Sophia's Chronicles

Chapter 86: Blind Faith

Sophia's House, Illinois – 8 December 2012, 6.33am

"Good morning, Dog," Jack patted the mutt's head as Dog came to devour the nutritious Walmart food emptied into the bowl. Jack stood on the front porch, hands on his hips, as he regarded the large open field before him. They were on the precipice of sunrise, so he turned down the storm to a mere drizzle. The aromatic vegetation thanked him for the morning shower with their fresh, damp life-giving essences. Once the sun showed up to greet him, he dismissed the dense clouds so he could welcome his warm friend. He expanded his lungs to fill them with the sweet petrichor. The sun's first rays caressed a lone tree in the meadow.

"Good morning, Ser Adler," Jack said to the lizard in a sing-song manner as Adler crawled down the tree bark. The archangel touched a palm to the bark and Adler crawled up his arm to his shoulder.

Of course, he didn't forget his other friends. He raised up the fresh banana. A small mass scaled down the tree to take it. "Good morning, Paws," he cradled the small monkey like a baby in his arms. Paws, in turn, put his hand around the archangel's shoulder for support.

After filling up the bird feeder on the roof, going about the house to clean up a few things and taking a shower, he opened up a bottle of wine and headed down into the basement. Light filtered in through windows near the ceiling. A lone table sat in the centre of the large, musty space. Jack took a swig straight from the bottle and set it down on top of a map spread across the whole table. His vessel acted as a proxy for his enjoyment of the drink, without the associated intoxication holding him back . And so the bottle was half-empty after the first gulp.

He almost felt ashamed of himself, but it seemed appropriate considering the markings on the world map. The heavily annotated map said a lot about the state of the world and this was just about one particular thing – his dad. He rued to think how much more space would be taken up on the map if he'd added more post-its and threads for other issues. The world would be divided into warzones and conflict dens rather than countries and continents.

The last time he'd added something was just a couple days after the ball in Egypt – the fond memory of meeting Hovan came to mind. He had yet to hear from the demigod, but intentions were certainly acknowledged when a delivery of flowers was sent straight to a newly-bought house in Los Angeles. Jack had just moved into that comfy two-story house in the suburbs a few days prior, so he was certainly surprised that the first delivery he'd ever received was a neat little bouquet.

Congrats on the new house. -H.

Just thinking about it sent blood rushing to his cheeks. Jack shook his head to snap himself out of it. He studied the latest post-it placed over Greece. Hundreds of tiny thumb-sized rocks had washed up in the Delphi coast. No one had taken notice, dismissing them as part of the sand on the beach, but Jack knew something was up when he went to the grand stadium in Delphi and found some there too. They were identical, thumb-sized stones with precise net-like patterns imprinted onto their coarse surfaces. This had to be some kind of sign, he thought.

Saturnalia was coming up too, which meant that some of the Roman gods were on their ascension cycle. This prompted him to perform an investigation of his own. It was an arduous process but Jack managed to do it on his own. He did a rudimentary sweep of the whole region and charted the approximate number of such stones on a map. Lo and behold, a pattern of concentric circles appeared. "What's so special about these areas?" he wondered out loud. Ser Adler blinked in response from his spot atop Russia.

He opened his laptop on the table. For a moment, he was tempted to consult his friend on the Deep Web. Then, he remembered the betrayal. With another gulp, the glass of wine was completely drop-free. It's fine. I can do this myself. He looked up news sites in all the marked areas-of-interest, scanning for an hour to find some kind of commonality. Vampire Boy would have written a code to sieve out all the noise. He sighed. This was taking too long.

Manual searching wasn't an option. Asking Vampire Boy wasn't an option. You could just find someone else on the Deep Web. Trust was an issue, however. Such a shame, it was, that a good partnership had to be destroyed by some nameless third person whose face would soon find Jack's fist in it. He was sure that it was a third person too, despite having no face to put to Vampire Boy's name. I'll get to the bottom of this someday. All that remained was to combine theory and empirical evidence – studying the lore. More reading? Ugh.

If only the stone could talk, he thought, as he hefted it in his fingers. He took a sniff. Hm. Some strange scent wafted from the tiny stone. It was familiar, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. One thing was for sure, though – there was some kind of intoxicant in it. Ser Adler crawled closer to Jack, clawing one of his feet against the map in some consoling manner. The lizard's scaly throat vibrated as he clucked.

"Is that what you think this is?" Jack contemplated what Ser Adler told him. "An Omphalos stone?" He quickly entered the suggestion into the search bar.

The Omphalos Stone marks the centre of the world, a page read.

"Okay, that's a little self-important," Jack snidely commented as he read it.

These stones were thought to allow communication with the gods via the inhalation of intoxicating vapours.

"Of course," he rolled his eyes. He closed the lid of his laptop once he'd read enough. "They're trying to roofie people. But for what?"

Ser Adler responded with another question in turn.

"You just want a field trip, don't you?" Jack monotonously inferred. Barely a second later, he beamed at his scaly friend and placed him on his shoulder. A thought was all it took for the pair to stand in a Greek city. The archangel didn't think he'd be back here in a while, hoping to catch a break after the hours of just observing and counting these little rocks all over the country, but here he was again. Perhaps, in the second look, he did notice some unusual things. Some strange buoyant energy permeated the air. Each and every person that walked past him on the sidewalk appeared like signal transmitter of some kind. Humans normally did appear to him like walking energy towers, but not like this – it was a very specific kind of signal.

It was a distinct change too, based on which part of Greece he found himself in. Those within the concentric areas had this unique signature while those in between did not. It was especially obvious because Greece had seemed to him like a dying nation. Despite all appearances, the air of doom and hopelessness had begun to permeate the people because of the debt crisis. Sure, it wasn't something seen everywhere all the time because it wasn't in the people. It was in the air. The Omphalos stones had completely vacuumed away this gloomy energy in the air where they were concentrated. A continuing awe washed over him to think he didn't pick this up right away before. Maybe the stones needed time to brew and embed themselves into civil life; get into the water, maybe. But the signs were clear. The humans were transmitters for some kind of psychic signal. Getting closer to the epicentre – the bullseye marked by the map – strengthened the signal for sure. So he went straight to where the action was happening.

The monolithic structures of the Acropolis stood high above Athens. To see how the ancient Greek constructions had fallen into ruin, all in broad daylight, invoked in him the smell of dusty books and ambitions of a lost fortune. The city was still full of life, yes, but this was a cemetery and these people, with their Bibles and their crucifixes, danced on the graves of a greatness that once was. It dawned on Jack just how cruel his relatives had been to strip away something like that from an indigenous people. "I guess I shouldn't be too sad," he told the creature on his shoulder. "Greek gods or Abrahamic, they're all shitheads. They don't really care about the mortals. At least the pagans were more fashionable."

