Chapter 5: S.I.T.C.O.M., Pt. 2
Late at night, somewhere deep in the Virginian woods, a portal from Hell tore itself open out of thin air, sending nearby wildlife fleeing into the treeline. Three figures emerged, their feet crunching against dead leaves and twigs on the ground as they hopped out in succession. In the darkness, keeping their bodies close to the ground to avoid making their silhouettes visible to anyone who could see them, they stalked through the forest, heading towards the beacon of light from further in the forest.
They eventually reached a small hill overlooking the target's location. The three imps ducked behind a large rock formation just before a floodlight swept over their position, only peaking over at their destination when the light faded and the darkness flooded back in its absence.
"Alright guys, this is supposed to be the place," Blitzo whispered to his employees, producing a handheld telescope from his jacket pocket. His cocky grin faded as he took stock of the base's defenses. "Shiiiiiit, they've got this place locked down tighter than a fuckin' chastity cage. Snipers, patrols, lots of floodlights… What the fuck do they have goin' on here?"
"I have no idea," Moxxie replied, producing his sniper rifle from his jacket and unfolding it. He nestled its barrel in between two rocks and shouldered it, pressing his eye to the scope and adjusting the zoom to get a better look at the base below. He was half-tempted to pick off a few of the soldiers patrolling the perimeter on the spot, but held back for the sake of not ruining the mission before it even really began. However, as he followed the perimeter with his eyes, he noticed a large pipe covered by a grate beneath the fence on the far side of the base, venting some sort of steam out into the frigid night air. "Sir," he hissed, waving his hand to get Blitzo's attention and nodding his head in the direction of the grate. "Take a look over there."
"Oh… oh, I see what you're gettin' at. Good catch, Mox." Blitzo jumped down off the rocks and gestured for Millie to follow close behind him. She nodded, tightening her grip on her ax with both hands. "Mills, you're with me. We're gonna sneak on down to that grate and see if that's our ticket in. Mox, keep us covered; if those assholes figure us out, I'd feel a helluva lot better about our chances with you pickin' 'em off from up here."
"You can count on me, sir."
"Hell yeah! Alright, bitch, let's get this show on the road!"
Moxxie shouldered his rifle again and kept track of Blitzo's and Millie's movement through the scope, watching as they slid down the hillside and traversed their way past the spotlights, hiding behind trees and other rock formations to avoid being spotted. A few times, he was worried that one of the snipers would notice them—their lasers were passing uncomfortably close, and the thought of any of them hurting Millie made his blood boil. He lowered his finger down from the side of the trigger guard and hovered it over the trigger as he prepared himself to blow the nearest sniper's head clean off.
Thankfully, he didn't need to do it; he watched as Blitzo and Millie made it safely to the grate, narrowly bypassing one of the perimeter patrols while they slipped down into the pipe's entryway, with both of them tugging against the grate with all of their strength until it popped off, clattering to the ground beneath them. Blitzo leaned out of the entryway and waved towards Moxxie, gesturing for him to come down the hill and join them. Moxxie unshouldered his rifle and folded it up again, stuffing it back into his jacket before scrambling down the rocks and following the same route that Blitzo and Millie had taken down to the bottom. By the time he reached them, he was panting and heaving from a mixture of overexertion and the panic from nearly being caught by a floodlight on the way down.
"Phew… I…was worried that…" Moxxie stopped talking and sniffed the air, noticing the overwhelming stench of the hot air rising out from deeper within the ventilation pipe. He gagged, feeling bile creeping up his throat and bulged out his cheeks. "Oh crumbs, how are you guys—ugh, just—how can you just stand here and not be bothered by that smell?!"
Blitzo waved his hand and scoffed.
"I mean, I've smelled waaaaay fuckin' worse."
"I don't think it's that bad, either," Millie replied, shrugging nonchalantly. "Good ol' stick never hurt nobody."
"No offense, honey, but you're only saying that because you grew up surrounded by animals and their crap and—ugh, oh fuck, oh fuck, I-I've gotta hurl!" Moxxie whipped around, keeled over, and emptied the morning's breakfast from his stomach. Groaning in pain, he stood back up straight again, dusting off his jacket and pinching his nose to block out the smell to the best of his ability. "S-sorry about that guys, can we just get through here as quickly as we can? I don't know how much of this I'll be able to take…"
"Yeah, we don't wanna stick around too long," Blitz answered him. "Who knows when they'll finally decide to send someone to check on this shit… literally." He chuckled and began to head further into the pipe, strutting along confidently. However, just as he was about to step forward, Moxxie saw a few small, black dots lining the interior of the pipe just in front of him. He squinted and noticed several incredibly faint purplish lasers emerging from the dots. His eyes widened in panic and he started to reach out to yank Blitzo back. "Fuckin' idiots, didn't even think to—"
"Sir, watch out!"
It was too late. Blitzo's leg had already crossed one of the lasers. He stopped dead in his tracks and after a second of awkward silence.
