INTERLUDE III

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The disappointing part about returning topside was that not all that much had changed. Just enough to leave Martin confused.

It was the first time he realized that Hell had been more deceiving than what he had first thought. Even time cheated down there.

Time moves slower when you're having fun, someone had once told him.

Martin guessed that was also true for having your guts ripped apart in Hell.

Wansui. It was an expression Fang Ling, a smuggler friend from the docks, had once taught him. It meant 'ten thousand years' and it was used only for those belonging to the royal family, to wish them a long life.

Martin had spent nearly twice as that in Hell and yet, less than 150 years had gone by for the rest of the world. He thought he had wasted too long in his quest to find the old man, but he could see now that, from the moment he had started his quest, all of it had been meant to be.

He had arrived just in time.

Martin had thought that millennia had gone by. Enough for humans to look different then before; enough for Martians to have settled in.

People looked the same. Only busier.

Cars were no longer an odd looking thing to be laughed at in science fairs. Everyone seemed to have one now. Some smaller, some larger, all looking the same.

People dressed in less clothes and walked faster, but most of them still had no idea where they were going; money still made the world go around, but you needed more of it now. A lot more.

Guns were bigger and better. Not that Martin needed them to kill anymore, but it was a pleasant surprise to see how inventive Mankind had become at killing itself. His brother Jim was going to like that.

Martin looked at himself in the mirror, smirking with lips that were not his own and seeing everything through eyes that were the wrong color. The meat-suit he'd picked was average enough to pass unnoticed and that was all that matter to him. Soon, he would be back in the body he remembered from before, back to his own skin, where he felt comfortable.

The spell the old man had given him was easy enough. He needed the blood of humans, but not just any humans. The lambs had to come willingly to the slaughter, ready to lay down their lives in order to bring back each of his brothers back to their original bodies.

Martin knew exactly where he would go to find his victims. Poetic justice, some might call it.

He just called it plain revenge. He pushed open the door for the local students' hang out and went inside with the taste of victory on his lips.

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…..NEXT-