The world was pitch black. Even with their flashlights, the small group of high school girls could barely see a few feet in front of them. Step after eerie step, the group continued forward through the woods toward their destination. An old, abandoned factory shut down over some factory accident and the newest spot for anyone worth anything at Evington High School to test their courage. Which explained why Caitlyn and her group of leeches she called friends wanted to film themselves exploring it. And since Caitlyn was a total coward and none of her clique was any good with horror, Emma got dragged along. After all, she and Caitlyn were childhood friends; it would just be like hanging out together, just one favor for old times' sake. God, Emma regretted agreeing to it. With a sigh, she moved some of the lower tree branches away and out of the camera's shot of the factory.
"There we have video of you visiting the factory. Is that good enough Cait?" Emma asked before turning to look at the girl in question. Caitlyn had certainly seen better days. Her clothes were a mess due to a fall early in the trip. With the long hike and all the needless little jump scares from the leeches along the way Caitlyn had long since sweat through her makeup.
"I guess this is good enough," Caitlyn muttered.
"No way!" the girl with the camera (Emma couldn't remember her name; maybe Chelsea) yelled. There is no way we are turning around when we are so close!
"I don't know, this really doesn't feel like a good idea." Catilyn pleaded.
"Don't be such a pussy. Come on, let's get this over with," Another girl with too much spray tan (Trish? Maybe?) said before pushing Caitlyn and causing her to spring into Emma.
"Sorry," Caitlyn whispered into Emma's chest, "just a little further."
With a sigh Emma resumed her march towards the abandoned factory. She wasn't even that good with horror, she was just as scared as everybody else. Her small stature certainly didn't help. God just seemed to have punished her with a good heart and too little sense to ignore it.
The group of girls gingerly made their way to the factory. Past the broken glass windows and the faded foreclosed sign was an old, rusted door creaking in the wind. With another exasperated sigh that Emma made sure everyone heard, she pushed open the rusty door to reveal the room behind. Save for some broken glass and ceramics, the factory was completely empty on the first floor. The only object of any interest was the old rusty fire escape stairwell on the other side of the building.
"There now, we have video of you inside the factory. Now I'm going home, and anyone else who is done with this stupid shit can join me." Emma said while trying to push her way through the group of girls and out the exit.
"Not so fast," camera girl said before pointing to the fire escape, "no one leaves until we get video of all of us celebrating on the roof."
"No," Emma replied, "there is no way that stairwell is safe. We've gone far enough, and I'm not a part of your little group-"
"Exactly," the camera girl interrupted with a stupid smirk, "which is why you're going first!"
Emma tried once again to push past the girls but this time she got a boot to the stomach for her trouble.
"Ugh," Emma groaned as she fell to the ground.
"Stop being such a bitch and hurry up," spray tan said before giving Emma another kick to the side.
"Please, Emma, just do this so we can be done," Caitlyn pleaded.
Emma shot a venomous look at Caitlyn, before silently standing and making her way to the stairwell. Upon closer inspection the old fire escape stairwell was more rust than metal and the way it swayed and creaked in the wind did not give Emma any confidence. Some of the other girls surrounded Emma as she approached the stairs. Making it so there was no easy direction to run.
"Go on. Up you go." Caitlyn stammered out with all the fake courage she could muster before giving Emma a light shove towards the stairwell.
Slowly and carefully, Emma made her way up the stairwell one step at a time. Each and every stair, she would check with her right foot, testing to make sure it could handle weight before pressing onward.
'Childhood friend, my ass,' Emma thought to herself. 'I should've never even gone along with this.'
Floor by floor, Emma made her way to the roof, her annoyance with Caitlyn growing with every step. Just as Emma was closing on the top of the stairwell to the fourth floor the metal of the steps screamed in protest. She tried to take a step back, but it was too late, the welds of the step broke apart, and with a scream, Emma fell.
Her body fluttered in the wind, and with a sickening crunch, her back bounced off the railing of the third-floor staircase, sending her hurtling headfirst toward the ground. Emma's eyes couldn't help but scour her surroundings for her childhood friend. But there was too little time. Her last thought as her head hit concrete was a prayer to God.
A prayer 'to make things right.'
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"God have mercy," I spat as I awoke.