"FUCKING SHIT!" He shouted, stomping his foot down in frustration and drawing his pistol. "Let's fucking move it before those cocksuckers get all over us!"
The three imps bolted down the pipe with their weapons at the ready as alarms began to blare all throughout the night and all throughout the facility, everyone on the base now aware of the fact that intruders had managed to break in.
"Test 63. Continuation of tests of effectiveness of 5.56-by-45 millimeter cartridge on deceased demon flesh. Current test is of the M995 armor piercing cartridge, to be compared against baseline of standard M193 ball cartridge. Test begins now." Max set the audio recorder on the table in front of him and picked up his modified M4 carbine, slamming the bolt release with his palm as he shouldered the rifle and took aim through the red dot sight at a bloody pile of meat downrange.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
Each crack of his rifle was accompanied milliseconds later by sickening squelches as the rounds impacted the flesh, causing red mists to linger in the air for several seconds. The sickening stench of hot lead mixing with decaying flesh and blood should have disgusted him; instead, it gave him a sense of… satisfaction? Pride? He didn't quite know how to describe it. All that he did know was that whatever feeling it was, it reminded him that he was alive.
Nothing else really made him feel alive anymore.
Not since…
…since he'd had to do what was necessary for the mission.
Max released the magazine onto the ground and cleared the chamber, racking the bolt several times before flipping on the safety and slinging the rifle behind his back. He grabbed the audio recorder and made his way around the dividers and onto the range itself to check on the meat. He turned off the camera that had been placed on a tripod off to the side before continuing with his inspection.
"Target has been thoroughly shredded," he spoke into the recorder, using one gloved hand to poke and prod at a few of the entry and exit wounds. "As expected, armor piercing ammunition clearly has more penetrative power than ball ammunition on unarmored animal flesh. Video footage should confirm this." He sighed and shook his head. "Off the record, I'd just like to reiterate, sir, that this is a pointless exercise by now. Prior testing has shown that these 'imps' are incredibly vulnerable to every kind of weapons fire we've tried, and anything over nine-millimeter is overkill."
Max clicked off the audio recorder and waved over to the figure leaning against the wall next to the range's entrance. "Alright, Lola," he called out, pointing to the bloody pile. "Get this crap disposed of."
"Aaaaand why would I do that," The lieutenant answered, flipping her hair back and continuing to scroll through her phone. "You're the one who made the mess." Blitz had wanted her here to "help" with the tests, but so far she'd done nothing but sit in the back, scroll on her phone, and complain every time a brass shell happened to fly back in her direction.
Good God, Max hated her fucking guts.
"Because I'm ordering you to, Lieutenant. Now get over here and do it."
"You're gonna have to try harder than that, dipshit."
"Oh my—UGH, fucking Christ, Lola, get your insubordinate ass over here and get this gross shit to the incinerator or—"
"Or what? You're gonna tell Blitz about it? And what's he gonna do, huh?"
Max clenched his fists and took a deep breath to get ahold of himself. He dug his fingernails into his palms to feel something apart from the constant and undying rage he felt towards the snarky jackass across the room. No matter how hard he tried to push back, to get her to see him as her superior officer the way she was supposed to, she always seemed to find a way to put him down and make him feel like shit.
"That's what I thought," Lola continued, returning her attention to her phone. She chuckled and shook her head. "You're so easy. Always such a fuckin' pushover." She pressed the button on the side of the door and waited for it to slide open before sauntering out, flipping Max a middle finger as she left.
Scoffing, Max grabbed the SD card from the camera and stormed out of the range. When he was finally out, he sighed and leaned back against the closed door, relieved to finally get some fresh air—well, as fresh as you can get while working in a secret underground facility. He took off his gloves, stuffed them in his pockets and rubbed down his face with his hands.
He was about to let himself scream into his hands when he heard the clanking of holstered hand axes against
"Max!" He heard Mabel call out from across the office. She was rapidly approaching him, the clanking of her holstered hand axes against her thighs giving away how close she was getting.
Please just leave me alone, a part of him desperately wanted to tell her. God he just wanted to be alone, just for once. He never had time alone these days, what with her always being all over him almost every waking moment when he wasn't working.
"Hey," was all that ended up lurching pathetically out of his mouth as he involuntarily flashed a smile at her to keep up the image of the happy, innocent man that Mabel was desperately trying to cling to.
"How're ya holdin' up, pumpkin? Blitz got ya runnin' more tests on those samples we got last week?"
"Yeah," he replied, gently pushing past her and heading across the room towards Blitz's office. "Same crap, different day. You know how he is, loading me up with pointless work all the time. I'm managing, though. Don't worry."
"Well, just managin' ain't good enough fer me." Mabel stepped in front of him, stopping him by placing her hands on his chest. He groaned and let his head fall forward. Thinking it was an invitation, Mabel pressed her forehead against his. "Ya've been out of it for a while now, hun. What's up?"