When sunset came, the true spirit of the city came to life. That's when things really began to take fruit. The air was full of song and dance. The streets were rife with vigour, like the city had suddenly awakened from a deep sleep. Being a heritage site, tourists were abound and funnily enough, they had this psychic halo too. It was in the centre of the great Acropolis when he noticed the most important clue. It was all ancient. The music, the dancing, even the portraits drawn on the streets – a distinct style change had taken over all of them, like somehow they'd been transported to Ancient Greece.

"No one alive today has ever heard the music of the past," Jack told Ser Adler. "So how does this place feel and sound like it did two thousand years ago?"

Though the archangel remained invisible amidst the roving crowds, all these hagglers and tourist scammers carried on their onslaught of attention-grabbing antics as if to lure him.

"In an ideal world, you'd be in a gulag," Jack muttered in the face of a man trying to sell some miniature version of the Parthenon at an exorbitant price. He huffed, chuckling to himself at the sad reality of it all. "If I had to suffer for trying to sell Hot Pockets to Death in exchange for visits to the Empty, you should suffer for selling overpriced plastic. That's how it works, right, Adler?" That's when he felt the sudden absence on his shoulder. "Adler?"

He turned about himself, inspecting every region of his body and feeling about his hair and torso.

"Adler?!" he yelled frantically. "Where the hell did you go?"

His hazel eyes scanned the crowd with laser precision. Approximately a hundred and fifty metres away, he finally spotted the scaly familiar. Ser Adler looked straight at him, but had latched onto some lady's shirt. Any relief Jack had felt washed away quickly as the woman walked further and further away. Jack snaked through the crowd while keeping his sight fixated on his little companion.

"Where the hell are you taking me, you nifty bastard?" he muttered with a frequency only the lizard could hear. It had become apparent to him at this point that the lizard had a greater plan in mind that he needed to have faith in. So he did. He followed and followed until he broke away from the crowd to wander the streets. The woman appeared more obviously young and dressed in a sleeveless crop top with waist-high pants. Elaborate tattoos decorated her arms and back. "You found yourself a goth gf. You're really gonna cheat on Zara like this, huh?"

Eventually, the trail led into an underground club. Through all the heroin, the lean, the hookers and general debauchery in the narrow corridors, a grand hall came into view. A cacophony of masculine chanting and cheering ambushed him all at once. There were women here too, but certainly not as much as these sweaty men jam-packed around the spectacle. Jack pushed through it all to get to the front of the barricade. When he saw the rough tussle in the ring, a spark of excitement flared within him.

"Oof," he moaned, biting his grinning lip. All those muscled men brawling aggressively awakened something in him. He couldn't help but fixate on their ripped biceps and sculpted, bare torsos grabbing and mauling and pushing against each other. Every single drop of sweat and testosterone synchronised with his yearning heartbeat; every squeeze and lull of his meat heart made him a prisoner to desire. What's a guy gotta do to get choked around here? "Oh, Adler. You really are a man's man."

On some level, he did know this wasn't what his friend wanted him to see, though it certainly was a nice bonus. Eventually, one of the wrestlers body slammed the other in a dramatic jump, eliciting a collective 'ooh' from the crowd, including the archangel. The informal referee stepped in to declare the victory. Gambled money was passed around to those who had bet on the right horse. Men practically grabbed at the little boy handing out the cash like piranhas but somehow, the kid had a way of keeping the order. Jack followed him into a back room where people who looked like they owned the place watched and managed the events.

Looking over shoulders revealed some kind of shipment at the back entrance to this place. Sure enough, there was a truck waiting to be loaded. Unsurprisingly, the cargo was people. If I had a dime for every time I discovered trafficking… It wasn't just anyone too – these were the wrestlers, people who'd jumped into the ring and emerged victorious. Jack was reunited with Ser Adler at this point, so they both hitched a ride by sitting on the roof of the truck.

One blunt reached its end by the time the truck stopped. The archangel hopped off the edge, finding himself in the cover of trees. "I'm gonna take a wild guess and say ritual shit's involved. That's just how this normally goes," he said to Ser Adler. There were torches, people in robes and ornate knives. As a final piece, throats were slit. The wrestlers lay bleeding and dead. Chanting ensued and grew to a crescendo. A completely cloaked figure brandished a long staff with a shiny rock on its end, which began to glow. With the mage's power, the dead shot to a standing position in a smooth motion. To say they were no longer dead would have been inaccurate. Dead, they were, yet alive in some drastically different manner. It was the deific glow in their eyes that clued Jack in on what was going on.

"Of course," he realised. "The gods want to raise gladiators." A sigh extruded from his lips. "I feel like I don't wanna know what this is for."

Yet I have a map full of info just like this. You just can't stop yourself, huh, Luc? Robed figures carried bowls of blood they'd collected from their sacrifices off in some direction led by the mage. As they went down the path hidden amongst the fallen leaves and encroaching trees, a cave came into view. Once inside, the disciples assumed positions in a paired row, each with their own collected blood, and the mage at the head of their formation. A single torch behind the mage was the only light source, and seemed to have been purposefully placed to give him a fiery halo.

"Brothers!" the mage held out his hands in gesture. "The world may have lost its ways to the Christian colonisers, but you are proof that Olympus is not dead!"

There were chants of agreement.

"The gods have always spoken to me, but now they have made their desires known to all of us," the mage continued. "Do you still reject Zeus, after all that your own eyes have shown you? Do you reject this call to restore Athens to its rightful place as the centre of the world? The gods have sent us signs aplenty. Their intent is clear. We will give them soldiers! We will show them we are worthy!"

The mage's own bowl had at least a dozen of those Omphalos stones, upon which he proceeded to sprinkle some strange powder. With a wave of the wrist, this bowl erupted into a flame, whose vapours the cloaked man did not hesitate to inhale. While the other men chanted, the mage threw back his head and shuddered a few times, rocking about in dizzying motion.

"Almighty Zeus! Almighty Hera!" the mage cried out, eyes closed to feel the energies rise through him. "Take this offering, this blood of our gladiator kin, for we are meek. Give us the strength of this blood so we may carry out your will!"

Upon his signal, the disciples knew to consume the consecrated blood. But one look down into the bowl had brought upon them a stunning sobriety. "My blood's gone!" one of the men shouted. By then, every single one of them had noticed how absent of content their bowls had become. Not a single drop of blood was in them.

"It's right here, silly," an uninvited male voice came out of nowhere. The men flinched to find the source of the voice, but no one could be seen. They came face to face with nothing but a stark emptiness around them.

A slicing noise pierced the air. A man choked violently. The mage, through the hallucinogenic glasses of his vision, tried his hardest to focus on the disturbance. "Who goes there?" he held out the torch. With the directed light, it appeared clear as day to him, and the rest of them, that young Mateo's blood was gushing out like a broken dam into the bowl. The young man held a desperate palm to his throat in a pathetic attempt to stem the flow.

