1.
This was the true Unreal City.
The streets were deserted, but he could feel eyes on him from every window.
The sky was clouded over, but there was no promise of rain. It thundered, but there was no moisture in the air.
Pipes were laid upon every street, and pumps at every corner, pulling the steaming black tar out of the river.
There was a distant sound, like metal striking against metal, periodically broken by the whistling of the wind and a vague susurus of whispers.
The air smelled of sulfur and ozone, blood and filth.
Wind whipped red dust through the street, sometimes turning into a small twister, or creating a simulacra of people or machines.
Wade stood in the middle of the street, with his hands in his pockets.
“Well...” he said, “shit.”
From behind him, he heard a voice cry out his name.
2.
The Stranger had seen everything, he had been everywhere, he knew everything, and he forgot nothing. What another must study, he learned at a glance; there were no difficulties for him. And he made things live before you when he told about them. He saw the world made; he saw Adam created; he saw Samson surge against the pillars and bring the temple down in ruins about him; he saw Caesar's death; he told of the daily life in heaven; he had seen the damned writhing in the red waves of hell; and he made us see all these things, and it was as if we were on the spot and looking at them with our own eyes. And we felt them, too, but there was no sign that they were anything to him beyond mere entertainments. Those visions of hell, those poor babes and women and girls and lads and men shrieking and supplicating in anguish - why, we could hardly bear it, but he was as bland about it as if it had been so many imitation rats in an artificial fire.
The tall young man stood outside the gate, and rang the buzzer. He had a large, bulging pack on his back, which he set on the ground while he waited for a response from inside the Carver House.
“What?” was the answer from the speaker, obviously annoyed at being interrupted.
“Despite appearances, this is not Wade Larkin. I'm here on behalf of the Great Marquis Shax, here to propose a secondary deal.”
“I'm listening,” Victor responded.
“It's not the sort of thing that I would really feel comfortable about talking about on the street. Can I at least come up to your door. Ask your maidservant...what was her name? Laplace?...if I mean you any harm.”
There was a moment of silence, before the gates unlocked with a magnetic hum and a clang.
Wade's Duplicate walked up to the house, and stood on the doorstep.
The door opened, Victor stood there, in a white coat and wearing horn-rimmed glasses. He had a cane, now, and his right leg was in a brace. When he moved his left arm, bandages could be seen beneath his coat.
“Tell me what you want,” Victor commanded.
“I want the battery containing a greater fraction of Paimon.”
Victor barked a laugh, “and what would I possibly accept for that?”
The duplicate smiled, and crouched by his pack, he opened it up, revealing a bloody trash bag.
“It isn't all of her, by any stretch, but it's a greater portion,” the Duplicate said, opening up the bag, and revealing Astarte's bloody countenance. As they watched, it began to slowly knit back together.
“And why would I want that?”
“Because it would allow you to study the physiology of someone who has had a demon invested into their form. You saw her while alive, now you have a chance to study the oldest of your Great-grandfather's...hybrids.”
Victor nodded.
“I have his notes, though.”
“Obviously, incomplete, and plagued by certain problems, Mr. Carver. You can't really imagine that his notes contain every possible bit of information that you want to study.”
Victor stroked his chin.
“You are persuasive...but what do you want the battery for?”
“Paimon's wave form is dangerous. It spreads like an oil slick, investing inanimate objects with his being. If not returned to our point of origin, it could have disastrous effects. The Great Marquis is not willing to let the world be destroyed before the bargain is completed.”
“So, you will empty out the battery, and take Paimon below?”
“We will dispose of the battery in the most efficient way possible. While you have the Great Marquis locked in contract, you needn't worry about the world being destroyed.”
Victor stared at the body for a moment, closed his eyes, and nodded.
“Rene,” he said.
The air by Victor's side rippled, revealing a solidly-built man in a suit, wearing white gloves. The man bowed.
“Retrieve the battery containing Paimon, and bring it to this man.”
“Yes, sir.”
Wade closed the backpack, and nudged it over toward Victor.
