“I… I…”
Hannah was lost in her own mind as she crumpled to the ground. The facility seemed to drone on and on as demons and rubble blocked every foreseeable exit. Hiding inside the barricaded breakroom, the three of them tried their best to form a plan.
A hard thing to do, since there was the old receptionist’s body sitting in the corner. It was initially hanging from the ceiling—for reasons best unsaid—until Andrew and Gwen pulled her down. Another death that Andrew couldn’t stop.
“How many bullets do you have left?” Gwen asked.
“I’m down to my last magazine, so thirty. You?”
“Thirteen.”
Things just got worse and worse, it seemed. Even though an exit seemed so close, Andrew knew that there was an onslaught of demons that awaited the entrance of prey. Surviving a step there would be an achievement. Two steps would be death.
It’s just like that fortress, isn’t it? You couldn’t save your team and even now you grieve their passing. If you could call their agonizing deaths a passing.
The voice played in Andrew’s mind like an unwelcome visitor. He knew that there was some reason in the Beast of Envy, considering that he had allowed himself the ability to absorb souls and powers. But this time was different. The Beast of Envy was asking for Andrew’s entire body.
“Andrew,” Gwen called. She seemed to already know what was going on. “We’re going to talk. You got that?”
“Huh? Talk about what?”
“Anything.” She stood up and punched him in the shoulder. “Whatever takes your mind off of what’s happening in your head or out here. It’s bad enough to be stuck here; it’s worse to be stuck here with that demon in you.”
Andrew paused. Hannah was still crying in the corner, but he had the privilege of keeping his thoughts straight at times like this. “I… I can talk to you about CDR-4. Best guys I’ve ever known.”
“Yeah?”
“Singh was like a big sister, except she’d always pop nicotine pouches in her mouth.” Andrew chuckled a little. “Smith was like a big brother, but with a spike of constant cynicism, and Gutierrez was almost like the drunk uncle who’d hand you a beer when no one was looking.”
“Souinds like a real family.”
“Oh, it was. Kang was the dad and Sergeant Yang was the mom.” Andrew closed his eyes like a boy remembering home. “Together, we really were invincible. I can name countless times where I thought we were absolutely cooked, just to come out on top in the end.”
Andrew opened his eyes. “But they’re dead now. My fault or not, they’re all dead. I guess Miyoshi was right. There’s nothing I can do or say that can reverse that. If the CDRs were my family, then I’m nothing but their abandoned bastard.”
Spiked with something along the lines of courage and stupidity, he got up and picked Hannah from the ground. “I might not be able to bring back the dead, but I can bring you guys out of here.”
“What?” Gwen asked with surprise. “Did you come up with something other than a deadly corridor?”
“No. That deadly corridor is our best bet.”
Gwen blinked. Even Hannah, who was just brought back to the real world, was at a loss for words. “But we saw it ourselves. Those demons will rip us into pieces if we even try to get through.”
Andrew took a deep sigh. With his eyes closed, he focused his energy to his arm, transforming it into an armored limb of spikes once more. “They can rip a human apart. But I’d like to see if they can rip me apart.”
***
It was Andrew’s dumbest plan yet, ranking even higher than going into a prison of demons with only intuition. The idea was that Andrew would charge right into the horde, fighting and absorbing what he could, while the other two got the hell out. If the police were already there, then they’d probably get arrested as fugitives, but Andrew took his chances.
“Ready?” he asked.
Hannah shook her head and whimpered. “No…”
In any case, Andrew broke down the barricade and charged out. He was immediately greeted by a demon that shrieked at the top of its lungs. It was loud enough to force ordinary humans to cover their ears to avoid the bursting of eardrums.
Fortunately for Andrew, the demon was only a few feet away. He smashed his arm into the demon’s jaw, blasting the bodypart right off. The scream sounded less like one of carnage and one of fear as Andrew smashed his spiked fist into its face over and over.
As the thing lay there, dying, Andrew clasped his hands around its head. He didn’t even have to say a word for the voice in his head to answer.
Very well. Its soul shall be ours.
Andrew heard a scream of an eaten soul as the eyes of the demon went white. In less than a moment, it was nothing but the husk of a demon. Andrew had gotten stronger, thanks to the envy of another beast’s strength.
While Gwen had seen this before, Hannah didn’t know what to say. “Are you sure it’s the Beast of Envy and not gluttony?”
Andrew didn’t reply. Instead, he looked into the hall where demons were ripping a group of doctors apart. There was no use in saving what was already dead. “I’ll attract their attention. Keep your heads down and book it to the exit at the end of the hall.”
The sun was barely coming up as they saw the light of dawn kiss through the door’s windows. It almost looked like the gates to heaven from here. But to get to heaven, they needed to go through hell first.