"Nothing! I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Ya know I know that yer a bad liar. How 'bout you tell me all about it later over dinner and— "
Max grabbed his wife's hands and took them off his chest, holding them in his own and massaging her palms.
"Mabel. Trust me. It's nothing. Now please let me go see the general?"
She sighed and cupped her husband's face, leaning forward and planting a kiss on his lips, one that he just barely brought himself to reciprocate.
"Alright. But I wanna talk later, alright? I'm worried about you."
"I mean… we talk all the time."
"I know, but—I mean—ugh, you know what I mean."
"Yeah. I'm sorry, babe."
Max gently guided his wife off to the side and rapped his knuckle against the door. The two of them stood there in painful silence while they waited for the general to answer the door. Mabel flashed him a look of concern, keeping her wide, twinkling eyes fixed on him. For a moment, his heart softened and he let himself feel the faintest echo of a love that he'd thought he'd lost weeks ago. Ever since then, he'd…
Fuck. Don't think about it, he thought to himself. Stop thinking about it, before it spiraled out of control again. There was no use in dwelling on it. He'd been over it over and over and over and over again, with Stoltzfus and Blitz, and they'd both told him the same thing: to shut his mouth, keep his head down, and keep working.
The door swung open and Stoltzfus shoved past both Max and Mabel as he stormed out of the room; there was a slight limp in his step, and for a moment, Max swore that he could see a strand of viscous white fluid dripping from his mouth, but the chaplain wiped it off with his sleeve as he went. About halfway down the hall to his office, he stopped in his tracks and sighed, furrowing his brow as he turned around.
"Someday you're going to have to stop stalling for time and do something about these creatures, Blitz! The longer we wait—"
"Just because you give me really good head doesn't mean you give good advice!" The general screamed back.
Stoltzfus cast his gaze over the couple standing by the doorway and Max watched as his face turned a bright, almost incandescent, red. Clearly he was still under the impression that his and Blitz's little "fling" was supposed to be a secret, even though the knowledge of it had spread through the base like wildfire the day that they'd begun.
"Please, darling, just listen to me—"
"Go fuckin' pray or whatever it is we pay you to do anyway!"
Stoltzfus muttered something half-unintelligible under his breath, something about his heart being jerked around, and limped into his own office, slamming the door shut behind him, the loud slam making the couple jump.
"C'mon in," Max heard the general say, just barely audible enough to get his attention, the last of his energy spent screaming at his obvious "secret" lover. Max entered and shut the door behind him, relieved to be away from his overly-doting, overly-concerned wife. Blitz was facing away from the doorway, his eyes locked on the lines of monitors on the wall behind him. Most of the monitors were displaying images captured from the various drone expeditions that they'd sent through the portal or still frames from the video footage that they'd inherited from D.H.O.R.K.
"So, Max," the general finally started, swiveling his chair around and clasping his hands on his desk. Now that his face was in view, Max could see just how much of a toll this project was taking on him. He noticed a few gray hairs that he hadn't noticed before, and the bags under his eyes had gotten significantly more pronounced. "I believe you've got somethin' for me?"
"Yes, sir," Max replied, stepping forward and setting both the audio recorder and the camera's SD card down on the desk in front of Blitz. His superior officer scooped both of them up into his hand and, after opening one of the drawer's in his desk, dumped them both inside. "With all due respect, sir," Max continued, not even bothering to hold back his annoyance. "I think most of these tests are bullshit."
"Oh for fuck's sake, not you, too," Blitz groaned, slamming his head down on his desk. "Stoltzfus is already up my ass about it, and I'm gonna tell you the exact same thing I just said to him: we are NOT going through that portal until we know EXACTLY what we're dealing with, no matter how fucking long it takes!"
"But sir, we already know basically everything important that we need to know about these imp… things, and—"
"No buts, Max! I don't wanna hear another fucking word out of you! I keep you around to say 'yes sir' and carry out my orders to a fucking T! Do you understand that, Colonel?!"
"...Yes, sir." Max spat out the last word, his gut churning with rage. He was really starting to get tired of being pushed around all the damn time.
"If we're gonna do this thing, we're gonna do it right, or we might as well not fuckin' do it at all." He swiveled back around and pressed the tips of his fingers together in his lap, his eyes rapidly darting between the monitors. "You know what these fuckers are capable of. You've seen how many people they've killed, how brutal they are." He slumped down further in his chair. "I don't want to lose you guys. I can't lose another good unit, not again. Not like last time."
Max felt the faintest pang of guilt appear in his mind, but it immediately ran head-first into the walls of apathy towards his boss's antics that he'd built up in the months since they'd first met. He just knew that it was more than likely that his commanding officer was tugging on his heartstrings to rope him into more unnecessary and grueling work again.
But maybe, for once, he was being genuine. He couldn't discount the possibility, right? After all, ever since they'd opened that portal down in the chamber, everyone seemed to be a lot more on edge—especially himself. Surely he wasn't the only one who'd been feeling like this.
