Chapter 4: S.I.T.C.O.M., Part 1
Bzzz.
Bzzz.
Bzzz.
"God, pleeeeease shut the fuck up," Catja grumbled, turning over in her sheets and brushing aside her disheveled hair before fumbling for the ringing phone on her nightstand. She squinted at the bright screen, her vision too bleary to make anything out right away. But when she saw the caller ID, her eyes widened and she immediately sat up ramrod straight, pressing the green button to accept the call and holding the phone to her ear. "Holy fucking Christ, Max?! I-Is this really…?"
"Yeah, it's me," the tired voice of her brother on the other end of the line replied. "Before you say anything, I just wanna, ah, apologize for disappearing for so long—"
"It's fine, don't worry, I just—I thought you told me that you were doing some, like, secret Army thing before you left? Right? Are you okay? Wait, wait, a-are you even allowed to be, y'know, calling me, because—"
"Hey, hey, slow down, lil' sis," Max interrupted. "Yes, I'm allowed to call you. The line's secure on my end. I quintuple-checked it with our SIGINT folks, no one's gonna be checking in on us, though… is anybody in the room with you right now?"
"Um… no?"
"Okay, good, and you're sure there are no bugs in your room?"
"C'mon, Max, cut it with the paranoid spy shit. I'd know if someone had been in here. Besides, you still haven't answered my question. Are. You. Okay?"
Catja heard her brother sigh on the other end, and the two sat in awkward silence.
"Okay, um," Max finally muttered, breaking the silence. "Whatever, I-I just need to tell you it in person, okay? It's too sensitive to say over a phone line. Trust me, it all has to do with your field, alright? You're, like, the one person I actually trust to get this done."
"...Fucking seriously? It's like, what…" Catja turned her head to check the digital clock on her nightstand. "...midnight? A-and you seriously can't trust or get another archaeologist on the line for this? Max, seriously, you're freaking me the fuck out; you're usually not one for this whole quiet-and-paranoid thing, normally I can't get you to shut the fuck up and I don't even know where you are, so—"
"Sis. Please. It's really fucking important. I just—I need you here, alright? Please. Y-you have no idea how important this is. It won't even take too long, I promise."
Catja sighed, letting herself fall back down onto the bed and staring up at the blank ceiling. She couldn't recall her brother sounding this scared. Ever. It was freaking her out and unsettling her to no end.
Why did he need her? She was just some civvie, a tech at a smaller, less-known lab that did mostly trivial work for better-funded and more consequential labs. Whatever it was, she was seriously underqualified for it, even if she was technically an archaeologist by virtue of her degree—
"You don't even have to drive over yourself," Max interrupted, breaking her line of thought. "We've got some guys heading over right now to pick you up—"
"You already sent someone?!" Catja groaned in frustration and shot up to her feet to pace about her bedroom. "Alright. Fine. Whatever. Fucking whatever. I'll get myself ready and I'll need to send my lab an email about being late for work, but this better be fucking important, Max, or I'm going to sue both your ass and the collective asses of the U.S. Army."
"It is, I promise. I wouldn't lie about it."
—
The humvee hit another pothole, causing Catja to be tossed around in her seat.
"Hey," she shouted towards the driver, "Can we take it a bit slower?"
The driver only glared at her through the rearview mirror for a second before returning his attention to the road. Catja sighed and slouched down in her seat, looking out the window into the dark woods passing by them outside.
She knew that they were heading up into the mountains. She'd check her exact location, but before she'd been taken by the two soldiers in the front seats, they'd made sure she left her phone at home. Weird, but it made sense if she was heading to some top-secret government facility or something.
There was something about this whole affair that unnerved her. Max contacting her out of the blue after almost eight months, needing her for something that he couldn't say over a secure line? What could possibly be so important that it needed her, definitely the least qualified of all the archaeologists they could have gotten for this?
The questions ricocheted around her head, ever since she'd gotten that call earlier. She knew that something was off, but… it was Max. It'd been so long, and a not-insignificant part of her just yearned to see him again. He wouldn't just come back into her life again if it was nothing.
"Almost there, ma'am," the soldier in the passenger seat said, his voice devoid of any emotion. Catja leaned over to see through the windshield, and could see the base ahead of them on the road. It was a beacon of light in the otherwise pitch-black valley, illuminated by massive flood lights and with a number of spotlights illuminating the perimeter.
As they came closer, she could make out the silhouettes of soldiers patrolling outside the fences tipped with barbed wire, the snipers in the guard towers at the corners with their red lasers sweeping through the forest. She could make out only a few buildings within the gates from a distance, but the base itself seemed pretty small.
They pulled up to the gate several minutes later. The sign at the side of the road read, in bold lettering, "Camp Borgia: Home of the Supernatural Intelligence and Tactical Command." The emblem next to the name was the unit's patch, which consisted of a white cross, with the American flag draped over it, superimposed over a dark background with a dark red pentagram. An uneasy feeling took hold in Catja's stomach as she took it all in; something was definitely off about this whole thing, and it wasn't just that this was the first time she'd ever seen or heard of the Army having a freaking supernatural unit.
