The police sirens blare, their lights casting long shadows on the dilapidated buildings of the wrong side of town- squat, gray buildings blocked off from each other with rusted chain link fences and garbage littering the street. A squadron of police cars is parked beside the burnt shell of what had once been an apartment building. There is a stout older man with a gnarled face, apparently the police chief, shouting through a megaphone, but whatever it is he's saying is completely lost between the shrill scream of the sirens, the helicopters blasting overhead, and a heavy downpour of rain.
Through this concrete jungle, two shadows are locked in a heated pursuit. The one running away grabs onto a perfectly straight wall and, in an act defiant of gravity, leaps up to reach the square edge of the building's roof, hefting himself up with surprising power. The one chasing him, a figure of grand stature, sprints for the nearest stairwell, and somehow just barely corners his quarry.
A lightning bolt strikes right beside the flock of police officers, causing them to scatter, hollering. The wind has whipped itself up into such a powerful force that a single harsh gust tears the megaphone away from the chief’s hands, leaving him bewildered as it's blown away into a ditch.
“Cornered.” The taller figure speaks calmly; his voice somehow splits through the heavy assault of noise.
The other man is out of breath, the adrenaline in his blood overtaking his thoughts. Slightly illuminated by the floodlights below, his appearance reveals itself as grotesque and inhuman. His arm twists and morphs into what looks like a writhing blade, and his eyes bulge out with an unusual hue to the iris.
He lets out a single shriek and lunges at his assailant.
As if waiting for that exact moment, the suited man dashes forward, skidding across the bare cement, and barely avoids the razor sharp claw of his target. His long tie flips up in the wind, and the heels of his dress shoes make a short clack as he lands confidently.
Another lighting bolt strikes; the duel is settled.
In their brief second of confrontation, the taller man had pulled out a handgun. The other one fell dead to the street below.
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A fluorescent lamp flickers. Inside a rented apartment. A single mother is, once again, trying to do her best with what little she’s been given.
“You want to hear that story again?” She laughs, as her child points at a rough-looking children’s book.
The book is for older kids, tweens, but her 5 year old son loves it dearly.
“I don’t blame you, I also loved this story when I was your age.”
She tries to remember where they left off, flips quickly through the thin pages, and finally lands on an illustration of a red-haired boy laying face down in a vast, barren wasteland.
“This is the right page, isn’t it?”
The child nods silently.
The mother clears her throat and begins reading.
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A fluorescent lamp flickers. Stuffy looking men in ill-fitting suits run frantically from an office room to a hallway and then back.
In the middle of a dusty conference room, a man plays a VHS tape over and over again, rewinding it to the start almost compulsively.
“Pause. Go back.”
The tape slowly spins back, VCR straining.
The grainy, low-res video shows the inside of a nuclear missile silo. Guards listlessly patrol the area, not paying much attention to their surroundings. One of them hocks what appears to be a wad of gum on the floor, not bothering to check whether or not he'd be seen.
In the background are a number of nuclear warheads, ready to be deployed when needed.
“Look at that. One, two, three…”
Suddenly, a flash overwhelms the camera. In the blink of an eye, every guard has disappeared, leaving behind nothing but piles of clothes.
And so did the nuclear weapons.
“Just like that. It's like special effects.”
A dopey, drawn-faced CIA official is pacing the room frantically. He's circling a round table of notable US intelligence personnel. Anyone with half a brain can tell he shouldn't have taken that last hit of coke before coming down to the briefing. It's probably the worst day of his life.
“This is clearly some kind of cover-up.”
The table gets shaken slightly when a man with bad hair and drooping jowls leans over it to grab a cigar cutter. He's calm; he doesn't seem to share the others' concern.
“Where did this tape come from? Are we sure it wasn't fucked with?”
He lights his cigar, then draws a heavy drag off of it; the air around him is choked with a cloud of thick smoke.
“Right. Right. It has to be some kind of advanced computer edit. We're most likely being misled by some kind of terrorist organization.”
Another man butts into the conversation by gesturing for the panicked man to sit down.
“Does the president know about this?”
“Not yet - and we would prefer if he didn't have to at all.”
The tape is rewound again.
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.
.
“The boy wandered the desert for forty days and forty nights. On the forty-first day, he met an angel.”
Mother was gently continuing the story from where she had last left off.
“The boy pleaded for help, as he was dying of thirst. The angel asked him, 'Where is your home?' The boy said he had none. The angel couldn't help a boy without a home and so he flew away.”
She never really understood what the story meant by that; it was an older book, given to her by her father, who got it from his grandmother and so on. There was probably a meaning there that was lost to time.
Whatever it was, it had her son at the edge of his seat.
“Another week passed. The boy was reduced to dragging himself across the sand, his energy depleted. The darkness of night was his only respite from the scorching sun. Suddenly, a demon appeared before him. The boy had no energy left to plead for help anymore. The demon asked him, 'Where is your home?' The boy said he had none. The demon laughed, and gestured, throwing his arms out wide. 'can't you see? This world is your home,' he said. The boy responded, asking him, 'What good is a home to me if I'm dying?' The demon just laughed again. 'You are your parents' only child now,' he explained. 'you can never die.' The boy frowned at the thought, but knew it was true.”
She pauses for a moment, looking over to check if her son is still awake. He gestures at her politely to keep reading.
“The demon, while normally wicked, pitied the lone child. He decided to tell him a truth he had overheard from the angels. 'If you nourish your love and cherish your mind, you will not die, my child,' he said. The boy sat up, struggling to stay conscious. 'How do I find love in this barren land? How do I keep myself from losing my heart?'
The demon merely laughed at him once again.
'Search for a tower to the east of here. There, look for a lover and a thinker. See what they can teach you.' He jumped up and disappeared without a trace.”
She almost flips to the next page, but pauses. When she looks over at her son, he is finally asleep.
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A sea of heated yelling and argument is blaring from the conference room. It all comes to a sudden halt when an imposing older man walks through the door.
“Noah.”
One of them recognizes him.
“Can I?" says Richard Noah.
Commonly known as Dick- due in no small part to his attitude towards his colleagues- he's a rough, weathered man in his late 50s. He looks more like a career sailor, all rugged lines and hard scars, than a politician.
“Of course they'd send your superstitious ass here,” The round man snorts, barely making an effort to conceal his laughter as he tokes on his cigar. Noah barely pays him any mind; he slams a briefcase on the table in front of him, cutting his laughter short.
“My team checked the site. It's not a prank. The nukes are gone, the soldiers are gone.”
He pulls out a slight burnt military uniform jacket.
“What's more…”
He throws a bunch of papers onto the desk.
“All of the files they had stored on-site have been wiped. The text is just gone from the pages. The computers were all fried. There was no recoverable information.”
The pages, starkly blank, smell of sulfur.
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She sits down on the living room couch and breathes a sigh of relief. It's been a long week. The air conditioning at her workplace burned out a week ago, and the temperatures just kept rising. Her ancient television set hums pleasantly, a daytime talk show host babbling away. She's about to drift off, when her eyes meet with the red haired boy on the book’s open page.
She's curious, and picks the book up again.
“The boy traveled day and night in search of the mysterious tower. It was ever looming on the horizon, like a sign reminding him of what his purpose should be. Growing closer to it, he felt like he was starting to understand the meaning behind the devil’s words.”
The next page has a nice drawing of the tower, or rather, a whole fortress. It's massive, reaching the heavens. Ornate statues of angels and gargoyles decorated the imposing walls, large flocks of birds are gathered in the detailed architecture.
The next page had the boy approached by guards larger than normal humans; relatively speaking, they must have been over ten feet tall.
“I remember this part, he meets that other boy in prison after this…” She fondly recalls, thinking out loud.
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.
.
The round table is in uproar. The cigar smoking man is now up from his seat, berating Noah. He's waving his cigar around erratically, his face dark purple, spittle flying from his mouth as he screams.
“You fucking lunatic! Catholic nut job! You really fucking expect me to believe that a fucking demon stole nuclear weapons? Our nuclear weapons?!”
Dick, clearly annoyed, does not move an inch as the man grows closer and closer to him. Right when he's about to jab an accusatory finger into Dick's shoulder, there's a meaty thwack, and he crumples to his knees, dry heaving. Mr. Noah has punched him in the gut, tendons in his arms still flexed like steel cables as the man struggles on the floor.
“This is undeniably the work of a supernatural force. Now, if anyone else wants to complain, you can join this pig on the ground.”
Nobody moves an inch. The air is charged with electricity.
“Now, I have a plan. It involves getting a third party involved. Someone who had connections to our New Mexico facility.”
He flips through the pages of a file then drops a picture onto the middle of the table.
“Not much is known about him, we think he's ex- military. Maybe Soviet intelligence.”
Another set of photos fall onto the table.
“He briefly worked for the Trinity right before they went missing.”