Frankly, though, it didn't really matter either way. It was always the same cycle. Like the general said, he was here to say "yes, sir" to everything he was ordered to do and to carry out those orders. Nothing more, nothing less. He wasn't here to think.
He might as well just play along, as always. He never had a choice anyway.
"Yes, sir," Max finally spoke, breaking through the heavy silence, his voice—and spirit— much more subdued than before. "My apologies, sir. With these experiments, I believe that—"
Just as he could finish his sentence, the base's alarms began blaring, causing both Max and Blitz to jump to attention. The general whipped his arm around and slammed his keyboard, changing the monitors to security camera footage from across the base. On one of the monitors in the top right corner, showing microcamera footage from within one of the air vents, three small figures were just barely visible in the dark, crawling their way into the heart of the base. The general pressed another button, turning on the camera's night vision functionality and finally getting a good look at the assailants.
"Mother of God," he uttered, drawing his engraved pistol from its holster. "It's fucking them." He grabbed the radio on his shoulder and pressed the talk button. "Everyone, they're in the vents and heading directly for the heart of the base! I want every fucking able-bodied soldier down here on the double!" He turned to face Max, a newfound conviction in his eyes and a sadistic grin plastered on his face. "Go grab the others, Max. I think it's time for a little fuckin' field test."
"Fucking Satan's balls, Mox, can you stop ramming your head into my ASS?! I can feel your horns pricking me every fucking time!" Blitzo shouted back behind him, his voice echoing through the cramped ventilation shaft.
"I'm sorry, sir, but if you just moved faster then it wouldn't be an ISSUE!" Moxxie wiped the sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket, his chest heaving as he struggled to breathe in the stale, musty air.
"Respectfully, can ya both keep it down?" Millie asked, nudging her husband in his own behind with her arm. "My ears are startin' to hurt a lil' from all yer shoutin' and I don't think all of us bein' cramped up in here is helpin'."
"Sorry, hun," Moxxie replied, toning his voice down. "Sir, how far do you think we have left to go?"
"Hmm…" Blitzo peered down into the vent beneath him and moved his head around to get a better look inside the room. "This ain't it. I think it's a supply closet of some kind… wait, I think there's a used condom or two on the floor—"
"Really didn't need to know that, sir."
"Well too bad, I thought it was important. Whatever, let's keep our asses movin', people."
They clambered through the shaft for a few more minutes, the banging of their limbs against the thin metal rattling the entire structure and giving Moxxie the impression that it was going to collapse under the weight at any given moment.
"This has gotta be it," Blitzo whispered, but just as he was about to take a peek and see if it were the correct place, the vent gave way underneath his elbows and he quickly fell through the new opening. "FUCKING SHIT!" He screamed as he tumbled down and smacked into the hard concrete floor beneath him, groaning and rolling over onto his back.
"Sir!" Moxxie shouted, jumping down through the hole after Blitzo. Unlike his boss, he managed to at least land on his feet, dampening his fall with his hands. Millie wasn't far behind, landing right beside him and taking her ax off her back with both hands. Moxxie reached down and took Blitzo's hand, grunting and gasping from the painful amount of exertion as he managed to help him to his feet. When he was back up, Blitzo straightened himself out, dusted off his jacket, and began twisting his torso from side-to-side, cracking his back and acting as if he hadn't just taken a particularly nasty fall that totally could have permanently fucked up a few of his limbs.
"Where… are we?" Moxxie asked no one in particular, looking around them and gauging their surroundings. The entire room was bathed in dark red from the emergency lights; unpleasant memories of the time when they'd fought their way out of the D.H.O.R.K. facility months ago came to mind and he unconsciously grimaced at the thought. The entrance behind them, along with the two doorways on the opposite side of the room, were blocked by large metal bulkheads that had likely sealed off most of the facility when the alarms sounded.
It seemed like some sort of lobby area, with a reception desk at the center of the room and two doorways on the opposite end of the room leading deeper into the base. It was obviously the start of a much larger facility that the smaller base above ground had been a cover for, and Moxxie had no idea just how far underground they were at this point.
"Mox, go check that desk and see if there's some kinda fuckin' button or whatever that'll open these doors."
"On it, sir."
Moxxie started heading moving, but before he could take another step he heard a loud thud from under the desk followed by a muffled groan from a feminine voice. All three imps stopped and drew their weapons immediately, pointing them in the direction of the noise. A few seconds later, a woman in uniform with long gray hair emerged from under the desk, clutching a bluetooth earbud between her fingers.
"Finally fucking found you, you little—"
When she finally turned her head, she noticed the three imps stanced in front of her desk pointing weapons directly at her and stood completely still, her eyes widening in shock.
"Oh fuck."
"Don't you fucking…wait wait wait, hold the fuck up, you're way too familiar," Blitzo asked, squinting and raising an eyebrow at her. "Have we killed any of your loved ones recently or somethin'?"
"...Probably not, no?"