A sudden freezing coldness gripped the mage with such a tenacity that he doubted if he could still move his limbs. It was right at this time the intoxicants desired to lull him into an absolute overtaking of his mind. To fight with the drug and reality at once was a battle one couldn't expect to win. Instead, he found himself crumbling into a ball as some mysterious force continued to slash his disciples' necks and fill their bowls with their own blood.

"W-who are you?" the mage shivered. "Zeus?"

There was a flapping sound. A dark figure towered over the cowering mage. All the human could see were flaming orbs where eyes were meant to be. "Please. Zeus could never pull off subtlety like me," Jack knelt to be at his eye level. "The older generation isn't known for their sense of humour. So tell me, priest, is it strength you seek?"

The man was completely tripped out at this point. The deep recesses of his mind had been split open so far by the intoxicant that he wasn't sure what was real or imagined at this point. That, and the overriding sense of danger, did nothing but put him in a feverish delirium. "Y-yes," he nodded, wide-eyed.

"Tell me what the gods mean to do," Jack whispered with a snake-like intonation. He brandished a knife, cutting his palm to ooze blood. At once, the bleeding palm was pressed to the man's mouth. Eagerly, the mage sucked on the blood like an elixir. "Feel that? That's divine Kool-Aid, straight from the source." As soon as the man had felt the evidence of what was given to him, Jack withdrew the supply to leave him craving for more. "What visions have they shown you?"

"M-Mount Olympus, Northeast of here…" the mage's bloodstained jaw trembled as he spoke. "People g-gather. We summon the Old Ones. The crystal tells all where to go. To a- to a stone in the West. The dead are on fire."

The man's beastly eyes drifted to the gash on the archangel's palm. "You want more?" Jack offered, eyes contorted in mock sympathy. The mage meekly nodded. "Ask and ye shall receive."

Jack clamped his bleeding palm over the man's mouth, even pushing him back onto the ground. His hand was like a vice on the man's jaw as he summoned every muscle to push out blood. The mage, first entranced by the celestial power imbuing into him, soon realised he was just a fuse waiting to blow. His eyes glowed a bright divine yellow. Then, the scorching heat set in. He screamed into the palm, fidgeting and convulsing under the archangel's grip to push him away. Jack had now settled on top of the man's chest to hold him down as he generously gifted his blood. Eventually, the heat and power grew so great that Jack could feel the man heating up from the insides, burning every organ and turning it into mush. Slowly, but gradually, the mage's protests declined to a stop and his struggling hands fell away. When Jack finally got up, faint wisps of smoke seeped out through the man's facial orifices, especially the burnt-out eye sockets.

"What was given…" he sighed with a yearning breath. "Will be repaid in excess."

He made a vertical slice on the man's neck and dived downwards to imbibe what was his. There he was, sucking and drinking, interspersed with moaning as the power returned to him. When he was done, he plopped down next to the corpse with his mouth agape at the thought of what he'd done. "Greed will get 'cha what God won't stitch up," he muttered in a half-rhyme. "Hope it was worth it."

One second, he grabbed the long staff, the next, he set foot on Mount Olympus. Under his touch, the purple crystal on its end glowed incandescently. He passively let it guide him, tugging him in the directions it was drawn to. The apex stood rocky and majestic. Just as he'd set one foot above and one foot below supporting him, the burning star in the sky had awakened again. Damn, has it been that long?

The staff, held up vertical in front of him, showed him the sign only when he faced the exact orientation it needed. At the precise bearing of 296.6 degrees, his archangel eyes detected a precise line illuminated by the sunlight through the crystal.

Sophia's House, Illinois – 8 December 2012, 10.03pm

Black ink marked the map with a swish sound as he drew the arrow over Mount Olympus in the angle revealed to him by the staff. "Accounting for the curvature of the earth…" in a smooth, uninterrupted motion, he drew a line straight from the end of the arrow across the world map. When he stood back, realisation dawned on him. "Holy shit."

The indicators on the map were greatly messy and disorganised, but all this information had been brewing in his head for a long time. Once he saw where it all led, he couldn't unsee it. There were directional omens all over the world, India, China, Russia, Finland – everywhere. The hunters' increasing number of pagan-related missions all over the states formed distinct bubbles of activity in an ordered chaos. He drew more lines, eagerness so gripping that the nib of his pen was almost incising the map. When he was done, all the black lines met at a single point.

"That's it," he gasped, a strange mixture of awe and hopelessness making his jaw tremble. For a moment he just sat down with the flat of his clenched fist resting on his chin. "Adler, what are we gonna do?"

Rufus' Cabin, Whitefish, Montana – 9 December 2012, 10.15pm

"Just got off the phone with Jody," Dean announced, settling on a chair across the couch. "She ain't gonna trust any old Bing Crosby after the Chronos thing, but she's doing fine."

These pagans are really stepping up from foot soldiers to gods, huh. Zara recalled the whole incident. Dean accidentally got thrown back in time by the god of time himself. It was pretty trippy to think about it. She was glad to get it over with, especially because of the half-a-star shack they had to settle in. If anything, that 'semi-functioning bathroom', as Sam had called it, was the true horror of this hunt.

"I put her in touch with Robinson. Anything weird happens, she'll have a whole network to hit up. Our very own First Responder system," Dean reported.

"That would sound so cool, if I didn't know why we were doing this," Sam remarked. "Zara and I finished all the calls on our end, so there we have it. Every hunter we know is on high alert and ready to show up."

A sudden gust of wind knocked into all of them. "We have an emergency!" Jack came yelling in.

"Jesus!" Zara yelled back. "Call next time!"

"This is important," he marched around the room, flipping over books and looking inside drawers.

"Hey, hey," Dean called out. "Slow down. Talk to us."

"You guys have any maps here?" Jack continued to rummage through the cabinets.

"Here," Sam held up an atlas from the coffee table, just as bewildered as the other two.

Just then, Kevin walked out of the kitchenette with a mug of coffee in his hand. He stood paralysed just a few feet in front of the archangel. "Um," he began. "Whose blood is that?"

Jack's hands froze in mid-air. He turned slowly to the three on the couch, suddenly sobered with self-awareness. Now that he was standing still, they could clearly see the crimson stains all over his jaw, neck and hands. "Well it ain't mine," he smugly said. "I'm perfectly fine, guys, no need to worry."

He accepted the book from Sam and sat next to him on the couch.

"So, Jack, what's new?" Zara nervously asked on behalf of the others.

"The world is in grave danger," he monotonously replied as he arrived at the right page and set the book on the table. "There," he pointed on the map.

"Washington?" Dean elucidated. "Is… Obama okay?"

"What?" Jack asked as if he had any right to be puzzled. "No, not that Washington. This is Brimstone. It's a small city in East Washington—the state. It belongs to Lucifer."

"That's a city? Name's a little too on-the-nose," Sam wondered.

"It was recently renamed," Jack told them. "It's a whole-ass city, Sam. Hundreds of thousands of people living there, big skyscrapers, all that jazz. They don't even know what's coming for them."

