PROLOGUE

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"Is everything prepared?"

"Yes Master, you need only chose a disciple to deliver your message."

"Send the girl."

"M-master are you... Are you sure?"

"DO NOT QUESTION ME! Send the girl."

"Y-yes Master. Please forgive me."

"Very well. The girl shall deliver the first bomb shall to Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, the heart of all darkness."

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A young, slim man with black hair that hung limply around his face entered the BPRD at seven on the dot. He has brown eyes and a dull unremarkable face. In fact the only thing about him that stood out were three long, ugly, red claw marks that had been recently stitched up. It was this injury that Hellboy noticed first about the man and, in his abrasive way, he bluntly pointed with a cigar and asked. "Cat fight?" The young man blinked and took in the strange, muscled, red sight before him. Hellboy took a drag on his cigar and blew it into the agents face, causing him to look away and cough. "You gonna stand there gawkin' all day or are ya gonna answer my question?" The agent paled a bit and hesitated before answering.

"I was umm. It was a previous assignment. I uh, I'd rather not talk about it." Hellboy scratched a gray tabby that rubbed against his leg and spent a moment in meditative thought. If the new pamcake pusher didn't want to talk about it that was fine with him, he hadn't meant to really upset the kid. He straightened up and stretched just to see if the kid would flinch. A little smile twitched the corner of the demon's mouth when the agent, faced with his looming height, didn't move a muscle. Maybe this one would work out.

"Well scarface, lets get this over with." The agent seemed confused and followed behind Hellboy as he walked out of the catastrophe of cats, televisions, and papers he called a room.

"My name is Adam." Red gave him a glare that could melt ice and said coolly.

"I didn't ask what your name was kid. Now come on." He quickened his pace forcing Adam to run to keep up.

"Where are we going? I was told I would be your handler." Hellboy rolled his eyes, boy when he got a hold of Manning, well that could wait.

"Look, you work with me you work with the rest of the team." Adam scrunched up his brow.

"That doesn't answer my question." Hellboy smiled. A quick wit, this kid might actually be fun. Instead of answering him Hellboy opened the door to the library and said.

"Time to meet the freaks."

Adam was shocked by the amount of books this room. So absorbed was he by the vast amounts of literature that he didn't even notice the two people in the room until the walked up to introduce themselves. The first one Adam noticed was the blue fish man. "He's telepathic don't let him touch you." A whisper warned inside his head. The blue man held out a hand to shake and Adam hesitated for an instant before noticing the icthyopath was wearing gloves. "Hello my name is Abraham Sapien, but you may call me Abe."

"I'm Adam, nice to meet you." That introduction out of the way Adam turned to the other agent. A thin pale woman with short black hair and eyes that were blazing with some kind of internal inferno of whatever emotion she was feeling at that moment.

"Hi, I'm Liz." He smiled a real smile for the first time in a long time and took her hand, which for some strange reason reminded him of sitting around a warm campfire.

"I'm Adam, pleased to meet you." She smiled at him and Adam quickly dropped the oddly warm hand. He glanced back at the demon, who was leaning against a soft leather couch, and then back at the incredibly normal looking Liz. "I don't mean to be rude, but um Hellboy said-"

"Oh I'm sure he said a lot of things." Liz smiled at the red demon and moved next to him. Adam saw her eyes burn with a love so intense it almost hurt him to look at. She held a hand up and suddenly it was engulfed in blue flame. Adam jumped back and Hellboy laughed at his knee jerk reaction.

"Yeah, its real surprising the first time you see it." The demon laughed and Adam smiled and asked.

"So what is this place anyway?" Abe looked up from the oak desk where he was strapping a breathing mechanism around his neck.

"It was Professor Broom's office and the contains every book owned by the BPRD. This room contains the most information on paranormal and religious material in the world." Hellboy shook his head.

"The way he describes it you'd expect some clunky librarian to come with the place. This is where we hang out when we're off duty. There's always a few bottles of somethin' hidden behind these old books." Liz shoved him playfully and he nipped her neck causing her to smack him on the arm.

"This is where we can be ourselves, where no one will judge us. Its like the heart of the bureau." Adam winced a bit at that, but quickly covered it up with a yawn. Hellboy smirked.

"Tired already, Scarface?" Adam smiled but Liz and Abe looked shocked.

"Red how could you- I am so sorry Adam, he's usually not this rude, well no, actually he is, but I'm sorry."

"Its okay Liz, really I don't mind." Liz still looked uncertain, but Abe seemed to have forgotten the matter entirely.

"Are those from a werewolf, Adam? I had heard about a pack that was running rampant in the mountains of North Carolina." Adam brushed his fingertips absently over the stitches and nodded.

"Yeah, it was in the mountains." There was a short silence as each of them ruminated over past injuries. Finally Liz spoke up.

