V. Mister Jones

Over the past seven years Saul Jones had, by his own reckoning, taken the lives of twenty-one individuals. When the insurrectionists needed someone removed, Jonesy was one of the people they turned to.


His neighbor knew nothing of his occupation. They knew Saul Jones was a reasonably handsome bachelor in his early thirties who tended to be out late most nights but was always friendly and rarely drunk. Most of the tenants were aware on some level that he was a practicing Jew, and a handful were aware that he was proud of it.

His faith and his occupation caused some dissonance in Jonsey's mind, but he believed in both causes too strongly to forsake one for the other. When asked by his fellow insurrectionists how he was able to reconcile the murders he committed, his standard response was "I've never had a dull Yom Kippur."

Jonsey came in the front door of his apartment around 6:30 in the morning, just as his downstairs neighbor Lydia was sending her son Tommy off to school.

"Morning, Jonsey." said Tommy. The kid was twelve, perhaps thirteen by now.

"Mornin', big fella." he said. The alcohol from the previous night had left his system some time ago, restoring Jonsey to his normal, charismatic self. "Where's your mother?"

"Inside." Tommy jerked his head towards the open door to room 102.

Jonsey poked his head through the doorway. "Hey, how's my favorite shikza?"

"Good morning, Saul!" called Lydia from behind her kitchen counter. She stood up, holding an empty plastic container. Lydia Crown was a few years past thirty and had long brown hair. She'd been raising Tommy by herself since before Jonsey had moved in three years ago. Jonsey didn't know what Lydia did for a living, only that it was a government job. For her part, she though he was a Human Resources director in an up-and-coming organization (which Jonsey reasoned was a possible interpretation of his occupation). As for Tommy's father, Jonsey couldn't blame the guy for impregnating a woman like her, but he had a few choice words for anyone who'd force her to raise the kid alone. Apparently she'd kicked him to the curb after he knocked her up and then got himself locked up. Other men in Lydia's life was not a topic Jonsey was intent on pursuing.

"I see you're sending that fatherless boy off to school," said Jonsey, smiling. "When are you going to get that boy a good male role model?"

"I don't know, Saul. I guess he'll just have to settle for you in the meantime."

"You wound me, Miss!" Jonsey clasped his tattooed hands over his chest.

Lydia's bearing changed just enough for Jonsey to notice it. "Well, I think I should make it up to you. Does Friday sound good to you, perhaps around seven?"

So there it was. The invitation he'd kept himself from extending for more than a year now. She'd got tired of waiting and just thrown it out there herself.

Jonsey's cheeks darkened slightly and he averted his eyes. "I can't. I've got this big thing at work, this man-eater of a client. They don't know when he's coming in, just that it's sometime this week, and they'll kill me if I'm not there whenever he decides to mosey in."

Lydia's face fell. "Oh, right," she said. "Sorry." She shook her head as if answering an internal monologue.

The story wasn't a total lie. He did have a very important job later this week that he didn't have an absolute time slot for. Keyes had been adamant about it. But Jonsey realized how unlikely it must have sounded to Lydia. He decided that this was not the scenario he wanted.

"Can I get a raincheck, though? It's only Tuesday, this big guy may have come and gone by Friday night. Or maybe next week if he hasn't."

She hesitated, but only for a moment. "Okay, sounds good."

He smiled, and so did she. She glanced at the kitchen wall clock. "Hey, I've got to get to work, but I'll see you, right?"

"Oh, sure. I'll let you know about Friday night as soon as I can."

"Sounds good. I'll see you, Mister Jones."

"And I'll see you, Miss Crown."

As he climbed the steps to his room, Jonsey realized his heart was fluttering like a teenager's.

IV. Threats and Smoke

Seymour Lovitz slept soundly. He and his wife had been separated for six months next week, and he'd gotten used to having the bed to himself.

But Seymour wasn't alone as he had reckoned. He realized this when the sound of a gunshot brought him to consciousness. He sat up and cringed back reflexively as an arm grabbed him by the front of his pajama top and lifted him out of the bed. He managed to take in that the bedside lamp was on, casting a sepia glow around the room and the man who held him aloft. He looked into the man's pale green eyes for an instant before clamping his own shut.

Lovitz felt himself being lifted entirely out of the bed and out over the floor. It seemed the man was lifted all of Seymour's two hundred pounds with one arm.

"Open your eyes." came a gravelly voice a foot from his face. The smell of a chainsmoker drifted into Lovitz' nostrils. He opened his eyes to see a gaunt face framed by greying brown hair down to his assailant's shoulders.

"Mornin', Seymour!" said Darrus. The alarm clock on the nightstand read 4:37.