The driver rolled down the window as the soldier at the gatehouse came out to meet them.
"Got the package in the back," he said, gesturing back to Catja with his thumb. "Let General Braddock know she's here."
"Copy that." The soldier outside shined a flashlight through the window and into Catja's face, making her squint and instinctively block the light with her left hand. "Yep, that's her, alright. Colonel Richards is gonna want to see her." He headed back into the gatehouse and with a press of a hidden button the gate in front of them lifted.
Colonel Richards?
That was new, Catja thought to herself, impressed that her brother had gotten a promotion since they'd last spoken—and more than a little pissed that he hadn't even bothered to tell her about it.
They passed a number of old, dingy corrugated steel barracks as they drove forward. Catja was a little puzzled at the lack of anything else; it had to be the case that the base was a front for something else, because there was no logical reason to have this much security for a dump like this. The driver pulled the humvee in front of one of the barracks at the center of the compound and put the vehicle in park. He and the other soldier exited, and a few seconds later, her own door opened, one of the soldiers gesturing for her to get out.
"Follow us, ma'am. The Colonel's inside."
She stepped out of the humvee, anxiously flitting her eyes between the soldiers escorting her. The door to the barrack swung open, another one on the inside holding it open as the three of them stepped through. The barrack was a single room, completely barren save for a large set of open double doors in the floor. She was just in time to see Max for the first time in eight months, rising out of the entrance, slowly revealing himself as he climbed the staircase out from beneath the ground.
"Max!" Catja shouted, bounding towards him and wrapping her arms around him when he finally came within her reach.
"Cat," Max replied, his voice quiet and maintaining that weirdly distant attitude that Catja was realizing she fucking despised. He hesitantly returned the hug, casting a glare at the two soldiers behind his sister who had readied their weapons at her sudden movement. They remained in each other's arms for several minutes, with Max allowing his sister to savor the moment despite his obvious discomfort.
"So," she finally said, breaking the silence and letting go of her brother. She looked him up and down, appreciating the new colonel's bars on the patch on the front of his uniform. "Colonel Richards, I think I heard the guy at the gate say? When were you gonna tell me about that?"
"Ehh… Eventually? Probably?"
Catja raised an eyebrow and leaned over to get a better look at the patch beneath the American flag on his arm. It was the same one as on the sign at the front gate. "And, seriously? You're into some weird government occult program now? C'mon, Max, I didn't take you for the type to be into that bullshit"
"Cat, the folks here at S.I.T.C.O.M. are—"
"S.I.T.C.O.M.?" The young woman threw her head back and laughed. "Are you kidding me? That's the best you guys could come up with?"
"Hey, it's a lot better than having to say 'Supernatural Intelligence and Tactical Command' all the time."
"Fair, fair." She gestured towards the staircase behind her brother leading into the giant hole in the ground. "So, are you gonna tell me why I'm here working with a bunch of weird occult Army guys or what?"
Max's already-faint smile completely disappeared, that cold, nervous, dreadful demeanor returning. He averted his eyes from her, nervously wringing his hands.
"I-I think it's better if I just, take you down and show you myself."
—
"Alright, is this the last one?" Catja asked, impatiently tapping her foot and crossing her arms as her brother leaned down and looked into the retinal scanner while punching in a ten digit code into the keypad next to it.
"Yes, yes, I promise this is the last security check… I think."
"You said that like, three doors ago!"
"I'm sorry! We've gotta just get through this last one annnnnd… there!"
The monitor above the retinal scanner flashed green, and the massive steel doors in front of them groaned as they slowly, painfully slowly, slid back into the walls. Finally, at long last, the two stepped out of the seemingly endless hallway of security checkpoints and into a small lobby area. Like the hallway, the entire room seemed bleached, and the blinding white LED lights only made everything even more washed out. Only a couple of potted plants on the reception desk and the American flag hanging on the wall behind it served to provide color. On both sides of the flag were two openings that both led into a larger workspace.
"'Sup," the lieutenant at the reception desk at the center of the room stated, her voice completely deadpan as she flipped her flowing gray hair back and out of her eyes. She didn't even bother to stand or salute her superior, completely preoccupied with her phone and loudly chewing bubblegum as she browsed through endless amounts of garbage content. Catja watched as her brother groaned in frustration and clenched his fists, his face turning a bright shade of red.
"I…I… Lieutenant Erikson, your conduct is absolutely unbecoming of—"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it, fatso." She rolled her threw up her left hand in a sloppy excuse of a salute before returning her attention to her phone.
"LIEUTENANT, I—"
"Woah, woah, Max, stand down!" Someone shouted from the other end of the room, emerging from one of the openings with his hands on his hips. He was a taller, skinnier man, his uniform not quite fitting him correctly and draping off his wiry frame. On his uniform, however, were four stars, indicating his rank as a general. Upon seeing him, Max's eyes widened and he straightened out his posture before snapping his arm up in a salute.
