he probably would parade around his department after actually meeting two guys like straight outta a comic book and surviving.

The technician held out the disc, trying not to shiver as an aqua-tinted hand, with a pebbly texture, pinkish claw-like nails and… thin pieces of flesh bridging the spaces between the fingers, reached out to take the disc.

"Thank you, Mr Paul Byron."

"Ah… just call me Paul. No problem. Yeah." Something exploded in the technician's mind, which would have him bragging on his intensive technical analysis with the heroes of BPRD.

As the technician walked back to his seat rather dreamily, the alien hand that held the disc moved, gently placing the disc on the table surface. Another hand rose from its sedentary position and hovered over the disc. It spread out, the thumb and pinky just about 180 degrees split, the webbing stretched. The etched and layered yellowish-pink palm twitched, its reflection mirrored in the shiny CD.

The air in the meeting room eddied slightly, Manning and technician staring at the disc.

The first person instead took a deep puff of the cigar, patiently waiting for the news. Finally, with the crinkling of gills, the second person shifted and peered at the disc, blinking his huge onyx-coloured eyes.

"I sense…" he murmured wetly. "I sense a young… ah… female. Hhhh… loneliness. Isolation. On a diverged path…"

"Alone…hhhh." The person finished, retracting his webbed hand from above the disc, and looked up at Manning, who looked pretty unnerved by his statement. A moment passed.

Manning scowled. "And? Is BPRD's security compromised?"

"Ah. Hhhh, perhaps yes. It was not a coincidence…"

Icthyo sapiens, otherwise known as Abe, was well known for his blue skin and similarities to the fish species. Found underground in an abandoned lab deep below a hospital in Washington DC, Abe was a lifeless body floating in a tank filled with a salt solution. Many of the tools and apparatus had rusted away, papers hastily stuffed in the fireplace – the unburnt pieces already damaged by decades and humidity. The only sustainable clue was a plate attached to the tank, reading Icthyo sapiens, dated April 14, 1865. An anthropologist amongst the modern evacuators of the lab linked it to the day that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated, and nicknamed the floating body 'Abe'.

It was thought to be a fanciful hoax, much like the 'mermaids' of Victorian times – an age where con-men tried to pass off crudely taxidermised monsters as the real thing - until someone tried to test the lights. Unfortunately, some electrical insulators had rotted away, and the resulting shock took out several districts in Washington DC. The contents of the tank lit up like a blue sun, and the old glass began to give away, sprouting several fissures that bled water. When the lights came on, it took a few minutes before someone noticed the creature move.

Twenty minutes later, BPRD received a call.

After gruelling years of tests, Abe was permitted a "temporary citizen" status, and became an agent of BPRD. He quickly gained a nickname of 'Blue' and a reputation as a cool-headed, stoic person that was invaluable as the brains in the field and at headquarters. Completely aqua-skinned, his skin finely pebbled and patterned with zebra-like stripes, with a fine sheen of 'slime'. Just under his jawline, a few flaps of gills scored the flesh, set below a face that, despite its lack of human facial muscles, seemed unusually expressive. Huge twin globes of inky blackness mounted wide above two nostril slits and a pink spade-shaped mouth, gave a hint to his extrasensory abilities.

Agent Abe "Blue" Sapien turned towards his fellow agent, his first and foremost friend of 29 years, and his complete opposite. Abe watched him exhale another cloud of poisonous smoke, and spoke.

"Hellboy, I believe this does concern you."

The most infamous agent of BPRD since Lobster Johnson (still MIA) and The Torch Of Liberty, took another puff and narrowed his yellow eyes at Abe.

"I said I don't know anything about whoever… or whatever this is."

"I only meant that -"

Manning interrupted Abe, straightening his lapels with a sneer. "Are you sure, Hellboy? That you weren't sneaking around outside illegally, and some one followed you? Or you let them, hm?"

A sharp scrape of chair on lino, "hang on, Manning -"

"What I sensed," Abe spoke, his toneless voice echoing and neutralising the tension in the air, "someone trying to find validation. Loneliness. Isolation. Darkness." Abe repeated. "I felt no familiarity nor connection from this sample and Agent Hellboy, only that this person somehow has the knowledge of BPRD."

Agent Hellboy scowled, creases appearing in his heavy brow, overset by a pair of ground-down horns that gave away his demonic origins. That and the red skin was kind of a big hint. Tall and stoutly built, Hellboy was one of the most senior members of BPRD, many other members more senior long since retired or dead, or off active field duty. Ageless, perhaps immortal, and with superhuman characteristics (accelerated healing, immunity and durability), but all of that and pushing 70 didn't do anything about his short fuse.

Born in another dimension, the infant demon had popped out from a tear in space and time by an insane Russian-nazi fanatic, for how or why no one knew. Nevertheless, a raiding team of American Allies destroyed the Nazi camp and their spell, and one member, a recent Phd graduate, Trevor Bruttenholm had found the bright red demon-child. What the twiggy "Broom" did next bamboozled the secret Government: he adopted the demonspawn and nicknamed him Hellboy, for want of a better name – but the name stuck forever.

Hellboy grew lightening fast, attaining 'adulthood' at 15 years of age, and was finally permitted field duty at 17, picking up his second nickname of Red. Known as 'The Hammer' of BPRD, he had a charisma about him that put people at ease and gladly clink beer cans together, but he was not a someone to anger. Cross him, and you wouldn't see his yellow eyes narrow before his right fist – a oversized fist made out of unknown and untraceable stone that was twenty times harder than diamond, and yet had grown mystically with his body – knocked you out. That would happen if you pointed out how his metre-long tail was probably evidence of the missing link between man and monkeys.

Things were just beginning to calm down, after the murder of his adoptive father and with the official relationship with Liz Sherman, except for his seemingly endless vendetta with Manning, who was now the Acting Head of BPRD after Hellboy's late father.

Hellboy rolled the rapidly-shrinking cigar between his human left hand. "Which means – is this another freak or what? What if it's someone from that failed RV project?"

Abe sighed, a wet sound of his gills flaring with a burst of air. "The Remote Viewing Project was closed fifteen years ago, and for all possibilities, I still did not sense any familiarity. It seems I need to visit the site to glean more information." He turned to Manning. "With your permission, may we secure the area of the gate so I can perform a deeper analysis?"

Manning blinked, giving Hellboy a glare before answering the blue-skinned agent. "Very well. Can you get the subject's location?"

"I should be able to, Dr Manning."

"Hnh." Manning waved at the CD. "Meeting closed. And… Hellboy, watch your step."

Manning swept out of the room, dogged by the nervous technician, and Hellboy farewelled the Acting Head of BPRD's back with a left middle finger.