Something about how the angel had shown up, despite the blood and dirt on his clothes, instilled a seriousness in Dean. He, before the others, had the instinct to know something big was coming up; something compelling him to listen to what Jack had to say. "What's going on?" Dean asked him. "Lay it on us."

"There's going to be an attack," the archangel said with a seriousness they'd rarely seen him have. "Pagan gods all around the world are rising. Finding ways to manifest, even if it means killing loads of humans. By God, the things I've seen…" he rubbed a temple with his finger. "These people have no limits. I figured they were gearing up for something but I didn't know what. Until now. I found this guy – a mage, worships Zeus, joneses for blood – told me that they would set the dead on fire. I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty apocalyptic to me."

"This has to do with Lucifer?" Dean pressed. "All those monsters popping up recently, they sure sounded like they had it in for him."

Sam grew focused, like something was clicking for him. "They're about to attack Lucifer's base. It's gonna be a war," he gravely concluded.

"It'll make your world wars seem like child's play," Jack warned, equally sobered.

"When?" Zara asked. He knew, just by looking at her, that she probably had more information that she let on. He wished so much to shake her by the shoulders, shake her out of it, and get her to see the bigger picture. Her relative calmness was stark compared to the frenzy in his eyes.

"The blood moon," he felt like much was lost the moment he said those words. It stung him to feel like he couldn't speak openly in front of his own best friend because he was worried about what she would do. "If there's anything that unites all the religions of the world, it's the strength of a blood moon. It brings the mortal and the spirit worlds closer together. Everyone will be at peak performance."

"That's in two days," Sam realised, with growing terror eclipsing his face. "We have to call it in."

"Wait," Dean lifted up a finger in askance. "If this city is controlled by Lucifer, as you say, wouldn't there be demonic omens? We would've heard something."

"That's the thing," Jack addressed. His every word had a strong end to it, as if emphasis would be lost if he was calmer. "Brimstone is a media dead-zone. My guess is that Lucifer's lackeys are the local authorities and they're controlling what goes in and out. It's also conveniently located hundreds of miles from any other town. Which means a giant sinkhole could swallow Brimstone into Hell's ileum and the whole world wouldn't know."

A shaky breath left his lips. Thoughts flew around in his head in a chaotic frizzle, making it hard to focus completely. If this went on any longer, he worried that things would spiral out of his control. So he turned to the only quick fix he knew. The lighter flickered to provide him ignition for his elixir. One puff of the blunt and things felt smooth again. The hunters took the natural pause to collect their thoughts about the situation.

"I say we send out the code red now and set up camp near Brimstone. It's gonna take everyone a while to get here, on the road or by flight," Dean discussed, trying his best to ignore the smoke. "Meanwhile, we can head to the bunker and pack up as many knives, guns and miscellaneous to kick every species of ass."

"No offence, Dean, but this is way above your paygrade," Jack muttered as the soothing smoke filled his lungs. "I know you want to fight but more fighting isn't what we need. I'm trying to find a way to end all of this before it can start. Make it peaceful, even."

"No offence, Jack, but that's above your paygrade," Dean refuted. "You really think a bunch of gods are gonna pick peace over smiting just because one angel asks nicely?"

"I have to try," Jack insisted. Such a burden the archangel had to bear – the numerous lives that depended on his plan. His voice may have been soft but it was no weakness that caused it. It was a heaviness so deep within his being from knowing the reality of what would happen. "There might be a way to force them to stand down. But if I can't pull it off, lots of innocent people will get caught in the crossfire." His eyes were fixed on the table the whole time, locked in a maze of incomprehensible despair. "If your people try to fight them, you won't stand a chance. Those pagan gods and their millions of soldiers literally eat people like you for breakfast. But… you can do damage control. Help evacuate the city."

"How the hell are we meant to do that?" Zara asked. There was no masking her surprise. "There'll only be a couple hundred of us at most. You said this city has hundreds of thousands of people."

"I don't know. You can't save everyone," Jack said purposefully. "I didn't come here to tell you about this just so more people can die. I don't want a repeat of Westney." The cannabis cleared away the rubble of dark thoughts. One breath in. He covered both eyes with his palms. Then an exhale. "There are people I know interested in stopping this kinda thing. I… I might be able to arrange for a makeshift hospital outside the warzone. A refugee camp, even. Because the nearest help would just be too far away."

"You can do that in two days?" Sam huffed. "That would be great."

"It's gonna be a divine miracle if you ever saw one, but I can pull some strings," Jack vowed. "You'd better remember me for it because God sure as hell ain't gonna put it in a Bible." That had somehow led to a sense of hope among them, especially Kevin, who'd been watching quietly this whole time. Jack's eyes caught Kevin's just then. "Hey, you're a prophet, right? Get out that old typewriter and write some good things about me, won't 'cha?"

An hour later, after another gruelling round of phone calls, the boys had retired for the night to be well-rested for what was to come. The lights had been switched off, save a lamp next to the couch. It gave Zara and Jack the perfect cover, away from light and noise, to talk away from the world's sight.

"Were you ever gonna tell them?" Jack whispered. They were seated cross-legged, facing each other on the couch. By now, he'd taken the time clean up so he'd look less bloody. "Were you ever gonna tell me?"

"Of course I was. The boys need to learn that they can't defeat every evil. They need to have their hopes crushed," she replied without so much as a blink. "I was gonna tell them when the day came. Make some excuse about seeing it in a dream. But props to you. You figured it out all on your own."

An inkling of a smile came to her to think about the lengths he must have gone to for the sake of putting it all together. "This isn't something to celebrate," Jack stated, leaning in closer to her. "Just because you love Lucifer doesn't mean you have to agree with everything he does. Sometimes true love is telling people what they don't wanna hear because it's the right thing to do."

"You expect me to talk back to him? Tell him everything we've worked on for months is a bad idea?" Zara hissed.

"That would be a good start, but don't do anything that would put your life at risk," he advised. "Can't you see?" He took her hand in both of his. "You said he would never put you in danger. But this whole affair is nothing but dangerous. I can't stand by and let this happen. This isn't just a battle of power. This is about the fate of the world. At this rate, a nuclear Armageddon would be the most peaceful way the world could end."

"So?" Zara refuted. "It's about time. Humanity can't handle itself. It's time to hit a reset button. For a new order to rise." Her other hand caressed the back of his. "You can be a part of it."

"I'm not interested in salvaging a broken world," he said with increasing exasperation, pleading her with his piercing hazel eyes. "It isn't anyone's place to undo thousands of years of progress. Believe me, I want the world to change too, but not like this. You don't understand the instability that will come if you help Lucifer do this."

"He has better control of the situation than you think," Zara consoled. To see him then, weary and desperate, could break even her heart. She knew him well enough to be gentle with her words but firm with her intentions. "This is all part of the plan. Let it happen, Jack. The transition will be smoother than you think."

