Chapter 1

The elevator doors slide open. Aria can feel her stomach knot as she starts walking toward the door at the end of the hallway. The plush red carpet masks her footsteps and the only sound that can be heard is that of her clothes rustling together.

She feels for the gun tucked between the waistband of her tattered jeans. The small pistol is still there which reassures her. She changes her attention to the small key in her back pocket. She manages to fish it out with her nimble fingers.

The apartment she is about to enter belongs to Herbert Sentalli, a notorious old mobster who has his fingers in many different pies around the wasteland. The old man no longer commanded the kind of respect he once did. Instead, the people who used to fear him have banded together to bring his reign to an end.

And that is where Aria comes in.

As the daughter of a wasteland hitman, she was raised to shoot a gun before she learned to say her first word. She has honed her skills by learning to hunt and kill the mutant animals beyond the city walls.

Tonight she is going to test those skills on a human for the first time.

With a steady hand, Aria slides the key into the lock and turns it. There is a soft click and the door swings open an inch or two. She pulls the pistol from her waistband as she pushes the door open further. The smell of rotten wood and moldy furnishings hangs thick in the air.

Inside, the apartment is surprisingly well-lit. A small lamp on a table in the lounge emanates enough light to outline the kitchen and the other two doorways. Aria knows that the door closest to the main entrance leads to the bathroom. The second door leads to the bedroom. It’s there - if her sources are correct - where she will find the old mobster sleeping off his daily intake of booze.

She pads over to the bedroom doorway and pushes the door open. There is a soft squeak from its rusty hinges that makes her cringe. Light spills in behind her and she can see the sleeping figure on the bed.

Her father, George, had told her that hesitating before pulling the trigger was one sure way to end up dead before her target. With that in mind, Aria took a slow, deep breath, and as she exhales she raises the pistol and pulls the trigger. Even in the dim light, she can see pieces of skull and other gooey parts spray onto the wall behind the bed.

Bullseye, as her father would have said.

Never hang around the scene of the crime. Another piece of great wisdom her father had imparted to her while growing up.

In other words, it was time to leave.

Despite the sound of the gunshot, Aria meets no resistance as she makes her way down to the basement of the building. She crosses the basement floor, expertly dodging the many crates and boxes that have long been looted for their contents. She slides out the fire escape door and back into the alley between the apartment building and the ruins of a small hotel.

As she makes it back to the street she is confused to see an ambulance already outside the apartment building. The city is still in the process of recreating something that looks like an emergency service with ambulances being reserved only for the wealthy.

But that still doesn’t make any sense.

It took Aria only five minutes to reach the ground floor. No one had come running to the rescue of the old mobster and yet there was an ambulance already waiting for him with the crew already inside the building.

She makes her way to the small auto her father had fixed up for her. The electric motor it ran on wasn’t the most powerful one out there, but it was one of the few that recharged itself as it was driven. This made it ideal for trips between the wasteland and the city.

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She keeps her eyes fixed on the ambulance and slips behind the wheel of her car. She pushes the button to fire the motor. She isn’t ready to leave the scene. Instead, she prepares to follow the ambulance and make sure her target doesn’t survive the night.

It takes five minutes for the two-man ambulance crew to bring Herbert Sentalli out of the building on a gurney. His head is wrapped in a bandage that is already soaked in blood. Despite this, he looks alive and alert.

This is bad news for Aria. She watches the old mobster being pushed and then secured into the back of the vehicle. Then the two paramedics, who seem way bigger than most normal men, jump into the front cab of the ambulance.

Lights flashing, the ambulance peels away from the building.

Aria slips her car into drive and follows behind it.

Soon, the buildings become a blur of shapes and shadows as the speed increases.

Aria pushes hard on the accelerator. She’s able to squeeze enough power to ram the back of the ambulance. The larger vehicle wobbles back and forth on the road as its driver tries to bring it back into a straight line. She hits the accelerator again and again her car bumps into the back of the emergency vehicle.

She pulls out her pistol and leans out the window trying to take aim. Before she can pull the trigger the ambulance suddenly hits the brakes. She has no time to react. The force of the crash sends Aria forward and her head hits the steering wheel.

The last thing she remembers is her pistol falling from her hand into the footwell between her feet.

Aria gasps as the blackness she has been engulfed in suddenly gives way to concrete. But she isn’t falling. She realizes that she has been sitting with her head bowed and when she opens her eyes all she sees is the concrete floor of the building.

She lifts her head and glances all around her. The building she’s in seems to be some kind of church. There is a podium beyond the pews in front of her. She glances left and right. Both sides have stained glass windows. On one side the glass windows depict angels battling demons. The other side depicts giant winged creatures devouring the souls of the innocent.

Aria had only ever been in one church with stained glass windows and they never depicted anything like she’s seeing now. This causes confusion to grow on her face.

‘Ah, you made it,’ says a deep male voice.

Aria turns to look up the aisle and see’s a tall, slender man in a white suit. As the man draws closer she can see that he has a gaunt face with piercing blue eyes. His suit has roses outlined in red on both the sleeves and trouser legs. However, as the man moves the roses seem to leak their red ink and it spills down to the cuffs of his pants and suit jacket.

‘Who are you?’ She asks, feeling dizzy and lightheaded.

‘My dear, I am the very reason you are here right now,’ says the man, from out of nowhere a cigarette has appeared between his fingers and he puffs on it as he takes a seat across from Aria.

‘I don't understand what is going on,’ says Aria, the last thing she can remember is being behind the wheel of her car.

‘Well, let me get straight to the point,’ says the man, ‘I’m the Devil, or Satan, or whatever you want to call me. But basically, I’m the badass that lives in and runs Hell.’

‘I’m tripping,’ moans Aria as the man claiming to be The Devil takes an extremely long drag of his smoke.

‘I don’t have time for your teenage angst, why did your father send you to whack Sentalli?’ The Devil draws on the last of the cigarette and flicks it away.

‘He told me he wasn’t feeling well and said it was time I earned my first kill,’ says Aria, feeling more confused.

‘Well, he’s regretting that choice now. I made the deal with him to get rid of Sentalli, not you. Now, because your father broke the rules and thought he could outwit me, he is in hell and I’m without a good hitman. So it looks like your going to have to finish the job you started.’ Explains the Devil.

Aria looks at The Devil with concern. She can see the blood pooling at his cuffs and dripping to the concrete floor. If this is a trip it's one she wants to get out of straight away.

‘What do you mean he is regretting his choice? What have you done to my father?’ She asks.

The devil has another lit cigarette between his lips.

‘Well, he broke the rules of the agreement. I don’t make fools' errands. It was an honest contract. He killed Sentalli and in return, I took away the cancer eating at him.’ says The Devil.

Her father dying of cancer shouldn’t be a surprise. In the wasteland, thanks to the higher radiation levels, life expectancy was very low. Her mother had already succumbed to the disease when she was just five years old. Now there is also the point that her father might be in hell.

‘You sent my father to Hell for breaking a contract with you?’ Asks Aria, still hoping everything she is experiencing is just a part of her imagination.

‘Those are the rules. But if you can end Sentalli before midnight tonight, I will send him to a nicer part of hell. One that doesn’t involve eternal agony,’ says The Devil, as smoke drifts from his nostrils like a dragon.

‘Fine. Send me back then and I’ll take care of it,’ says Aria, in her mind she is resolved to freeing her father from an unimaginable hell.

The Devil clicks his fingers and in an instant, she disappears in a puff of greasy black smoke.