Thus far, Darrus' plan was working perfectly. Lovitz was a lower level administrator inside the administration complex known as Tower Zero. Darrus was keeping Lovitz terrified and off balance until he got what he needed. "Sleep well?"

"Who are y--"

Darrus put the barrel of his gun between Lovitz' eyes. "Ah ah. I'll be asking the questions. And you're going to answer them. Because if you don't, I'll shoot you. Maybe in the head, maybe in the stomach. Do you know what happens if you shoot a man in the stomach? Nod or shake your head, Seymour."

Lovitz shook his head as best he could with his skull pressed flush to the wall.

"It rips through your stomach lining, pouring your stomach acids out onto your other organs. It takes about fifteen minutes of agonizing pain before it finally kills you. You don't want me to do that, do you, Seymour? Shake your head no."

Lovitz shook his head again, eyes wide with panic.

"Very good, Seymour. I think you and I are going to get along just fine. Now then, I want to know how many backup devices exist for the surveillance system in Tower Zero."

"T-two power stations." stammered Lovitz.

"Power stations? What about the central processing unit? Does it have any backup devices?"

"No, b-but it's a 64 core processor. It doesn't n-need a backup except for power."

"Very good, Seymour. Now, what brand is that processor? Think hard."

Lovitz swallowed hard. He was soaked in sweat. "M-Micrologic!" He had no idea why the green eyed man wanted to know technical details of the Tower Zero CPU, but was acutely aware that there was still a pistol in his face.

A smile spread across Darrus' lips. It was exactly as he'd hoped. "Very good, Seymour. Well, I think it's time you went back to sleep. Deep sleep."

Lovitz nearly wet himself in terror at the implication.

"No, not what you're thinking." said Darrus. "This is all a dream. Think about it. You haven't lived in this house for years. Just wake up!"

Seymour Lovitz sat bolt upright in bed--the right bed. Marla, his more-than-friend-less-than-mistress, slumbered to his right. There was no trace of the tall man with the piercing green eyes.

"It was a dream." he whispered to himself. "It was just a dream."

Within fifteen minutes, sleep returned to Seymour Lovitz, and this time, it was dreamless.

*

Darrus stepped back into Hell. He talked to his son in the dreamscape from time to time and was aware Nightmares were sometimes harvested from it, but that made the transition no less disorienting. Regardless, he had a piece of what he needed, and had left a man with no more evidence of his information gathering than a bad dream that would be no more than idle breakfast time chatter.

III. Wheels

Cankerworm's chamber bore a strong resemblance to an executive office. Darrus doubted it had always looked this way, but he guessed its tone had remained consistent throughout the centuries. This was the abode of a being of power, the office said.

Cankerworm himself took the form of a middle-aged businessman, right down to the wing-tip loafers. His suit was black and his eyes were blood red.

"Darrus." said the Archdevil. "Good, the Succubus reached you. I have a job for you."

Darrus lit a cigarette. "And how is this different from normal?"

Cankerworm grinned. His teeth came to points. "You do your job well, Darrus. It keeps you in demand."

Cankerworm, being an embodiment of corruption, paid lip service to Darrus' skills only when it was convenient. Cankerworm spent most of their time together looking down his nose at Darrus, waiting for the demon to screw up, often throwing out threats of what would happen if he did. Darrus had learned to shrug both off.

"So, what infernal task do you have for me now?"

"There is a package in New Liberty, and a man who wants it. It is in our interest to make sure this happens. You will be facilitating this change of possession."

Darrus blew a cloud of smoke. "So, you called me here from literally another planet in order to give me duties as a drug runner? I mean, I hear church attendance is up, what with the world basically being a kettle of shit right now, but is Hell really doing that poorly?"

Cankerworm's grin vanished. "It's not a box of drugs. If anything, it's the opposite. And the task is more complicated than you think. We're not certain where exactly the item is, only that it resides inside Tower Zero. You'll need to get it out, and do it without overwalking."

Darrus' eyebrow rose. "Any particular reason why I can't overwalk?"

"The package's contents is at least partially organic. Overwalking will kill it and make it worthless."

"So what exactly is in this little box?"

"That is on a need-to-know basis, and you haven't been cleared."

Darrus glared at Cankerworm. "On whose authority?"

Cankerworm's reply was barely above a whisper. "The Lightbringer."

Darrus' eyes widened. "The Lightbringer? As in the Morning Star, the Prince of Darkness, the Lord of the Air, the Seven-Headed Dragon? That Lightbringer?"

Cankerworm nodded. "That Lighbringer."

Darrus thought for a moment, puffing his cigarette. "So first I have to figure out just where this box is. Then I have to recover it and I would presume deliver it somewhere without overwalking. I would assume I'll need to be gentle with the box, too?"