"Sir!"
"Whatever, at ease," the general replied, waving his hand. He began making his way towards the two siblings, his hands clasped behind his back. "C'mon, Max. Lay off the hardass routine with Lola already. She has a lot of very important work to do, y'know, and yellin' at her only makes her more stressed."
"But sir, she just sits there all day and literally does nothing but sit there on her goddamn phone! And she needs to have her attitude—"
"So this is your sister, Max?" The general interrupted, turning to face Catja. Max groaned and rolled his eyes, crossing his arms and tapping his foot impatiently as his boss introduced himself to his sister. "Damn, ya should've told me about her earlier! How're ya doin', darling? Welcome to S.I.T.C.O.M.!" He extended one of his hands outward, wordlessly pressuring her to shake it.
"I-I'm Catja, sir" she replied, cautiously taking him up on his offer. She hadn't been expecting to meet a general tonight, but enough weird shit was happening that it didn't surprise her as much as it should've. He shook the living hell out of her hand, thoroughly wearing out her arm in the process.
"Oh, please, just call me Blitz. Most of the folks here call me that after my, uh, bold strategies when I was overseas—except for your brother, who seems to have gotten himself into a stubborn habit of calling me sir all the fucking time, and I'd rather you not follow in his footsteps."
"A-alright, si–Blitz. It's an honor to be here, even though I don't really know what for."
"Did Max tell you anything about what you're gonna be doing?"
"Almost nothing? Just that y'all needed an archaeologist and that I was apparently the only one suitable for it, somehow, even though I'm literally the least qualified person you guys could have gotten for this."
"Nahhhhh, it's fiiiine, you'll do fiiiiine! You're totally underselling yourself, sister." The general laughed nervously, flashing a grin at Max and clasping his hand on his shoulder, making his shorter subordinate jolt with surprise. "Good job on actually doing one thing right, Max! I might have ya doin' only half of Lola's paperwork tomorrow night!"
"Sir—"
"So, Catja, you ready to see some freaky, fucked up shit that frankly no normal human being should have to be subjected to?"
The woman cocked an eyebrow at him, looked back to her brother, and shrugged.
"I guess? I can't say no, can I?"
"Nope! Now let's get moving, time's a wastin' and you've gotta do your duty for your country and all that shit."
General Blitz motioned for her and Max to follow him through one of the doorways, the latter sibling huffing and casting a death glare in the receptionist's direction as they passed by her desk. Out of the corner of her eye, Catja saw the lieutenant—Lola, Blitz had called her—flip her brother two middle fingers as they left before getting back to whatever lack of work she was invested in.
Following closely behind the general, Catja was led through a small office space with a few desks. There were a few motivational posters on the white walls, with an aquarium populated with eels on the right side of the room.
"I, uh, mostly work over there," Max said, tapping his sister on the shoulder and pointing to the tiny desk closest to the corner. "When I'm not in the armory working on our guns, that is—"
"Maxxie, baby!" A loud, shrill voice with a Southern accent called out, causing Catja to cringe in annoyance. A short woman in uniform, with a captain's insignia on her chest, barged through a set of double doors on the other side of the office, barrelling her way towards the three of them and scooping Max up in her arms, making him chuckle nervously and reciprocate. Blitz took a few steps back to let the three of them have some space.
"H-hey, Mabs," Max responded, giving her a quick peck on the cheek. "Ummm, by the way, Catja, this is my fiancée, Mabel—"
"Your fiancée?" Catja rubbed her face with her palms and shook her head. "Were you going to tell me about her at some point, too? How many damn secrets are you keeping from me, dude?!"
"Cat, I—"
"Oh, Catja!" Mabel interrupted her fiancé before he could even attempt to formulate some pathetic excuse for himself, letting go of Max with one of her arms to snatch Catja into the hug with them. "Pleasure to finally put a face to the name! I hear yer gonna be doin' a pretty big thang for us tonight, right?"
"I… I guess? None of you guys have really told me about that 'big thang' so far..."
Mabel glared at her husband and then over at Blitz, who only shook his head at her and pursed his lips as he let out a deep breath.
"Well, I can't say anything 'bout what yer here to do, but… it was nice to finally meet ya, Cat. Wish it could've been outside of this whole thing we've got goin' on tonight and that we'd get a lil' more time for some girl talk, but ya gotta do yer thing." She turned to her husband and gave him a peck on the lips, drawing out that goofy-ass smile of his. "Hun, when y'all are done, ya wanna grab some dinner and have a movie night? It's been a while since the last time."
"Absolutely, babe. Anything for my precious lil' belle."
Mabel let go of Catja and began making out with Max for several incredibly awkward minutes, moaning and almost grinding against each other. Neither Catja nor Blitz wanted to interfere out of fear of making the two lovebirds angry, but both were desperately hoping that the other would do it for both of their sakes. Catja was happy for her brother, yeah, but this was just getting disgusting and was definitely not the time and place for this.