"Huh. I swear to Satan I've seen you somewhere before. The fuck's your name?"
"Lola…?"
"Huh… Lola… Lola…" Blitzo furrowed his brow and closed his eyes, desperately racking his memory for either her or someone who looked like her, but ultimately nothing came up.
The four of them exchanged glances between each other as an awkward silence set in.
"So, uh… I'm guessing you guys are the reason the alarm's going off?"
"Wow, no shit, you're a real smart one," Blitzo responded sarcastically. With his free hand he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a crumpled photo of the target that Catja had sent to him the other day. "You wouldn't happen to have seen this fuckin' guy around? We're only here to kill his ass."
Lola scoffed and shoved her phone in a pocket in her uniform, leaning against the side of the desk and crossing her arms. "Oh, him? Max? Fuck him. Go wild. Pretentious little shit's been getting on my fucking nerves since the first day I saw him and I'm more than glad to see him get his scrawny ass handed to him."
"...Wait, seriously? You're just gonna let us kill him?"
"Yep."
"Straight up? No strings attached?"
"Uh-huh."
"And this isn't some kind of trick or anything to get us to lower our guard?"
"Nope. Fuckin' hate every single person here. They're weird, annoying as fuck, and I really don't get paid enough to give a shit about any of this bullshit."
"Would you mind getting those doors for us while you're at it?" Moxxie asked, gesturing behind Lola with the barrel of his sawed-off shotgun. "T-Thanks for the help, by the way. We greatly appreciate it." Lola only cast a judging look in his direction, her eyes flitting back and forth between the photograph that Blitzo was still holding up and the smaller imp. She eyed him up and down, appraising him like some sort of anomaly as a look of confusion and bewilderment spread on her face.
"What the fuck dude, you look exactly like him," Lola muttered, leaning in for a closer look at him.
"Huh?" Blitzo turned the photo around and held it up next to Moxxie's head. He scrunched his own face in confusion, squinting his eyes as he desperately tried to make some sort of connection in his head. "I, uh, I'm not seeing it."
"Trust me, it's fucking freaky. Say something, little guy."
"O-Okay, um… thanks for —"
"Oh my GOD, he's got that fucking annoying ass voice, too! Also, Jesus fucking Christ, dude, do you really look at yourself in the mirror in the morning and let yourself go out looking like… that?"
"Hey, quit bad mouthin' my hubby, ya bitch, or I swear on Satan's bad name I'll–"
"Woah, woah, chill out! I'm just saying, maybe if he lost a little bit of weight—"
"Oh. My. SATAN. Would you PLEASE just shut up about my body and get the damn doors?!" Moxxie shouted, his face turning an even deeper shade of crimson from the embarrassment.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever, shorty." She bent down and reached under her desk, hitting a red button hidden on the side of one of the legs. The bulkheads blocking the doors behind her, as well as the one behind them, lifted with loud ker-chunks. "Go fucking wild. Y'all fine if I just head out? I'll pretend I never saw any of you."
"Sounds good to me, " Blitzo answered her, cocking the hammer back on his pistol with his thumb. "By the way, when you inevitably kick the bucket and wind up in Hell, hit us up, alright? I like your vibes, sister."
"Fuck. No. I never wanna see any of you ever again. Fucking disgusting little shits."
The three watched as she sauntered past them and into the security checkpoint behind them; once she was safely inside, she smashed the panel next to the door with her fist, shutting the bulkhead and permanently blocking herself and anyone else coming from topside from reentering the facility. "Well alright, gang, let's go fuck these guys' shit up."
"What the hell's happenin'?!" Mabel rushed down the hall with both of her axes drawn, catching up to her husband and Blitz outside of his office. "I was 'boutta take a leak when the alarms started goin' off like crazy!"
"We've got a Code Black," the general answered her, racking the slide on his engraved pistol. "Clearly those demons finally caught onto all the shit we've been doing down there."
"Code Black?! Well shit, I didn't know it was that bad!"
"Wait, wait, wait, hold on a second sir, what's a 'Code Black?'" Max asked, raising an eyebrow at his commanding officer in confusion. "You never told me that we were using any sort of a code system."
"Didn't you read the email that I sent out last week?"
"...No? Did you copy me on it?"
"Oh, uh… um… well, maybe you should've told me that you weren't! God, how am I ever gonna get you stop being such a fucking slacker?"
"You've gotta be—"
"Did somebody say Code Black?" Stoltzfus asked as he peeked his head out the door of his office from further down the hall, his voice steeped in the off-putting giddiness that he seemed to have been infected with. Max groaned and unslung his rifle.
"Oh my God, does everyone know about this except for me?"
"Seems so," Mabel replied.
"Whatever. Whatever! Let's just get this bullshit over with and kill these fucking things."