“Get ready…”
The two of them covered their ears as Andrew gave a deafening shriek. All the demons paused as the shriek reverberated in their inhuman eardrums. It was like using a dog whistle in front of a pack of hounds. Their heads turned right in his direction.
They came in droves. “Go!”
Gwen and Hannah slipped to the side as Andrew engaged in the melee. He fired his spikes into their eyes to briefly blind them. The only way to win was to fight these demons one at a time.
The first demon was a mean-looking motherfucker with teeth as long as knives. With Andrew’s spikes in its eyes, it could do little but writhe in pain. Perfect for Andrew—he slammed its skull against the tiles before absorbing its soul.
Now Andrew could have his teeth.
He sank his new fangs into the neck of another demon: one with boney spears protruding from its forearms. It shrieked before Andrew grabbed its skull and absorbed its soul. Another scream. Another power.
Now Andrew could have his weapons.
By the time the demons could get the spikes out their eyes and regenerate, Andrew was already on his fifth or so kill. Since their minds were nothing but demonic mush, they reverted back to their grind for violence. It was almost like a vision into Valhalla, but with the warrior’s euphoria transformed into unbelievable carnage.
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So many powers, some more useful than others, coursed through his veins. Thicker skin, supercharged tendons, eyes that could see arteries like a biological scanner—the possibilities went on. A high like that could tip anyone insane.
But Andrew couldn’t afford to lose himself; not when he had people to protect. He watched as Hannah and Gwen snuck through the distracted corridor. Despite Andrew’s best efforts, one or two demons caught the scent of fresh human flesh. “Hannah! Gwen!”
A demon lunged at them—Andrew grabbed it midair and smashed it into the wall. He didn’t even have time to absorb its soul; another demon was already charging towards them.
With the spear protruding from his forearm like a biological gauntlet, he stabbed its skull. More than a haircut—he impaled straight through the brain, forcing it to gargle on its own death. “The exit is just right there! Get out!”
“What about you?”
“Just go before the cops come!” It was hard enough to yell. It was even harder to yell while elbowing a demon in the throat. “Go!”
His voice sounded less human, more demonic. It was a deep shrill that edged on the brink between natural and unnatural. Both Gwen and Hannah were taken aback, but they didn’t question it. They bolted out the door.
***
Now, like Miyoshi, it was Andrew’s turn to sacrifice himself to buy some time. Valhalla continued as the horde of demons charged him into their ceremony of violence. Dark blood spilled as everyone traded blows with one another.
Andrew had slowly become the lead killer of the group. He grabbed one of the monsters and smashed its head into the doorframe. Andrew must’ve slammed the door on its head at least a dozen times before it burst like an oversaturated grape.
Bodies lay around him like a throne of death. Through nihilistic might, he had formed himself as king. In a world of demons, direct power was the only language they could speak and understand. It was actually impressive, seeing how many demons could die in less than half-an-hour.
By the time the violence slowed, Andrew was standing with a transformed body. While still retaining his humanity and coherence, he had spiked arms that protruded with bone spears, skin that bordered the line of leather, teeth that resembled knives, and eyes that looked more black than white.
Meanwhile, standing in front of the exit, stood the same red beast that plagued them earlier. The tengu raised a head, Miyoshi’s head. When Andrew saw its hideous form, he knew that Miyoshi was already long dead. At least he gave a good fight—a rebar pole remained impaled in its chest.
“You were a CDR,” Andrew growled. His voice had turned more and more distorted. It was hard to believe that he was still mentally in charge of his own body. “Which team?”
The tengu must’ve been in a brief moment of coherence. It spat blood onto the floor and used its bare foot to paint a number.
Three.
“Ha,” Andrew scoffed. “CDR-3 was full of fucking pussies.”
The two charged into each other, with Andrew immediately lunging with his spears. Just before they could kiss skin, the tengu grabbed the bones and snapped them in two. Andrew didn’t say a word as the tengu countered with a kick to the chest.
Andrew’s back slammed against the tile. He ducked right before the tengu blasted its fist into the wall—it came tumbling down.
You’re getting jealous, Andrew. You want the power that this demon holds.
The Beast of Envy echoed the truth as Andrew kept evading the tengu’s attacks. “Get back!” Andrew shrieked with his demonic power. But this did nothing but slightly aggravate the tengu into destroying its own eardrums with its fingers.
The tengu grabbed Andrew’s neck, ignoring the spikes that helplessly fired into its red flesh. One hand holding Andrew, the other plucking the thorns out, the tengu regenerated the wounds like nothing.
Next, he pulled the rebar out of its body. The hole instantly healed itself, like Miyoshi’s sacrifice meant nothing. As Andrew thought about it, every sacrifice had meant nothing, now that he was on the brink of death.
His team’s death meant nothing, if it meant the same march towards that same fate.
