“No one will believe this,” a deep voice awoke him from nothingness, behind the bars of his dark cell. The crudely cut stone ceiling was the first thing that he beheld after his slumber.
“Yet there is no denying it,” a female voice sounded next, “He appears to be an ordinary human.”
“No man could have survived in that place, much less a child," the man shook his head, finally getting their captive to break from his gaze and look around. The outside of his cell was strange; clean white tiles covered the entire lab room filled to the brim with well-maintained equipment of all sorts. Despite the lack of light within the cell, the rest of the room was well lit, from all directions. And right in front of the cell, two figures stood in long pristine white robes, to the left an elderly looking man with many wrinkles rending his skin and no hair, to the right a middle-aged woman with wildly squinting left eye yet well-kept visage and an ebony mare.
"He is awake," the female seemed to notice. At that moment he wanted to answer from within the cell, however, as his mouth opened no voice came out. Immediately he attempted to grasp his own throat in panic, yet his hand wouldn’t move either.
"Stay calm, young man," the man spoke with a strangely reassuring voice, with the feeling of a trusted old acquaintance, "I hope to make this as easy as possible for both of us. I will ask you questions and I want you to nod or shake your head for now. Do you understand?" the captive immediately nodded.
"Good, my first question then: Do you know where you are?" the man asked, quickly receiving a shake of the head as an answer.
"Can you move your limbs whatsoever?" the man asked. His captive attempted to futilely move at least his fingers only to shake his head again.
"And lastly, can you understand my words?" that earned him an immediate nod.
"The truth ward is calibrated," the woman nodded, looking at some sort of screened terminal attached to the wall next to the cell on which she had been tapping during the short conversation, "Accuracy estimate 5.5, so a massive overkill for the kid."
"Alright, young man. I am going to ask you serious questions now," the researcher said after a nod and the woman tapped on the terminal again, "Keep your vocal answers as brief as possible for the both of us, please. First of all: What is your name?"
"I…," although his voice finally came out, that simple question caught him surprisingly unable to answer. When his mind entered that train of thought there was no turning back. He desperately searched for his memories, trying to recall anything at all only to return with nothing, "I don't know. I can't recall anything."
"Complete amnesia is not uncommon when exposed to large quantities of abyssal mana," the woman commented as she moved over to a nearby laptop and made a quick note, "On the other hand, it's a miracle he had avoided the suicidal insanity that the scientific community had long considered inevitable in association."
"In more pleasant words," the man coughed, "It's a miracle as well as a pleasant surprise that you are even sane."
"What happened to me?" the prisoner asked next.
"We are not sure either," the man shook his head, not minding that his captive took the questioning initiative. There were very few things one could ask someone with complete amnesia after all "We had not intended for a human to arrive from the other side."
"Then can you let me go?" he asked, already sickened by his immobile limbs and the strange dimness of the cell. The feeling of being completely at someone’s mercy, unable to even move was discomforting to say the least.
"Of course not!" the woman half laughed, half exclaimed, "A human that hasn't gone insane in the Abyss! You do not begin to comprehend what that implies!"
"Therefore we cannot let you go," the man nodded slightly in agreement as his eyes flickered with a hint of excitement, though he did not let his emotions show as much.
"Not until we find out exactly what makes you so special," the woman added to the sentence before pausing, "We should choose a name for you, since you don’t remember your own."
"He is going to lead us down a new path where we know nothing for certain," the man spoke, "How about Null?"
"Null…" the woman repeated, "It implies the nothing we currently know as well as the beginning of the long path ahead of that nothing. As well as patient zero. I like it.”
“It’s settled then,” the man nodded with satisfaction, deciding on their own without the boy's input, “Rebecca, put him to sleep and follow me upstairs. We need to formulate what of our research can be salvaged," the man said and quickly left the room through the door at the end of the laboratory.
"Rest," the woman looked at Null through the bars, returning to the cell terminal and tapping a few times, "There is a long day in front of us both," as her words sounded, a strange sweet smell entered Null's nostrils as his mind began to quickly succumb, his eyes closing from sudden drowsiness in just a few minutes. Though apparently that was not as fast as Rebecca had expected because a few more of her words entered his ears before his consciousness faded.
"I would like to order your best eggs… Brood parasites… Hatchling 5-3-19 to the Cuckoo. I need to report a situation completely beyond my expectations…"
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When Null awoke next he felt a sting in his arm. Opening his eyes he attempted to twitch away, however, his limbs were still completely paralysed.