“A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Carver. The Marquis will be by later, to discuss the finer points of the deal.”
3.
Wade pushed into the bar. The floor was pitted, and the ceiling had been stripped, revealing a labyrinth of pipes that dripped tar into the holes in the floor. He could hear things skittering beneath his feet, and labored breathing.
But his attention focused on the person behind the bar.
A tall Palestino woman, fixing a tap. She had her hair tied back, and sunglasses dangled from the collar of her shirt.
Mari, but seen through a smoked pain of glass, ghostly and indistinct.
“Hey, Wade. What's going on?”
Wade didn't say anything for a moment, but settled onto a bar stool.
“Not much, Mari...though I think I'm stuck somewhere strange.”
“Hell. You're in hell, Wade.”
“Well, I think that counts as somewhere strange, wouldn't you agree?”
“Yeah. I've been here for a couple of weeks. It can be kind of rough.”
“I can imagine. Where is everyone?”
“Part of hell is isolation. You're only allowed to see someone long enough to remind you that you're alone.”
“So how are we talking?”
“You aren't dead, Wade.”
He nodded.
“That makes sense. What's with the tar?”
“That filth? It's liquid Arafel, the condensed form of the rotten halo that the inhabitants of this place wear. There's no water, here, only Arafel.”
“Well...that sucks.”
“You have no idea. It does things to you when you drink it.”
Wade nodded.
“So...do you want to know how to get out?”
Wade looked up at her.
“There's a way out?”
“For you. I can't use it...I was a Ghul when I died, too much of me is native for exit to be possible.”
“A Ghul?”
“It's a long story. I was the child of a normal woman and a thing that Charles Carver brought back from the dead. It made me hunger for human flesh. I resisted for as long as I could, then...well...Algie had to shoot me. I'm glad it was him. He set me free.”
“To hell.”
“'A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n,'” she quoted.
“What's that?” Wade asked.
“Paradise Lost,” Mari said, “really, Wade. Do you read anything but road novels?”
He gave her a sheepish grin.
“I'm more limited than I think, sometimes,” he replied.
“It's okay, Wade. You can get out of here. But if I tell you how to do it, you're going to have to do something for me.”
“What?”
“You've got to promise me that you'll take care of Algie and Theia. They tried to help me, and I can't pay them back. So, do you think you can...?”
“I'll keep them safe,” Wade said.
“Thanks.”
“Alright, how do I get out?”
“It isn't easy...” she said, before beginning.
4.
Theia pulled up outside the gate, and stomped up to it.
She pressed the button, and heard the buzzer. There was no reply for a long moment.
She hit the button again, and the speaker broke, bursting open in a shower of sparks.
She jumped back.
“Oh, shit,” she muttered.
The door opened, and a tall, stork-like man walked out. He had one sleeve rolled up so that she could see a tattoo: “#44.”
He walked to the gate and looked at her with impossibly ancient eyes.
“Turn back,” he commanded.
“Screw you, pal. I want to talk to Carver.”
“Turn back,” he repeated, more forcefully.
“Are you deaf?”
The man made a gesture, and Theia was pulled off her feet, the wind knocked out of her.
She blinked to clear her head, shook her head to clear away the stars, and scrambled up to watch the man go back into the house.
“Son of a...”
“Theia Marlowe,” a familiar voice said from behind her.
“She turned, and stared into her own face. She wore a black blouse and loose black pants, with designs on the wrists, ankles, and collar worked with silver thread. Her duplicate's feet were bare and calloused. Emerging from either side of her head was a jet of greasy black smoke, the twin plumes curved up and encircled her head like a dirty halo.
“Who the hell are you?” Theia asked.
“Me? Isn't it obvious?”
“No, dammit!”
“I'm a replica of you, a simulacra. An imperfect duplicate, I'll admit, but I'm just as I was intended to be, just as my Maker made me.”
“Simulacra? You're not like any wax doll I've ever seen.”
The duplicate laughed.
“So narrow-minded. But I suppose that's to be expected. I'm glad I'm not a perfect replica of you, you know that?”