Someone finally breaks the silence and stands up in shock.
“The Trinity? You mean… he has ties with that whole mess?”
Noah nods.
“Before anyone asks: yes, we have a way of forcing him to do this for us, our way. No paper trail. He is currently serving a life sentence in one of our offshore prisons.”
He pulls out a picture and smirks.
“Nasty scene he pulled. The place still stinks of blood - I've been to it.”
“So this guy… KGB?” Someone chirps in.
“Maybe, maybe not. We have pictures of him in the Vatican too. Going to places where tourists can't.”
“Right… who is he, exactly?”
Noah finally sits down and tilts his head, eyes drilling into the man who asked.
“Well, we don't know his age. What we know is that he's a 300lbs, 6’9”, practically mute caveman who survived a small army of beat cops rolling down on him.”
He sinks a bit lower and suddenly looks up.
“The only name we have is…”
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A fluorescent lamp flickers as a prison guard goes down a set of rough metal stairs. He rapidly taps in the passcodes for multiple keypads, each one opening yet another thick metal door. At last, he comes to a bare hallway, adorned only by a row of solitary confinement units.
He jingles his keys, then slowly and carefully opens one of the doors.
“It's your lucky day, asshole. You've got some feds to see you.”
Inside the cell, on his knees, rests a rough, dirty, bruised man. He's got chains restraining every limb, a metal collar around his thick neck.
He's tall, taller than most people. He's got a rough beard, clearly unshaven for quite some time. His prison clothes are torn and his fingers are bruised and bloody.
Jet black hair covers most of his face, obscuring any identifying features, save for one very visible detail: a black eyepatch on his left eye.
Dick Noah, a week removed from his meeting with the top brass of US intelligence, slides behind the smiling guard and takes some papers out of a canvas bag.
“Cain.”
Cain doesn't look up at him.
“I've got an offer for you.”
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.
.
Handcuffed, Cain gets shuffled onto an unassuming barge. No government markings; if not for the size, it could’ve been taken for a fishing boat. Right by the entrance sits an all black car with tinted windows, a ride befitting a government man. Dick follows him close and gestures something to the front of the vessel. Men come rushing in to undock the ship and soon, they are sailing away.
“You smoke?” He looks to Cain.
Cain stands in silence, his gaze turned to waves.
“Thought so. You know, I’m an intelligence guy; men like you always smoke. It helps to calm them down before they kill someone.”
“I don’t follow.” Cain finally opens his mouth.
“You’re espionage, no? KGB?” Dick wheedles, trying to get some information out of Cain.
“No.” His short answer makes Dick laugh.
Cain takes the cigarette with his bound hands, and lets Dick light it.
The ship takes them under a wide, tall bridge, and it becomes dark all around them. Only the faint reddish glow of the scant lighting and the unnaturally distant exit keep it from being a total abyss.
“Do you believe in spirits, Cain?” Dick exhales a cloud of smoke through his teeth. “You know, I've heard there was a group of pseudo-Christian monks that used to live in the southern regions of Germany. They got executed by the Nazis.”
“The Numerologists.” Cain remarks.
“So you've heard of them? Yeah, that's what they were called. They calculated the end of the world to be right around… This December, actually.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Cain scoffs.
“I’m a spiritualist, not an idiot. When I hear people yap about Y2K I laugh… but…” Noah looks down and throws his cigarette butt into the water.
They exit out the other side. The morning sun blinds Cain a bit - his eye isn't used to light after how long he'd spent in that cell.
“Nevermind that. Take these," he says, and he hands him a dossier and a change of clothes. It’s a black suit, complete with a white shirt and black tie. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to find one in your size?”
Cain takes a long draw off his cigarette.
“Why do you think I won’t just run?”
“You won’t, at least not when every government agency in the western world has eyes on you. Even you can’t escape that kind of tracking… but, if you can figure out where the missing nukes are - all your files go in the shredder. Not just the American ones, but Russian, Chinese, German. It all goes.”
Cain furrows his brow, hmphs in a way that implies he understands it’s his only way out.
“Before that, however. I’d like you to meet my assistant.”
Cain suddenly feels a sting in the side of his neck, and quickly turns, ready to strike. He's met with a short, somewhat effeminate man with some kind of injector device.
“Call me Ardeth. I’m with the CIA.”
He’s got neatly parted blonde hair, with a bias to one side, and striking blue eyes, with longer than average eyelashes. He definitely stands out amongst the crowd of federal agents. He hides the injector in his bag and folds his arms, assessing some kind of dominance over the prisoner.
“...and that was the negative reinforcement.” Dick interjects.
“Explosive capsule.” Cain guesses.
Ardeth walks over to Dick and puts his bag into their car.
“You know a lot about espionage, Mr. Cain.”
Noah croaks out a laugh and leans on the hood of their black, nondescript Mercedes. Ardeth stands next to him like a boy scout in attendance.
As they arrive closer to the shore, the blonde leads Cain at gunpoint inside the car. He casts him some mean gazes as he realises he has to sit next to him. He seems miniscule as he sits next to Cain, but he keeps his cool and with a dejected tone speaks to his superior.
“Mr. Noah.”
He gets his attention.
“Yes?”
“You haven’t explained the reason to me why we’re taking this dangerous criminal for something one of our field agents could do.”
Ardeth is clearly unhappy with the idea. The boat makes a creaking sound, indicating they are finally at bay. Noah yells something out the window and men come to unhook the car and begin to set down a ramp for them to exit.
“Cain has firsthand knowledge of The Trinity’s existence. Most Agent’s aren’t even authorized to hear that name.”
Dick shoots down the agent’s concerns. Then puts another cigarette in his mouth and lights it without breaking eye contact with the pages of paperwork in his hands.
“Years ago, after you got caught, during the interrogation, you said that you last saw Dion in Russia.”
He begins to prod Cain a bit more harshly.
“...and you couldn’t remember anything else.”
“I’m old.” Cain shot him a look in the car’s rear-view mirror.
The driver started their car and slowly and carefully drove off the boat and onto the dirty road. Unfazed, Dick continued.
“We’re going to jolt your memory. You’re going to lead Ardeth to his hideout. Details in the dossier.”
Cain looked at Ardeth, as if to eye his strengths.
“Please do not look at me.” The blonde replied antagonistically. “I prefer not to make friends with men with such disregard for rules as yourself.”
Noah laughed.
“Guess he doesn’t like you much. Too bad.”
The car finally pulled up next to a somewhat large airfield. Cain couldn’t figure out where exactly they were, but it was not a field for commercial flights.
“We're here. Ardeth will keep an eye on you. Get yourself cleaned up and board the plane. I’ve got to call up some judges and let them know I’ve taken the liberty of letting a dangerous fucking criminal out.”
With that final joke, they left the van. As he exited, Ardeth threw a large coat on Cain, just to cover up his prison jumpsuit until they got to the hotel.
The blonde guided Cain, forcefully, into a somewhat seedy looking hotel. Inside isn't very accommodating, a couple of suspicious men in shades sit at the cocktail bar and don't even try to hide that they're monitoring Cain's every move. Ardeth also takes note of them and whispers into Cain's ear.
“Those guys must be MI6, Mr. Noah mentioned they would be looking for you.”
He acts completely naturally - fit for someone in his life of work. Body language and facial expression giving off the idea that they're having a regular conversation.
“If any trouble arises, don't you dare act out, or our agreement is a bust. Dead bodies are strictly against the rules that Mr. Noah set down for us.”
Cain shuffles in the loose coat and follows Ardeth up to their room. They were to leave in the morning, so there was still time for Cain to assemble a less disheveled look.
Ardeth had a camera stashed in the wardrobe, according to their written plan they were to forge Cain a fake passport to safely get into Russia.
“Put that down.”
Ardeth points his M1911 handgun at the back of Cain's head.
“You can't use any sharp objects.”
Cain drops the razor onto the floor.
“...how do I shave then?”
He grumbles. Ardeth takes the razor away and points to a bladeless electric razor.
“You know how to use them, no?”
Cain ignores the comment and shaves his beard to the best of his ability. He peeks out the window. On a hill overlooking the hotel he spots a shimmer of a sniper’s scope. They really want to make sure he doesn’t run. Ardeth shoves a chair into the corner of the room, overlooking the door leading to the hallways as well as the one leading to the bathroom currently occupied by Cain. He rests his gun against his forearm in a way that aims roughly in Cain’s direction.
Not that he really feared the big man - after all any wrong move would set off the microcapsule explosive in his neck. It would just have been a shame to go through a week of paperwork to get this man out just to waste it.
Intensely he watched Cain shave, making sure he wasn’t doing anything suspicious. Finally the man turned around to face him - he looked much younger now, but still nearing or slightly past 50.
“Now take a shower, but make it quick.”