"Good morning," Rebecca greeted him, her squinting eye almost terrifying from so up close. She was crouching just beside the bars, drawing blood from Null's wrist with a large syringe.
"How are you feeling?" she asked, sounding almost concerned unlike her rather insensitive behaviour before Null fell asleep, though even that was mostly undermined by the large needle as well as the fact that she was holding Null captive.
"Dizzy," he replied, indeed feeling a bit light-headed.
"Did I overdo it?" Rebecca looked at the nearly full syringe and carefully pulled it out, covering the wound with a disinfected piece of cotton and a bit of sticking plaster.
"What will happen to me now?" Null asked as Rebecca stood up straight, tapped twice on the terminal and walked deeper into the laboratory.
"We will get you into better accommodations in a few days at the latest," Rebecca said, squeezing samples of the blood into individual marked vials, "I first need to finish these tests. The preliminary magical examination told us you were human but we must be certain before moving you. You are the first of your kind after all."
"I have no idea what that even means," Null sighed, feeling utterly powerless, confused and at the back of his mind even terrified.
"What we were trying to summon into that cell was not you," the woman shook her head, "Rather, it was not supposed to be human in the first place."
"Then what were you searching for?" Null followed up. Perhaps understanding would allow him to feel a bit better.
"Are you familiar with what the Abyss is?" Rebecca asked, once again looking directly at him.
"It feels like I have heard about it but I cannot recall," Null sighed, unable to even shake his head anymore.
"It's something like another universe or dimension, closely intertwined with ours and mutually accessible from any place as long as one knows how to open the doorway between them," Rebecca explained, "However, there is a major difference. The Abyss is filled to the brim with what we call abyssal mana, a fantastical power many deeply desire to tame and control."
"So I am someone from another universe?" Null asked next.
"Not quite," Rebecca shook her head, returning part of her attention to the vials of blood while preparing some sort of solution on the side, "Unfortunately that abyssal power seems to be mutually exclusive with sapient life. Using it leads to a rapid descent into madness. Even the most powerful mages cannot manage more than a bleak amount and stepping over to the other side had always been considered a death sentence. Until you passed through there alive and mostly sane, that is."
"Then what were you attempting to catch in here? There is no point in the bars if the captive can't even move…" Null asked after futilely trying to process what he was just told for a few seconds.
"An abyssal fiend," the woman poured a drop of the prepared solution into one of the vials. She then took the blood vial and poured its contents into a strange cylindrical device to her left, "The closest thing to a living being that one can find within the Abyss. There are many kinds and most of them exist only for their mindless and ravenous pursuit of devouring all and any magic they can find, be it inside a gemstone cluster or a living being. That is also the reason why the wards binding you are so potent: They were created specifically to contain something which literally lives to feed on magic."
"Then can it even be disabled?!" that revelation was not reassuring.
"Of course," Rebecca smiled, "There is a backdoor, though only I can use it. Either way, you shouldn't get any ideas. Even if you were to escape, the…" suddenly she was interrupted by a beeping sound coming from the device she had previously poured the blood into.
"Less than minute?" she glanced over with a frown, "I thought it was state of the art yet the damn thing broke in a month," she replaced her frown with a defeated sigh quickly, quietly thanking that she at least wasn't paying for the expensive equipment from her own pocket.
"What is that thing for?" considering he couldn't even move, Null had nothing else to do but ask questions and try to ignore the sudden twitch on his wrist.
"The machine itself is just supposed to accelerate chemical reactions involving a small degree of magical influence," Rebecca once again took the solution from earlier into her hand and poured a drop into 3 different blood samples, this time leaving them where they were, "What really matters is this mixture. Its original purpose is to estimate whether one's magical nature lies with chaos or order, though one of the side effects is that it can very reliably ascertain whether blood is truly human as it will only react with human blood for reasons science has yet to understand."
"Is it supposed to take long?" Null derived from her previous comments that one minute was certainly not the expected duration.
"Of course," Rebecca looked back at him, "The speed implies how one-sidedly the dormant magic within your body leans. For example, as someone in the middle it took hours before the concoction began to evaporate from my blood without even changing the colour. The fastest I have heard of was about 5 minutes even with the machine and that was already an extreme case."
"So one minute is impossible," Null concluded.