"A-Alrighty, folks," Blitz finally chimed in, resting his hands on Max's and Mabel's shoulders and gently pushing them apart from each other. "Hate to break up this lovefest, but we've really gotta get the ball rolling on this whole thing we're about to do or Stoltzfus is going to lose his shit, so I've gotta rush this pretty lady along for her brief."
"Well then," Mabel said, leaning forward to give her fiancé one last parting kiss on the lips before letting him out of her arms. Her excited demeanor dissipated, replaced with a look of barely concealed dejection. "Techs got everythin' ready for the, uh, thing, boss. Just—lemme know when y'all are done, alright?"
"Yeah," Blitz replied, nodding as he gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Don't worry, we're hoping it'll be over pretty quickly."
"So, uh, see you around?" Catja asked her soon-to-be sister-in-law. Mabel only responded with a shrug of her shoulders and a longing look in her eyes, as if there were something that she desperately wanted to tell her but there was something far beyond either of them that compelled her to maintain her silence. It was incredibly unsettling—as if this entire situation weren't already unsettling for her—and a voice in the back of her head was telling her to find some way, any way, to get the fuck out of there the moment the opportunity arose.
She followed Blitz and Max through the double doors that Mabel had just emerged from, finding herself in a conference room. On the other end of the room, admiring the amateurish doodles on the whiteboard on the other end of the room, was an incredibly tall, lanky man with slicked back gray hair accented by a single strand of white. Hearing the commotion behind him, he finally turned around, revealing the silver crosses pinned to the collar of his uniform and the colonel's bars on his chest. He was also wearing a pair of circular, silver sunglasses with red-tinted lenses—an odd choice, Catja thought, considering that they were indoors.
"Ah, there you are!" He called out in a high pitched, posh voice, standing up straight and making his way over to the group, his movements oddly graceful and elegant.
"Oh god, please kill me," Blitz uttered under his breath, stepping behind Max and Catja to hide himself. "I've, uh, got the girl here, Stoltzfus. Don't mind if I just step out for—"
"No, no!" Stoltzfus swept the general up in his arms. "I'd love it if you stayed for this, Blitzy! I've been practicing this whole spiel all night and I want you to see! Besides, it's so rare that we get visitors from the outside and it'd be so rude to abandon your guest like that." He plopped the general down in one of the chairs at the table, strategically placing himself in such a way as to not allow him to get up again.
"Miss Richards, please forgive my manners! I'm Chaplain Stoltzfus, and welcome to our humble little operation here at S.I.T.C.O.M.! Please, sit, we have much to discuss." He pulled out another chair for her next to the general and she reluctantly took him up on the offer. Max remained standing, opting instead to lean against the wall and observe from a distance.
"Okay," the chaplain started, clasping his hands together on the table. "So by now, you know what our little acronym stands for and I promise you this isn't just another complete dead end where the government throws money at a bunch of kooks to pursue some weird nonsense. I promise that what we do here is very real, and very dangerous."
Catja only cocked an eyebrow at him and tilted her head.
"Ssssssure."
Stoltzfus sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Right… it's easy to forget that I don't interact with… how do I say this… normal people. Usually I'm always around people who have regular access to top secret, humanity-threatening information." He grabbed a remote from the center of the table and, with the press of a button, lowered a projection screen from the ceiling in front of the whiteboard. "Colonel, lights please?" A few seconds later, with the lights out, Stoltzfus pressed another button, turning on the projector on the other end of the room.
He cleared his throat and leaned forward before continuing. "For months now, there have been many, shall we say, incidents, in which a large number of people across the country have been gruesomely murdered almost completely at random. The F.B.I. were the first to pick up on it, but ultimately came up with nothing, as the victims had little to no connection between them whatsoever.
"However, another organization under the government's umbrella, D.H.O.R.K.—which, I must say, is one of our fine government's least appealing acronyms apart from our own—finally found something that tied them all together. Video footage from various incidents was carefully examined and analyzed, confirming that these massacres were, indeed, being carried out by demons somehow arriving on Earth by means of some kind of dark magic. I know it's difficult to believe if I just say it, so I think it's best to let the evidence speak for itself."
He pressed the start button on the remote, beginning a playlist of footage of the supposed demons. In between all the blood, guts, and viscera of all kinds—enough to make Catja nearly vomit on the spot—she could just barely make out a few inhuman figures carrying out the killings. They were small, incredibly so, only reaching a height somewhere around an average person's thighs, and were colored in strange patterns of red, white, and black.
"Sadly, as you can see, the fine folks over at D.H.O.R.K. were almost all, um… liquidated without their consent—"
"Gruesomely murdered," Blitz chimed in.