The young man might’ve felt somewhat dirty saying that. He’s never been in a situation where he could order another person, let alone another man, to undress and shower. He wasn’t really a relationship person, he fell into the academy to escape his Parent’s constant pestering about finding a wife.
Cain on the other hand didn’t much care about pretenses, he barely hid behind the door frame and jumped into the shower.
“Y-you can close the door y’know.”
His mind steamed up, as did the bathroom. So he quickly rushed in and closed the wooden door, leaving Cain to his devices. He thought about how Mr. Noah would be displeased at him getting his eyes off of the asset, but Ardeth wasn’t good with nudity.
Distracting him from his thoughts was the sound of voices coming from the hallway. It was pretty late for anyone to just be wandering about.
Ardeth moves slowly towards the door, trying to kill the sound of Cain’s shower in his mind and focus on anything coming from the hallway.
“Room service.” The voice startled him - but it clearly belonged to one of the maid’s, he’s heard her voice before.
“We didn’t order any, no need.” He replied politely.
An awkward silence followed. Longer than seemed normal to him, he braced his pistol close to his chest in a tactical position he was taught at the academy.
“I’m sorry… I think I left my keys there while I was cleaning, can I enter and have a quick look.”
Ardeth didn’t say anything but he heard the sound of keys turning the door open - of course, the maid would have all the room keys. The door creaked open and revealed a normal looking younger woman, she must’ve been in her twenties, the only problem being that she was teary eyed.
“I’m sorry.”
She said, before a bullet penetrated her head and her limp body fell to the ground of the hotel. Ardeth stood there in shock, his stomach turned upside down and he couldn’t even pull the trigger before a man larger than him knocked him to the ground and immobilized him in a nasty headlock.
“Where is he?”
The big man held a gun against his head and demanded to know Cain’s location. Another man entered the room, closed the door and kicked the maid’s body to the side.
“Who.. the fuck are you?”
Through gritted teeth the young man hissed at his assailants. He could feel blood coming out of his nose and dripping onto the carpeted floor.
“Answer the fucking question or I blow your head off.”
The gun pushed against his cranium. Just then he realized that the sound of the shower head was missing. Unfortunately the look he gave towards the bathroom door must’ve given away his thoughts and the man restraining him gestured towards his partner to search the bathroom.
“F-fuck…” Ardeth hissed again.
This was his big assignment and he got bested before it even started. He tried to break free but couldn’t get enough grip. He looked up to the bathroom door once again, Cain’s either escaped out a window when he heard trouble, or he’s already lying dead.
The gunman opened the bathroom door slowly, only to find nothing.
“Nothing here - keep pushing the guy.”
Those words signaled to the restrainer to push on him harder and slam his face against the floor for added measure.
“Last chance.”
“I… don’t…”
His words were cut short by the sound of something shattering. When he looked up, he saw something he didn’t imagine possible. Cain was in the middle of bursting through the bathroom door, flying with incredible speed, tackling the gunman and crushing him underneath the broken door.
“What the fuck?!”
The man restraining him aimed at Cain, this gave Ardeth enough time to shove him off him, throwing his aim off. In turn, this allowed Cain to grab the old-school style razor and throw it directly at the assailant. The blade perfectly lodged in between his eyes, releasing a slow but steady stream of blood. Ardeth thought he was going to pass out, but powered through it and kicked the man off of him completely.
Cain was crouched down, a towel barely covering his lower half.
“I told you… to not interfere.” The CIA agent picked up his handgun off the floor and pointed it in Cain’s direction.
“I wasn’t going to let my insurance die.” Cain replied coldly.
If Ardeth wasn’t about to puke, he’d probably laugh.
It wasn’t the coldest December that Russia has ever seen. At least Ardeth felt so, he’s been brought up imagining an eternally snow covered landscape of Tsars, and then Soviets. Him and Cain had just passed through a checkpoint and were now headed towards their pickup.
Cain had kept eerily quiet throughout the plane ride and their short train ride to the Tatishchevsky District, a small area just north of the border from Kazakhstan. Cain had been here before - which is why they picked it to begin with.
Ardeth accidentally met Cain’s gaze as he was glaring and quickly looked away in another direction. Feeling awkward he tried to start a conversation.
“So… how sure are you that this is where you last saw Trinity Alpha?”
Cain looked back at him.
“Trinity Alpha?”
“Oh - I mean, Dr Dion.”
Doctor Ahab Dion was the man that Cain had last seen in 1961. He didn’t know it at the time, but the man had just escaped from the United States into Soviet Russia. There is no official agreed upon reason as to why he, or the other members of the so called “Trinity” went into hiding.
Dion came to be known as “Alpha” as he was the lead researcher on the project. The project in itself was a bit of a mystery, the kind that people spoke about in hushed tones while discussing aliens and the Kennedy assassination.
Cain furrowed his brow and looked ahead onto the damp streets.
“He was hiding away in a church, pretending to be a priest. He asked me to follow his wife. Marital dispute. Petty stuff.”
Cain didn’t do divorces, usually, but the pay was good and the job seemed easy.
“While talking to Mr. Noah, you didn’t mention anything about what happened after that.”
“Old age and whiskey.” Cain grumbled.
Ardeth scoffed at the man’s brazen disregard for good behavior, he gazed around for a bit before doing a routine assessment of their surroundings. Back in his training days he was recognized for his deduction skills, but this felt different. He could feel that he was thrust into meddling with forces that were larger than him, probably larger than what the agency could comprehend either.
The security footage from New Mexico, conducting the investigation with Mr. Noah, it all felt out of his grasp. Ardeth was a man of faith, as it was passed down to him by his parents, but believing and witnessing are two different things. His mind kept thinking of a rational explanation.
He glanced behind his shoulder. There was no one on the empty street. He checked out every window, alleway, car interior - anything that could hide an assailant. The hotel mess, although cleaned up by the agents monitoring him, made him more cautious. Any more rash moves and they could end up compromised, especially in Russia.
“Those men weren’t MI6.” Cain said, almost as if reading his mind.
“They definitely were, Noah’s team ID’d them.”
“Dick is lying to you. They used private militia tactics.”
“He wouldn’t do that - he is bound by an oath… oh, nevermind.”
Ardeth came to realize that Cain mostly spoke past him - he didn’t much respond to anything he said, only made him statements and moved on.
They arrived near a small, partially wooden Orthodox church. The area felt eerily quiet, maybe people weren’t keen on praying on a day as gross as this. The church’s courtyard was filled with a gothic fog that you could kick at with your heels. The agent felt uneasy, churches back at his home state of California didn’t have a centuries old feel to them.
“This is where you met the doctor?”
He asked Cain to cut the dead silence.
“This is where he found me, really.”
Cain replied. It was hard to start a conversation with him.
“You’re hard to start a conversation with.”
Ardeth shot a glare away from Cain. The taller man seemed perplexed by the sudden outburst and leaned against a stone cross decorating the Church’s dead garden. He slowly pulled out a cigarette out of his suit pocket and put it in his mouth.
“You expect me to pour my heart out to some random government agent? Tough shit. Give me a light.”
“I don’t smoke.” Ardeth shrugged.
“...and I don’t chit-chat. I’d prefer you just let me lead you to Dion’s hideout and shut up.”
Cain let out a bit of sass in his tone, but didn’t even crack a smile. Hell, his expression wasn’t even neutral. Ardeth came to realise that this entire time Cain’s face had a frown, it’s like his mouth was just shaped that way.
“You’re gross, immoral, and deeply unusual.”
For some reason Ardeth felt annoyed by Cain. Something in the way he carried himself. It’s like he didn’t even care about getting his freedom and was just going along to grab another cigarette.
“You get a chance at carte blanche and you don’t even give a damn?”
Cain folded his arms in response.
“I would’ve gotten out eventually.”
“Ugh. Why did I even try to talk to you?”
Ardeth stomped towards the door. It really was a comical sight in some way, but Cain suddenly shifted his posture and opened his mouth, speaking in a more serious tone.
“You care too much about the rules, it makes you upset.”
The agent didn’t turn to face him, but the silence was enough for Cain to realise he was right. Why did someone like Dick Noah make this soft, rookie agent on a mission where the stakes were nuclear? Something didn’t add up.
“Tch. Why did you even try talking to me?”
Cain got up from the stone cross and walked towards the big wooden doors and swung them open.
Ardeth got in front of him, as if to assess his leadership. Inside, a single person praying on a shoddy wooden pew and an out-of-time looking orthodox priest minded about their own business.
When the Priest saw Cain he jumped and walked behind a column, as if that would render him invisible. Ardeth turned to look at Cain who simply shrugged at him.
“Go on, make him talk.”
Ardeth nudged Cain. The tall man sighed and took a step towards the scared priest.”
“Father Dryga.”
He began speaking in fairly fluent Russian, with a bit of menace in his voice.
“What do you want?”
The priest hissed at him from behind his hiding spot.
“I’m looking for Father Dion. I need to ask him some questions.”
