Danny shuddered at the memory of an image he could no longer even remember. The feeling that it had left him with was more than enough to shake him to his core. All that he could piece together was that this image was related to the energy now coursing through his body. Danny shook his head and cleared his mind. It was another mystery for him to attempt to solve when he had more answers.

For now, he turned his gaze toward the space he found himself in. The first thing he looked at was the small Asian man in a lab coat. He was inspecting Fighter, with his back to Danny. He would have stood five foot five at most, but Danny saw that he was wearing polished black dress shoes that had a very generous heel which added a few inches. He looked to be in his late fifties, with hunched shoulders and a terribly unhealthy crook in his neck. When he had been facing Danny, he had shown a face with deep, dark bags under his eyes.

His skin was pale and unhealthy-looking. Danny saw a small man, who did not eat healthily, exercise adequately, or get enough sunlight. Danny could make a few guesses. The man likely hadn’t left this underground laboratory in a considerable length of time. Was that due to choice or secrecy? Danny couldn’t tell but the man’s physique led him to think that he likely didn’t care either way. This man was built for this sort of environment.

Danny then looked around the room, finding it to be stereotypically barren. White walls, a polished white floor, and white benches. There were computers and machines that Danny could only guess would fit the category of ‘lab equipment’. The room provided very little insight into his situation. Or did it?

Danny took what he knew. This place would have taken quite an effort to construct, everything looked relatively modern and expensive. This would have been a project requiring considerable manpower and money. There was also the fact that it was built somewhere deep underneath a populous city. This secret lab held more mysteries than its bland appearance would suggest.

Tamm walked into the lab through a steel door that slid open. Steel door? It looked industrial like it was made for keeping something secure. More information. The evil European woman stared coldly at Danny. Questions tore through his mind at a rapid pace but he stayed silent. Danny just watched the woman. Her face was as stoic as ever, giving nothing away, but Danny wasn’t going to fold. This woman had brought him down here for a purpose and he hoped she’d deliver on her end of the bargain.

“Chen,” the Asian man turned, not having noticed Tamm enter the room.

“Ester, it’s wonderful. Look at them, who would have thought? Kuhh, decades of work.”

Tamm levelled her gaze back on Danny. “He’s the one I’m more interested in.”

Chen turned around and looked at Danny as well. “Certainly. Perhaps we will be able to find out why he is so different from the rest.”

Danny looked at the two and suppressed a shudder. He wasn’t a person to them. He was something to be examined. They looked at him, but they weren’t seeing Danny. They were seeing whatever it was that they had done to him. Danny had a feeling they weren’t overly concerned about his chance of surviving whatever it was that they would be doing to him.

Danny considered asking questions but he felt more comfortable staying silent. He needed time to rest and recover to the best of his abilities. With his mana suppressed he didn’t have many fantastical options available. He was also restrained by the strange magical metal, which he doubted he’d be able to muscle out of. So, he needed to bide his time and find an opportunity to… …escape? That wasn’t entirely it.

Escape would be good, but he had come here for a reason. He needed to know what his condition was. He needed to know how he had ended up the way he had. He also wanted to know what had happened to Claude, the man who had started this whole thing. He was doubtlessly one of the many zombies Danny had run past or slain, but Danny wanted to at least honour the man by understanding what had happened to him. To know why he had ended up the way he had.

Then he’d… get revenge? It was doubtless that he was going to kill the people here. If he got the chance. They had already become inhuman in his mind. The hundreds of zombies he had fought, the super zombies, his own condition, all of these things had been done by these people. They had chosen to sacrifice these people for their own aims. Danny would have no mercy for them when he had the opportunity. There had to be some amount of justice in the world.

“Can we knock them unconscious?” Tamm asked.

Chen then went about inserting an IV line into Danny and Fighter, filling the drip with some cocktail of chemicals. Danny felt his consciousness fade and he drifted off under the watchful eyes of Tamm.

Danny woke up in a white space. An attractive woman in a black cocktail dress stood before him, her blonde hair cascading down around her shoulders. “We meet again, child,” she battered her long eyelashes at him.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Being called a child really doesn’t work with the image you’re going for, at least for me, Hag.”

The woman pouted, looking absolutely adorable. Danny sighed and tried not to let his emotions get the best of him. “You’re no fun, Danny.”

“What do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” Danny asked. It hadn’t been the week he had bargained for.