"Ohhhh, you have no idea how long I've been waiting for something like this to happen," Stoltzufs continued, his eyes lighting up like he was a kid during Christmas and a sinister grin spreading across his face as he emerged wielding a large-caliber pistol in one hand and his personal prayer and spell book in the other. With everyone armed and ready to face their attackers, clearly these interlopers would be dealt with in a matter of time; after all, they'd had nearly a month to prepare to fight these kinds of foul beasts, and—
Ker-chunk.
The bulkheads sealing them off from the lobby area opened, leaving the team perplexed.
"Shouldn't you be the only one who has door access when we're in lockdown, Blitz?" Stoltzfus asked, cocking his head to the side.
"Well, I did give Lola a button under her desk—"
"You what, sir?!" Max shouted. "You actually trust her with something like that?! Oh my God, sir, that is the single WORST thing you could have ever done—"
"Wait, wait, shut the fuck up Max—guys, where the FUCK is Lola?!" The general screamed at his subordinates, silencing Max and scowling at all of them, expecting some kind of an answer or excuse to soothe his growing fears. All he got was a few shrugs and an incredibly awkward silence.
The silence was shattered by the loud crack of a bullet ripping through the air past them, embedding itself in a nearby filing cabinet and knocking it over with the force of the impact. Everyone immediately threw themselves behind the nearest cover, flipping over tables, chairs, cabinets, anything they could get their hands on that had even the slightest chance of keeping themselves face from the now-hail of rounds headed in their direction. Max could only occasionally hold his rifle out above himself and pop a few rounds off over his desk back at the assailants.
"Goddammit, how the fuck did they get past Lola?!" He heard the general shout as he popped a few shots from behind the water cooler. "I swear to God, if any of those fuckers laid a finger on her I'll rip them in half with my bare fuckin' hands!"
"Ooooh," Stoltzfus cooed, shifting in his cover and wiggling his eyebrows at his lover. "Now that would certainly be a sight to behold, my dear."
"Christ, Stoltzfus, can you stop being a sex-starved freak for like, ten seconds and—"
A bullet hit the cooler's water jug, soaking the general as a torrent of water streamed down on top of him. He growled and, blindly firing towards the lobby, dove behind the same table that Max was hiding behind.
"Have you considered that maybe she ditched us, sir?" Max spat, ejecting the magazine from his rifle and slapping a new one in as he spoke.
"There's no way in hell she'd do that to us," Blitz replied, also reloading his pistol. "To me, especially after everything I've done for her!"
"Sir, with all due respect, you pulled her out of a court martial for desertion, and assaulting a commanding officer, so frankly I didn't know what you were expecting—"
"Fuck you, Max," he interrupted, "She's not like that anymore! At least, I hope so." He leaned over the side of the table and tried to center his sights on one of the little red freaks on the edge of the doorway; however, when he pulled the trigger, all he heard was a click as a round from the magazine failed to cycle. He muttered a curse under his breath and racked the slide a few times before trying again. "Where the fuck are the rest of our guys, anyway?!"
"Topside, probably," Max answered him. "With all the unnecessary security barriers you had put in place, they're gonna take way too long to get down here to actually help us."
"Motherfucker," Blitz spat, realizing that Max was actually right for once.
Moxxie wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his jacket and ejected the shells from his shotgun, wincing as hot plastic briefly impacted his cheek before falling to the floor below amongst the other spent shells. He slammed two more shells into the barrels, whipped the action shut, took aim, and pulled the trigger, grunting from the kick of the recoil.
"Mills!" He heard Blitzo shout behind them to Millie, "We'll keep 'em bogged down, head through that other door and see if ya can wreak some havoc on 'em from the rear!"
"On it, Blitz!" she answered, tightening her grip on her ax and crossing the room to the other doorway. Thankfully, their enemies' attention remained on Blitzo and Moxxie, worrying more about the hail of bullets raining down on them than about Millie sneaking her way towards them and trying to get a flank on them. However, it didn't take long for them to notice her.
"Fuck, they're pushing us! Pull back!" One of them shouted, most likely their commander. "Max and I'll keep you two covered! Get back into the conference room! Move!"
Just as two figures began to emerge from their cover, the two muzzle flashes from the center of the room unleashed round after round towards the imps, forcing Millie to dive for cover and driving Blitzo and Moxxie back behind the doorway.
"Holy shit," he heard Blitzo mutter to himself. "These guys are going fuckin' hard."
On the other side, as Mabel and Stoltzfus finally got themselves into the conference room behind them, Max finished dumping one magazine and reloaded another, panicking slightly at the fact that he was starting to run dry.
"Alright," The general exhaled, panting from the suffocating mixture of heat and lead in the air. "You're next, go!"
Max smacked the back of his head against the table behind him, grunting from the impact and the soreness raging across his entire body and cursing under his breath.
"Yes, sir," he acknowledged, beginning to slowly retreat back into the conference room as ordered. But, believing that he could get a few last shots out, he rose up out of cover, shouldering his rifle to take aim at one of the imps. Just as he exposed himself, he was too exhausted and concussed from the noise and heat to notice the imp on his two o'clock, rapidly closing on him with a knife in one hand and a battle ax in the other.