"Hm." Jack looked away, nodding to himself. "You're so far gone. How did this happen?" he muttered hopelessly to himself. "Zara, I know you've suffered and I know you didn't deserve it. If I could take all your pain away, if I could take it as mine, I would. You can't let your rage fester and infect the world. It- it just isn't right. Not for you, not for anyone." As he said this, a deep ache gnawed within him, making his eyes sting. "The rage will be gone but your guilt won't. When you stand on top of the rubble and see what you've destroyed, nothing will fill that emptiness inside you. Maybe people will tell you that you did the right thing. Maybe Lucifer will. But deep inside, you'll know that something worth more than a thousand suns was lost and it ain't coming back."

"Jack?" she frowned. Something began to claw away at her insides. He gulped away the sadness but it had already left its mark on her. "W-where's this coming from?"

He sniffled. A moment later, he shook his head. "It doesn't matter," he dismissed, suddenly filled with determination. "I don't think you understand what you're doing. I just don't want you to do anything you'll regret. You're young, initiated and useful. You see, when powerful people sniff even a scent of self-doubt and unbridled anger in someone like you, they'll jump on the first opportunity to tell you what to do and who to be. You have all this potential and they just want to use you for it. You can't let them. People can be such snakes."

Zara just had to stop and stare at him. Everything she thought she knew for fact seemed to dissolve away in that moment. She didn't even have to question it – she knew that this stinging desolation on his face was real. In this brief snapshot of time amidst decades and even the long lifespan of the universe, she was just Zara, not Lucifer's lieutenant, and he was just Jack, not an angel, and they were bonded by a force beyond understanding. "It's too late now," she weakly muttered. "But it's gonna be okay, I promise. There's nothing more to be done at this point. I'm sorry."

"There's always something that can be done," Jack argued. "We may be facing one of the biggest clusterfucks in all of history, but there's one person in the whole universe who can stop it. Only one person has that power."

Perhaps there was an inkling of hope that had spread from him to her. "Who?" Zara dared ask.

Hazel eyes pierced through her brown irises. "You," he answered. She was about to turn away, put off by the implausibility of it all, when his next sentenced rescued her attention. "You know where Sita is. I know you do. You helped Lucifer capture her."

A defiant huff escaped her lips. "Wow," she widened her eyes briefly in surprise. "Never thought I'd have to worry about blackmail from you."

"It's not blackmail. I'm not threatening you," he implored. Some distant thought seemed to distract her. Some memory. "She's not dead, is she?" Jack's heart would've stopped, but something told him that Zara would've answered that question. If it were the case. "Just… tell me how to find her. I'll handle the rest."

"What, you think that's gonna magically stop war?" Zara grew impatient. "The moment you set her free, they're still gonna gun for revenge."

"Maybe. But it'll diffuse a lot of anger," Jack reasoned. "You don't know the Hindu gods. They're not like the others. They can be convinced to stand down. If they do that, the others will listen to them." Zara still didn't seem convinced, so he continued, "The Pagans may be full of has-beens, but Hinduism still has a massive fan club. Almost on par with the Abrahamic ones. They never impose their will on others, so the other gods look up to them. They even initiated Javelin just so everyone could get a piece of the pie. That is, until you happened. If Rama gets his wife back, he can convince the others to have mercy. There won't be any confrontation. Lucifer can have his portion of the world, and the others can have theirs."

She hated it, but he was beginning to make sense. "I…" she sighed. "I can't do it."

"Lucifer won't find out," he swore. "He'll never know it was me. He'll never know it was you."

"He'll definitely find out," she countered, rubbing her elbow. "There's no hiding anything from him."

Jack pursed his lips, forming a thin line. "When you're ready to stop being a slave, I'm all ears," he assured. "Get some sleep, bucko."


The Void

Smoke billowed in from beyond the gate in a mysterious stream.

I felt the others approaching me as reinforcements. Forty-Two was one of them. Still, I didn't dare take my eyes off the door. "Alpha has regained His sight," she spoke the dreaded truth to me. We'd found out just moments earlier that the ocular matrix, which was supposed to be functionally dead, was live. "Our defences are failing."

"No, child…" A large black figure stepped through, His every limb muscular and His head embedded with antlers sticking out. "They're succeeding at failing."

Every instinct in my body screamed for me to fight. So I did. I charged forward and plunged my blade into Alpha's torso. With sparks erupting from His dark core, the Being dissipated into a million dust motes in my arms. I was left disoriented and paralysed. This couldn't have been it. Several of my sisters thought so too. We stepped out of the gates, where smoke obscured much of our view.

"Not that easy to get rid of me," Alpha suddenly appeared before Forty-Two, walking towards us from beyond. With a shriek of surprise, she too lunged forward and stabbed him. Again, the Being disintegrated.

"No matter what you do," another one walked towards us.

"You can't escape me," yet another incarnation appeared. As it turned out, more and more kept coming. They spoke in unison, driving a stake of urgent chill through me. "I am the Ultimate. I can't be stopped."

And so the onslaught began. Our side merged with His in an aggressive tango for survival. "Commander!" Forty-Two called. One enemy down and we stood facing each other. "You have to go back inside. We don't know if the other areas are safe."

She was right. I dashed back into the Omniverse. Sirens pulsated in my head over and over again, as if the growing sense of trepidation wasn't enough to put gravity in my step. The further I went, the more emptiness I saw. No one was manning the infirmary or the control panels as I zoomed past those rooms. Well, I was glad the infirmaries weren't filling up yet. But the control panels were – pun unintended – out of control. I could hear all kinds of meters swinging and fizzing wildly. Something was going horribly wrong in the multiverse and yet, that was the lesser of two concerns.

When I reached the Omniverse, it became clear just exactly how thinly-stretched we were. My other sisters had rapidly assumed positions at the other boarded-up entrances – they weren't boarded-up anymore – to hold off the intruders. Some had gone off to find a way to repair the defence systems. So it was just me here, in front of the large Interface. For a moment I just clutched the Interface with my palms and groaned straight from my gut. "What am I going to do…" I whispered, head sunk.

Your sisters need you.

I loaded up the defence modules on the Interface and charged up the hyperbolic pulse generators. These had already been calibrated to target anyone who wasn't us, so all that was left to do was wait for them to absorb enough of the surrounding energy. While the generator was loading, I ran back to the first gate to help them stave off the attack. Then, I reappeared to load up the next hyperbolic pulse generator. There was one at every entrance. The best way to beat this attack would be to unleash them all at once, so that their compounded effects would be larger than their individual forces. So I charged up the next one, and ran to the next entrance to launch myself into battle again. Like this, I had made a round at all the entrances, both to reinforce my sisters' efforts and assess the situation while our final means of attack was being readied.

