Chapter 1
Star
Lilly shot awake gripping at her chest. The same nightmare night after night. With deep heavy breaths, she let herself gain composure. After a moment she would calm down and take a few more breaths, getting up off her bed with a loud screech from the old springs. Looking to the full-length mirror across from her, she caught glace of her tattered blonde hair and old patients gown across her body. Quickly turning away from the sight of herself she walked further across the room, feeling the cold stone against her feet.
She wrapped her fingers around thick iron bars. A cell. Lilly was in a cell deep underground, and she’s been there for a long, long time. She hung her head low, apart from her wishes each day she’d awake to a different room, a new scenery. Even the room in her nightmare looked better than the one she awoke to. This was the real nightmare.
The sound of a large door opened and slammed shut down the hall. Her eyes moved in that direction. The clack of shoes against the stone approached closer and closer. Before a man with round glasses, and messy brown hair came into view. He wore a lab coat and had a clipboard in his arms. Looking to Lilly he gave a forced smile.
“Miss Lilly! Good morning.”
Lilly scoffed, she couldn’t stand the cheerful tone. Backing off the bars she retracted further into her cell.
“Nothing good about this morning, John.”
The man named, John, tapped a pen against a clipboard. He was Lilly’s “doctor” the one who looked after her in this place she was held in.
“I… I have news.” He said speaking up with a stutter behind his words.
Lilly looked at him again, walking back up to the bars and wrapping a hand around one.
“News?”
John nodded and flipped through pages, he looked like he was about to start reading off lines from whatever documents he had on hand.
“To the Goverment issued Laboratory of Defense Against Hell in America or the LODAHIA. We have information inquiring-”
Lilly was getting frustrated already, she needed him to stop.
“Enough, enough! Just give me the gist of what this news is, not the whole damn telegram you got from wherever.”
John adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat, dropping the clipboard down to his side.
“Lilly. The general of the US Army is on his way as we speak. He wants our “weapon” on the front lines. Effective immediately.”
“You mean me,” Lilly said quickly.
“Fire with fire, demoness,” John replied.
Lilly dropped her hands from the bars again. Stepping away and letting herself take in the information.
“You have been here for a long time Lilly, starting as just a demon we found out in a field, to becoming our only shining hope to save the human race. From your own kind.”
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Lilly wasn’t listening to whatever his rant was about. The words escaping his lips being drowned out by her own thoughts. Though what he was saying was true. She’d been there for a long time, not even remembering where she was before this place. She was Project Star, the first live proof of demons. That is before the gates of hell opened in the year 5049 and leveled all of civilization on the planet. The world is in chaos, and the USA wants to use her as a means to stop it.
With one problem.
“I still have no magical energy.”
She said looking back at John.
“They’ll have me executed.”
John didn’t have a response to her words, what could he say anyway? He knew she was right, humanity hated demons at the current moment, it's been six years since the gates opened, and war has been raging on outside the lab that whole time. The belief is that they want the earth for themselves, but no one truly knows.
“Maybe, if we can just show that you have enough use for the army with your physical ability and heightened strength and sense they may just let you live. Find a use for you, and you can try and escape as we have talked about for you many times before.”
Lilly kicked against the floor with her bare feet. John has always been by her side, but he’s the only one in the place who had the means to be close to her, and see that she wasn’t a true monster.
“You're right, what should we do in the meantime while we wait? How long do we even have?”
John shook his head. “Not long, we can go to your “Training room” and try to think of something to show to the general that will give your basic ability a grand enough performance.”
Lilly nodded, within the next moment John was unlocking her cell, and the bars once blocking her path were gone. She walked out of the cell looked at him and walked with him down the hall, as they made their way to the door that had opened and shut so loudly earlier. A large metal door, that looked like it was a struggle for John to open. Used clearly to keep a demon in the basement.
Up the stairs, they went, the cold stone against her feet before another door opened to the main lab, with doctors in lab coats just sitting around. You’d think things would be more active than they once were. When Lilly first came here computers and people were running, tests being done from her own blood, etc. Though now, with the war, all the technology is gone. Not gone, the better word being, unusable. Now there were tired eyes and glum looks from men and women sitting in spinning chairs, looking to an elevator across the way that entered into the lab from above.
John grabbed Lilly’s arm and softly pulled her along in the direction of the training room mentioned before, which was down another long hallway. Though, just before they made it to the hall, they were stopped by a man standing in front of them. Blue hair and yellow eyes stared past John and burned into Lilly’s.
“Good doctor, you’ve brought the Project out of her cell to introduce her to the General directly! What a marvelous idea!”
John looked up at the man who stopped them. He was around six foot two, causing John to strain his neck being quite shorter, even shorter than Lilly.
“Her name’s Lilly and we were going to”
“Nonsense, the demons don’t have names, and our tamed demon is just the same, now step aside, he should be here any minute.”
The man pushed past John and put his hands on Lilly’s shoulders, guiding her to stand in front of the elevator in the main room now. Lilly gave a low growl in response to his hands on her, the man was Zayden, the head of the lab. He was the one who pulled all the strings, and the man who found her when he was out on a stroll taking a day off of work.
“Zayden, I don’t think it's a good idea to have her meet him head-on, I mean it's a lot of pressure!”
Zayden wasn’t listening and he cut John off again.
“Good doctor, your presence isn’t required here until he asks about Lilly’s tests and such. Now we must simply wait.”
His grip on her shoulders tightened, and Lilly looked to the elevator. Powered by a magical core, the only thing keeping this place’s lights running. Though it couldn’t get the complicated technology up and running again. Seems magic has its limitations with that. Lilly’s eyes locked on the numbers at the top of the elevator, that would illuminate when someone got in.
Long pause of silence, no one spoke or moved, the anticipation building and building. Before the light to floor one lit up, her heart ached. It squeezed inside her like it was going to fall and break in her chest. She felt hopeless. In this moment she felt so utterly lost.
The light faded from the number 1 and then illuminated the letter G. The ground floor, the entrance to the lab. Where she was standing... With a loud DING! The doors then slowly opened. Lilly gave a sharp inhale and prepared herself for whoever was inside. Prepared for this day to possibly be her last.