Something about the Duplicate caused anger to rise inside of her, clouding Theia's mind's eye.
“It means I won't be repeating any of your errors. I'm not going to have anything like the time you allowed Cincinnatus to fall into a coma, or you blaming Wade Larkin for something obviously out of his control, nor will I repeat your slovenly attempt to save a friend, like you did with Mariposa Harris, and I would certainly never allow a friend to sink as deep as you let Algernon Heller.”
Theia balled up her fist, and struck.
If Theia moved like water, her Duplicate was steam, and struck like a thunderclap. She felt her shoulder come out of joint, and once again found her on her back.
The duplicate laughed, shook her head and walked away.
Theia rolled onto her stomach, and rose up on her knees. The Duplicate Theia walked down the street and met up with another figure: tall, thin, wearing a “NOMAD” shirt, and with a head wreathed in greasy black smoke.
5.
Wade didn't expect redemption to be so easy-sounding, or so arduous.
Ahead of him stretched a line of figures. Each stood alone, no more than a hundred feet from the next. All stood waiting for him. They held knives, chains, baseball bats, and other weapons.
At the end of that line was redemption, found at the feet of the statue of Asclepius on top of the hill.
The first figure was of a Hashshishin, a man with blood dripping down the side of his head from where his ear had come off.
Wade squared up against him; he had no weapons other than his fists, no power other than the blood his beating heart fed to him.
The man lunged forward, and Wade seized his wrist. He lifted the man up, and slammed him to the ground, before straddling the man's chest, one knee pinning his knife-hand to the ground as he rained blows on the man's face.
Eventually, the shade evaporated into a cloud of greasy black smoke, and the next shade gestured him to come forward.
Wade stood and walked onward.
After the five Hashshishin, he had collected a knife to use as a weapon, but was faced with an unexpected enemy.
Cincinnatus stood on the lip of the bridge, his bespectacled eyes full of resentment.
“What are you doing here?” Wade asked.
The shade shrugged.
“I don't want to fight you,” Wade said.
Cincinnatus held out a hand, and his fingers warped, turning into the talons of a raptor.
The shade lunged forward, dragging the talons through the air, striking for Wade's eyes. He ducked, but still took the smallest talon across his hairline, a thin trickle of blood coming from the wound.
Now that first blood had been drawn, Wade responded, sticking the knife up into the Shade's stomach, and dragging the blade downward, opening up a deep gash.
Cincinnatus fell, and evaporated into a cloud of greasy black smoke.
Wade pressed the wound on his forehead, trying to close it by hand. Eventually, the trickle stopped, but it still stung.
With an exasperated sigh, he continued onward, toward the next figure, a young woman wearing the uniform of the convenience store.
What had her name been? He asked himself, before recalling, Nawal, the first person in Valley City he'd interacted with. The girl who he'd seen eaten alive by a thing in the alleyway.
She screamed like a harpy, and dove for him, her fingers outstretched and held rigid like claws.
He took a step back and punched, striking her in the hollow where her throat met her chest. She dropped, but began to slowly work her way to her feet.
“Don't make me do this,” he said, as she got up, “I don't want to have to...”
She had gotten into a runner's crouch, and headbutted him in the groin. He fell on his side, dropping the knife, and curled into a fetal position for a moment.
She began to rain down blows on him, but he didn't register them for a long moment. When the pain had turned to anger, he reached out, grabbed the knife, and thrust it at the point where he had punched her, in the hollow between her collarbones.
She gurgled, and turned into smoke.
“Okay...” he said, forcing himself to his feet, “No more mercy.”
6.
The last two were the most difficult. The second to last was the hardest to win. Maxwell stood before him, at the edge of the yard where the statue was housed, his hands wreathed in flame and his eyes burning with hate.
He lunged at Wade, attacking with fingers splayed to maximize the surface area of his flaming hands. Wade leaned back, braced himself on a bench, and kicked high, striking Maxwell on the jaw.
The demon reeled back, but wasn't even stunned. He rolled over, charring the concrete beneath his hands, and forced himself upward.