The last one was charged. I hit the big red button, bracing myself. Every picosecond was torturous. Then, the shockwave burst through the air, making the ground quake with a mighty tug. I would've lost my balance if I hadn't held onto the Interface. Distant crashing noises reached me. Did it work? With the help of some keys, the monitors showed me every gate. I was relieved, at least, to see my doppelgangers in less combative positions. Some were standing and looking about themselves and some had lost their balance in the pulse, but they were safe.

I panted for breath at the sudden relief of it all. I almost shed a tear or two. To think that it could have all been lost… My hands on the Interface, my arms stretched, I bent over just for a moment of peace. Some cool fluid caressed my fingers. My head shot up. Black goo as far as I could see – it absolutely coated the buttons. Gasping, I quickly scrambled away. The obsidian poison pulled apart in loose threads as I stretched out my fingers. It was all over me. How will I wash this off? I blinked. It was gone.

The monitors showed movement again. The others sprang into action again. Shit. There were more attackers incoming. I had to charge up the generators again. So it was another cycle of charging, running and fighting again. And again. I tried my best to deliver hope though I was running on empty myself. At some point, I stopped without a clue of where I was or what I was doing. Something in me told me to keep going and I just trusted that inside voice.

For the third time, I slammed the big red button. Another quake rocked the Omniverse. I didn't even bother holding onto anything this time. I succumbed to the shockwave and fell to the ground. Every part of me just wanted to stop. This isn't going to stop. I needed to figure out a more permanent solution. I pulled myself back onto my feet.

"The pulse generators buy us some time but not much," I thought out loud. "Because the attackers are just manifestations. Low-powered limbs devoid of the main source. Cripple the source and the attacks should stop."

I tapped away on the keyboard. "Commander to maintenance. What's the status on the repairs?" I spoke into the communication module. A haunting silence followed. "Commander to maintenance. Do you copy?" Possibilities I did not want to consider surfaced to mind. "Commander to maintenance. Come in."

I left the line open way longer than I needed to. "Goddammit!" I slammed a fist against the Interface. Despite my every premonition, I headed to the upper level – far above where I stood – to see what the hell was going on. As I thought, there was a sight awaiting me.

Had I become so desensitised? So numb that seeing four archangel corpses did nothing more than annoy me? They had been taken by the infection. It had made their irises void of our colour. Now their eyes were a soggy white, staring at nothing in particular, while the black tendrils of death had spread across their skin in a spiderweb pattern.

Stepping past them, I saw the problem with the defence panels. Wires had been ripped out. The hell? Some had clearly frizzed out from overheating, implying some kind of overload. But others were clearly severed. How could this have happened? Someone must have trespassed into the Omniverse under our noses. I dismissed further speculation and got to work. These systems weren't going to repair themselves.

I was halfway through the repair – just salvaging whatever was left, really – when a faint tap sounded behind me. My sword was literally ahead of me in facing whatever awaited me. Turns out, it was the dead. One of them, to be more precise. Somehow, this one had found her feet, while the other three were still struggling to get up. "How's this possible?" I said with the minimal hope that she might respond. "You're dead."

Nothing had changed about them except the fact that they could now walk, apparently. They chose to follow me. The grip on the hilt of my sword tightened. Her jaw dropped. From inside, a black mass seemed to climb its way out of her throat. I could see it bulging and pulsing through her neck. In a split second, a long appendage shot out at me from inside her mouth. Reflexively, I swung my arm to slice it off. The slithering tentacle on the floor had me rooted to the ground. "It's…" I didn't want to say it. "It's the Leech." I looked back at the dead ones. "They've infected you," my jaw trembled. "They've infected the others too. They've been hiding inside all of you this whole time."

At least I knew now how to get rid of them. These zombies didn't put up much of a fight. It was the Leeches I had to be watchful for. Still, I'd assumed that among all the worst things I had seen, this was a surmountable obstacle. I should've been less complacent. As I stabbed the last one, half my sword immersed in her torso, the Leech inside her held on to dear life. So much so, that in its dying breath, its black blood launched itself out of her mouth and onto mine. I recoiled immediately in a frantic attempt to wipe the slime away from my lips.

With all of them slain, dead a second time, I finally stepped back to take a breather. The timing of it all couldn't be a coincidence. The strange uninvited voice I heard in the quarantine zone, the persistent incarnations of Alpha, the Leeches showing themselves? This was planned. Not to mention the fried wires. I got back to working on them. Perhaps it was one of the infected that slashed the wires after being reanimated.

"Need a hand?" the forbidden voice said. That self-satisfied tone was the only thing I'd ever known to instantly invoke a recoil response. "I have many."

"You're not real," I stated with makeshift confidence as I faced Him. I could've sworn He appeared to me with the same fleeting intensity as the vision I'd had in that mission with Sixty-Six. This had to be a vision, I thought. Maybe that was how I knew to be steadfast. "I know You're not here."

"You act like I'm already dead," Alpha huffed. "Newsflash, I'm not. I've already won, Sophia. Give up now."

"You act like You've already won," I retorted through clenched teeth. "But if You were truly here, we'd all be dead. Fact is, we must've dealt You a terrible hand, Khaos. That's why You're using these manifestations of Yourself to scare us. They may be numerous, but they all die with a single stab. They're no substitute for You. They don't even pass. You're old, dying and on life support."

"We both have that in common, don't we?" He stated. His formless face embellished itself with a crooked smile, which soon bore crooked teeth as He laughed. I looked down at myself. Black tendrils spread across my arms. Maniacal laughter filled my head with an intensity I couldn't ignore. Something shuffled from inside my chest.

"Shut up," I demanded. The sounds only grew louder. "Shut up!" I lunged forward and pierced Him with my blade. Another manifestation. He dispersed into dust and faded away. I groaned. With a great push, liquid sputtered out of my lips. My palm revealed the deadly black colour. "I… don't have much time."

It was with this hopelessness I found myself sitting with my back against the wall. I started seeing the visions again. The same ones that had gripped me tight back in that inescapable room before. My son, my mother, Zara. This time, I crumbled under the pressure. "I'm going to die, Mother…" Plump tears defied my attempts at keeping myself intact. "You're going to outlive me."

Like some psychedelic distortion gone berserk, the room around me seemed to warp and become a garbled mess of itself. This must be the final stage. The end is here. Zara had the most accusative eyes. For a mortal, you glower like a god. She was one of many failed promises. Every one of my sisters who were fighting for their lives was a promise each. What have you done, Sophia? You really thought you were in any place to be salvaging anyone. You couldn't even save yourself. That's to say nothing of the life you brought into the world, only to leave him motherless. The archangel of wisdom – a history of nothing but lost causes. It's time to stop playing the hero. It's time to let go.

I wondered if it was just me, or if it was really a reaper fading into my vision. I saw Death himself. "Finally come to visit?" I drawled with lazy lips. "I always hated your timing, you know that?"

He towered over me, scythe in hand. Even in my last moments, his condescending look was strongly vexing. "Luciel is alive," he said, almost like a reminder. Amidst all the visual distortions, voices – including his – seemed to dissipate and amalgamate in a trigonometric regularity. I almost didn't catch what he said.