"Correct. The contents must be safeguarded. Also, don't open the package--you risk the contents dying if it's exposed to any airborn pathogens." Cankerworm saw Darrus' expression of confusion and added, "I think I can go so far as to say that the contents of the package includes an aquatic lifeform and open air isn't good for it. As for delivery, you're correct. You'll be meeting an operative for the relevant organization in a small cafe a few blocks down from Tower Zero--it's the closest inconspicuous location to the Tower."

"So I'm expected to sneak a box (that I'm going to go out on a limb and assume is of some importance if even Hell doesn't know where it is) out of the highest security facility in New Liberty, out past its walls, then carry it down the street for a few blocks, all without overwalking or being detected. Would I be wrong if I assumed I'm being left to my own devices to figure out how to do this all?"

"Yes, you would. You've been authorized the use of a demon engine. You'll be briefed on its operation once this meeting is concluded."

Darrus nodded. “A set of wheels, that should be a nice change.”

“There’s one other important issue. Don’t get caught. I don’t care what means you use to get the package out of the building, but it cannot register as anything supernatural. It is imperative that this look like a human operation. Our involvement in this transaction has to be kept secret or the whole mission counts for nothing. Leave nothing more substantial than anecdotal evidence, understand?”

“Not a problem,” said Darrus. It was a lie—that detail would make this infinitely more complicated.

“Good. One last thing. The package you’re looking for is called Project Grendel, Revision Eight. It will be in the development wing of Tower Zero.”

“Project Grendel, Revision Eight. Now, how about a threat for what will happen if I screw up. You know, just for tradition’s sake.”

Cankerworm snorted. “I told you, the Lightbringer has taken personal interest in this job. I don’t think I need to elaborate on what will happen if you disappoint the sovereign of Hell.”

If Darrus still had sweat glands, a wave of cold sweat would have washed over him. Instead, his face did all the work informing Cankerworm that the threat had worked. “Right, I’ll go check out that demon engine.”

Cankerworm nodded. Darrus overwalked out the door and into the garage. Hell’s garage endless, filled with means of travel that were as primitive and exotic as infernal llama caravan and as advanced as a Scion IV Martian colonization pod, a device capable of carrying five thousand colonists from Earth orbit to Martian touchdown. The vehicle Darrus was looking for sat directly in front of him.

It was a midsize black sedan. It was identical to the Miramo “Spirit,” one of the most ubiquitous vehicles on the streets of New Liberty. As a whole, the vehicle was just was Darrus preferred—inconspicuous, able to blend in with the city and hide in plain sight.

"Howdy," said a demon next to the car. He had a short brown goatee and appeared to be wearing protective goggles. "The name's Blix, and yo u must be Darrus. Let me show you what this baby can do."

Blix climbed into the driver's seat. Darrus sat down in the passenger's seat and looked on. Blix pulled a set of jingling objects from his pocket. "To start her up, put any one of these keys into the ignition. I know keyed interfaces are a little old school, but they're still common enough it shouldn't raise any questions. Like I said, any of these keys will work, but nobody carries a ring with just one key on it--it's the sort of thing people notice. Now then, you just turn it forward like this."

Blix turned the key and the car's engine started, humming pleasantly as it sipped power from the fuel cell under the hood. At least, that was what Darrus assumed--given that this was not in fact a Spirit, but a demonic construct, it was entirely possible the sound of the engine was entirely artificial.

"I know how they work." said Darrus. "I used to have keyed interface car."

Blix shook his head. "That's a relief. You'd be surprised how many I get coming through here that need it explained to them. Now then, let's take a look at the actual features of this vehicle."

Blix indicated a pair of buttons, one mounted on each side of the steering wheel. Each was marked with a simple image of a trumpet. "Pressing the right horn button or the center of the wheel will honk the horn like normal." Bliss pressed the center of the wheel in and the card make a loud report. "The left horn's different, though. Push that one, and it'll put a human into a trance--knock 'em out for about a minute, give or take. It's good for any time you need to get rid of some witnesses without leaving bodies."

"Sounds good. Do they remember anything about the trance?"

"Nah, they usually think they've fainted or passed out or something.

"Moving on to these ones," Blix gestured at three buttons distributed beneath the horn buttons. "These are the cruise control, at least as far as any humans in the car are concerned. This car is a semi-intelligent entity and has its own Nexus tap. Hit ON and it'll drive itself to your destination, changing lanes and making turns as necessary. It'll even signal properly. As you might guess, hitting OFF or tapping the break pedal will drop it back to full manual control. I wouldn't recommend using the cruise control when anyone is in position to see the inside of the passenger compartment."

"Why not?" said Darrus. "Self-driving cars have been around for more than a century."