According to the interview Cain gave to Noah, Dion was hiding away pretending to be a priest. Clever really, it wasn’t a place anyone knew about, and being a religious man himself, he blended right in.
Dryga froze in pure fear; it was as if a dark miasma entered the room. Ardeth could feel the temperature drop significantly and unexpectedly. He glanced around the room but saw nothing out of the ordinary, the doors were shut tight as they were when they closed them. Puzzled, he looked at Cain’s face for answers. His furrowed brow indicated some kind of understanding.
“That filth - sold us out! He sentenced us to this hell!”
The priest broke out into a wheezing fit of rage and insults. Cain took a step back, but then regained composure and confidently strode at the older russian and grabbed him by the collar of his robe. Ardeth stepped forward to intervene, sensing that Cain could kill the man.
“Cain. If you hurt this man-”
The priest, with unnerving speed turned and pointed his finger at the agent.
“You… young man. You have to run away. You’re still young.”
Ardeth didn’t know how to respond, he froze in his step and made a confused face. Cain let go of the priest and fixed his tie.
“Be concrete.” He spoke bluntly.
“Cain… There is a shadow over this place. It’s not right.”
“Specifics, Dryga.”
The priest’s legs seemed to give out and he slid to the floor. The CIA agent thought about helping him, but wasn’t sure if he should get closer; he cursed his inability to act in situations like these in his mind.
“Dion… was taken… he’s…”
“Taken by who?” Ardeth finally unfroze from his state and stepped in front of Cain.
“Child… he was taken by a devil.”
The blonde made another confused face, and looked up to Cain to assess what the bigger man thought of it. Cain’s face, to Ardeth’s surprise, was taking the story of devils and curses completely seriously. Trying to cut the awkward silence, Ardeth nudged Cain and asked him to talk in private.
“Cain - we have to be more discreet. There are civilians here.”
The dark man looked down at Ardeth with a questioning expression. Ardeth discreetly pointed behind him at the single man, kneeling down on the wooden pew.
“Ardeth,” Cain began, “there’s nobody…”
Suddenly the realization struck him, unfortunately too late. The stained glass windows were suddenly engulfed in a mass of shadows resembling a flock of birds or bats. Ardeth, trusting his instincts, pulled out the handgun he had hidden in his winter coat and pressed his back against a pillar. The panicked pastor ran into the back rooms of the church, screaming curses in fear for his life.
“What the hell is this?!” Ardeth yelled out, and turned his frustrations towards Cain. “What did you do?!”
The glass window finally gave in and shattered, marking the agent's question with a bang. A shadow, vaguely resembling some kind of flying reptile, crashed through; as it cut through the air it left a screeching sound that could only be compared to that of industrial machinery. Ardeth felt Cain’s hard hand grab him and pull him to the ground, just out of the devil’s grasp.
The demon flew across the walls and ceiling, exactly like a shadow, continuing its terrible sound. It was like a blade scraping against stone with the strength of a hydraulic press.
“Ceiling! Shoot!” Cain yelled as he tried to slide off of Ardeth, giving him a chance to fire.
The agent’s instinct once again took over, fueled by adrenaline, and he let out a salvo of shots vaguely at the ceiling above him, hitting probably centuries old decorative paintings. Cain reached for his arm and shoved it to the right - this time the shot was perfectly aligned to hit the shadow on the wall. The thing let out the sound of a powertool with a dying battery and slunk away into the hallway that Dryga ran into moments prior.
Cain jumped off of Ardeth and bolted over the shoddy benches and into the wooden door that led into the back rooms of the church. Nothing felt right, Cain thought to himself. It wasn’t a hugely important insight but complaining made him keep focus on the task at hand. If Ardeth was smart, he’d be trying to contact the CIA right now. Surely they’d have field agents somewhere in the area. They spread like cockroaches. The eyepatched man ran through a few hallways when he hit a dead end. The shadowy figure had seemingly disappeared.
Cain made a sour face and turned to his side, looking as if trying to remember something. He started touching the wall to his left, feeling every brick and detail. When that led nowhere, he took a step back and, with a forceful push, delivered a kick to the wall, making it wobble unnaturally.
Ardeth, feeling the impact’s vibrations through the ground, snapped out of his shock. He wiped his face with his hand, barely keeping his composure, then ran in the same hallway Cain vanished into. He pulled out his handgun and tried to safely breach and clear every nook and cranny of the labyrinthian church. Just as he was taught during training. Eventually he found a collapsed wall. Taking a deep breath he dove inside, aiming his pistol at the first person he saw - which happened to be Cain.
His eyes took a moment to focus away from him and adjust to the darkness, but when he finally could see the room he was in, he stood back in shock.
The ceiling was covered in pictures of a child, at most 10 years old. Old, mouldy polaroids of a little boy. Some of them had writing on them, some of them - elaborate insignias of alchemical and occult importance that flew over the agent’s head. In the middle of the room, where Cain stood, was a child’s empty cradle, and at Cain’s feet was the corpse of the orthodox priest.
This was Trinity Alpha’s, or rather Dr Ahab Dion’s secret room.
The walls were adorned with the writings of a madman, but a madman who was one of the top physicists and engineers in the world. Equations, graphs, schematics. All intertwined with Bible verses, gnostic passages, occultist chants. It felt like stepping into a Voynich Manuscript themed funhouse.
“Jesus Christ…” That’s all that the shocked Ardeth could muster out.
Cain turned to him, a serious expression painting across his face. This clearly wasn’t what even he expected. Ardeth swallowed his fears and turned on a flashlight, beginning to investigate the room.
“Keeping it quiet has just gone out the window. Goddamn. Cain.”
Cain ignored the comment. Ardeth then got out some kind of radio-eque device. It must’ve been a phone, but it was bulky and unwieldy. He dialled something into its interface and put it up to his face.
“Mr. Noah, this is Agent Ardeth.”
After a bunch of crackling sounds subsided, a voice spoke through the other end.
“Ardeth - it’s Dick. Report.”
“Cain led me to the Trinity Alpha’s hideout… we’ve had casualties.”
While waiting for the static to give way to Dick’s reply, Cain started to poke around the room. His attention was piqued by a painting of Saint George slaying the Dragon. It stood out in a room already filled with oddities and trinkets.
“...You’ll give me a proper report later. What did you find relating to the case?”
Ardeth looked relieved that Dick didn’t give him a hard talking to on the spot. He fumbled a bit, thinking of the right way to describe the room he was in right now, when Cain dropped a heavy brick onto the floor.
“Tell Dick we have what he wants.” He said confidently.
Behind the painting was a small box, stuffed behind a few loose bricks and rocks. The box, seemingly used to be bright red with golden decoration, but now it was cracked and maroon coloured, only small patches of the gold paint remaining. Cain opened the box, inside finding a picture of a 30 year old man holding a child. In the background of the photograph was what seemed like a military base. The text on the bottom read: “Tatishchevo Air Base”. That place was less than an hour away from where they were right now.
“Seems like a bad place to hide, being so close to your history.” Cain added, seemingly trying to make some kind of deadpan joke.
Ardeth finished up his report to Dick. Then he sat down on a large brick, exhausted and unsure what just happened, he turned his head to Cain.
“I’ve never seen…” He stopped, unsure what to say, “what the hell was that, some kind of animal? Secret weapon?”
“It was a demon.” Cain replied, stuffing the picture he was holding into his jacket.
“Demons. You sound like Mr. Noah when you say that.” Ardeth scoffed in response. “With all due respect to him, I don’t believe in demons.”
Ardeth was somewhat religious, maybe more than most, but in his cosmology demons were more metaphorical. They were shadows in the back of your mind tempting you to sin.
“You don’t have to believe me.” Cain replied, “but there’s a reason why your boss got me out of prison for this.”
“Don’t tell me you are some kind of exorcist.”
Cain didn’t reply, he just lightly shrugged and walked off into the hallway to smoke without disrupting the agent’s rest.
“Just to repeat myself - with all due respect to Mr. Noah, I think that’s a load of lies. I’m more of an inside the box thinker.”
Ardeth’s instincts told him that whatever was happening in this region of the Russian Federation was explainable - scientific. He respected Noah, and just as an effect of getting saved by him, maybe developed some kind of begrudging respect for Cain. That being said, there was no place in his life for the abstract.
“If there were demons…” he whispered to himself, “there wouldn’t be a need for all this.”
Ardeth shook his head and got up, he needed to get back to monitoring Cain. The man clearly knew this area and they had a good shot at finding the whereabouts of the warhead together. When he stepped out of the church, however, he was met with another disaster.
Cain laid in the back of a pickup truck - shot a handful of times in the chest. His right arm was bent tightly over his chest and head. Before the agent stood a squad of seemingly highly trained soldiers, they looked like mercenaries. Nothing about them indicated that they were russians. In fact, Ardeth immediately felt like he recognized the uniforms somewhere, he took note of the particular design, but without a patch, he wasn’t sure who they were.