"Yes, gruesomely murdered also works. But the point is, as a result of their untimely demise, the investigation was shunted off onto the D.O.D., who created our unit, S.I.T.C.O.M., a few months ago to pick up where D.H.O.R.K. left off. We've been studying this dark magic that these demons use to travel between their realm and ours—under my supervision, of course—and we believe that we are on the cusp of one final, crucial breakthrough." Stoltzfus finally paused the footage, which Catja was immensely grateful for. She'd seen more death and dismemberment in the past few minutes than she'd ever seen in all 28 years of her life up to that point.
"So," she started, finally swallowing down the bile that had been building in her throat. "Why exactly did you bring me here? And I don't want a bullshit answer, because every single one of you—including my goddamn brother—has been dancing around it ever since you all brought me into this."
"Well, Miss Richards, I'm not at liberty to say where we found them, but we've, let's say, uncovered some of the last artifacts that we need to complete a key ritual that might just give us access to Hell. We need you to… examine these artifacts for us. Yes, examine them, before we use them. If they are authentic, then we might just have a fighting chance against these vile creatures and, hopefully, prevent incidents like these from occurring in the first place."
"I'm not even the best person you could get! I-I could get you in touch with the head of my lab, any number of my colleagues, I just—I fucking suck at my job, okay?! There is no good reason why—"
"Please, Miss Richards. We need you. No one else." The man pushed his sunglasses down to meet Catja's eyes with his own piercing gaze, revealing that his irises were a bright brown, bordering on orange. "Trust me. We wouldn't call you here if we needed anyone else, and don't you want to do your duty for your country?"
"...I've already asked Blitz this, but... I don't really have a choice, do I?"
"My dear Blitzy's correct. The answer is, sadly, no. I suppose you're being drafted, haha!" Stoltzfus rose from his chair and, pressing yet another button on the remote, opened a hidden door in the wall on the other side of the conference room. "But what you will be doing tonight is the highest service you could perform for your country. If you'll follow me, please. It's prudent that we start as soon as possible."
Catja and the others followed Stoltzfus down the stairwell, their path illuminated only by a few old fluorescent light bulbs installed along the ceiling. A few minutes later, after walking for what felt like miles and with Catja's feet feeling like they were going to fall apart, they found themselves in a small control center, with consoles lined up in front of a large window that provided a view into some infinitely dark space in front of them.
"Ugh," Stoltzfus groaned, facepalming. "I specifically told the technicians to leave the lights on for this!" He rushed ahead of the group, uttering insults and grievances under his breath and, with a swipe of a keycard, opened up a massive airlock next to the window leading out to a catwalk. He leaned down over the railing and clapped his hands together. "LIGHTS, PLEASE!"
The deafening kerchunk of massive flood lights activating made Catja wince and squint her eyes as she covered her ears with her hands. Suddenly, the void on the other side of the glass disappeared, revealing a massive square room before them roughly the quarter of a city block in size. Carved into the floor and spanning the entire space was a pentagram, with some sort of inscription in Latin around its outer edge.
"Miss Richards, if you'll follow me, please?" Stoltzfus asked, gesturing for Catja to follow him out onto the catwalk. "You too, Colonel. It's time for us to begin."
She did as she was asked, her brother following closely behind her. The airlock door shut behind them with a hiss, the pit in her stomach only growing along with the absurdity of the situation she was in. They stepped onto an open elevator off to the left and, with the press of a button, the gates closed and the platform began to descend.
Catja stole a few glances over at her brother, who was staring dead ahead, his breathing incredibly rapid, beads of sweat appearing on his forehead. He'd been incredibly silent for most of the little "tour" that she'd gotten, which only made her feel more uneasy than she already did. It was already incredibly fucking weird that she was going to be spending her Friday night helping the fucking United States military with some sort of Satanic ritual to stop demon invasions, but the fact that they were all being so cagey about her role in all of this wasn't right.
What did she really have to do with all of this?
And what was Max's role in all of this?
"Examining some artifacts." Sure. As if they hadn't probably already thoroughly picked them apart long before she was ever in the picture. Catja was absolutely sure by now that they were lying through their teeth about why she was here. But there was no way out of it; she was railroaded into this the moment she picked up the phone all those hours ago. She had no choice but to play out whatever role she was meant to play in this whole thing.
The elevator finally reached the bottom, lurching to a halt and allowing for the rusty gates to swing open. Catja followed Stoltzfus and her brother out, her heart pounding. She saw the two men exchange glances between each other before they stopped at the center of the room, in the middle of the pentagram. Stoltzfus cleared his throat, adjusting his glasses as he did.
"Miss Richards, I apologize for the deception, but… you'll be serving a more direct part in this ritual. It was a necessary measure to ensure that you would come here willingly."
And there it was.
"Just—just what do you mean by 'more direct part,' exactly? Huh?!" Catja replied, angrily gesturing to the engravings surrounding them. "I mean, what do you guys need? Blood of a virgin or something? Did Max tell you that?" She turned and faced her brother, crossing her arms and sneering at him. "Too bad he's wrong! I fucked a Brown University resident literally last week, and she was GREAT! And afterward she treated me like a goddamn queen and gave me the BEST aftercare a human being could possibly be capable of! So fuck. You." She jabbed her finger into her brother's chest several times to accent her statements. She began pacing back and forth, shaking her head. "Jesus, Max, you were just going to let them kill me?! Fucking seriously?! I'm your little fucking sister, does that mean NOTHING to you?!"