Soon enough, before he could get a shot off and before he could reach the safety of his other comrades, a black-and-red knife slammed into his right temple, with a sickening schlick, embedding itself deep in his skull. Millie bolted towards him and jumped up onto his chest to remove it, only to slam it home again through his forehead several more times.
Max was dead before he even realized it.
"Fucking—SHIT!" The general shouted, scrambling back towards the conference room doors on all fours and kicking the doors shut once he was inside, denying the imps the chance to take him out right then and there.
"All good in here!" Millie shouted, finally removing her knife and sheathing it again after wiping the blood and brain matter off on her sleeve. "Rest of 'em are hidin' behind this door," she continued, slamming her fist against the metal to accentuate her point. She glanced down at the corpse at her feet. "I, uh, think is our guy, right?"
"You think so?" Blitzo asked as he and Moxxie emerged from cover and made their way across the room. "Lemme see." When they reached the body, Blitzo knelt down and pulled out the crumpled photo, holding it up next to the disfigured face of the dead mortal on the ground. He didn't care about the blood pooling around him and staining his pants. "You really did a fuckin' number on him, Mills, geez, I'm havin' a hard time actually making out… well, anything…"
As Blitzo was inspecting the body, Moxxie reached down and grabbed the dead man's rifle out of his cold, dead hands. He was thoroughly impressed with the dead soldier's handiwork; a lot of the modifications made to the rifle were ones that he himself would've done, and if the rifle were just a little bit smaller to accommodate his size, he would've mistaken it for something from his own collection. He fiddled around with it for a while, racking the action and checking the magazine several times as he considered bringing it back home with him as a little trophy to commemorate their outing. Making up his mind, Moxxie slung the rifle onto his back, happy to continue expanding his almost endless collection of guns.
However, the emblem on the soldier's arm piqued Moxxie's curiosity; he'd noticed it on Lola's arm, but he hadn't had the chance to get a closer look at it. He bent down besides Blitzo and grabbed the corpse's arm, yanking it towards him to get a better look at it.
"Hm… 'Supernatural Intelligence and Tactics Command…' That's odd.."
"Sounds lame as fuck," Blitzo commented, grabbing the man's mangled head and shifting it from side to side, still trying to determine whether or not the man they'd just killed was actually their target
"There's something wrong about this whole thing," Moxxie noted to himself. Gears were turning in his head, his inquisitive mind latching onto clues that only fed into his growing suspicions. "You don't fortify a place this hard unless you've got something to hide. There's gotta be something more going on here… sir, I'm gonna have a look around and see if I can find out anything more about these guys, they're giving me the heebie-jeebies."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever, don't care, have fun with your little mystery while I actually do our fucking job and check shitlips here for some sort of ID. You better not take too long; we're gonna be out of here soon anyway."
Without responding to his boss's jab, Moxxie wandered away from the corpse and into the large office at the other end of the room; immediately, the images on the various screens lining the back wall piqued his curiosity. Most of them were stills from security camera footage that had captured them as they'd made their way through the ventilation system; he hadn't even noticed that they were being recorded in the first place, and some of these camera angles seemed impossible.
He wasn't concerned with those. What really made his eyes widen and his blood go cold was the footage of them from other jobs. He collapsed down into the swivel chair and wheeled himself closer to the monitors, eyes flitting between the images in disbelief. His heart sank as he saw just how much footage of them there was.
Moxxie swiveled the chair around and grabbed the keyboard from the desk, laying it down in his lap and turning back around to face the monitors. He pressed the arrow keys to change the images on the monitors, curious to see how far back all the evidence of their time on Earth went.
That one job last week, when they'd killed some big football star for a scorned ex-lover.
Another job from a few months back, when they'd taken out that whole camp of lumberjacks. Turns out that there had been a few campers nearby that had recorded some really terrible footage on a flip phone that, while barely viewable and would normally just be passed off as shitty video editing, still managed to get some of their outlines.
Security camera footage from the incident with D.H.O.R.K. all those months ago, displaying them clear-as-day mowing down wave after wave of faceless government goons. That was probably the most damning evidence of all, considering how clear the footage was.
There were even videos and pictures from before then, likely collected by D.H.O.R.K. before being handed over to whoever the fuck these guys were—their confrontation with C.H.E.R.U.B., the Spring Break bet with Verosika, countless other occasions which Moxxie barely remembered himself.
While Moxxie was busy giving himself another panic attack by picking through the mountains of evidence that the human government had about their existence, Blitzo was finishing up his examination the corpse while Millie kept an eye on the door in case the soldiers inside tried to fight their way out and retake the room. He rolled over the body and reached into one of the back pockets, producing the man's wallet and dumping its contents onto the floor. He sifted through some loose mortal cash and a still-wrapped condom—it wouldn't have surprised him if they were the same kind as the used ones he'd seen in the storage room closet earlier—before finally grabbing the man's driver's license, finally confirming that this was, indeed, their target.