“Get in the back.” A man with a non distinct northern USA accent pointed a silenced rifle at Ardeth’s head.
He didn’t exactly look like a hardened mercenary, his features were soft and his red hair had a slight curl to it that looked deliberately styled. Ardeth raised his arms high and complied with the command. As he got into the truck, he got a better look at Cain’s body - he looked stiff and dead.
“Fuck.” Ardeth swore under his breath.
The red haired merc behind hit him with the stock of his rifle, Ardeth was numb to pain at that point, but the force of the blow threw him down next to the corpse. He couldn’t see his face, because his hand was fully covering it, clenched as if he was deliberately trying to defend it.
The mercenary got into the truck and sat on a seat. His aim trained on the agent.
Before long, the cars got off to a start. The skies were turning a maroonish color and the clouds were clearing up, showing no sign of rain or snow.
“Terrible weather, isn’t it?” The merc scoffed. “Some December it is; feels like June. Do you believe in global warming? If you ask me, it’s a bunch of bullshit. I’ll tell you what’s really going down.”
Ardeth didn’t reply, he just looked at him, no doubt betraying his anger. At the same time, he was scouting the area for any way out of this situation.
“I think it’s the end of the world. I mean, listen, everybody knows it. The Russian government knows it, the Americans certainly know it. That’s why they sent you here, a last resort to save their asses.”
“What are you talking about?” This confirmed to Ardeth that his cover was blown - but the man’s weird speech intrigued him.
“You’re here for the nukes - we know, we had you tracked.” The redhead smiled. “It’s nothing personal, we just got paid to get to them first. Our employer is going to use them to bargain with your employers. It’s a shame you guys killed our scouts back in the US.”
“Money isn’t good for anything without a global system to uphold its value.” The CIA agent tried to irritate his capturer.
The merc just busted into a wild laugh.
“Money also has a psychological value - even without a market.”
The car ride felt excruciatingly long - Ardeth felt like he could’ve counted the hairs standing on the back of his neck, At the forefront of his mind his first idea was how to get in contact with the agency and call for backup. Lost in his thoughts, he took note of various landmarks, anything to signal his position.
Eventually they arrived outside of a guarded facility. Rusty fences adorned with razor wire and “beware of dog” signs. The soldiers danced their usual dance; they got out of their cars and swept the area like proper operators. Ardeth eventually got nudged by some greasy looking soldier, it was his time to get out of the truck.
“Keep an eye on him.” The redhead whistled as he undid the safety on his rifle and followed his men inside the facility.
Just as they left, the CIA agent felt more uneasy than ever. A knot was forming in his throat. Was it just his imagination or was there a strange smell in the air? Did it suddenly get darker and redder?
“We should get back into the truck.” He blurted out in his worry.
“Shut the hell up.” A mercenary with a blue scarf mouthed off at him.
Something was about to happen, Ardeth thought to himself. Something terrible. His instinct and training told him that he should act quickly. He slipped his slender fingers into his back pocket, searching around for anything useful.
The only item of any note was the detonator of Cain’s explosive capsule. Ardeth gulped nervously. Cain was dead, but the idea of exploding someone’s head made his stomach turn. Morality aside, his instinct told him that a distraction was exactly what he needed to get out of captivity.
The sky seemed to grow darker and darker by the second. The agent hovered his thumb over the switch. His heartbeat got faster and louder the more he considered his actions.
Suddenly, a familiar sound, like a knife slicing through the sound barrier. A blood curdling screech that felt like nothing on this earth. Ardeth jumped and stumbled back, hitting the truck behind him with his body.
“Shit.” The agent swore when he realized that the detonator slipped out of his hands and onto the floor.
He quickly hid it under his sole, praying it does not go off prematurely. One merc turned to him and groaned some swear words at him, but his words were drowned out by another loud thunderous crack in the air.
“The fuck is that?”
“How should I know - maybe Gregorian is engaging hostiles?”
The discussion was interrupted by another loud crack, this time closer than before. Something dark and blurry whizzed past the mercenary; the man stumbled nervously as he turned around and fired off a burst into the ground. Before he could say anything, another blitz slipped past his feet.
A red line appeared alongside his ankles, the man remained on his feet for a few seconds, then fell to the ground screaming. His feet stayed planted to the ground, as if he had just taken off his shoes, blood gushed out of his stumps and lingered in the air like a red mist. The other soldier screamed and mindlessly pressed the trigger on his battle rifle.
A volley of bullets flew in the direction of the sound, a few hit right next to Ardeth, causing his senses to kick in and throw him onto the ground. The harsh sounds of the bullets ripping through the steel of the car rung loudly in the man’s ears. He crawled along the ground as hell was let loose above him.
Mercenaries, who just a moment ago seemed like the most prepared team on the planet, had gotten decimated by a force they couldn’t even comprehend. Ardeth, high on adrenaline and deafened by echo of a cracking bullet still bouncing around in his head, desperately reached out for the detonator. He then weakly picked himself up off the ground and clawed his way up the truck.
A demonic drilling noise broke through his dazed state. Striking fear into his mind, working like a direct injection of another dose of adrenaline. His blue eyes noticed a shadow, flying in his direction. The agent’s muscles tensed up and almost against his will vaulted him over the truck’s side and right on top of Cain’s dead body. Ardeth cursed everything that lead him hear as he heard an invisible blade cut right through the side of the car he was leaning on just a second ago.
He gazed out onto the sky, seeing now the shape for what it was. His mind could only describe it as the shadowy outline of a skinned mammal, twisted and bent into the shape of a bird. It covered up the sun with its dark wings, casting a deep red shadow on top of Ardeth. If he wasn’t terrified, he would’ve probably found it beautiful. Like a tortured butterfly.
But right now, Ardeth’s body was in charge and it was fighting for survival.
He grabbed Cain by the shoulders and prepped him like the world’s heaviest shield. He readied the detonator in his hand and gently pressed on the button, not hard enough to make the bomb go off, but enough to be able to make it go in a millisecond. The dreadful butterfly shut its wingspan. It hung in the air for a few seconds before dipping down aiming straight at its target.
Ardeth gritted his teeth and readied his hand muscles.
“Sorry Cain.”
“Save it for later.”
The blonde’s eyes widened as he heard a voice from right above him. Before he could process what just happened, a strong hand gripped his wrist and pulled him up and over the truck’s side. They both fell and hit the ground with a loud thud. Cain now on top of Ardeth, a metallic slash barely missing them and destroying what was left of the car’s behind.
“You’re…” Alive, Ardeth wanted to say but couldn’t get the words out of his throat.
Cain’s hand had a nasty wound in it, and the bullet that caused it was still inside. He gritted his teeth and stood up. He used his dress shoe to kick up a rifle off the ground and into his hands.
“I’ve had it up to here with this flying pest.” Cain unjammed the rifle and braced the stock against his hip.
The “pest” seemingly angered by this comment, made an impossibly quick turn in mid air and slid down a pile of bodies, slicing them into finer bits along the way. Cain squeezed the trigger with his bloodied hand. His aim was flawless even in this state, Ardeth noticed. Multiple bullets hit the beast, causing it to veer off course and miss them both. Cain bolted forward and with a dirty roll across the ground turned his aim 180 degrees. The, now bleeding, monster made a beautiful roll in the air and began hurling towards Cain with a rage previously unseen in the heartless killing machine.
The blonde was now a witness to a western showdown from hell.
Within the blink of an eye the demon was now right against Cain. Seemingly this is what the man was waiting for as he threw his rifle to the side and readied his hand with visible twitch to his muscles. When it was just within range, Cain hurled his fist forward at speeds almost matching that of his opponent.
Then, the sounds of mayhem gave way to silence. Defying logic, Cain’s fist had pierced the shadow, pinning it to the ground. It was now gently bleeding, letting out its final strengths in the form of insect-like twitching. The tall man unlodged his fist with a wet sound and stood up off the ground, making sure to fix his tie afterwards. Ardeth’s muscles finally gave in and he let himself breathe a momentary sigh of relief.
His rest was short lived, as a siren could be heard from inside the compound.
“Cain.” The agent started, “we have to… finish the mission.”
Ardeth wanted to say “Stop them” or “Save them”, but he realized that those words were bigger than him, they were too radical for him to even utter.
“Make sure this whole place doesn’t go up in flames. Got it.”
Cain finished the sentence his own way as he dug in his hand and attempted to fish out the bullet bothering him.
Before they departed, Ardeth made sure to grab the detonator and hide it in his pocket.
Cain’s boot kicks open the metal doors guarding the entrance to the warehouse. Ardeth follows behind him.
“How did you survive?” He asks.
“Dumb luck.” Cain’s replies seem to not provide much in terms of detail to the confused CIA agent.