My head pounded as I fell out of bed and sprawled out across the orderly tile floor of my dorm. I desperately crawled to the dorm toilet while retching up all the bile in my stomach. After five minutes of dry heaving, I gingerly stood in front of the mirror, praying I didn't look as bad as I felt. My skin was pale as could be, and my green eyes looked nearly lifeless as they stared back at me. I moved a hand through my black dyed hair and looked in horror at the black jagged horn growing from my forehead.
"I just had it shaved down as well," I mumbled while touching the black horn. Every human had psychic potential; it was one of the perks of being graced by God. Those with abundant grace often develop a Sinseed in a moment of heightened emotion. The Sinseed allows the graced to control their powers for the minor trade-off of a significant chance of turning themselves into a hulking monstrosity of human emotion and trauma called Sin. Every exorcist has a Sinseed, but only the lucky ones have a sin mark—a physical representation of their deviation from humanity. A constant reminder of our roles as sinners, to be nothing more than expendable tools thrown at the problem that was Sin.
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Most Sin marks at least gave their exorcists some extra advantages, an additional psychic power or talent. Not mine, though; all it's good for is itching like all hell and otherwise being a general nuisance. With my hair dyed black, the horn can at least be somewhat hidden in the bird's nest I call my hair when it's shaved down.
"You going to explain that dream, or will you keep dancing around my periphery like usual?" I asked the dark corner of my room. Cold crawled down my back like icy water dripping down my spine. I watched as the dark seemed to split apart to make way for my Shadow, which slowly wandered into my periphery. My Shadow mirrored me in every aspect, with a few notable exceptions. We shared the same lean and tall body, yet my Shadow only ever showed its left arm. Its hand firmly pressed against its left eye as if it kept something from spilling. My Shadow's photorealistic right eye, an unnatural drop of color in the otherwise all-black Shadow. Above my right eye, a strange smoke dispersed out of a diagonal slit just below the hairline and into the natural darkness right where my horn should be.
"Did you have to show me something so unpleasant the day of my first hunt?" I ask it, staring into its eye. My Shadow stared back momentarily before moving to the edge of my right side periphery. I followed my Shadow with my eyes as it moved around the room, stopping right in front of my dorm's metal door. Beneath it was a small crumpled pile of clothes branded with the CAIN logo.
With a sigh, I exited the bathroom and put on my uniform. The white button-up shirt was spotted pink from old blood stains, the black dress slacks were two inches too short, and the shoes were five sizes too big. The belt with my gun was so small it just got around my waist, and I had to make a new hole for it to clasp shut. Despite repeatedly telling the quartermaster I was a leftie, I was issued a right-handed holster and surplus 1911 with one mag and five bullets. Only the straight black tie and coat seemed a decent fit.
'You're a tool that exists to wipe out the stain of Sin, Everett,' I thought. 'You don't get nice things until you survive long enough to prove your worth.'
Seeing I had gotten changed, my Shadow decided it had enough of being helpful and went back to rest in the darkness. It still responded when I prodded it with my psychic powers, which was the best I could ask for at the moment. With one more deep breath, I marched out of my dorm to the Admin's office, ready for my orders.
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The only advice Admin gave was, "Don't get attached."
There was, conveniently, no time for Admin to explain what I wasn't supposed to get attached to as two armed guards helpfully escorted me out of the office and into the back of a large unmarked black van. Exorcists were packed like sardines in the back of the van. You could barely move an inch before you were in someone else's lap. Despite there being so many of us, I didn't recognize any of the exorcists here from training. The Castle branch of CAIN should be in charge of all hunts. Castle doctrine ensures all exorcists are briefed in a safe area before being brought on a mission, and exorcists are supposed to only work with other exorcists they spent time with in the onboarding process to ensure team cohesion. The lack of both didn't strike me as a good sign.
We rode in silence. Hours passed, and a few more stops were made.
More time passed.
Eventually, the road began to grow bumpy, the pleasant screeching of tires on gravel consuming the van's silence. Then, just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Doors shot open, and one by one, we were thrown out into the warmth of the sun.