"But out of production for a few decades. They used common routing satellites--there was too much potential for terrorism. One well-placed hack could send a hundred cars smashing the front of a chosen building. Rehnquist had the routers powered down a few months after he took power. So if somebody sees your car drive itself--"

"They'll know something's not normal about it."

"Right on." nodded Blix. "Now here's where your cruise control gets interesting. Tap 'Set Accel" to enable the car to overwalk. You do just like you would normally, except the car goes with you. This indicator here," Blix pointed to an orange LED on the dashboard display, "tells you whether or not its enabled. You have to be a little more careful about overwalking a car--people have an easier time noticing when it goes in a tunnel and disappears, especially the one's in traffic around you. Now, this next part will help you out with that."

Blix reached up and hit one of two buttons on the ceiling. The dome light came on. "The front button does exactly what you'd think it does--turns the dome light on and off." He clicked it again and the light went off. "The back button, on the other hand, will turn lights outside the vehicle on and off. It'll know which light you want. It's a good way to blind any humans around you, whether you need a patch of darkness or a sudden bright light. Just FYI, this thing's only good on artificial lights. Sunlight, starlight, hell, even fireflies, aren't bothered by it at all. Keep that in mind."

"Gotcha." said Darrus.

"Other than that, this thing works like a normal Spirit. Any questions?"

"Yes, actually. I'd planned to bring a Nightmare with me, and I don't think it'll fit anywhere in here."

"Hm..." Blix scratched his beard. "How big are we talking?"

"About 12 feet at full height, fourteen long including the tail, maybe eight feet wide."

"Damn, that's a big-un." said Blix. "Nope, won't fit inside...but I think I know a workaround. Give me a couple of hours and I should have it ready."

"Glad to hear it. My other question is, where's the ashtray in here?"

II. Subjectivity

It was a rainy night in New Liberty. Water that was the slightest bit caustic flowed over a statue of the Virgin Mary that sat among a field of blank tombstones in front of Zemekis Monuments Inc. Mary's blank eyes peered across the street at Catalina's Cabaret across the street. Thanks to a gust of wind earlier in the storm, the sign out front read " OME PARTY WI P ETTY LAD S!" The neon signs behind the front windows were sheltered from the storm; one read "OPEN," the other, "GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS." The latter flashed rhythmically.

Inside, a twentysomething twirled on a stage that lay somewhere between the dream of singing on the radio and the nightmare of standing on the corner. She was doing her best to brighten the night of the surly clientelle of the dimly lit club. Music whose only relevant attribute was its thumping bass droned from a pair of shaggy black speakers behind the stage as she cast away clothing to a chorus of disheveled cheers and rickety applause.

Four patrons sat in a booth towards the back of the place, largely ignoring the stage and those waving small bills in its immediate vicinity. A deck of tattered playing cards sat beneath the booth's dim lighting fixture, manipulated by the tattooed fingers of a man with a red beard. The man next to him had a bottle in his hand and shallow sneer on his face. A long blond ponytail snaked down his back and under the collar of his coat; it hung lower than his belt when he stood.

"Why do you always have to bring those?" asked the blond.

"Helps me focus, you know that. I've had some of my best ideas playing poker with these very cards."

"In case you haven't noticed, that's solitaire you're playing."

"Can't very well play poker with me around, can you?" said one of the men across the table. He was small and skinny, with light brown hair that came over his ears but not much further.

"Precisely." said the redhead. "As always, the dear Prophet, Ross the First, grasps it before the Bard or the Aryan Messiah."

All four men chuckled at the nicknames. The one playing cards was named Saul Jones, but it was a rare occasion when he wasn't simply addressed as Jonsey. Next to him was blond-haired, blue-eyed Robert Keyes. Across from Jonsey was Ross Gibson, former inmate at the New Liberty Hospital for the Mentally Ill and current Bona Fide Prophet of the Lord God on High. Rounding out the booth was Lucian Briggs, a skinny fellow with long black hair pulled behind his head. His eyes were pale green like his father's had been and he kept a picture of his parents, both deceased, in his wallet. It had been taken shortly before his birth, and showed his father, Darius, embracing his mother, Viola from behind, with both of them looking at the camera.

The four men at the table were the most wanted men in New Liberty, possibly in all of the North American Block, in the abstract. Between the four of them, they had directly caused forty-seven deaths, seventeen fires, twelve riots, eleven million credits in theft (and much more in equivalently valued property), nine suicides, and one tactical nuclear explosion. Indirectly, they were responsible for eight to ten times those figures. The reason their status as wanted men was kept in the abstract was that the powers that be had no idea of their true identities. This was almost entirely the doing of Gibson, whose prophetic gifts allowed him to stay one step ahead of the authorities at all times. Any of the men could (and frequently did) walk the streets of New Liberty in broad daylight without consequence.