"Why wouldn't he be?" I said almost dismissively. "Of course he's alive, but is it any way to live?"

"Listen closely: Luciel is alive," Death repeated. I'm at the end of the line and you still won't operate with the courtesy of speaking usefully, I berated him in my head. Then, the dots connected in my head. Luc was taken from me because there was an imbalance between the sister universes I'd been in. Our lives were connected – it was the only guarantee that he would still live. If I died now… He'll be fair game.

Every milestone achieved in arriving at this conclusion slowly brought me back to reality. I looked back up. Death was gone. Where'd he go? I gasped as the Leech desperately tried to suck me back into my nightmare trance. "You need to leave," I growled at my parasite. It pulled my breath inside like a vacuum, leaving me to gasp.

My twitching fingers reached for a knife. My clenched teeth stifled my raspy screams as I cut a large gash on my sternum. Luminescent grace revealed itself from my wound. Now for the difficult part. I hoped my own fingers would be of comfort to me, but they felt like anyone else's slithering inside my chest. I arched my back suddenly, and reached for anything to hold onto with my free hand. If this pain could be described as anything, it would be blinding. Black spots appeared in my vision as I searched for the invader. The heat of death wanted to burn out my eyes, but I welcomed it as nothing more than a warm friend. Slowly, but surely, the nasty little parasite came into my grip. With a mighty roar forcing itself out of my throat, I yanked the fucker out. At once, I stabbed it with the knife.

Just one problem remained – the terrible pain. One wrong shift of the knife, and I could've ended myself. I supposed I was lucky to have excised the infection with just a horrible mutilation. Heating up the blade, I did some work of the wound in an attempt to close it. This would have to do for now, because there were more important things at stake. Finally, finishing the repair, I made it back to the Omniverse.

I could barely hold myself up straight. My new situation would need some getting used to. The appropriate commands were entered into the Interface to charge up the defences. With these done, we may not have the level of security we'd had before, but it would be something to begin with.

"What a precarious little thing…" a voice slithered.

I spun around. It was another one of those Alpha clones. "You try your darnest because I'm not dead yet," I snarled at Him.

"It's impressive, really," He nodded. "What you've managed to accomplish with blind faith."

"No faith was needed," I argued. "You've taken enough from us. We just want what's ours."

"That's the thing, little butterfly," He bore that dastardly smile again. "You don't know these girls. Not like I do. I had a plan for each and every one of them. Not all of them hated what I had in store. Did they ever tell you what I offered? For every loss, there has always been a ten-fold reward."

Through a frown, I managed to curve up my own lips on one end. "Your desperate attempt to make me sabotage my own efforts will hold no weight," I swore defiantly. "We are united now, more than ever. My sisters are stronger than you give them credit for."

"Oh I think I give them plenty of credit," Alpha replied with that Machiavellian glee I wanted so much to wipe off His face. "It's amazing what investments will pay off."

A comforting 'ding' let me know what needed to be done next. "Invest this, asshole," I flipped a switch and activated all the hyperbolic pulse generators at once. The ground shook violently once more. Though I held on, my legs buckled beneath me as pain ripped through the wound. Grunting, I sat firmly on the ground against the Interface until the quakes ended. And then, there was total silence. That hallucination of Khaos had vanished at the first convenient opportunity. As much as I wanted to check on the monitors, it seemed obvious that shifting from my position would only intensify the stinging on my torso.

It was hard to get a grip with my shaking hands. I hadn't realised that it would be so difficult. I was barely pulling myself up when I saw the others streaming into the Omniverse. Amidst the numerous pairs of eyes, one was motivated to urgency upon seeing me. Forty-Two rushed to my side.

"Dark Mother, Almighty God! What's happened to you?" she exclaimed. It was at this point I realised how frazzled I must've looked. With my shirt ripped and a nasty gash on my chest, things were certainly hard to explain.

"The infection got to the maintenance team," I began weakly. I tried to stand again to no avail, so Sixty-Six stepped forward to lift me to my feet. I cleared my throat. "Unfortunately, it tried to get me as well. It was in that unpleasant moment that I found out the cause of the infection. It was those very same Leeches that Sixty-Six and I encountered in our trip outside. They…" I looked to Sixty-Six for strength but she too had this disturbed look on her face that I couldn't blame her for. "They evaded detection by hiding inside our sisters. At least we know these things can be killed with our blades. As you can see, I had to take the liberty of excising the infection from myself. Let this be a message of hope: we can survive these invaders."

An untold look of solidarity was exchanged among us. I couldn't help but feel some kind of pride to see them then. All of them suffered varying degrees of injuries and weariness but we were all here, together. Still, I could see that some were missing and that instilled a sense of solemnness over everyone.

"We managed to restore defences, so we are safe once again. But I must emphasise this: We are living on borrowed time," I told them honestly. "Khaos is blinded again, but if He could overcome this before, He can do it again. I don't know how this happened, to be completely frank. The ocular matrix inhibitors were sabotaged when I went to repair them." Concerned mumbles erupted. "We will look into this immediately and figure out what's been going on. Meanwhile, we must all stay focused on our goals. The first expedition is still in progress, and the second needs to be mobilised soon."

They understood that as a request to get back to work and dispersed. I tried to take step forward. My legs collapsed again and I would've fallen ceremoniously, were it not for Forty-Two catching me this time.

"I- I need to go to the quarantine zone," I protested.

"No, you need to rest," she insisted, plopping me onto a chair Sixty-Six had pulled up behind me.

"The Leeches are residing inside the corpses. I need to kill them," I reasoned, despite my own body's reluctance to move.

"I'll handle them, I promise," she said, so I let it go. "You're not going to be able to do surgery on yourself again so soon."

"She's right, you know," Sixty-Six agreed, both of them kneeling on either side of me. "It's time for you to take a breather. Remember what I said about arms and legs, Sophia."

She touched a finger to her forehead and silently mouthed, 'and eyes and ears,' before leaving us. "Those apparitions sure were mouthy," Forty-Two sighed as she gave me a once-over. "It made me remember how much I really couldn't stand working for Khaos. I can't believe I actually put up with Him for as long as I had."

Can you? I wondered. All around me, the others were slowly picking up pace. The air of busy-ness was slowly returning, but not without the uphill climb of overcoming trauma. Some part of me wondered if there was a point to continuing at all, seeing as how another attack seemed imminent and we might not be so lucky this time. Already, our numbers had gone down a third. I could see that this incident had left a visible tremble in all my sisters. I was supposed to be a shining pillar of strength for them and instead, here I was, mutilated and confined to a chair. I could be no symbol of strength.

That's what Khaos would want you to think. He also wanted me to think that one of my own was working against me. Is that so unfounded? Sixty-Six basically warned me of the same thing. It didn't sound like such a crazy assertion now, especially after the things I'd seen. I could see doubt in their gazes, maybe even animosity, for letting something like this happen under my watch. It could've been any of them. The Devil at my side – which one of you is it?