Ardeth sighs and leads them both inside, handgun at the ready. As they walk, he attempts to continue their conversation.
“We’re gonna have to figure out a way to transport the warhead - there should be a vehicle capable of doing that in the facility.” Ardeth begins describing the plan. “We will use the forests to move it to the nearest port town, there are allied pirates that will meet us wherever Noah tells them.”
They step over some bodies and shards of broken glass.
“You’ve got it all step-by-step.” Cain notes.
“Thank you, I think.” The blonde doesn’t turn to face him and simply hops over a metal railing.
.
.
.
“Thank you for calling, Mr. Valentin.”
A pair of soft lips speaks with a gentle intonation into a rotary phone’s receiver. A muffled voice replies on the other end.
“Oh, you’re already aware of the troubles happening in the Tatishchevsky District?” There’s a hint of laughter to the speaker’s tone.
“Please, Mr. Valentin, there is no need for anger. I don’t want to cause you any trouble. Satan is what I’m after, not pointless killing.”
Angry voices can be heard from the phone.
“I’m fully aware that you consider that just a rumor, but to me it is very important. Please, you will be compensated.” The man gets interrupted by a ringing sound. “Excuse me, another call.”
“Good day to you Mr. President.” The man picks up the phone and speaks with glee. “Oh Please, I’m well aware that you hold respect for my family and I’m greatly honored by it. This current situation will be of course sorted out I hope without any damage to your position.”
There’s a relieved tone on the other end.
“I’m glad you understand Mr. President. Politics is a cruel game sometimes and, as you always say, it comes with some sacrifices, but I believe this will not be consequential in the grand scheme of things. It’s just something personal for me.”
“Thank you for understanding.” He hangs up and immediately picks up the other phone.
“Mr. Valentin.” He speaks sternly “Don’t make any rash decisions, I want the warhead in its entirety, not in pieces. Mr. Valentin?”
Silence hangs in the air. The man hangs up.
.
.
.
Ardeth felt safe being a cog in the machine. The sense of order and repetition kept him from ever venturing out too far. Thinking back, it all started when he was a child, where he disobeyed his father and went with his childhood friend into the bad part of town. All they wanted was to throw some rocks at the river, but one bad turn let them see what they should not. What was it? Ardeth’s memory was so blurry. He remembers Moses crying, he remembers a feeling of violent disgust.
Something about that forgotten memory still chained him into today. Being a CIA agent meant that he was at least on the better part of the chain. He wasn’t dangling off the gallows, he was the one handing out the ropes. It didn’t feel good, but it felt safe.
Cain wasn’t like that. He gave off an attractive, wild, outlaw feeling. Despite being in chains for the last decade, he seemed to grit and pull against his leash. Like the world’s angriest dog. In a way, it had its gravitational pull. Maybe Cain could find the same safety that Ardeth found within the system, outside of said system?
To the wounded CIA Agent, it felt like an unreachable star.
As the duo crossed across a seemingly endless labyrinth of steel walkways, rusty fences, shoddy ventilation systems, and busted electronics they could sense that they were getting closer to the heart of an infinite machine. This place didn’t feel right, cables seemed to go nowhere, yet everywhere.
Eventually the pair made their way into a seemingly repurposed aircraft hangar. With engineering decisions that seemed random. Neither of the two men could tell at a glance if it actually worked. Unmistakably in the middle of the room, laying on top of torn down train carts, lay a giant, black, metal tube.
It was the nuclear warhead they’ve been after. It was bigger than what Ardeth expected, it was almost as if it had the warhead already connected to the missile, which would imply a level of preparation to use it. The agent didn’t like that thought.
“So this is what I got shot for.” Cain looked out from the scaffolding they entered.
It seems what they thought was a door was actually a repurposed window - a “floor” was built out of scaffolding and various pieces of scrap. Precariously, Ardeth made his way down the shaky construction and waved for Cain to follow him.
“The Satan Missile, a weapon so horrible it drove the people who made it to paranoia.” Ardeth hyped up the giant piece of metal.
Suddenly, shots bounced off of the various scraps of steel. The construction shook violently and knocked Ardeth down into a pit. The agent just barely managed to twist his body into a sloppy roll, his legs getting caught up and tangled in some wires in the process. Cain dove onto the floor, barely dodging out of sight of machine gun fire.
“Shit!” He yelled.
He looked out onto the warehouse and saw a soldier, shambling like a corpse, clutching a rifle in his hands. He was laying down cover fire for a whole squad of soldiers from another makeshift staircase. Cain looked down at Ardeth - his foot was stuck in a wire.
“Ardeth! Throw me your handgun!” Cain called out to him.
“Are you crazy - ugh! I can’t give you my gun.” The agent struggled
Another salvo of shots hit the wall beside the dark haired man.
“Throw it! Now!” He demanded.
“It’s against my directives. It’s - It’s…”
Ardeth seemed to freeze up as if the idea of breaking his code flipped a panic switch inside his head. He shook his head, a fear setting onto his face. Cain looked at him with pity for a moment, then grinded his teeth together, clenched the muscles in his legs and dove once again this time off the scaffolding completely. He hit the ground with a loud thud, bruising his already damaged arms. Quickly enough he got back on his feet, taking cover behind the nuclear warhead. Shots bounced off the thick metal shell hiding the atomic core.
“Are you fucking insane? You’ll kill us all!” The tall man yelled from behind the warhead.
His anger didn’t matter to the attackers. The soldiers had been dead long before the men got here. Their eyes were sunken into their skulls, skin dried up and crumbly, They were the classic idea of what an undead, reanimated corpse looks like. Shuffling their feet in a parody of life. Cain could tell at a glance they wouldn’t be able to listen to him even if they wanted to.
He pounced, moving like an animal. His bones were still stiff from years of imprisonment, but he somehow hadn’t lost his enormous build. He easily tackled one of the undead, wrestling it onto the ground and ripping out their rotten hand clean off the joint. He flipped onto his back and squeezed the trigger. The acoustics of the warehouse caused Ardeth’s ears to ring, snapping him out of his despair and finally freeing himself from his binds. The agent straightened out his arms and with deadly precision shot at the soldiers. One after another they fell to the ground, the ones that Ardeth didn’t take out, Cain filled with lead.
“Put that rifle down.” Ardeth turned to Cain.
“Are you still going on about that? This is not your usual FBI -” Cain began ranting at him, but quickly got interrupted.
“Shut up! Shut up. If we don’t go according to directives we might as well be DEAD. You hear me? DEAD.”
The agent waved his gun at Cain, but his display was cut short by an alarm suddenly blasting out of every speaker in the facility. Red lights filled the room. Both of them realized this was bad news. In a booth overlooking the whole building, the bloody hand of a dying soldier pressed a button labeled with every kind of warning sign there is. The clock began ticking.
Another round of rifle fire ripped through the sky, this time grazing Ardeth and sending him onto the ground. Cain jumped out of the way, holding the rifle close to himself.
“Ardeth! It’s the nuke! It’s getting armed!” Cain yelled over the loud siren, trying to reach the dazed agent. “Forget the damn mission - we have to disable it!”
Ardeth flung himself into cover, tucking his legs in behind a slab of concrete. He shook his head, trying to keep it together. He turned his weary face to Cain and yelled out.
“I’ll cover you - think of something.”
He then limply peaked himself out of cover and started shooting in the direction of the gunman. Cain jumped over the concrete wall he’s been hiding against and sprinted straight at the nuke, bullets flying overhead, sparks and ricocheting shots barely missing the man. He pounced onto the slowly rising weapon, a hydraulic system creaking and hissing as he kicked himself off one edge to another. Eventually making it on top of the black steel shell.
Feeling the surface for any weak spots, Cain finds some loose rivets holding down a rectangle of steel. On it, an image of a cross appears, alongside an inscription. Cain recognized the text, it was a prayer of sorts, written over and over in different languages. He didn't have time to fully translate it in his head before the hydraulics pushed again, lifting the nuke ever closer to an upright position. The roof of the hangar, though to be stationary at first, began to shift and open in a mess of wires, pulleys, and gears. The sky above was of a deep red hue, with dark shadows circling the clouds.
Cain, in his own brave and stupid way, understood one thing; The launching of a nuke would be bad. Without much thought he pounded his fist at the weakest spot in the metal he could easily find by feeling it. A rivet flew out in one direction. Cain punched again, and again, and again, until his hands were bruised and bloodied.
Defying logic, the steel plate began to bend, after a short while, it was bent enough for Cain to reach his hands under the crack and begin pulling. He wasn't about to let a disaster happen right after he got out of prison. He tensed his muscles, revealing powerful tendons in his arms and neck. Legs shifted on their own till his body was more of a lever than a human body and then…
Blood. Cain flew back, the determined strength of his own legs flung him back, prayer plate in hand, right onto the floor next to Ardeth.
