Prologue

JAMES

All stories have a good guy and a bad guy. There’s always a big fight scene at the end of the story where good usually triumphs over evil. Sometimes the bad guy turns out to be not so bad, and on the rare occasion, the good guy turns out to be a total shit.

In the real world, none of that happens. There is no final battle. Life continues on after one struggle, regardless of the outcome, only to saddle us with another, followed by another, until we eventually die. Even then, we don’t know what struggles come after. That’s for philosophers to debate.

All of us have it in us to be both good and evil. We spend most of our lives somewhere between the two in our daily struggles. Granted, the concepts of good and evil are abstract, but that, again, is for those philosophers who somehow make a living sitting around thinking this crap up.

I don’t know why all that is going through my head right now. I have much more pressing matters at hand.

The cold of the stone floor was seeping through my clothes and into my knees as I knelt before a pacing figure, the bad guy. He had the good guy, me, powerless and completely at his mercy. He was currently in the middle of a traditional storybook villain’s monologue, and if I hadn’t already been terrified beyond all rational thought, I’d have rolled my eyes.

It was true that I couldn’t move. Somehow, he’d managed to gain power over me and completely ruined my whole “defeat the bad guy and save the day” plan. My plan had been bold and reckless, as most of my plans usually were. The only problem, aside from the whole being captured by the bad guy thing, was I didn’t have a backup plan, and the heroine was just as incapacitated as I was.

Had this been an action movie, this is the part where the comedic sidekick would come storming in and do something completely moronic, inadvertently saving the day. But this wasn’t an action movie or even a dramatic horror flick. This was the real world, and that sort of thing never happens in the real world.

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Bio-Habitat 00117

Observation Post 36211

CR’EON

I’d finally learned to tone out all the standard sounds of the observation post. This made it easy to hear the chime, reminding me it was time to send in another status report.

Putting the sharpening tool down, I brushed away the tiny onyx-colored fragments from my claws. While I didn’t expect to enter combat anytime soon, it was an old habit to keep myself at the ready. A moment later the tiny shards fizzled to nothing as the room’s refuse program initiated.

“Yeah yeah,” I mumbled as the chime sounded again.

This is Cr’eon, Bio-Habitat 00117, with my daily report. No detectible Angel Guard activity. Inhabitants remain unaware of their Bio-Hab containment. The unusual phenomenon I previously reported…

I paused to review the status console.

Continues to rapidly spread throughout the bio-hab. All data points towards the possible initiation of a culling protocol. I will update upon verification.

I finished encoding the report and sent it off where I was sure it would be ignored, just like the 5,166 daily reports before it. Even if there was a culling protocol in progress, Behemoth had initiated it. The Daemon Corps were here to protect Behemoth, not interfere with its operations.

With my daily duty done, I returned to the direct observation port and peered below. The white clouds covering the bio-hab’s water and land masses were light today, giving me a good view. Not for the first time, I wondered what the inhabitants did to pass the time. If the broadcasts the bio-hab vomited out were any indication, there were plenty of opportunities for amusement.

I, on the other hand, was stuck in this booth. Now I understood why my predecessor was so impatient to leave when she was training me.

I returned to my console and plopped down unceremoniously in my seat. When I’d first started this post I was full of excitement at the prospect of being the “tip of the sword” and the “first line of defense” when it came to defending Behemoth from the Angel Guard. Looking back on my wing commander’s words, I couldn’t believe how naïve I’d been.

“It’ll only be for a few cycles,” my commander had said. “Then we’ll bring you back to the unit.”

Lies, all lies. Once they’d gotten rid of their “problem child” my unit forgot me. Not a single one of my wingmates had contacted me since my transfer. When I tried to contact them, the transmissions were never accepted.

Sighing, I removed the warskin from my feet and began to sharpen my toe claws. I had enough stims to keep me awake for my shift, now I just needed something to keep my attention.