"Sophia," Forty-Two's voice snapped me out of my thoughts. "Are you listening to me?"

"What?"

She sighed. "You're really out of it, aren't you?" she frowned. "I don't normally do this, but it seems like we're desperate." She brandished one of her own obsidian blades and cut her palm, exposing her grace. "It'll help you regain your strength."

"No, I'm not doing this," I refused. "I can recover on my own. I just need some time."

"We may not have 'some time'," she argued. "Please, this will do for now. I'm the closest match you have."

I hated that she was right. It didn't feel right to me to depend on someone else for grace, but here I was. When I had taken enough to be able to stand on my own, she healed herself. "Thanks," I said out of obligation. "But no more of this."

A silent understanding came between us as we worked on the Interface, checking all the readouts to make sure things were returning to normal.

"If I may be so curious," I broached conversation. "Khaos must have offered you abundance of reward for obeying Him. You even showed me what He did for your universe once. Why did you choose to help me?"

"The reward Khaos offered me, above all else, was to not brutally murder my husband," she clarified. "Of course, I wasn't allowed to tell you that. Would've been a bad PR move."

"Your husband," I repeated. "Michael."

Some stifled exasperation flashed across her face. Years of pent-up emotion, perhaps. "For some reason, Khaos always had it in for him," she muttered despondently. "I got to continue going back home to my beloved, only if I helped Him run all the multiverse, basically. I don't have to tell you how bad that was, right? All that ruthless destruction and formless conflict. But when I saw you, I knew things could change. You made a son who has power beyond measure – a child of two universes; one who breaks the binary. And you birthed him out of your own womb. It's a miracle of the divine feminine. It's… unprecedented. I knew that a mother who could create such a being had to be some force to reckon with herself. I was not wrong."

"I don't know, these nephilim I keep hearing about sound pretty robust themselves. Archangel grace, powered by a human soul? Now that's unprecedented," I said. I knew some of my sisters were mothers to such beings.

"Yes, but it isn't quite the same. These arch-nephilim are powerful, but highly unstable. In my universe, it is seen as a gateway to madness. Khaos has used them, in the past, when a world was severely lacking in 'fun', as He called it," she recalled with a bitter scowl. "He's also condemned them to death the very second He saw them as unpredictable actors."

"Why didn't you bear any offspring?" I wondered.

"Michael wanted me to, sure," she huffed, wryly smiling at the thought. "I told him that an eternity waited for us. There's no rush in these things. Besides, I didn't want to be seen as just a baby-making machine. No offence."

"Right…" We returned to silence. I hit a button to pull up the reports from the expedition. This seemed to be taking a while. I hit the button again. It then occurred to me that this was no lag. There was nothing. "Oh no…" I dreaded the implication. "We've lost touch with the vessel." I tried everything – flipped every switch, entered every code I could think of – but still, nothing. "Great, we've lost all contact. What if they're dead?"

"I know I'm supposed to say something in consolation, but there appears to be another issue," Forty-Two's eyes were glued to the screen. The same reluctance I had in interpreting the situation seemed to have its hold on her. "I don't want to alarm you but the chaosmeter appears to be rising."

Keep it together, Sophia. It's probably nothing. There was just a battle in the Omniverse, so the chaosmeter should show a brief, natural increase. It'll go back down. Something about the twitch in Forty-Two's fingers left me just a little hesitant to look at the monitor she was referencing. Still, I did. The chaosmeter was almost full. That's not natural.

As if this wasn't nerve-wrecking enough, a hundred monitors switched on at once. Every one of them had a story to tell – a story of chaos. War, revolution and explosion in universe upon universe began showing itself to us. This wasn't right. This wasn't balanced. Chaos was rising and with it Khaos would ascend. This was bad. Really bad.

On one monitor, I somehow had the instinct that I was watching my own universe. Some city came into view. Brimstone, Washington. The name came to me as some kind of divination. As I watched, fiery rocks came raining down from the sky. What the hell is going on back home?


Brimstone, Washington – 10 December 2012, 4.45pm

Screams of terror were abound. Citizens of Brimstone scrambled in all directions, like roaches if one looked from the sky, as the flaming orbs descended speedily upon them. The crashes were deafening and thudded in their chests as shockwaves spread far and wide.

Inside an office, a woman frantically switched on the radio. Immediately, the synth beats came into earshot.

"There's a room where the light won't find you…"

"What the hell?!" she exclaimed. She moved the dial to the next station. There was a brief static blip, but the song didn't change.

"Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down…"

She shifted the dial again. And again. And again.

"When they do, I'll be right behind you…"

"Every station is Tears for Fears?!" she yelled. "Where's the fucking evacuation announcement? The National Guard? Anyone?"

"So glad we've almost made it

So sad they had to fade it

Everybody wants to rule the world…"

A male co-worker stood eerily still as he met her worried gaze. "I don't think anyone's coming…"

Ding. The elevator opened. It was a crowded cargo, releasing these large, muscled men. If they could even be called 'men'. Their necks were twisted at some odd angle, different for each one depending on how their throats had been slit. Their eyes lacked any distinct human quality and instead, were sunken like they were already dead. That was to say nothing of their Centurion fashion. Some inhuman clicking noise came out of their mouths.

"S-stay away," the woman warned. Little by little, the zombie gladiators hobbled towards the employees. No sign of comprehension could be read on their faces. Adrenaline pumping through her veins, she pulled out a revolver from her purse and took aim. "I said stay back!"

Shots rang through the air. Bullet shells clinked as they dropped to the floor. Blood-curdling screams pierced the air as hard munches pulled away skin and painted the walls red. At some point, one of the floor-to-ceiling windows was broken by a fire extinguisher, if only for a man to hurl himself out of it to his death.

Amidst the clamour on the street, demons in suits assumed an orderly formation. They were like rocks in the water, opposing the very flow of civilians running from danger. In their sights, Rakshasas bore their true form – reptilian and wicked. They had already crushed dozens of skulls beneath their bony feet by then. The two fronts approached each other, slowly at first, but drifted into a sprint.

No innocents were safe from the barbaric clashes. Creatures of all sorts of heinous origins, grotesque in feature and form, and lethal in their very footsteps were found here. None cared for the collateral damage. The city was soon to be a landfill. Everything was on fire, dead, undead or living.

"Beautiful in its own way, isn't it?" a British voice remarked from a rooftop. In all his years, Crowley had never seen destruction so great and fierce. "It's strangely cathartic."

"You said Lucifer would be weak," Esther spoke up from beside him. Her unrelenting gaze scanned over the exploding buildings. "But he still has allies, you know?

"We have more," Crowley reassured her. "He'll not get away so easily this time."

With a final long look to take in the eventful big picture, Crowley turned to walk back into the building. Esther took her own moment, spotting familiar faces in the street below, before following suit.