"Yes… unless…" Rebecca quickly turned towards the device, her expression revealing she was clearly thinking about something, "It would certainly help explain how you managed to survive within the Abyss. Perhaps you weren't saved by what you were but by what you became," she pressed a few buttons and the machine opened, immediately releasing a puff of ebony smoke. Without delay she carefully removed the small liquid container and poured its contents into an empty test tube. What had previously been a bit of blood was now as black as tar and about as fluid, moreover, black vapour was steadily rising from it.
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“This is the first step,” Rebecca smiled widely, “Dante is going to be overjoyed.”
“Not quite,” a yelp came from behind the doorway, revealing the male researcher the next moment, sweating and out of breath, “We are under attack!”
“What?” Rebecca looked at him, temporarily stupefied, “Like, a frontal assault?!” she asked and the researcher nodded, “We are right beneath a warehouse and its barely dusk. Are you sure we are even the target?”
“Mage killer bullets,” he grunted, “Shredded right through the outer wards. I only saw something black flash in the corner of my sight before I shut the blast door behind me but it might not hold them for long."
"It has to be Azure's men," Rebecca frowned, "We need to go now and leave everything behind."
"We have to take the boy with us!" the professor exclaimed.
"There is no time to disable the wards!" Rebecca implored, "Azure would be after our research. I had fled from him before on the Western Islands 5 years back; they won't pursue if we let them have what he wants."
"Then leave everything but take the boy with us," professor insisted, "He is the founding stone of our new pursuit!"
"Please," Rebecca seemed almost desperate add she begged him, "Leave him behind. There is no time."
"Unthinkable!" he still refused.
"I see," Rebecca suddenly appeared a bit sad, "Fine, I will prepare the escape route, you disable the wards. But hurry."
"I will be right behind you," Dante nodded and turned around towards the cell, quickly tipping something on the terminal. Rebecca, however, did not leave. Instead, she picked up a pen from a nearby table and snuck up on her colleague. By the time Null realised what was happening, blood sprayed on the bars, instantly evaporating with a sizzle without even a drop passing through.
The pen glowed with blue hue as Rebecca pulled it back out of Dante's neck. He tried to speak, though no voice came out, only his lips mimicked the word why, before he collapsed to the ground. Rebecca's visage revealed a hint of sadness as her eyes teared up.
"You were always such a naive fool," she sighed as her eyes teared up, droplets of blood staining her face and clothes, "I am sorry it had to end up like this but what Azure would've done to you is far worse," she then turned towards Null and walked over to the bars, speaking with a meekness different from her previous self-confidence "My involuntary master had decided to pick you up," she stepped around the professor's corpse and tapped on the display a few times probably intending to check what Dante had managed to do, "I can only wish that you will be treated better than me, though, I will have to keep you bound until his people arrive," she did not quite have the time to say anything else before steps sounded in the hallway leading to the lab. That made Rebecca turn away before she even finished reading through the terminal.
The door was kicked open and 3 figures rushed in. Their modern automatic rifles were at stark contrast with their almost medieval ornamental robes depicting an old-fashioned wooden wheel with a badly disfigured silhouette strapped onto it, like it was some sort of a crest. Their metallic masks hiding all facial features made them look only stranger. Rebeccas face shifted between confusion, horror and contemplation in the moments before 3 got her at gunpoint. Apparently they were not who she had been expecting.
“Messiah be blessed!” Rebecca exclaimed as joyously as she could after a moment of silence, “You are executioners from the Syndicate! I am saved!”
“What happened here?” one of the man took the leading position as asked, looking down at the dead scientist.
“I am a firm believer in the Messiah but I was captured by that sinner and experimented on!” Rebecca tried to seem outraged, terrified and joyous at the same time. Her still teary eyes from before definitely aligned with that impression “He had tried to silence us when he heard your righteous approach but I manage to ambush and kill him just before the esteemed executioners arrived. I have been here for a long time and I know his passwords, let me show you,” she blurted everything out as fast as she could while still being clear. That caught the trio off guard enough that they allowed her to write something on the terminal for two or three seconds.
“Stop and step away!” the supposed leader of the executioners finally recovered from his initial haze and coldly commanded. Rebecca did not try to bluff any further and took a quick step back while raising her hands above her head, her face a mix of wanting to curse and even fear, “Doesn’t she seem strangely familiar to you?”
“You are right, I have definitely seen her before,” one of the others replied while the last gunman remained silent.
“Of course she would be.” the man exclaimed, his tone turning joyous “She is, Messiah forgive me for speaking her name, Rebecca Olivia, the witch of thousand bloods. One of the 50 great sinners!”