Stoltzfus sighed, maintaining his stoic expression and clasping his hands behind his back.
"That information was… not something that either he or I needed to know, and that's not why we need you. You see, we needed the blood of a beloved family member for this—"
"And none of the rest of you sick fucks have in-laws that you hate enough to throw them into this bullshit? You dragged me into this, Max?! Fucking why?!"
Max was avoiding eye contact with his sister, his lip quivering and tears forming in the corners of his eyes. His hands were clenched into tight fists, his knuckles bone-white. Behind Catja, Stoltzfus took off his sunglasses and rubbed his palm over his face, clearly frustrated. He withdrew a golden, jewel-studded engraved knife from a sheath attached to his belt and flipped it around, holding the handle out for Max to take.
"Colonel, do it. Now."
"S-s-sir, I-I ca—"
"That is an order, Colonel," the chaplain snarled, glaring at Max with murder in his eyes. "You know this must be done. We've been through this before. We cannot hesitate now, not when we are this close!"
Max took the blade and, after a brief moment of hesitation, closed his eyes and plunged it into Catja's chest, her blood coating his hands and his uniform as it shot out. She let out a grunt of excruciating pain as all the air in her stomach was expelled by the force of the stab. Her hands found their way to his forearms, digging in with her long nails and drawing his own blood out to mix with hers. With her remaining strength she stood up straighter, staring her treacherous, cowardly shitstain of a brother directly in the eyes, defiant in the face of the greatest betrayal.
But soon, her vision began to fade, and her eyes began to close of their own volition. Her hands went slack, dropping down to her side as her legs gave out from under her.
The world around her went black.
The last thing she saw was her brother's face, tears streaming down his face as he committed blatant sororicide for some "greater good."
The last thing she felt was an unbearable, primal rage towards him, one she would drag behind her into the afterlife, chained to her soul forever.
—
Max cradled his dying sister in his hands, lowering her down to the ground as he watched the life drain out of her eyes. He felt his soul rend itself apart, his tears cascading down his face and mixing with her blood.
"I-I'm sorry," he whispered, his voice husky from grief. "I'm so f-f-fucking sorry, C-Cat..."
He laid her down on the cold floor, leaving the dagger sticking out of her chest. Her blood pooled around her, getting all over his pants and hands as he knelt in it.
"Worry not, Colonel," Stoltzfus began, laying a hand on Max's shoulder. "Her sacrifice will never be forgotten. She died so that many more may have a chance of living."
Max sniffled and turned his head to look up at his superior officer, who was completely unfazed by the murder that he had just witnessed in front of him. He hated him more than anything either on Earth or in Hell. Part of him wanted to get up and strangle the life out of him, too; but that part of him was snuffed out by that other, more cautious side of him, that warned him of the consequences of such a course of action, whispering words like "demotion" and "court martial" that dominated his mind and made him obey the dark, twisted demands of his superiors.
It's okay, that part told him. He's just following orders. It was all to serve the greater good, and sometimes serving the greater good meant making tremendous sacrifices, no matter how unsavory the sacrifice itself may be.
Max rose to his feet, standing alongside the priest who flashed a pleased grin at him.
"Alright," Stoltzfus said into the radio on his shoulder. "We're beginning. Please initiate CODE 6 procedures and standby in the control room for any emergencies."
The floodlights illuminating the room shut off, and for a moment, everything was dark again. A large number of candles rose out of hatches in the floor, outlining the pentagram. The sickening sound of gushing blood from various pumps echoed off the concrete walls, and in several minutes seeped into every part of the carved pentagram.
"Now when the ritual begins, please, please, please do as I tell you."
"O-okay." He stood at attention as Stoltzfus closed his eyes and raised his hands. However, he couldn't stop his hands and limbs from shaking, the adrenaline still flowing through him from having to murder his own sister for this bullshit—
Max immediately forced the negative thoughts out of his mind the moment they appeared. He couldn't dwell on them; he couldn't afford to when so much was at stake. Blitz and Stoltzfus had told him that over, and over, and over again, until he'd internalized it. He repeated to himself that it was for the greater good until the part of him that still clung onto conventional morality was drowned out.
Stoltzfus was reciting some incantation that he had been memorizing for weeks. It sounded like it was in Latin; he couldn't make out any of the words, save for the obvious ones like "Satan" and "Lucifer" and several other demons' names. After a few minutes of recitations, Max felt a hand on his shoulder forcing him down to his knees. He didn't resist; if he did, the ritual could fail, and his sister's sacrifice would mean nothing.