A short way away, we encountered an abandoned factory surrounded by deep woods on all sides. I did what I could to get a quick look at our surroundings. The factory consisted of multiple buildings: a collapsing office block, a towering furnace room, and a dilapidated assembly building. I felt an eerie familiarity with the factory, especially the assembly building, which looked frighteningly similar to the factory in my dream.
Having sized up our surroundings, I turned to look at my fellow exorcists. With all the vans unloaded, probably thirty or so new exorcists were brought here for this hunt. There were enough exorcists here for five hunting parties, and judging by the poorly fitting uniforms, we were all new.
Questions bounced around my head as I struggled to understand what CAIN was planning. 'Why are there so many of us? Why do none of us know each other? What was all this supposed to accomplish?'
"Hallo, Hallo!" a woman's voice pulled me from my thoughts. "Can I please have your attention?"
Behind us was a line of five all-black SUVs, each with an armored squad guarding it. Only two people weren't wearing heavy armor. One was a short woman in an all-brown robe with a rope tied around her waist. No matter at which angle I looked at or how much she moved, I could only see the bottom half of her face, with her top half perpetually hidden in shadow. The other was a wall of a man with a smile forever plastered on his face. He was seven feet tall and built like a tank. He was older, with white hair and scars that could have only been won from battle; he wore clean and proper priestly garb emblazoned with the Temerity logo. Temerity, CAIN's research division, I'm pretty sure I saw all thirty of the exorcists shudder at once with the realization.
"Hallo, Hallo, again!" The woman shouted once she had our attention.
"I'm the ambassador from Seer, CAIN's intelligence branch, but you can just call me Amby-chan, and I'll be handling your briefing today! Hip, hip, hooray!" She exclaimed with a jump and a shake of tambourines that seemed to appear in her hands. "Today, you guys will be responsible for hunting; a drum roll, please, CAT 3 hound!"
"Category 3, that's impossible!" one of the exorcists yelled. "You're ordering us to die!" Yells and sobs, along with similar sentiments, were thrown out by the crowd of exorcists.
"Silence." With a single word from the priestly man. The crowd went quiet as if his words locked all our jaws.
"As I was saying," the seer ambassador continued, "Seer believes that this hound was formed by a high school girl named Emma who went missing in this area a few days ago. Shortly after her disappearance, many other students were reported missing. A few have turned up in pieces around the town, but there is still a chance that some of the students live, so make sure you do your best! Thanks to Seer's quick judgment, we were able to trace the palace of the hound to this general area. Your orders are simple! Find the palace and execute the hound. You have until the end of the day before the Seraph space station files this case as out of control and performs an orbital decontamination. If you're still alive and the hounds are not dead by 11:00 pm, make sure to exfiltrate from the area! That all make sense?"
The silence from the crowd of exorcists was deafening. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Thirty new exorcists, sinners one and all, versus a Sin that even experienced exorcists would struggle with. As new exorcists, we barely counted as CAT 1. Hell, some might still be CAT 0, like ordinary people. We were brought here to die. Before anyone could think of running, the priestly man stepped forward. His body briefly overflowed with psychic energy as he conjured an invisible fortress around the mission area.
"Any who cross the fortress will be considered deserters and will be executed for treason." The man, his smile never wavering, stated. "Do your duty to humanity, purge the Sin, and wipe away the stain."
A commotion ripped my attention from his words. One of the new exorcists, a tall woman, screamed as she backpedaled, the front of her uniform soaked in blood. My eyes quickly found the source of her terror: the exorcist next to the screaming woman's head was gone. Replaced by a fountain of blood.
The hound had gotten first blood.
The sound of grinding bone brought my eyes to the Sin in question. Its body was an amalgam of human skeleton and rusted metal. Pipes and jagged stair corners jutted out of bone at unnatural angles, covering its body with spikes. What flesh remained was twisted into pulsing knots, dyed brown with rust and blood. Stitched into its chest cavity was a young girl's face screaming in rage. Its head was an oversized skull with sharpened railings poking out its eye sockets. Inside its slack jaw sat seven rows of spiked teeth, each twitching as if with a mind of its own. In its clawed front hand was the bleeding head of an exorcist.
For a moment, all of the exorcists drowned in silent disbelief. But only for a moment.
"Dibs on her shoes!" A girl's voice rang out.
Then all hell broke loose.