But both of the men's attention was focused on one thing: the blood. What felt like something that would house a safety switch or some kind of detachment possibility contained… blood. Seemingly an endless amount of it. Cain got up in front of Ardeth, trying his hardest to shield the agent with his body.
Then with a slow tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
A veiny, root-like structure, hands made of what seemed like roads of a fully developed nervous system, grabbed onto the sides of the metal. Like a human, getting out from a hole in the ground. Cain understood another thing; the nuke wasn't just a weapon, it was a steel casket. The hydraulics gave up and fell with a short slam back onto the ground.
“At least the launch was stopped.” A thought entered Cain's mind, but the optimism was short lived.
He, as could be noted, based on the phallic string of nerves around the groin region, got up slowly. The nerves slowly trailed behind their connections, the movement looked alien. He didn't say anything, but Cain could feel him staring right at him.
“Ardeth. You have to go. Now.” Cain told the shocked spy.
“I… I can't. Cain, I can't disregard my duty…”
“Shut it.” The tall man didn't know how to handle this kind of situation, he didn't know what to tell the younger man beside him. “You have to run.” He pleaded with him.
Ardeth slowly got up and as if he was weighed down by the gravity of steel chains began to make his way outside, trembling along the way.
The mass of strings, red, blue and flesh colored strings, seemed to look down, tilting his head by a few degrees to one side. Cain already had two pieces to the puzzle, now he was starting to visualize the third. It wasn't a random, lucky day that let him out of prison.
It was December 1999. Days before the new millennium. It was winter. Yet it wasn't cold. He was paired with an agent who knew nothing about the supernatural, by a commander who was a religious fanatic.
And the one that stood before him was Satan.
“Hell. If the devil is not all that he's cracked up to be… I might make it out of this one too.” Cain said out loud, more to calm his own nerves than anything else.
The shape lunged at him, he dodged out of the way. His opponent seemed to disappear into the now inch deep pool of blood that covered the floor. Cain shifted his torso back and forth, stanced ready to fight at the smallest move. A few bubbles rose to the top of the bloody surface making Cain jump at them with a stomp, but nothing happened.
Behind him, the devil emerged again, this time covered in a coat of red, resembling a human body a tiny bit more. Like a starving animal it tackled Cain, dragging him along the bloody ground, biting into his neck. The demon pulled to the right, Cain gasped for air, the demon pulled to the left, Cain grinded his teeth, gripped the discarded metal plate and threw it with all his might at the bloody shape, but he just kept squeezing his neck ever more tightly with his maw.
Eventually, the skin gave way, the flesh gave way, and Satan was left standing upright holding a chunk of Cain's neck.
Interrupting the primal scene, the sound of gunshots tore at Cain's worn out eardrums. He looked behind him, holding his neck, barely holding back any bleeding.
Ardeth stood in the hallway, shaking with fear but holding his gun just like they taught in police academy.
“It's an order, it's an order, it's an order…” the man was repeating with a mania in his voice.
He got the demon's attention. It watched as Ardeth reached into his pocket and pulled out the detonator to Cain's micro-bomb and pressed the button.
Cain closed his eye as he heard a loud bang, yet he didn't feel anything. He opened his eye once again to see the demon, with his head blown right open.
But it wasn't enough. The devil flew into the red sky, cutting through it like a crimson bullet. Cain could only watch, screaming in horror and rage as it descended onto the young man. It filled him completely, entered every crevice. Small veins made their way through the gaps under his eyelids. Ardeth couldn't even begin to scream; the devil simply took him. The last words Cain heard him say were:
“It is an order.”
He then began to lose consciousness.
Before you ask, it wasn't one of those big, corporate, John Deere owned farms.
We lived in the middle of nowhere. Me and the family. There was no other job than to farm and tend to the animals. It's dumb to admit, but I loved the farmland, the orchards, and the gardens.
I was a kid, and those things made me feel wonder, I guess. Inside that home, a child could feel safe. My parents didn't smoke or drink.
That's how I remember it. Though every day it gets muddier, like looking at a mirror you never clean.
One detail that's clear in my mind is my mother. She didn't talk much, but there was a specific phrase she’d tell me when I'd wake up in a cold sweat; I had nightmares then.
Remember to keep breathing… remember to keep breathing… remember to keep breathing…
With his consciousness fading in and out, Cain is at the mercy of the demon. He feels his own body floating, as if it was getting gently carried off to heaven by an angel.
The airbase, the hangar, any signs of struggle; they are all gone. The last thing Dick Noah heard on the radio was cold, uncaring static. Everyone in the operational headquarters waited with baited breath, but no explosion was ever detected on the radar.
Days passed, and there was no sign of Ardeth, Cain, or the nuclear weapons. When an extraction squad was sent into the district, they found nothing. Nobody they interviewed knew about the location they were talking about, as if it never existed. It was now the 10th of December and the panic surrounding the new millennium was growing stronger.
When Cain woke up for the first time, he saw a beautiful nude man, crawling across the floor. When he woke up a second time he felt hands dragging him across muddy ground. When he woke up the third time, he felt cold steel, and heard distant screams.
If only he could sleep some more, the pain in his body hasn't disappeared since he passed out and he was just tired. Tired and guilty. Unfortunately, something was waking him up, the gentle wind that carried him before was turning into a hurricane that jostled and scrambled his thoughts. He could smell gasoline, he could feel bumps in the road.
“Waking up finally?” Faintly a deep, nice voice reached his ears.
Cain finally snapped his single visible eye open. His mind flared up, immediately attempting to assess his situation. He was tied to a dusty leather seat in some kind of trashy car. He couldn't move or break his binds no matter how hard he tried. The car was moving upsettingly fast, speeding down a sparsely forested highway. He turned his head to the driver, regretting the decision when he felt a sharp pain still residing in his neck.
“G’morning Princess.” The man said, with a weird accent. It was kinda as if he was imitating someone else’s way of talking.
He was a blonde, similar to Ardeth in some ways, but exuding a completely different aura. He was smiling to himself mischievously as he paid concerningly little attention to the road. His outfit was strange, it was a white suit with a pink shirt and a blue hat, cheekily adorned with what seemed to be little horns on the top. He looked bold and brash like a bad technicolor adventure movie.
Cain was stuck, kidnapped, in the car with Lucifer.
He started turning and tugging on his binds, his hands were twisted in a way that stopped him from reaching the door handle, or much of anything really. Seeing the commotion, Lucifer laughed and spoke again.
“Scene. Car interior. Man on the run from the government is given an offer he can't refuse.” The blonde letting go of the wheel for a moment, too long for Cain’s liking, finger framed the captive man.
“Fuck you, Lucifer.” Cain spat.
“Satan is the official term.” He laughed and set his hands back on the wheel.
Somehow he seemed to push on the gas pedal even harder, digging Cain’s bruised neck into his seat.
“Where are we? What did you do to Ardeth?”
“Salem. We’re breaking the speed limit on a highway to Salem.”
“Ardeth. What happened to him?” Cain hissed through his teeth.
Satan remained silent on that question, focusing instead on the road for the first time since Cain regained consciousness. Cain's felt fed up with his captor, he kicked his seat back with but it was no use. Like a dog, he was chained to the seat itself, all it did was hurt his neck further.
“Don't be upset, it causes wrinkles.”
“Maybe I’ll try asking a simpler question: what do you want?” Cain hissed.
“Scene two: The detective hissess through his teeth. An accusatory question stings his dashing captor,” he paused to take a breath and change his tone of voice to a more cold one. “It seems that you knew members of the Trinity, yeah? I want something they hid away from me.” He smirked.
“Fuck you, Lucifer.”
Act defiant when it doesn’t benefit you in the slightest. That’s what Cain knew he was best at. The look on Lucifer’s face however, didn’t show a crack of anger. To the eyepatch clad man it seemed almost sad. Somber. Melancholic. Names of all the feelings he’s gotten too used to seeing on other’s faces.
“It’s Satan, officially.” He switched expressions in an instant and put his, obviously forked, tongue out. “That’s what The Big G would call me.”
He then comically faked clearing his throat and began his exposition again.
“To return to my exposition: The Trinity had access to secret knowledge that they decided to keep hidden away from the public. Hours and hours of film-”
“I’m not helping you.”
Lucifer’s expression faded away. His face could only be read as cold and uncaring now. He switched to a higher gear and hit the gas without saying a word. Cain knew what this meant - he was going to crash them; he was trying to scare him. The tall man wouldn’t let him have this privilege, they could crash and burn, he didn’t care. That being said, he quietly began to tear at his binds with his slightly chipped fingernail - if he only got it halfway, he could tear his hand away.
“You’re not going to scare me, fucker.” He thought to himself.
The scenery passing them by became a smudge of colors and shapes. Cain felt like the car was going to spin out of control at any moment, but Lucifer kept his hands steady on the wheel.
