XIV. Dahl's Song

The cameras of Cell Block J-14 in the Julian O'Connor Memorial Prison recorded the same thing they had all week--nothing. Moonlight streamed through the barred windows, showing the placid prisoners. Their food contained sedatives to keep them under control; they routinely slept for 12 hours a day.

The closed-circuit camera system was backed up with a retractable machine gun turret in the ceiling of the hallway. Between the two, there was no reason for human guards to be present. Had they been, they would have seen something the cameras couldn't pick up.

A young man, perhaps twenty years old, came out of the door at the end of the hall. Despite this fact, the door was closed and remained so--he simply materialized out of the door itself, trailing his long black hair. He wore a long, black-and-red coat that swirled around his ankles as he strode purposefully toward cell 1482.

The man grabbed the cell door and the tumblers in the lock clicked open. He slid the heavy door open and strode in, shutting the bars behind him. He strode over to the cell's occupant and grabbed him by the shoulders, lifting the prisoner off the bed and then off the ground.

"Wake up." he said. The prisoner's eyes fluttered open as the sedatives in his bloodstream collapsed into their component chemicals.

"What--what's going on?" asked the dizzy prisoner. "Who are you?"

"My name is Dahl." said the intruder. "And you, not-so-Reverend Daniel Carter, have much to answer for."

Just then, the camera over cell 1482 experienced a technical error, bringing it offline.

"What do you want from me?" he asked Dahl.

Dahl threw Carter to the ground so that his head struck the barred wall of the cell. "Retribution."

"I don't understand--"

"My employer gave you an item of great power, with specific instructions on how to use it. You, however, stepped beyond your station, and decided to use it for other means." Dahl kicked Carter in the stomach. "And now you will return what you have taken."

"The...the blood?" Carter asked. "But I used it exactly as I was instructed!"

"Yes, you did. But then you took liberties with it. One specific liberty. You took that which was not yours and did so without permission. In this one act, you have reviled yourself before Earth--" Dahl slammed Carter's head into the bars. "Heaven--" Dahl kicked Carter in the shoulder. "--and Hell." Dahl threw Carter across the cell. His blood stained the concrete floor.

"But I thought--" whimpered Carter.

"Yes, you did. And Hell does not look kindly on free thought. I am curious, though. How did you rationalize this act? Drinking the blood of any creature is detestable, let alone the blood of one of the most evil beings in existence. It burned your mouth, am I correct?"

Carter knodded his head, obviously in pain.

"And yet you somehow thought that imbibing that liquid would make you more powerful? You were wrong. Your body cannot channel that sort of power. And so I have come..."

Carter heard the blade slide loose. He looked up to see a glittering sword in the demon's grip.

"...to take back what you stole."

Carter's screams echoed off the walls, accompanied by the Rhythm Blade's melodic slashes, playing out a symphony of pain. The rest of the prisoners remained in their drug-induced slumber. As such, no one noticed the other two men that emerged from closed cell doors down the aisle. The taller of the two held a cigarette cupped in his hand, concealing its glow. The other was mumbling to himself.

"He must've had a bad reaction to the sedative...temporary insanity...numerous precedents..." muttered the short one. The tall one remained silent, simply watching as Dahl gleefully cut into Carter long past the point where he had ceased screaming, his blade continuing its morbid song.

Finally, Dahl finished. He touched the tip of the Rhythm Blade to the concrete floor, the beam of light still dancing across its surfact. He turned the pommel, and the blood dripped off the blade, settling to the floor. In its place, a few droplets of slightly brighter blood coursed up the blade, settling at the base.

"Pleasure doing business with you, you bastard." Dahl leered at the corpse. With a satisfied smile on his face, Dahl walked through the door and went back to hell.

Down the hall, Rigel continued to peace together the logical conclusion the guards would come up with after making their morning rounds and discovering Carter. Darrus threw his cigarette to the ground and stomped it out.

"So much for being a good cop." he muttered.

THE END

XIII. Damnation Achieved

Dahl's eyes adjusted instantly to the light of the new chamber. He smelled cigarettes.

"You again?" he said.

"Who were you expecting?" Briggs replied, taking a drag. "The Devil himself?"

The room could have been a waiting room anywhere; its walls were blank, its floor a carpetted gray, its only furniture a set of institutional-style chairs. Briggs sat in the corner.

"So, what am I supposed to do here?" asked Dahl.

"Well, I'm going to show you how to tap into the Nexus, hell's overarching database. Normally they'd have someone else do it, but my superior wants me to oversee this personally. Go on, have a seat, this won't take long."

Dahl remained standing. "So, you were a demon all along?"

"Explains a lot, doesn't it?" said Briggs, focusing on his cigarette instead of at Dahl. "By the way, the name's not Briggs, not anymore at least. Call me Darrus."

"I'm Dahl."

"I know." he tapped his forehead. "Nexus."

Dahl sat.

"Remember that note I left on you, back at the church?" said Darrus, still not making eye contact.

"Yeah."

"Well, I think this should explain everything, as promised." With that, Darrus snapped his fingers.

Dahl braced himself, expecting another rush of unpleasantness. Instead, he felt a minor chill run down his spine, and then nothing.

"Congratulations, you are now officially a minion of the Pits of Hell." said Darrus, now standing in front of Dahl.

"But...nothing happened." he said.

"Think about that, why don't you." said Darrus, tossing away his cigarette and lighting another.

Dahl thought about his questions--and realized that he knew the answers. When Darrus had described the Nexus as a database, he had assumed it worked like the pre-Rehnquist computer search databases, hunting down specific data automatically and presenting it. Instead, it was more like memory--he simply knew what the answers were, as if remembering things that had never happened.

It all came to him at once. The red flask Darrus had retrieved from Hosanna of Bethany was a container of blood from a Fallen Angel, immensely powerful and exceedingly rare. Darrus had had to ask permission before entering Hosanna of Bethany because demons could not enter a holy place without permission. The Nexus had provided all of Darrus' information. Darrus smoked constantly to cover up the odor of sulphur that permiated his being. It all became so clear.

As for the training rooms, they were all connected but not connected. Hell wasn't bound to the same laws of time and space as the earth was--A and B could connected without ever touching the distances between them.

But the Nexus told him something else. He was a demon, and Reaver, but there was something more. He was a specific type of demon, a Doppelganger. He could take on the form of anything he could see.

Dahl looked up and Darrus, and simply understood the procedure. There was a sound like the shutter of a camera clicking open, and Dahl had changed forms.

"Impressive." said Darrus, looking at his own mirror image. "But you made a little flaw. You made a mirror image of me; everything backwards. Try it again."

Dahl focused harder this time, and the shutter clicked once more. This time the illusion was perfect.

"Better?" he asked, speaking in Darrus' smoke-ravaged baritone instead of his own voice.

"Passable, I think." said Darrus. "Now, you should also know how doors work. Any door for a demon connects to any other door. Now, you need to leave this room and come back out on earth. I think you know your first assignment, correct?"

Dahl thought for a moment, and understood. The Nexus told him everything he needed to know. With the camera sound, he reverted to his normal form and pulled out the shining sword--a Rhythm Blade, the Nexus called it.

"I understand." said Dahl. He turned to the door, and was gone.

"No, not really." Darrus said to the empty room. "You've lost that capacity. You don't have enough free will to really understand anything, anymore."

With that, Darrus left the room, and it ceased to exist.