A finger with the letter D tattooed across it moved the queen of diamonds onto the king of clubs. Fingers marked L and D flipped the next card over--the ace of spades. Jonsey nodded at the cards.

The insurgents agenda kept them busy most of the time, but they met at Karoline's Kabaret once a month (or occasionally more often, if possible) to oggle the girls and talk about things other than bringing down what currently passed for authority in most of the world.

"So anyway," said Keyes, "What I'm saying is that evil is not a subjective concept; it's all subjective, depending on how you see it."

"Not true." said Lucian. "Wrong is wrong."

"Well, look at this way." said Keyes. "Back in the early 21st century, there were Muslims who used to blow themselves up in hostile territory, sometimes killing dozens in the process. The Christians--and sometimes other Muslims--they were attacking called them terrorists. But their families saw them as martyrs giving their lives to weaken a great evil."

"So they were wrong." said Lucian. "Nobody wants to think their kid is psychotic--it's easy to make excuses."

"You know, you don't hear much about Muslims these days." said Jonsey.

"Having your pilgrimage site reduced to a radioactive crater tends to break a group's spirit." said Gibson. "It's hard to believe in an allmighty god who lets your enemies wipe out your most holy site in one salvo."

"Oh, that's right, they were supposed to go to that city, weren't they? How it get destroyed, again?"

"Some Muslims--some histories call them radicals, others say they were mainliners--tried to blow up the Wailing Wall with a dirty bomb. They got caught, so Israel shot a tactical nuke at the Dome of the Rock and a full-fledged ICBM at Mecca. Place was uninhabitable for forty years after that, not that people didn't try to rebuild it. Actually, that blast was when World War III got serious."

"I'm suprised Israel didn't get bombed into oblivion after that." said Lucian.

Jonsey grinned. "They tried, but the angels themselves caught the missiles and blew them up in the stratosphere."

"I heard it was anti-missile rockets," said Gibson, "But I am but a humble Prophet, so I won't contradict what your Rabbi taught you."

The waitress came up to the booth, stripped to the waste. "You boys need anything?"

Keyes dropped a roll of bills on her tray. "Another round of the same, Gorgeous. Keep the change."

She went up to the bar to get their drinks.

"Okay, boys." said Jonsey. "Place your bets. I say real."

"Fake." said Keyes.

"Real." said Gibson and Lucian, almost at once.

"Are you kidding me?" said Keyes, tapping his forehead in frustration. "They were rigid. There's no way those were real."

"Well, dear Prophet," said Jonsey. "Care to enlighten our friend?"

"I would, once again, like to point out that I only know what the Metatron tells me, and he has yet to give me any inside information about the nature of a stripper's mammary glands.

"I did, however, agree with Mr. Jones on this one."

"That means you get the next round, Bob-O." said Jonsey, breaking into a grin.

"I just bought this one. Come on, how can all of you be so sure?" whined Keyes.

Jonsey put his cards down and pressed his palms to the table, spelling out HOLD FAST across his fingers. "Do you really want to know?"

"Yes, I really want to know."

"You realize that if I tell you, we won't be able to play this game anymore. Just so we're clear."

"Oh, I'm sure it will be worth it." said Keyes. "No doubt some mystic Kabbalah secret to it."

"Watch it, you goy." said Jonsey, picking his cards back up. "Anyway, it's a simple matter of observation. Lush, you want to tell him, or should I?"

"It's your trick." said Lucian. "Honor's all yours."

The six of spades came down over the seven of hearts. "Stretch marks."

"What?"

"Stretch marks. Real breats--at least, ones that big--have stretch marks on 'em. Fake ones don't. It's that simple--the imperfections that denote the genuine article."

Keyes shook his head. "How many boobs did you have to stare at to figure that one out?"

"Oh, quite a few. It was your mother that really sealed the deal, though."

The joke was a crude one, but welcome none the less. A chorus of laughter rose into the smoky rafters of the Kabaret. Even Gibson's normally sullen demeanor was penetrated.

Outside, the rain began to lighten and the Virgin Mary kept staring.

I. The Fields of Mars

The dome rose out of the rust-colored landscape like some giant, cracked egg. The ruins were still coated with burns some twenty years old, silent reminders of one of the darkest moments in human history. It was hard to believe the ramshackle collection of shattered domes and buildings had once been the capitol of an entire planet.

Perhaps not an entire planet, but certainly the parts worth ruling. By some surreal coincidence, the sign that read

ARES CITY

POPULATION

still stood on the side of a slowly crumbling tower, the electronic numbers that had displayed the number of inhabitants going dark at roughly the same time those it recorded had, and with just the same amount of finality. For seven decades, Ares had been the capitol of this world; for the past two it had been a tombstone.