Wade retreated as the demon came at him. It lunged again, and seized his leg, burning his pants and the skin beneath. Wade howled in agony, and fell back, striking his head on the concrete.
He didn't allow himself to stop moving though. While blinded with pain and dumb from the shock, he lashed out blindly with the knife, hoping to protect himself even while mentally defenseless.
When his head cleared, he saw Maxwell standing over him, his right hand held out, preparing to snap his fingers. The shade grinned, and the dead demon snapped his fingers.
Wade rolled out of the way, and was struck with a thought, he ran down the hill, followed by the shade of Victor's former manservant, until he found a pump.
He opened the side of it, and found a tube. Cutting it open, wade pulled out the hose, and doused Maxwell with the condensed Arafel.
The demon laughed as the black sludge hit him, slicking his suit, and soaking into his skin. He seemed to grow larger, more solid, with each step. The flames on his hands turned from red to orange, from orange to yellow, from yellow to green, and from green to blue.
Wade kept spraying him, hoping that his instincts proved correct. Even though Maxwell stood almost thirty feet away, Wade could feel the unbearable heat radiating off of the dead demon.
A moment after Maxwell's hands turned white, Wade's instincts were vindicated.
The flames turned clear, the color of burning Alcohol, and shot up Maxwell's arms. He screamed, as he was overloaded by the strength of the profane power flowing into him. His flesh turned to vapor, and his burning skeleton screamed as it continued on toward Wade.
Cracks formed the bones, and it shattered, turning into an octahedral cloud of fire and bone-dust. Still it came towards him.
Electrical sparks danced from shard of bone to shard of bone.
Still Wade sprayed the sludge onto the fire.
The force holding Maxwell together was finally overwhelmed, and he imploded becoming a dead black sphere the size of a marble.
It dropped to the ground, and shattered, before exploding outward in a fog bank that stretched from the crown of the hill to the bank of the river. Wade coughed as it entered his lungs, and ate away at him.
He covered his mouth, and waited. Eventually, the cloud dissipated enough that he didn't feel it would kill him, though his vision was obscured.
He trudged up the hill, and approached the final figure.
A tall, feminine silhouette emerged from the Arafel-cloud, a baseball bat resting on her shoulder.
Her voice rang clear through the murk, and Wade's heart sank:
“And as for you, River, there will be a day when you will flow with blood more than water. And dead bodies will be piled higher than the dams. And he who is dead will not be mourned as much as he who is alive....Asclepius, why are you weeping?”
The statue flashed with blue-white light, and the cloud pulled back, revealing Mari standing before the statue, her feet planted on the ground, the same baseball bat resting on her shoulder that he'd seen her use the first time they'd met. A wooden bat, with electrical tape wrapped around the handle, and a bit of blood on the wide portion near the top.
She looked him in the eye, a sad expression on her face.
“...Why are you weeping?”
7.
“Do we have to do this?” Wade asked.
“Yes. You know we do. You had to face and defeat everyone in front of you. You had to prove that you wanted life enough.”
“I'm not sure I want it enough, then,” Wade said.
“So you would choose to be the lowest of all the breathless dead, than see the sun again? Than see your friends and family again? I'm dead, Wade. You can't hurt me.”
“But I've had to kill people I failed in the past to get here, why is this my final test?”
“Because if it were easy to get out of hell, then everyone would be doing it. God dammit, Wade: 'Long is the Way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to Light.'”
“More Paradise Lost?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Algernon misses you. He hasn't been able to function at all,” Wade said, looking down at the ground.
“I miss him, too, Wade. But this is how it happened.”
He swallowed, and kept his head hanging low.
“Enough talk. Come on. Fight me and get back to your world, or let me kill you and die beyond death, consigning you to eternal Oblivion.”
Wade nodded, and held the knife up, his eyes hardening.
Mari didn't move, waiting for him.
For a long, long moment, no one moved.
In a flash Mari lunged forward, raising her bat up high. In the same instant, Wade dove toward her, striking with his knife.