“If you think I care so deeply for my life, you’re fucking mistaken.” Cain drowned out the pain in his neck with self talk.
It wasn’t going to go according to Lucifer’s plan - Cain was sure of that.
Then, all of a sudden, from behind a curve in the road, a school zone sign flashed against Cain’s keen eye.
“Fuck.”
Lucifer wasn’t just going to kill them, he knew Cain wouldn’t care about that. Cain realized that the demonic blonde could somehow read him like an open book. This was bad, really bad. Despite being a cold hearted mercenary by trade, Cain wasn’t about to let a bunch of kids get flattened by a crazed lunatic. You could say that was his life policy - don’t let plainly bad things happen. Not everyone agreed with him on that which is where most of his problems began. He began to scrape the bind with his fingernail faster.
“You…” Cain began. Lucifer remained silent.
It was no use - he was getting punished. A flock of perfectly content middle schoolers was crossing the road. The demon’s car was speeding fast enough that in the blink of an eye they would be already past the crossing. It was a do or die situation, Cain, despite being only a few days free from prison, had enough of these. He felt a strand of fabric snap and without his mind processing the decision fully he pulled his right arm sharply.
Once, then again.
Then again for the third time.
The fourth time.
Then with all of his will, the fifth time let out a sharp ripping sound as his fist hurled towards Lucifer’s steering wheel.
Their car, meters away from the would-be victims, flipped in the air. Cain’s body, despite being tied to the seat, flung to the roof of the car, his head hitting some metal part and cutting some skin. Random objects began to fly, some exiting through the open window, some bouncing around the back until they got stuck or managed to hit Cain in the face. The car hit the ground.
Once, then again.
Then again for the third time.
The fourth time.
Finally on the fifth hit, it lost enough velocity that it barely tipped, then landed on the roof with a finality that is only really seen in car crashes.
Cain's mind and thoughts, as well as the blood in his head, was shaken like a secret agent’s martini. He let out a sad cough, spitting out some mucus along the way. onto the ceiling of the wreck. The binds, weakend, let him slowly go, snapping or just sliding out. He slumped to the ground, and after groaning a bit began to crawl out of the open window. The screams of children, luckily for them, meant they were alive and unharmed. Cain rolled over out of the wreck and onto his back. He didn't know how he was gonna fix his back after all this.
“Good job, hero.” It was Lucifer, perfectly clean and unharmed.
He stepped politely into Cain's field of vision, arms behind him, looking smug like a child who just proved his point.
“Now will you help me?”
Cain grimaced and sat up, groaning like an old man. Someone came up to him, and started to check if he's okay, somehow they ignored Lucifer completely. What the hell was going on?
“Are you okay? Can you speak?” The person's face was blurry and the voice echoed in Cain's concussed head.
He looked over at Lucifer, who appeared perfectly sharp.
“I think this answers your questions. Your blood, which was delicious by the way, gave me a foothold in this world, but it's not fully… complete yet. For that I need the film, and I know the town of Salem has it.”
“It really doesn't answer anything.” Cain replied, grumpier than usual.
“What?” The person helping him asked, confused. Cain ignored them.
Despite Cain's denial, Lucifer was right. It did answer some questions that were burning Cain's mind. In his own experience and understanding, demons were not fully real beings, they were more like shadows in the back of your mind. An element on the periodic table that nobody has figured out yet. When you're at your weakest, they reach out of their world and into your soul, into your heart, into your mind.
Are they real? Yes and no. Mostly yes.
To become expressly real, they needed you, they needed flesh. So Cain was at least partially responsible for bringing this dipshit in front of him to reality, as he now painfully realized. What did a piece of film have to do with this? Cain didn't know.
“You’re full of shit if you think I’m helping you find anything, motherfucker.” Cain spat at the blonde.
The man that was trying to help Cain felt his jaw metaphorically hit the ground. He probably thought Cain was concussed, which would be correct, but not enough for him to start babbling nonsense. Cain got up and turned to him.
“What the hell are you looking at? Get the fuck out of my way.”
He looked down on the man with a murderous scowl. The man started to back up, unsure of what was going on, then upon seeing Cain form a fist he simply turned around and ran, no doubt yelling something about calling the cops for an escaped lunatic. Cain sharply turned back to Lucifer, who was watching the scene with great amusement. Adrenaline has worked its magic on Cain, who was pissed beyond belief.
“I don’t help high-and-mighty bastards like you.” Cain got into a boxing stance. “In fact, I beat them senseless.”
Lucifer whistled, took a few steps back, and bowed slightly. He was mocking him, which only made Cain angrier. Unable to contain himself any longer, he lunged at the blonde, driving a fist into his temple with relative ease. Lucifer took the hit, but simply pirouetted away and back around to Cain, as if the man’s heavy fists had no effect on him.
Lucifer came down on Cain with a powerful kick, drilling his heel into Cain’s shoulder, which tore at the damaged muscles of his neck. Cain clenched his teeth and grabbed his opponent’s leg, then, using some remaining memories of training judo, slammed him into the car wreck.
“You’re not bad. I guess you wanna kill me pretty bad, huh?” Lucifer laughed.
“I don’t care one way or the other. I just want you off my case.” Cain responded through the pain burning in his back.
Lucifer jumped and rolled towards Cain. With incredible agility, his legs clasped like a claw around his neck, and with a twist of his body he somehow sent Cain’s whole weight hurling towards the ground. Cain felt something snap. More than one thing. Lucifer got on top of him and started pummeling him with wild fists, right across the face.
“If you don’t care!” Lucifer yelled between gruesome punches. “Then you should help me find what I want!”
Somehow, Cain found enough will to grab one of Lucifer’s hands and keep it in place long enough to send a punch into the blonde’s nose. This one actually had some effect, as a stream of blood came out. Cain used the momentum to throw his attacker off of himself and rolled away to get some distance.
Sniff.
Lucifer inhaled slowly through his bloody nose and smiled. Cain started running at him, but something stopped him at the last moment.
“I need the tape, so I can die.” Lucifer said, calmly.
Cain’s expression changed from rage to confusion.
“I need your help, so I can die.”
A drip of blood fell from his nose and onto Cain’s shirt.
Salem was a wretched kind of town. Few things offended Cain more than gentle, east coast Americana. Especially in Salem, where the main attraction was gawking at some of the nation’s most cruel moments, then hopping over to a restaurant and eating a cream cheese filled jalapeno peppers, none the wiser.
“Check it out, cream cheese in jalapeno peppers!” Lucifer pointed at a fast food flyer.
Cain grimaced.
“Hey, let a demon have some fun. I’m out of the loop on these things. They don’t let Satan out on parole.” Lucifer smirked and leaned against a red brick wall.
“Shut up.” Cain was a man of few words.
He got a few weird looks from the passers-by. Nothing Cain wasn’t used to at this point, but even he realized that a huge man talking to himself must’ve been alarming. It didn’t help that he was also a bloody and beat up mess. Somehow he stopped his fight with Lucifer and agreed on helping him commit suicide. Cain didn’t see himself as someone you’d go to for euthanasia, but it seemed like Lucifer didn’t have a choice
“It wasn’t in my plan to get paired up with some nasty old private eye.” Lucifer sneered. “I mean seriously - a private eye, in 1999? Get with the times, Marlowe.”
“I was in jail,” Cain said, with a pause indicating annoyance. “Forgive me for being out of the loop.”
“I’ve been in Hell since before humans could write; if I can stay in the loop, so can you.”
That was a very good question to ask: how the hell did he stay in the loop? As good of a question it was, Cain wasn’t in the mood for talking anyway. That being said, questions are all he had: who really was Lucifer? How did he end up a prisoner inside an atomic bomb? Why did he want to die? Why kind of experiments did the Trinity do? Why did Dion flee all the way to Russia? What was he running away from?
Despite retracing his steps, mentally and physically, Cain couldn’t remember the details of his time working for the man. He was following the wife, trying to find if she was seeing someone. Was she seeing someone? As the duo turned into a quieter alleyway Cain gripped his temples in frustration and let out a sigh.
“I was too fucked up to memorize what I was doing.” He mumbled to himself.
“Jezebel - her name was Jezebel.” Lucifer stepped up to him.
This was new. Lucifer was right, the wife’s name was Jezebel Dion, she had an affair with a lawyer and would take frequent flights, disguised as being work related. All while Dion was hiding away, pretending to be a man of God. Hearing the name cut through the whiskey flavored mist that was clouding up Cain’s memory.
“How do you know this?”
“When you think about it, she’s kinda like my mother. Now tell me Cain, do you remember who she was seeing?”
Cain blinked in confusion, and just like that the demon had disappeared. Laughter reverberated through the detective’s skull. Before he could react to anything, Lucifer’s voice spoke out of nowhere.
“Go find him, doggy. I’ll be back, right now I have other business to deal with.”
“Just like that…” Cain thought to himself.