A lone figure sat on an oddly pristine park bench beneath the shattered central dome, incogruously smoking a cigarette. He was a tall man inside a light brown trenchcoat, utterly defiant to the lack of atmosphere around him. He looked as though he could be a graceful fifty-five or a rough forty; the creases around his pale green eyes suggested the former. His hair hung down almost to his shoulders; it was light brown, but streaked with gray. This was clearly not a man who had not spent his life in the lap of luxury, but rather somewhere around the heels. Indeed, he seemed the sort who would possess the sheer tenacity to smoke in a nearly airless environment.

He took another drag and looked up at the stars. He slowly swept his gaze to where Earth sat in the Heavens, seeming to be little more than an exceptionally bright star. He lingered for a minute, then shook his head and threw away what remained of his cigarette.

Another figure sat down beside him. She was tall and shapely, with auburn hair and dark blue eyes. She wore the sort of dress that is considered high class only by those most lacking; it was dark red.

"Well, if it isn't my favorite Jezebel." said the man.

She glared at him. "As warm and welcoming as ever, eh Darrus?"

"Ah, Lilith, you know I care for you as much as is possible for ones like us."

Something like a smile crossed her face. "I wouldn't tolerate your tone from anyone else."

A moment passed in silence.

"Well," said Darrus. "Just the two of us, alone in Eisenstein Park under the stars. In different context, this would certainly be romantic."

She looked at her feet. "Yes it would."

He stood. "Lilith, as much as I enjoy your company, I have trouble believing you came all the way out here just to talk."

"And you're right." she said as Darrus lit a new cigarette. "Cankerworm has a new assignment for you."

Darrus flexed his shoulders. "Of course. No rest for the wicked, I suppose. Damn, but this gets tiresome."

"You have no idea." Lilith agreed.

"I suppose I'd best be going." said Darrus, turning away from the bench.

"Darrus--" Lilith called after him. He stopped and faced her. "Why do you come here? When you have the time, I mean."

He sighed and spread his arms, indicating the sea of wreckage all around him. "To remind me what I died trying to prevent."

Aside: Good VS Evil

A tall, gaunt man with pale green eyes and long, graying hair leaned against the old theater, staring intently at the Holy Name Catholic Church across the street. A cigarette smouldered in one hand.
A boy of about ten years old was coming out of the ornate front doors of the church. The man by the theater crossed the street, tossing his cigarette aside. They reached the sidewalk in front of the church at the same time.

"Good evening, Jake." said the man. His voice suggested that the cigarette had been only the most recent in a very long line.

"Who are you?" asked the boy. His face was red and his was wet with sweat, as if from recent exertion. "And how do you know my name?"

"You can call me Mister Briggs." he said. "And I'd like talk to you for awhile."

"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers." said Jake.

"That's a good idea, but I'm actually a friend of your grandfather's. I was there when your father was born."

Jake looked at Briggs critically. "You don't look old enough for that."

"I've aged well, that' all. Come on, I'll walk you home."

Jake looked reluctant.

"I'll tell you what, Jake." said Briggs, "If it makes you more comfortable, I'll stay more than arm's length away, and stay where you can see me. I promise you I won't try to hurt you."

"Um..." Jake hesitated. "Okay, but I'm going straight home, and my parents warned me not to get in a stranger's car or take any candy or anything."

"That's fine advice, but I have neither."

This seemed to satisfy Jake. The pair started down the street and Briggs lit a cigarette.

"See, Jake, I've been very busy at my work for a long time, but I thought I'd stop by and visit. I heard that you go to church most weeknights, so I decided to walk you home. After all, who knows what terrible things could be out on these streets."

"Grandpa said it didn't used to be as bad." said Jake.

"He's right. A long time ago, before Rehnquist, this city--the whole world--was different."

Jake's eyes went wide. "Quiet! The LEMs will hear you!" LEM - Loyalty Enforcement Monitor. Rehnquist's troops drugged into unthinking loyalty.

"I'm just an old man, Jake. They don't care about me."

This seemed to satisfy Jake, but he kept glancing around.

"Don't worry, Jake, it's not as bad as it was ten years ago. These days, you can actually die from these things," he tapped his cigarette, "before the chots gun you down for griping about the good old days."

Jake hesitated a moment. "Mister, you fought in the Revolution with grandpa, didn't you?"

"I wasn't a field soldier like your grandfather, but yes."

"My grandpa still has his gun! He showed it to me. He doesn't have any bullets, though. The LEMs said that he's allowed to have the gun as a family heirloom as long as it has no bullets."

"It's an AK-98, right?" asked Briggs.

"I don't know, but it has--"

"A big banana clip with an automated loader right below the barrel. There's a CO2 canister in the stock that serves as a counterweight to the barrel and releases bursts of gas to compensate for recoil. Uses .22 caliber hollow point ammunition. Capable of semi-automatic or fully-automatic fire."

