Andy peered through the torn steel gaps of the ruined elevator enclosure. A black smokescreen pooled in the shaft. Andy backed up, holding Julie at his side, waiting for the aberration to show itself. Something wriggled out of the dark, poking through a tear in the steel and grasped the walkway. Andy aimed Julie, but a peculiarity stayed Andy’s hand. A face looked up at him at the top of the obtuse limb, like a fat demonic slug. Its jaw was stretched and fused into its obese neck, teeth jutting like crooked thangs. Its eyes were wide open, pointed in opposite directions, the red flesh of their sockets exposed and stretched over its face. Slowly, its veiny pupils swam around to focus on Andy’s face, regarding him with an agonised, imprisoned expression. Its throat gargled as its tongue drooped out of its mouth. “Kill… me…”

“Obliged.” Andy shot the face point blank with a Vortex Shot. It exploded in chunks of flesh, but more limbs replaced it, dragging a bulbous body behind them like a tick. Andy fired again and again, like shooting into a mudslide, a swathe of explosive force which destroyed the elevator enclosure. With Julie’s final bullet, Andy braced himself, summoning all of his remaining power. “Come on baby,” he murmured, as Julie rattled in his hands. The fire of a Vortex Cannon raged inside him until he couldn’t take it any longer, and he pulled the trigger, releasing the pressure, annihilating the gore-beast with one shot.

An upright trunk with three arms for fingers collapsed with a wet thud as the devastated carcass slid back down the elevator’s shaft, leaving behind a splatter of gore and severed limbs. His and Julie’s power was ecstatic, releasing a knot in Andy’s chest. He rubbed Julie’s polished-wood handle with his thumb, but the apology wouldn’t come. Later, he told himself. Andy reloaded her cylinder delicately, savouring the sensation of filling her up, while all around him, the vault dwellers panicked and fretted. The shaft was fully exposed now. No barricade, just a hole in the ground, and darkness below.

“It’s the devil!”

“Help us!”

“What is it?”

“Was that the Honcho’s face?”

“We’re doomed!”

“Help us!”

“Are those our…”

“That was the Honcho’s face.”

“What has it done to him?”

“Are they…?”

“The others?”

“Is that what it has done to them?”

“Why won’t it die?”

“Fires,” Clara shouted. “Light the fires. Arm yourselves. It’s coming.”

Out of the elevator shaft rose an impeccable darkness. A blight on reality. It billowed like a mushroom cloud, spreading to the cave’s roof in an instant. Lightning shot past Andy’s face, burning a hole into the black sky, bubbling through its surface like a white hot ball of lead dropped into a freezing lake. The shadow shuddered and shrank as the vaulties focussed their flashlights on it, plunging the white beams beneath its surface, while shock rifles crackled overhead. The combined glare stung Andy’s eyes. Shielding his face, he held Julie at his hip, ready to intercept with a Vortex Shot, for what little good it would do against the apparition.

Blue-cap jammed his shock rifle into the mouth of the elevator shaft and pulled the trigger. The shockwave severed the shadow’s seeping tail. Other vaulties joined him, cutting off the looming darkness above them from its main body, deep underground. For a moment, the shadow entity shrank back into the recesses of the cave, clinging to the walls, wreathed in burning in light. Clara’s golden thunderbolts shattering over the cave walls like a catastrophic storm. For a moment, Andy thought they might kill it. Perhaps its form was finite. If they could seep it out of the vault like leaking a car tire, they could burn it out, repel it over and over again. They might survive.

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Clara fell to her knees, the golden glow in her fists diminishing. Andy ran to her aid, but she hadn’t been hit. She was just exhausted. The light around them dimmed as flashlights shattered, and one by one, the lights went out.

Like the drawing of a curtain, the shadow swept across the walls of the cave. It swooped down upon the civilians huddled on the walkway steps like a sudden shower of rain. People screamed and cried, banging on the vault door, clawing at the walls, echoing endlessly, drowning Andy in the din of carnage.