“It has been decades since a great sinner was captured alive!” the other man exclaimed, “The listener is going to regret not supporting the three of us in this inquisition!”
“They stopped calling us witches since before my grandmother was born,” Rebecca scoffed as her visage adapted to a deep frown, finding respite from her fear in allowing her frustration to surface, “And who the hell came up with the title ‘of thousand bloods’, the middle ages ended centuries ago but I guess your mess of an organisation never moved on.”
“How dare you!” the leader yelled, “We are the Messiah’s hand of justice, the..”
“You used to be a hand,” Rebecca interrupted, “Now you are just a single knuckle and a bit of fleshless bone that is left from that hand.“
“You dare insult the Messiah?!” the third man who had been quiet until exclaimed with fury, his hands shaking. He appeared about to shoot.
“Don’t!” the first man stopped him, “She knows she cannot escape so she wants us to kill her quickly but a great sinner deserves no such merciful fate.”
While this went on, Null quietly listened from within his cell, not daring to speak though something interesting caught his sight: The four samples of his blood which Rebecca had mixed with the concoction. While the black vapour coming from the three mixed later on was still not large in quantity, the first sample which Rebecca had taken out of the accelerating machine was smoking furiously, almost like a factory chimney on a busy day. It was only because the situation was so tense that no one seemed to notice the black mass rising at the edge of their sight.
“How did a pack of zealot vigilantes like you even find this place?” Rebecca continued but cold sweat clearly ran down her face, “Ever since your High pontificate was raided and destroyed by the 8 Houses a century ago the Syndicate shouldn’t have the resources nor manpower to find this place, much less do so without me finding out in time to flee.”
“Fine, I will humour you so that you can tremble before our genius,” the first man said with pride bordering on arrogance, “We had been tapping the phone relays around the city and found your call from 2am today. After just a few moments asking for eggs the call suddenly switched to a secure line. Since someone would use such code words, they are obviously hiding a sin."
“WHAT?!” Rebecca seemed to have almost forgotten her previous fear as she yelled, “That call was half a day ago, just tracing that signal would take you most of that time. You couldn’t have possibly scouted what was going on in that time!”
“I need not know what evil the Messiah desires me to smite,” the man huffed.
“This is insane! Absolutely idiotic. It could’ve been a corporate research facility, a government agency black site or even worse: A mage Safehouse,” Rebecca was overcome by frustration over the sheer stupidity of what she had just heard, “You would have been torn to pieces and those pieces into smaller pieces. Bloody hell, I could’ve killed you with the traps in the corridor leading here had I not been expecting the actual recipient of that call.”
“Perhaps that could’ve happened to a non-believer like you,” the man scoffed, “But we are guided by the Messiah. If he wills us to die, then so be it.”
“Just the kind of attitude that turned the Syndicate from a power to be reckoned with to into a fucking joke,” Rebecca retorted again still furious, “With such absence of logic it's no wonder you got decimated by the mage Houses.”
“Despite your insults, the Messiah still brought you into our hands,” the man looked at her, probably smiling smugly beneath his metal mask, “I will approach her to inject mana suppressants, aim for her feet and…” his speech was suddenly interrupted as water burst from the sprinklers on the ceiling. The four samples of Null’s blood were all furiously spitting out their black smoke for a while and it finally triggered the equivalent of a fire alarm. Whether she had planned for it or not, Rebecca did not hesitate for a single moment as she dashed away.
“Don’t let her escape!” the first man was the fastest to recover and immediately opened fire. In the sound of bullets and falling water, a female grunt sounded as Rebecca was hit, though despite that her steps did not cease, “After her!” the leader immediately shouted and the other two also sprinted off.
“Another vault door,” by the time they returned the sprinklers ceased, “And she didn’t forget to lock it this time. Also, we found another room upstairs.”
“It’s fine,” the main person didn’t seem overly worried, “Can you smell that in the water and fog? Those are potent mana suppressants and they got into her bloodstream. She won’t be able to get far without her magic. We should quickly wrap this up and hunt her down.”
“What about the boy,” someone finally noticed Null.
“Please, help me,” Null immediately pleaded, still unable to move but full of hope. The people in front of him appeared to condemn mages in general which likely included human experimentation, “I was just a guinea pig to them. I don’t even know how long I have been held here!”
“What is your name?” the three men surrounded the bars, looking down at Null inquisitively.
“Null,” he quickly answered but their looks clearly implied that was not enough, “Dante Null,” he quickly added. Being at someone’s complete mercy for any period of time was stressful enough that the only first name that came to mind in that moment was that of the researcher lying dead beside the cell.