When he was finally on his knees, wading in his sister's blood, Stoltzfus shouted another lengthy phrase before leaning down, reaching his hands down into the blood, and smearing upside-down crosses on both his and Max's foreheads with it.
Finally, after several more minutes of shouting, Stoltzfus belted out one final phrase, and the entire room began to rumble. The blaring of alarms began to sound across the base as the walls cracked and the floor shook underneath them.
"Guys! Guys! Get the fuck out of there, all of our sensors are going off the fucking charts!" Max heard General Brad—Blitz shout through his radio, though he didn't really process it. He kept kneeling there, the Petrine cross painted on his forehead in his own sister's blood, staring down at said sister and feeling just… nothing.
Shouldn't he at least feel something?
Anything?
He felt Stoltzfus grip him by the back of the collar and drag him backwards toward the elevator, heard him shouting something into the radio, but he didn't care. His watched with empty eyes as the floor caved in where they had once been standing, his sister's lifeless body falling through into the hole like a ragdoll, the torrent of blood cascading down afterward like a waterfall as the rest of the pentagram was transformed into some kind of unholy portal.
The portal stopped expanding when it reached the edges of the pentagram, pitch black like the darkest of nights. As the elevator reached the catwalk, Stoltzfus finally let go of the catatonic Colonel, rushing over to the railing and leaning over in an attempt to get a better view into the portal. Max leaned himself up against the wall, his gaze fixed on the pulsating darkness beneath them. The bags under his eyes only sagged further, his eyes glazing over as he felt the last vestiges of his humanity wither and die.
"YES!" Stoltzfus shouted at the top of his lungs, laughing like a lunatic as he ran over to the airlock door and banged his fists against the hard metal, hard enough that he risked breaking bones. "WE DID IT! WE FUCKING DID IT! HAHAHAHAHA!"
The airlock door hissed open and the moment Stoltzfus could see Blitz through the doorway he scooped him up into a tight bear hug, pressing their lips together in a display of unbridled passion and emotion. The general struggled against him, hitting his fists against the chaplain's shoulders and trying desperately to shove himself away. Eventually Stoltzfus relented, setting his technically-superior officer and lover down, panting and with a wide grin plastered across his face.
"Please, please, please, please, PLEASE, Blitzy, give me a few minutes to pick out our strongest, sexiest, most masculine men and we can lead them down into that accursed place and tear them limb from limb just like we've always been planning to—"
"Woah, woah, woah, hold your fucking horses, mister," Blitz interrupted, physically holding his chaplain in place by the forearms to keep him from vibrating too much. "I'm the superior officer here, and we are not going into that… fucking thing down there," he said, gesturing towards the portal. "Not yet, anyway. We still need the techs to run some tests on it, make sure it's safe to go through. Alright?"
"Awww, is that really necessary, Blitzy?"
"Yes. I am not rushing into this blind. We need to take this as carefully as fucking possible so we don't royally fuck this up like back in Mosul. You remember Mosul, right?"
"...Yes. Yes I do, Blitz."
"Good. Now get back inside; we've got a lot of work to do before we show those demon fucks just how powerful America can be when you piss it off."
—
It was a typical day in Greed. Screams, gunfire, several large explosions; the neverending symphony of death and destruction played along to its usual tune.
One of Greed's many nameless gangs of imps had been scavenging around in one of Greed's many landfills, pilfering almost anything they could get their hands on: old appliances, wasting and half-rotten food, whatever was on the supply list their boss had handed them before they got there. If you could think of it, they probably found it and found some way of fitting it into their barely-functioning cars.
A portal opened over the landfill while the gang was hauling a few old refrigerators out to the road. This was a common occurrence; the rich fucks in the wealthier rings, usually the Ars Goetia, would just use their magic to dump any of their unwanted shit out directly into Greed, not giving a damn where it landed or who would take it. None of the imps batted an eye.
Well, until a human body fell through, a golden dagger buried in its chest, that is, slamming into the ground with a sickening smack and leaving a massive bloodstain underneath its twisted form. A sickly mixture of human and various animals' blood gushed out of the portal shortly after, coating the mangled corpse and the entire surrounding area in a sticky, crimson residue.
The imps were cautious at first; after all, for all of them, it was the first time seeing a real mortal, even if it was just the lifeless shell of one. One by one they approached, stepping through the blood pooled on the ground to get a closer look at it. They poked at it with sticks, with steel pipes, any object they could get their hands on.
Finally, one of them got close enough and snatched the golden dagger out of her chest, a sickening squelch echoing off the nearby garbage heaps. The other imps immediately jumped him to take it for themselves, stabbing and shooting and strangling and bashing each other's heads in with nearby objects in a gratuitous display of violence and gore, all of them desperate to be the one to sell the precious-looking object and finally have the cash to leave this nightmare of an existence behind.
They left the body largely untouched, save for a watch and a few pieces of jewelry, easy items for any of them to pawn off for some pocket change. It was interesting, seeing the remains of a mortal, but none of them had any interest in claiming a useless, bloody pile of meat and bones.