Andy focussed on the elevator shaft. Spears of black, unnaturally polygonal, stabbed at the shields of the militia. One pierced through the gaps and cut down a man, stretching out and pinning him to the walkway. He writhed in pain as his comrades severed the spear with zaps from their tasers. But it was too late for their comrade. Clara staggered to their aid, thrusting her hands forward, fingertips extended, firing bursts of blue electricity. Andy followed her, firing Vortex Shots into the dark, pushing back the demon, buying them a few seconds. The vaulties broke and retreated to the steps while Clara remained on the walkway. Around them others had managed to light fires from piles of gathered materials, but they did little to hold back the black tide.

Spears struck from the dark. Andy’s Reflex Shot triggered, and he blasted at anything incoming, counting his bullets, swiftly reloading when he got the chance. Suddenly, with a gust of wind, the fires went out. The vault dwellers shrieked and fled, jumping over the walkway onto the uneven rock, slipping and falling over one another. The sounds and smells of mayhem inundated him. His mouth watered and his heart raced. Andy’s thoughts receded to urge, and he clung to Clara’s jacket not to drown. She grabbed his wrist, guiding him in the dark, the warm glow in her palm tempering his heartbeat.

Clouds descended on them. Andy opened fire, but it was like pushing against a wave. A dagger struck Clara in the dark. Her thunderbolt fizzed and discharged. She fell at Andy’s feet, clutching her head. The smell of blood bit Andy’s nostrils. His sister. His blood, whom he was supposed to protect, had been spilled. Desecrated. A grenade went off in his gutt. Andy hadn’t remembered his capacity for suffering until he saw Clara cut down. Beneath the surface, deep underground, locked inside a concrete box was an apocalyptic grief, like the fusion core of an atomic bomb, barely contained with its lead shell. The fuse was lit. His sister screamed–the sound, a potent memory, etched into the grooves of his brain–turned real, conjuring a cruel spirit on the world. Crueler by many magnitudes than the demon engulfing them.

Hatred annihilated him. His rage was inferno, and within its purifying flames, bliss. Andy bore into the black veil’s throat as it latched onto him with ripping scythes. Dogs with locked jaws, twisting and tearing, seized in death’s throws, beyond pain and feeling, just kill, kill, kill.

Blue lightning crackled across his vision, consumed by the black. Clara’s voice in the dark. A soft hand on his shoulder, then a stabbing pain in his chest. Andy gritted his teeth and ragged his head like a wolf tearing chunks of meat from its prey. The shadow tasted like ice in his throat–stinging his teeth. He choked–beyond breath now–only death. His blood mingled with the shadow as the two clawed and coiled. The end was near, yet Andy dove for the exit. His boundless pain would remain until the last drop of blood fled his veins, and mercifully, he would be laid to rest.

Bright light stung his face like a bucket of bleach thrown over his head. The body of his prey evaporated beneath him. Andy toppled to the floor, empty. There was a deep crack, as though the cave had split in two. Andy looked around for the source of the sound. He tried to push himself up but was too weak. The walkway was cold against his ace. His consciousness bled away as an impossible light washed over him. Panting, he struggled to his knees, scanning for danger, but a fierce light burned everything away.

He turned to face Clara, expecting her to have risen into some sort of angelic being, casting the demon back to hell. But she was lying at the bottom of the steps, clutching her wounds, a mere candlelight of energy in her fists.

An impossible draft swept through the chamber, billowing fresh air with the growing light. From atop the walkway, the vault door slid open on its treads. A figure stood silhouetted in the daylight. He wore shorts, holding a biker’s helmet under his arm and an ornate cavalry sword. The man strode forward, arms outstretched like a saint addressing his devotees. “Erm… Hello everyone.” He waved. “Hello. My name’s Gabriel. You’re safe. Come on then.”

The vaulties clustered around the exit cheered and gasped with relief, swaying towards the light. Before him, Clara raised her head numbly, tired jaw hanging open. “You came.” Despite exhaustion, her voice was astounded.

“Did you ever have a shadow of doubt that I wouldn’t rescue you?”

Andy crawled over to his sister and lay beside her, surrendering to exhaustion, nodding to himself. “That’s a fine pun, sir.” He closed his eyes. “Well done.”