"Wow! You know a lot about guns!" said Jake, clearly impressed.

"Just the ones I had to know about." said Briggs, flicking the butt of his cigarette away and lighting up another.

"Did you use one like my grandpa?"

"No. There weren't too many actual battles in the Revolution, at least not by the time it made it to this continent--most of the fight got knocked out of us by the Great Plague. I used a Predator X-9 pistol, and a bit too frequently for my liking."

"Did you kill anyone?"

"Only those brain-dead Chot soldiers, and I don't think they count as people."

Briggs stopped walking, and Jake realized they were standing in front of his building.

"Well, Jake." said Briggs. "It's time for me to be on my way. I'm just an old workaholic, and duty calls. But I tell you what; I'd like to walk you home on Wednesday, if you don't mind."

"Okay!" said Jake, walking up the stairs. "Bye Mister Briggs!" he yelled over his shoulder.

But the sidewalk was empty except for a whisp of cigarette smoke.

*

For the next two weeks, Briggs met Jake on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, on his way out of the church. The two talked about many things, but Jake seemed to enjoy Briggs' war stories the most.

On the seventh time they met, Briggs asked Jake why he was at the church so frequently.

"Oh, Father Brown has me come in to help him. I'm an altar boy."

"Must be hard work. You're always all sweaty every time I walk you home."

A tear appeared in Jake's eye. "Yeah, it's hard work."

"What exactly does he have you do?" asked Briggs, a fresh cigarette hanging from his lip.

"Stuff." Jake looked more and more uncomfortable.

Briggs took a drag. "He told you not to tell anyone, didn't he?"

Jake nodded.

"I'll tell you what, Jake. I know another boy about your age. His name is Paul. I want you to talk to Father Brown and tell him that Paul wants to meet him in New Liberty Park on Friday, after your Bible Study session. Okay?"

"I don't know...I mean, I don't want Paul to...to get hurt or anoything."

"Don't worry. I'll be there, and You and Paul will be just fine."

"Well...okay. I'll tell him."

*

Claude Brown was nervous about leaving the church--he hadn't stepped off the grounds for more than a year. But Jake had been emphatic that he meet the boy, Paul, and Brown was always eager to find another...helper. Besides, the meeting was in the park, a public place with lots of people around. He had nothing to fear in such a public area.

"We're supposed to meet him at the fountain." said Jake.

"Yes, I know." said Brown.

Sure enough, there was a boy of about eleven years flipping coins into the fountain.

"Hey, are you Paul?" called Jake.

But Brown was standing still, looking around frantically. "Jake, come back here! Something's not right!"

"What's the matter, Father?" said the boy by the fountain.

There were no people. No one was in sight except for the two boys. And...a man, standing in deep shade from beneath a tree. Pale green eyes stared at Brown, set in a face framed in long hair tempered with the gray of early middle age.

"Jake!" called Briggs. "I think you should go home now! Paul and I would like to talk to Father Brown in private, all right?"

"Don't go, Jake." Brown whispered frantically. "I think he wants to hurt me, Jake!"

"Nonsense." said Briggs. "My days of hurting people are long behind me. You know that, Jake." he casually pulled a cigarette and lighter from his coat. His face was fully visible for a moment as he lit up. If Brown had to guess, he'd say the man was about forty-five.

"Don't leave me, Jake! That man is the Devil!"

"Your word's a little weak, Father. I've been his friend, while you've only placed demands on him--unreasonable demands! Go on, Jake, go home. Maybe I'll see again some time!"

"Okay." said Jake. And with that simple word, he left, ignoring Brown's pleas.

Paul and Briggs walked up to the man from the church, now on his knees and weeping. When Paul reached him, there was the sound of a camera shutter clicking, and the boy was replaced with a muscular man of perhaps twenty with a thick mane of black hair trailing down his back.

"Tsk tsk." said Paul. "You're out of character. A real priest would be praying, not crying."

Paul kicked Brown in the shoulder, sending him sprawling.

"Save it, Dahl." said Briggs. "I have some words for this one."

Briggs reached down and grabbed Brown by the shoulder. With one hand, he hauled Brown to his feet and used the other to tear off his clergyman's collar. He threw it away in disgust.

"We're not going to lie to each other, Claude. My real name is Darrus, and this my acquaintance, Dahl. I think you know who we are, and we we're here."

"That was clever, by the way." put in Dahl.

"Yes, clever. Exchange your soul for an extra fifty years on this earth. Then, when it's time to pay up, you hide in the one place your creditors can't follow. Unfortunately for you, your...urges...got the best of you." Darrus pulled him close and spoke in a whisper. Brown could smell the cigarette smoke on him, and beneath it, the stench of sulfur. "I want you to know, that I, a lost and damned creature, find your actions disgusting. That you would force yourself upon innocent children is one thing, but that you'd use the disguise of a holy man's collar to do it...well, you already know where you're going."