***
“Contact!” a voice suddenly called.
Machine gun fire echoed from the other end of the hall, prompting the tengu to drop Andrew to the ground. Humbled and out of mind, Andrew slowly returned to his human form as he wheezed. The gunshots sounded familiar to his exhausted ears: 7.62mm.
A team of soldiers funneled into the hall and poured lead. CDR was plastered on their platecarriers, like some kind of modified uniform. But rather than wearing the APEs that Andrew was used to, they wore exoskeletons that provided strength without protection.
The tengu chucked the rebar—it stabbed one of the members right into the wall. The poor guy was still firing his machinegun into the air as his body lost consciousness. His teammates could only watch in horror. “Shit, shit, shit! It killed Micheal!”
“We gotta get outta here!”
The rest of the group ran, leaving Andrew to sit with the fact that Miyoshi was right: the replacements of the CDRs were nothing but a shadow of the team’s former self. Even the tengu was laughing; its human memories allowed it to come to the same conclusion.
There was only one CDR trooper that stayed. Seemingly dismayed at the cowardice of her new comrades, she tossed her machinegun to the side and looked the tengu in the eyes. “I know you,” she said with her familiar voice. “You’re Huntington from CDR-3, right? Apparently went crazy a while back?”
Sergeant Yang’s smile was immediately recognizable. Wide-eyed, Andrew hid from her view. He didn’t want to be seen by her, not when she almost lost her life trying to save him.
The tengu charged at her—she countered his overhand punch with an uppercut to the jaw. The power of her prosthetic arm and exoskeleton sent the red demon reeling back. “I spent the last while reading into anything and everything,” she coldly said. “I know what happened here. I know that there are moles in our chain of command.”
The tengu charged again. This time, it landed a kick to her torso.
But, unlike its last victims, she hardly even shuddered. Beneath her platecarrier was a metal. Not because she was wearing armor, but because she was the armor. A new prosthetic chest was her latest innovation.
“I killed the Beast of Wrath. Guess what? His shriveled, thermite-stricken corpse looked a whole lot like the Chief.”
Sergeant Yang stabbed her fist into the demon’s chest. It lodged itself right through the heart—a clean punch and a clean kill. “I’m sorry, Huntington. But I wasn’t talking to you. You’re already dead.”
His body slumped to the ground. The once mighty warrior that killed Miyoshi as well as countless others, now fell like another body in the wind. “Andrew, come out before this gets more awkward than it already is.”
For a moment, Andrew hesitated. He didn’t even know that the Sergeant was talking to him. When he finally did come out, he got a clear look at Sergeant Yang’s face.
A new scar: a slash that went from the top-right of her forehead all the way to the bottom-left of her chin. It crossed through her face with a line of barely healed pink flesh. “Well?” she asked. “How’s life as a demon?”
“Sergeant, I–”
“You’re no longer a CDR and no longer under my command,” she coldly said. In moments like these, it was hard to determine if she was mad, sad, or just plain pissed off. It could be all three or none of them. “We’re not gonna call each other ranks and last names.”
Andrew paused. In this moment of heightened stress, it was hard to think—let alone remember anything. “J-Jessica,” he started, “it’s all my fault. I should’ve told you everything from the start. I should’ve told you about the nightmares, the voices, Doctor Myers, all of it!”
Jessica Yang stood there without saying a word. Maybe she wanted to hear more. Maybe she was just waiting for her turn to speak.
She remained silent as Andrew kept talking. “If I told you about everything I knew, then…” It was getting harder for Andrew to say everything on his mind. “Then maybe everyone would still be alive, if I just told you that I was… being possessed by something I don’t even understand…”
Jessica stared at him. She walked back and picked up her machinegun. Then, standing only a few feet from him, she said, “It’s not your fault.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Sergeant Jessica Yang stared him in the eyes. “I knew the whole plan was going to be risky. I knew that there was a good chance we were going to be hurt. But I failed to recognize that we were going to be faced with so many things. Maybe it was in my own ego, or in the idea that we were invincible, because now we’re standing here as the last survivors of CDR-4.”
She said it with one, heavy moment. “I got everyone killed the moment I accepted the mission.”
Now, Andrew was face-to-face with a CDR member. It now crossed his mind that he, a demon, was now in the crosshairs of someone whose sole job is to slaughter demons. Sergeant or not, she had a job.
Jessica Yang had one thing to say. “Hit me.”
“What?”
Yelling came down the hall as more CDRs came rushing in. Andrew quickly slammed his old Sergeant to the side before bolting for the doors. Gunfire came from both sides as the outside cops opened fire.
Weaving left and right, Andrew was only hit with a few bullet-scrapes that healed soon after he jumped past the line. It wasn’t long until he lost his trail. It wasn’t long until he disappeared into the night.