HELL'S ARCHITECT

Chapter 11. The Begging Devil

Thick purple blood from the demon’s exploded head was still warm, clinging to Sister Vera’s pale cheek like alien tears.

The intelligence agent’s breath caught in her throat. Her eyes were wide, empty, fixed on the lump of flesh on the floor, the remains of the demon’s face that had tried to speak to her moments ago. Seconds earlier, the creature had begged. Begged for its “Queen.” Begged for the truth.

Now it was nothing but floor decoration.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Three follow-up shots slammed into the concrete pillar where Elios had dragged Vera into cover. Sharp shards of stone exploded outward, slicing into Elios’s face.

“Stop spacing out, Sister! Your head’s next!” Elios shouted, his voice cutting through the thunder of gunfire.

He pressed his back against the cold pillar. His chest heaved, but his eyes stayed steady, scanning reflections in the pooling blood to track the enemy’s position. He gripped his shotgun tightly, even though he knew buckshot at this range was useless against a sniper hidden at the far end of the corridor.

Vera, meanwhile, was in complete mental collapse.

“This… this is a misunderstanding,” she babbled, her hands shaking violently as she held her energy pistol. She smashed the comm button on her collar in panic. “Command! This is Agent Vera, Authority Code Sigma-Nine! Cease fire! I repeat, cease fire! There is a friendly agent in the target area!”

Silence. No response in her earpiece. Only cold white static.

Her answer came instead as a .50 caliber round that smashed into the floor between her legs, punching through ten centimeters of reinforced concrete.

“SON OF A BITCH!” Elios yelled, yanking Vera’s cloak and forcing her lower. “Are you deaf or stupid? They don’t care about your codes! They’re here to clean house, and we’re the trash!”

“That’s impossible!” Vera slapped his hand away, her eyes wet with shock and doctrinal denial. “Divine Purification Protocol forbids eliminating fellow agents unless they are infected! They think we’re contaminated by that demon! I need to explain our status!”

She tried to stand, about to step out from behind the pillar to show her insignia.

“DON’T!”

Elios did not shout this time. He moved.

Fueled by raw adrenaline, he swept Vera’s legs out from under her, slamming her back onto the filthy concrete. Before she could fight back, Elios was on top of her, pinning her down with his full weight.

His left hand clamped around her jaw, forcing her head to turn.

Toward the shattered demon corpse.

“Look,” Elios hissed into her ear. “Look carefully, damn it! What do you see?”

“Let me go, Elios! You’re hurting me!” Vera struggled, pounding her bare fists against his chest.

“LOOK!” Elios snarled, pushing her face closer to the purple blood pooling on the floor. “That demon was restrained! It was helpless! It was talking! It was begging, Vera! When was the last time you heard a demon beg?”

Vera stopped struggling. Her eyes locked onto what remained of the demon’s ruined mouth. The memory of its hoarse voice replayed in her mind.

Pain… stop… Queen… crying…

“It… it spoke human language,” Vera whispered, her voice trembling. “It said… Queen.”

“And one second after it said that word, its head got blown off,” Elios said, releasing her and sitting beside her. He wiped sweat and blood from his brow. “That wasn’t a coincidence. That was silencing.”

Elios pulled Lyra’s pendant from his jacket pocket. He held it up in front of Vera’s face. The golden chip embedded inside glimmered faintly under the flickering emergency lights.

“They didn’t want us hearing what that demon was about to say about this chip,” Elios said. “And now that we did, we have to die.”

Vera shook her head slowly, frustrated tears spilling down her cheeks. “The Church is our shield, Elios. We are the foundation of this world. We don’t kill our own over the words of a monster.”

“The foundation of your world is built on my wife’s corpse!” Elios shot back.

“That’s a lie! Demons always lie! That is the first doctrine!” Vera screamed, raising her energy pistol, this time aiming it straight at Elios’s face.

The glowing blue barrel hovered less than ten centimeters from his nose.

The space behind the pillar froze solid. Outside, heavy footsteps drew closer. Inside, an ideological war reached its boiling point.

Elios stared into the glowing muzzle. He did not blink. He did not raise his hands. Instead, he leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the end of Vera’s pistol.

“Pull the trigger,” Elios said quietly.

Vera’s hand trembled. “Don’t force me, Elios. Give me the chip. I’ll take it to the Council. I’ll prove this was all a procedural error.”

“You want proof?” Elios laughed bitterly. “Look at my hands. Look at the blood on this floor. That’s Lyra’s blood. My wife. The woman I loved more than my life. And you want me to hand the last piece of her over to the organization that tortured her to death in that chair?”

“They didn’t kill her! The demon did!”

“OPEN YOUR EYES!” Elios slapped the pistol aside with violent speed, making Vera flinch.

“The demon said, ‘The Queen is crying in the ice,’” Elios growled. “Who has cryogenic facilities at the South Pole? Who has the tech to implant military-grade chips into civilian jewelry? Demons don’t have electronics factories, Vera. Your bosses do.”

Vera went silent. Her logic, the computational logic she had always trusted, began processing the data.