—
Somewhere in Pride, in a run down apartment downtown, Catja grabbed a cigarette from the pack on her kitchen table and, with a significant amount of force, slammed open the one window in her apartment. She leaned out and lit the cigarette with a shitty lighter she'd found on the street, taking a drag and closing her eyes as she listened to the ambience of gunfire, screams, and traffic jams that she'd grown accustomed to.
It'd been over a month since she'd been murdered by her brother at the behest of the sick fucks in S.I.T.C.O.M. When she'd woken up in Hell after her death, she found herself face-down in the middle of an alleyway in the middle of some city, with a few rags covering her as her only possessions. Trudging through the streets and back alleys until she found a nearby gas station, she was horrified to find when she saw herself in the bathroom mirror that her skin was a sickly mixture of splotches of brown and purple, as if she'd been bruised all over her body, with a glowing red spot at the center of her chest where her heart was; that her eyes, once a beautiful shade of blue, had been consumed entirely with a dark red, which seemed to spill out of her sockets and lick at her skin like flames; and that her hair had turned as white as ash, barely covering a pair of small horns on the top of her head. She'd cried for several hours, finally realizing the gravity of the situation she was in and grieving the person she once was.
Catja had been working at that gas station for a while now, making just enough cash to keep herself holed up in a nearby "apartment" that was frankly little more than just a glorified storage closet; to be fair, it was a lot like the old one she'd had in New York when she'd been studying at NYU. Nonetheless, she eked out a pathetic existence, maintaining the store at the behest of her greedy boss and every single day she wished she were back in the lab examining artifacts again. She'd give anything to have that life again, to see her old colleagues one last time and tell them everything she'd meant to say before her murder.
One day, while she was sweeping the floors and restocking the fridges with energy drinks, something caught her eye on the television playing behind the counter. It was a shitty advertisement for some company called the "Immediate Murder Professionals" and how they'd head up to the mortal world and kill anyone for you if you paid them enough money.
She'd called them the moment their number flashed on the screen, got in touch with their boss—some weirdo named Blitzo, with a silent "o"— told them about Max, about how he'd murdered her, and where they could find him. Of course, Blitzo was less concerned about the danger of the job and more so about how much she'd be paying. Knowing that she barely had enough money to scrape by as is, she'd told him that she'd have the money for it soon, and he'd promised to keep her on file until she was ready to commit.
So Catja worked for hours on end every day, taking overtime, taking as many extra shifts as she could, grinding through her awful dead-end job to save up as much cash as possible to finally, fucking finally, drag Max down to Hell with her. Finally, about a week later, she'd made just enough, and here she was, trying to mentally prepare herself to commit to it.
She pulled out her shitty old flip phone and rang up I.M.P.'s number, holding the phone to her ear as she took another drag of the cigarette, watching as the tip lit up and some of the tube's length burnt away into ash. The tone rang for a while; hopefully they weren't totally busy right now and she wouldn't have to put this off any longer. Thankfully, she heard a click as she was connected to the other end.
"Immediate Murder Professionals," a dispassionate female voice on the other end of the line grumbled. "We kill shit for money."
"Yeah, I talked to your boss last week about a job and I wanna let him know that I'm ready to commit."
"One sec." Catja heard the person on the other end move the phone away from her head to keep from shouting into the receiver and temporarily deafening Catja . "BLITZ! SOME GIRL SAYS Y'ALL TALKED LAST WEEK, SAYS SHE'S READY TO COMMIT!" She couldn't hear the response, but a few seconds later, she could hear the phone frantically being wrestled from the receptionist's hands.
"Howdy howdy, miss…uhh… fuck I remember your name starts with a C… Catherine…? Yeah, that sounds right, you're Catherine, right?"
"Catja."
"FUCK! Catja! Right! That's a beautiful name!"
"Thanks."
"Okay, so, um… finally made up your mind on wantin' to kill that pigfucker brother of yours you were tellin' me about yesterday?"
"Yep."
"Okay, okay, so… just to get my shit straight…" She heard Blitzo fumbling around with paperwork on the other end of the line, cursing under his breath as he searched through filing cabinets to find her file. "Right, here it is! So, you want us to kill your brother, who killed you in some weird ritual…blah blah blah, he's in some backwoods military base…blah blah fucking blah…the details clearly aren't important because the only other thing I wrote down is a big fuckin' dollar sign. So, that means you're gonna be payin' a lot for this one, right?"
"...I mean, I think the details are kinda important, this ain't gonna be—"
"Don't worry about it! Whatever it is, I'm 100% absolutely positively sure that we can handle it."
Catja was ready to reiterate that said "backwoods military base" was actually an incredibly secure facility belonging to a unit specifically trained and armed to kill demons, but she knew that'd probably scare them off.
"I've already got the money set up and ready to go. Once the job's done, I'll send it your way."
"Alrighty! You shouldn't have to wait too long, we'll have that fucker dead in no time."