“This is your blood, isn’t it?” the leader stepped away and approached the tubes. The tar-like substances in 4 of them had stopped smoking after the sprinklers went off, though that ebony vapour was once again beginning to rise from them. Instead of focusing on them the Syndicate gunman picked up the mixture Rebecca had previously mixed with Dante’s blood.
“Rumi’s concoction,” he stated grimly after smelling it, “And your blood has turned into this because of it, didn't it? Something so incredibly chaotic must be inherently evil,” he was firm in that statement and Dante felt strength leave his already immobile limbs, “Go bring that thing, I will wrap this up,” he commanded his companions and stepped back towards the cell. While the other two left the room with a nod, the leader took the riffle into both his hands and took aim from just behind the bars.
“Please don’t do this,” fear surged through Null, his heart beating faster and sweat appearing in exponentially larger quantities. But more than afraid, he felt powerless. From the moment he woke up in that cell, his fate was not his own, yet there was nothing he could do. He despised his utter lack of control, the inability to do anything.
“I cannot allow evil to freely tread the land. We have seen many deamons like you, so your pleas won’t deceive me. May the Messiah judge you mercifully for your sins,” the man only shook his head, not even a hint of grief or hesitation in his voice. Dante could close his eyes but that rage at himself won out as he clung to that little bit of himself he could still command. With defiance and hate, he stared down the muzzle, his vision shaking and increasingly powerful chill creeping up his spine.
The gunpowder ignited and the bullet left the barrel, too fast to see. Yet in the face of Dante’s defiance it stopped, or rather, in front of the cell’s barrier. Ripples were sent in all directions as the bullet was caught by the jelly-like barrier just beyond the bars. For a moment the thin layer gained pinkish colour as it held the bullet for just a moment before it sizzled and melted. The small molten blob was then ejected by the barrier back at the Syndicate executioner. The small amount solidified in the flight and what hit him was only the foul smell and lead shrapnel which lacked the kinetic energy to do any actual damage.
“It can even block sanctified bullets?” the man probably raised an eyebrow beneath the mask as he took a few moments to think, “It would be a shame to waste something so precious. You will be allowed to live a bit longer but don’t foul the air with your voice unless I change my mind,” he turned around and seemingly waited for something. It did not take long for his companion’s to return, each carrying a relatively large crate.
“Arthur, you let him live?” one of the two immediately sounded doubtful when he noticed Dante was still alive.
“There is no point in wasting ammunition on the likes of him,” the leader shook his head, “He is going to die either way. Plant those quickly and make sure nothing from this place can ever be recovered. I will go ahead and try to get on the sinner’s track.”
Dante almost sighed in relief as the man left the room, only to widen his eyes in horror as the other to started to take out blocks after blocks of marked plastic explosives from one of the crates, “I will take the room upstairs and the backdoor hallway, you take the rest,” one of them decided after the first crate was empty while the other only nodded and started sticking them to the walls.
“Please stop,” Dante attempted to plead one last time, “I have done nothing to deserve this.”
“Shut up,” the man did not even look away from his work. The way he was placing the explosives was completely haphazard without any sort of plan or efficiency in mind, though the amount was such that there would be nothing left of the room either way. Dante gave up on speaking as the man repeatedly left his vision with the explosives and entered it again without. As this went on, Dante felt himself lose hope. Such a gradual encroach of death was far worse than when the muzzle was aimed at him. Staying brave for moments was far easier than maintaining that remnant of zest for minutes. So he just laid there, still unable to move and no longer hopeful enough to speak.
“I will set it to 40 minutes so that we don’t accidentally cover the witch’s trail,” eventually the other person arrived with a stack of cables in his hand and the two gradually connected everything to what was apparently a countdown detonator, “Let’s go. Arthur must already be waiting for us.”
And so they were gone, not even looking back as they left the boy for dead. And the room was swallowed by silence, unbecoming of the impending doom. Once again, that feeling of powerlessness swallowed Null, fighting with the fear. That hate for being unable to do anything at all to avoid his own death. And from it came resolve, deep-rooted desire to keep on living. To rip control from others and to become the one who dictates rather than listens.
With all his will, he tried to move to no avail. So he tried again and again, failing each time. Yet he refused to give up and desperately pushed, again and again, powered by sheer fury at his powerlessness. He was on the brink of losing all hope when suddenly, his fingers finally twitched...