“Well, you’ve found yourself in the domain of another demon.” The woman walked around him, brushing his chest and shoulder with her delicate fingers. Her lips came right next to his ear. “I needed to make sure you weren’t cheating on me.”

Danny’s mind churned. Another demon? Danny then remembered how focused on his encounter with the Old Hag Tamm had been. Was Tamm connected to demonic business? Surely not. She would have been flying too close to the sun, how would she hide demonic stuff from Aldous Madley? Or Smith? Wait… She had hidden the whole underground business from the rest of the city, presumably. Could she also have hidden dealings with demons? Danny couldn’t be certain she hadn’t.

“I object to your choice of words,” he stepped away from the woman. “But why would I need to ‘cheat’? What would that even mean?”

The woman stalked toward him again but Danny backed up. She pouted again before morphing back into the form of an old woman. “I have learnt that a certain demon might be responsible for these happenings. I’m sure he will try to make contact with you, to poach such a fruitful contract. I don’t want that to happen.”

“What will you do if I take this other demon up on their offer?”

The woman’s back straightened out and for the first time, Danny saw the face hidden beneath the shawl. Piercing red eyes seemed to suck his very soul into them. “Then child, then you will have an enemy far worse than any you will have ever had, or ever will.” The woman then hunched back over, but Danny swore he could still see a faint red glow from the shadows of the shawl.

“Well, when you put it like that I can’t say I’ll ever ‘cheat’ on you, Hag.” Danny shivered. He had enough enemies. “Can I be honest?”

The Hag chortled. “Be honest with a demon? That’s novel.”

“Look, I’m not overly keen on signing a contract with a demon. It just doesn’t sound right. You seem lovely and all, but demonic contracts don’t bode well in my mind.”

The demon started cackling, full-bellied cackling. Their form shifted from the old woman to the attractive woman, to human-ish figures that hurt his eyes to look at. The demon continued cackling and Danny had to close his eyes to shield himself from the sight. Eventually, it managed to stop laughing and Danny cracked his eyes open a slither. The attractive woman was staring at him with a full grin. “Oh child, never once in all of my many years have I heard something like that. Such a childish and simplistic answer to a proposition.”

Danny shrugged. “It’s just how I’m feeling.”

The demon’s grin widened. “Usually, people try to convey it with a bit more poise than that.”

Danny shrugged again. “I’m very tired. I said I’d be honest.”

“Well then, out of appreciation for a humour I haven’t experienced in centuries, I will take a step back, for now.” The demon’s attractive face hardened. “Though, I won’t accept you signing contracts with any other demon.”

“Hmm. Seems fair. Shake on it?” Danny reached out a hand.

The demon stifled another laugh and then reached out to grasp his hand. At first, the demon’s hand felt softer than anything he had ever touched in his life. It was like a gentle caress that put him at ease. Then it morphed into something warm. Then it got hotter and hotter, and hotter. The demon’s lips curved into a devilish grin. “You just made an agreement, one that you can’t go back on.” The demon’s hand lost its appearance of a dainty hand and took on a blood-red colour. Polished black nails became sharpened claws that dug into his flesh and drew blood.

Danny panicked for a moment, then something shifted inside of him. The energy within him moved, changing its slow place and began to speed up. It flooded down his arm and into his hand. It flooded through the wounds that the demon had created.

“What?! What have you-” The demon’s eyes widened in panic. Its form began to shift again. This time it turned completely red and shrivelled in on itself before expanding into something ginormous. Red flesh oozed in every direction forming the bloated body of a creature almost incomprehensible to Danny. The clawed hand was still grasped in his, but it seemed almost disconnected from the creature that had grown from it.

Suddenly there was a contraction and the fleshly being vanished. The hand held in his became dainty again but retained its red colouring. The claws became nails but retained their wild texture. Then a new form grew from the arm. A tall, attractive red-skinned woman, with red eyes and horns appeared before him. Tattered wings spread out from behind her and she wore a dress made of wispy darkness that hugged her body.

Her face wore an expression that was a mixture of surprise and horror. “-What.” She stopped herself. She looked down at Danny, then at herself. “You…” She levelled an accusatory gaze at Danny. “...Have no idea what you’ve just done, have you?”

Danny didn’t. He was focused on the energy inside him. It had flooded his arm, bleeding into the cells that made it up. The arm felt slightly less his own now. The energy had returned to its gentle cruise around his body but lingered as it entered his right arm on each passing. What’s happening to me?