"Hmmm… uh-huh, yep, I think this is him! Probably. Hopefully. Well shit, that was too easy! Let's get the fuck out of here and get our fuckin' payday." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, immediately opening his messages and sending Loona the text to get her to bring them back. "Mox, get your ass back in here, we're about to—"
Ping.
Blitzo held his phone up again and was met with a pop-up saying that the message hadn't been sent.
"The fuck do you mean, 'no connection?!'" He tried to send the message again, only to get the same error pop-up. Frustrated, he slammed his phone a few times against a nearby desk, trying again and again to send the text before realizing that his connection meter in the top right had no bars. "Why the fuck am I not… What could possibly be…?"
"Didn't we make those emergency spell cards after Loona and I rescued yer asses the last time we dealt with these kinda folks?" Millie asked, resting her ax across her shoulders and pacing back and forth. "Ya should try one of those. Might just be shitty connection down here."
"Fuck, you're right," Blitzo answered, grabbing a folded piece of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it and read out the spell he'd copied from Stolas's grimoire, not caring that it was riddled with grammatical errors and nearly unreadable thanks to his handwriting.
Nothing. Their portal home never materialized; in fact, the paper he was holding burned up in his hand after he finished the spell, the ashes slipping through his fingers and onto the floor. He cocked his head to the side and raised an eyebrow, thoroughly confused.
"What the fuck?"
"G-Guys?" Moxxie called out from the larger office on the right side of the room, standing in the doorway fidgeting with his hands. "I-I, um, think you both might wanna see this."
A few minutes later, Blitzo and Millie had joined Moxxie in gawking at all the evidence the mortals had about them, skimming through not only everything that was already on display, but rifling through every file in the room and learning the full extent of everything that these freaks were doing here. Moxxie was sitting on the floor cross-legged, a pile of open folders and loose papers strewn out around him.
"This one says it's a report on magic… they've got runes, sigils, spells… wait, these guys know how to cast spells?" Moxxie asked, growing more exasperated by the second as his eyes continued down the list in his hands. "Sir, I think you know more about magic than I do, can you recognize any of these?"
Blitzo snatched the paper out of Moxxie's grasp, holding it up to his face and squinting his eyes to get a better look.
"Hmm… A lot of these are complete fuckin' nonsense, they're really graspin' at straws here. A few of these are kinda right, though; they've got a hex preventing Hell magic from working in certain rooms—"
"Prolly why we can't get in contact with Loona or open a portal ourselves," Millie surmised. "Only way we're gettin' back is if we get our asses outta here."
"Yep. This one's real funny though, these dumbasses got this stupid fuckin' spell here to summon a huge ass garbage portal to Greed—"
"Woah, woah, woah, sir, a direct portal to Greed?!" Moxxie shot up to his feet, snatching the paper back and staring at the spell in question in utter panic, hyperventilating as the magnitude of the words on the paper struck him full-force.
"Sure, seen Stolas use it a couple times to dump out some of his bitch soon-to-be-ex-wife's shit after we fucked. Helped him out, actually! Had a lotta fun doing it, too. Reminded me of when we were kids and—"
"Sir, do you have any idea what that means for us, for Hell as a whole?!"
"...Oh. Oh. Oh fuck."
"Mortals, with access to Hell," Millie uttered. "Well I'll be blessed, I didn't even think that could happen. I mean—can they even go through it? The portal, I mean."
"I don't know," Moxxie answered, grabbing a file from another folder and reading through it. "But they can definitely grab stuff and bring it back here. Looks like they've been running 'tests' on whatever they can get their hands on… thankfully, nothing living."
Blitzo had been staring dead ahead with vacant eyes ever since it hit him, going over everything he'd seen in his head. Every job they'd done, every time they'd been to the mortal world, even after the incident with those D.H.O.R.K. fucks and he'd never once given any serious thought to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, they'd been leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind them this whole time.
"They're doing all of this… because of us?"
"I…" Moxxie tried to come up with some sort of comforting answer, something to keep Blitzo from blaming himself, but nothing came to mind. The fact was that he wasn't wrong. All he could do was watch in distress his boss as he began pacing back and forth, gripping his horns with his hands and shaking his head in distress.
"W-What if Stolas finds out about this? Oh fuck, he's gonna flip his fucking shit when he finds out that we haven't been careful! I used his fucking grimoire for this all shit, and now somehow fucking mortals have access to Hell?! He's—he's gonna blame me for all this and—UGH! Think, think, think, guys, how the FUCK are we going to even remotely begin to fix this?!"
Millie answered him by jumping up on the desk, taking her ax in both hands, and bringing it down as hard as she could on the computer, splitting the machine and almost the desk in half and sending sparks and wood chips flying everywhere. The monitors on the wall suddenly blipped off as their connection was lost.
"We do what we do best, boss," she declared. "Let's burn this place and everythin' in it to the fuckin' ground."