Darrus threw Brown to the ground.

"I'm done, Dahl. Do your thing." Darrus said, and spat on Brown.

Dahl had pulled a sword from his coat. A beam of light danced across its surface. "With pleasure."

Darrus watched, reflecting on the events that had led to this--the goring Dahl would give him here would be nothing compared to what he would have to endure for the rest of eternity--and had to wonder at the Big Man's ways. Somehow he, a damned soul, had freed a young boy from a sexual predator, one who wore the guise of a holy man.

It was almost funny, in a way.

Introduction: Back Into Hell

In the fall of 2004, I walked into the Campus Center of Allegheny College (where I was a newly-minted Freshman) with a notebook, my CD players, and a burned copy of Bad Religion's "No Control." An hour or so later, I had produced a two-page short story called "The Interrogation," a gruesome little tale about a scoundrel getting what he deserves. I typed it up and it sat in my Documents folder for a few months.

As I was finishing writing Adventures in Real Life, I started thinking about Darrus, the vengeful creature who had willingly entered the service of the Devil. The character was only a few lines of dialogue and a name, but he had a certain amount of history to him--his death and the name he bore in life were explicitly stated, as had the notion that he'd been a martyr who'd had the unpleasant fate of seeing the cause he sacrificed himself for ultimately fail. I developed him a bit and began writing From Here to Hereafter, which used "The Interrogation" as its first chapter. There were enough loose threads that I was able to write a sequel, Where Demons Dare.

The following summer, I read an article about a church (I believe in south Florida, but I'm not certain) that had been defiled by the man who was supposed to be its preacher, turning what had been a booming congregation of over a thousand Protestants (I believe they were either Methodists or Baptists) into a dozen or so worshipers of the Devil, performing ritualistic sexual abuses in what was once a holy site. I spent a week or so mulling over the situation, what it must have been like for those involved even tangentially, and of course Darrus, the agent of hell, crept back into my mind. I adapted the story to Darrus' dystopian version of the 23rd century, and had intended it to focus largely around the fall of Pastor Carter and his imbibing a vial of blood from a fallen angel (hence the title, taken from the old saying that blood is thicker than water, taken literally). Instead, it became a prequel describing how a normal human becomes a demon, turning him into Dahl, a doppelganger that had a bit part in Where Demons Dare.

The three stories formed a nice conglomerate, for the most part. I had started developing a story arch in Where Demons Dare that was an extension of an arc that more or less concluded in From Here to Hereafter, involving Darrus' son Lucian and the prophet Ross Gibson. Unfortunately, Lucian's half of the plot didn't go very far, and I got complaints that his chapters didn't fit with Darrus'. The feedback was negative enough that I left Lucian out of Thicker Than Water entirely (being a prequel, this was logical; Lucian would have been about eight years old during the events of Thicker Than Water). With the exception of Lucian's arc, Darrus' stories seemed finished, requiring no more input on my part.

Darrus, however, was a difficult character to forget. In the summer of 2006, after a year's hiatus, I wrote a new Darrus story, much shorter than the others. I posted it in Six Shooter, where I don't think anyone noticed it. It was titled simply "Good VS Evil." Since I don't think most of you reading this have noticed its presence, I've reposted it here. Good VS Evil brings up a few interesting points in Darrus' history; he used the (fictional) AK-98 rifle during the brief World War IV (as a side note, AK-98 stands from Automatic Kalashnikov 2198, so named as its design is directly descended from the AK-47 and AK-74. Yes, it fires bullets; in Darrus' world, all guns fire bullets. I dislike the notion that any setting that takes place more than ten years in the future uses non-projectile weaponry. Also not noted before was that World War IV's actual combat operations lasted roughly six weeks. As stated in From Here to Hereafter, the world fell to Rehnquist not with a roar, but a whispter), and is also the first story to note the color of Darrus' eyes.

At the beginning of summer 2007, I was itching to write a new Darrus story, but didn't have a plotline for it. As it happened, about a month later I got my hands on a copy of the newest Bad Religion disk, "New Maps of Hell," and happened to hear a news story about what was possibly the most heinous crime I've ever heard of. Sharing its parentage with the methods that brought Where Demons Dare and Thicker Than Water into being, I present Subjectivity, the latest story in this line. I hope to tie up Lucian's threads a bit this time around, and also give him a stronger presence overall. Other than that, I make no promises for Subjectivity, but I hope you enjoy it. At least, as much as one can enjoy a piece of dystopian fiction focusing Hell itself.