"Red, I think we'd all like some alcohol now."

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Red surveyed the scene in the library with the rosy eyed happiness of a drunk person. Music was playing from a boom box, several different bottles lay drained on the floor and chairs, and Abe and Liz were fighting in overly loud slurred voices about the meaning of a poem. "I-I I keep on telling you Lizzz. I keep on telling- you jusht won't listen." Abe took a swig from the bottle he and Liz were sharing and blundered on. "When they say that the world will be consumed by fire they don't mean literally, they don't, they just don't."

"Well what does it mean then? Cause I been convinced ever since I read the damned thing that it was about the sun exploding and consu-comsumin-burning up the Earth." Abe shook his head adamantly, spilling a little bit of tequila as he did so.

"No noooooooo. Its all about the world being taken over by evil forces." Liz seemed to contemplate that for a moment.

"Oh." Then she grinned and they both fell into a fit of inebriated laughter. There was one thing however that was not rosy and drunk at this little party and that was Adam. Red shambled over the the new agent and plopped down on the couch next to him. Handing over his bottle of whiskey Red smiled.

"Here. Drink."

"I'm on the clock."

"Aw, come on man, lighten up." He tried to place the bottle in Adam's hand. The agent refused to take the bottle and continued to stare at Abe and Liz. Dimly sensing that his young, new friend might be upset Hellboy took a drink for the both of them. "So what's going on? And look, I know you said you didn't wanna talk 'bout it before, but does it have anything to do with-" He gestured at the claw marks. Adam looked down at his hands folded neatly in his lap and then back at Liz. He held a hand over the scarred side of his face.

"This doesn't matter." Red nodded with a deep understanding that only drunks seemed to have. That understanding came at the price of reduced motor skills so Red could only sloppily pat Adam on the shoulder.

"So its a girl then." He nodded.

"Yeah. Liz kind of reminds me of her." Hellboy smiled at the mention of his girlfriend.

"What happened." Adam sighed and seemed to sink deeper into the soft leather couch.

"Its complicated." The demon nodded.

"I know how that is brother." Suddenly Adam turned to face Hellboy and his dull brown eyes were blazing with a strange kind of light that seemed to animate his whole face.

"Do you love Liz, Hellboy?" Even the whiskey couldn't reduce that answer.

"With all that I am."

"And would you do anything to keep her safe, even if it was something you didn't think was right?" Hellboy paused before answering that one, thinking of the nightmare in the mausoleum.

"I almost did once." Adam's eyes burned out of his skull.

"What happened." He demanded urgently. Somewhere deep in Hellboy's instincts warning bells were starting to go off.

"A friend stopped me and helped me remember who I was and make the right choice. Adam is everything-" Real warning bells went off and surpassed even the music in volume. Abe and Liz were on their feet in an instant, albeit unsteadily, but Red remained seated next to Adam. The young agent was no longer looking at him, but he could tell that the fire had gone out of the kid's eyes. Whatever was about to be said had been buried by the alarm. Still Hellboy tried to push for an answer. He yelled over the siren and the music. "Adam, what's going on!" The agent still refused to look at him and now Liz was pulling on his arm yelling.

"We have to go its the red alarm!" Abe had already stumbled out the door, and Red stood up to follow with Liz.
"Adam, come on!" The boy remained seated but looked at Red with those brown eyes that were burning once more and said.

"I'll be there in a minute, you take Liz and go!" Hellboy knew he should have pushed for Adam to come with them, but something in the kid's eyes just screamed don't ask questions and get the hell out of here. Suddenly Hellboy's instincts were firing off rocket ships. Something really bad was about to happen and he needed to get Liz away from it. He started to pull her away and towards the door, but she resisted stubbornly.

"Wait Red, what about Adam!" Hellboy continued to pull and started leading her out of the room.

"Forget about him we have to go now!"

"But Red!" He didn't have time to argue or explain, so instead he just picked her up and carried her out of the room. As Adam sat alone with the siren and the music competing with each other for loudest most annoying sound he whispered to Hellboy.

"I wish you could have been my friend. I've forgotten who I am."

Hellboy got Liz down the hallway and around the corner when the bomb went off. He clutched her tightly to his chest and let his body buffer her from the explosion. The wave of sound and heat slammed him into the wall and knocked the air out of his lungs. Then a wall came down nearby and he surged forward to get out of the way. Debris flew out and cut his face and arms. Face pressed tight against his chest he could feel Liz trying to remain in control of her destructive power. The last thing they needed was another fire. As the walls came crumbling down around them Hellboy could feel himself choking on dust as he tried to outrun the explosion. That's when the ceiling collapsed and a crushing weight covered him in rubble and unconsciousness. And the world shall be consumed by fire. And the destruction shall begin in the heart of those who protect against the forces of evil. And as they fall so too the world should fall in seven days time.

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