A military chip.

Boot prints in the mud.

Oiled door hinges.

An experimental chair stained with human blood.

An execution order with no negotiation.

The pieces locked together into a horrifying image. An image that shattered the faith she had lived by her entire life.

“No…” Vera whispered. Her pistol lowered. Her shoulders slumped. “It’s not possible. Bishop Valdos…”

“Valdos is a merchant, Vera,” Elios said, leaning his head back against the pillar and closing his eyes. “And we’re just expired merchandise. Welcome to the real world. It tastes like shit.”

Suddenly, the intercom speaker crackled to life. Static buzzed, followed by a calm, authoritative baritone.

“Sister Vera. We know you are there.”

Vera flinched. She recognized the voice.

“That’s… Commander Krov,” she whispered. “Head of Black Ops.”

Elios opened his eyes and motioned for silence.

“This situation is unfortunate,” Krov continued. “You are a promising agent, Vera. Intelligent. Loyal. It is regrettable that you were led astray by the corrupting influence of the heretic Elios.”

Vera stared at the intercom, then at Elios.

“But the Church is merciful,” Krov said, his tone shifting into something smooth and coaxing, like a serpent offering fruit. “We know Elios manipulated you. Forced you to violate protocol. Step out, Vera. Hand over the chip he stole. And… deal with him.”

Elios smirked and raised an eyebrow at Vera. “Tempting offer. You kill me, you get a promotion. Maybe a shiny new gold pin.”

Vera swallowed hard. Cold sweat slid down her temple.

“Kill Elios,” Krov ordered, his voice turning icy. “And your sins will be erased. You will be welcomed back into the Light. You have ten seconds before we level the room with thermal grenades.”

“One,” Elios counted casually, checking his shotgun. Two shells left. “Two.”

Vera stared at the pistol in her hand. Then at Elios.

He looked… resigned. Not resigned to defeat, but to exhaustion. He did not try to take the gun. He gave her the choice. The first truly free choice of her life.

“Three. Four.”

“Why don’t you fight me?” Vera asked softly. “You could snap my neck in a second.”

“Because I’m not them,” Elios replied simply. “I don’t force people to follow me. If you want to be their dog again, go ahead. Shoot me. Take the chip. Crawl back to your comfy cage.”

“Five. Six.”

The footsteps outside were almost on top of them. Shadows of assault rifle barrels stretched across the corridor floor.

Vera closed her eyes. She remembered the demon’s begging face. She remembered Lyra’s blood-written message. She remembered how Elios had saved her from the ghoul even when she was dead weight.

And she realized something.

The demon begged for its Queen. The Church silenced it.

So who was the real monster?

“Seven. Eight.”

“Elios,” Vera said, opening her eyes. Her gaze was sharp again, but no longer robotic. This was the look of a human being choosing her own fate.

“Yeah?”

“What’s your plan after we get out of here?”

Elios crooked a grin, the first genuine one all day.

“Eat pizza. Then burn this city to the ground.”

“That sounds… like a terrible plan,” Vera said. “I’m in.”

“NINE.”

Vera rotated her pistol, gripping it firmly, and aimed not at Elios, but at the entrance.

“TEN. ELIMINATE THEM!” Krov roared through the speakers.

BOOM!

The door exploded inward. Smoke and debris filled the air. Black Ops troops in jet-black armor stormed in like a flood, weapons blazing.

“Down!” Elios pulled Vera with him.

But this time, Vera did not freeze. She moved with him.

“They’re using Phalanx formation!” Vera shouted, analyzing the assault instantly. “There’s a gap on the right! Liquid nitrogen tank!”

“Smart!” Elios barked.

Elios rolled out from behind the pillar and fired his last shotgun shells not at the soldiers, but at a massive pipe along the right wall.

BLAM!

The pipe ruptured. Super-pressurized liquid nitrogen at minus two hundred degrees blasted outward, creating a wall of freezing vapor between them and the assault team.

Shocked screams erupted as several soldiers’ armor froze solid.

“Run! Back exit!” Elios shouted.

They ran. No more hesitation. No more standoff.

Vera ripped her insignia from her chest and threw it to the floor, letting it be crushed beneath Elios’s boots.

Behind them, Krov’s voice howled with fury. “Get them! Alive or dead! The chip is priority!”

They reached the far end of the chamber and skidded to a stop. A dead end. The only thing left was a wide, vertical waste drainage shaft in the floor, yawning black and toxic.

“Dead end,” Vera gasped, peering into the abyss.

Elios looked down, then back at the advancing Black Ops soldiers breaking through the nitrogen fog.

“Not a dead end,” Elios said, grabbing Vera’s hand. “VIP exit.”

He turned to her, grinning like a madman.

“Ready for another mud bath, Sister?”

Vera looked at him, then at the soldiers trying to kill her. She took a deep breath.

“To hell with hygiene,” she said.

And for the first time, the holy agent swore.

Elios burst out laughing. “That’s the spirit!”

They jumped together into the darkness just as a storm of bullets shredded the ground where they had been standing a second earlier.