After a moment of silence, León's voice came back online.

"I'm not at liberty to speak at the moment. We're a little preoccupied."

Shit. Tasìa did not like the sound of that.

"Should I still meet up with you in the tower?"

"Negative," León said, his voice sternly concerned. "Stick to the maintenance corridors; you'll find a few useful options to squeeze yourself out of this complex if you look hard enough. I have to go. Stay safe, my friend."

"You too."

He ended the call.

He sounded nervous. Did he need her help, but was too proud to ask? No, there was something going on for which he wished for her to stay clear.

Tasìa had hoped to ask him, in turn, to bomb the cellar with gas to prepare for her entrance, but he had nixed that option.

She was beginning to worry about him.

I can't stay put, and I can't help him by staying here.

Tasìa swiveled around and folded her legs beneath her. The first eight feet of the duct was flat-surfaced before it descended down at a forty-five-degree angle.

The path forward reached another set of ducts that were smoothly rounded in shape.

From both directions, in front and behind her, at this level she heard the harmony of a lovely choral. It reminded her of, in equal parts, Handel's Messiah and the Islamic call to prayer at the mosque in Rossara.

Tasìa crawled forward. The duct she realized circled beneath the double glass domes. Thirty feet ahead another duct opened up to her right.

The volume of the music swelled as she approached. Natural light bled along this secondary duct's surface.

It merely traveled three feet before it opened up to a double-set grill forty-eight feet above the SIU's main atrium floor.

Tasìa frowned. The type of grill-set was one that was familiar to her. It was over two hundred pounds of reinforced metal, and it would take more than just emptying a magazine of .357 rounds to force the fasteners loose.

She had no intention of squeezing through it. She only hoped that the double-set grill model was not used to block more advantageous routes.

Down below, gathered on the main floor of the atrium, several guards stood together in a nervous stance as they stared into the cells of the Manifest.

It must have been a first for the guards as well to witness the Manifest sounding like an angelic choir instead of wild harpies.

Which for them is the more frightening?

Tasìa followed the circuit of ducts so she could get a better look at the inmates.

A dark, brooding voice, as if out of the depths of peaceful Oblivion, reverberated through the air and the tin surface of the ducts.

The Disappeared.

Normally, the Shrill of the Banshees was what the personnel called the sound sung by the most segregated and mysterious of the Manifest. This was no shrill yell, this was a Call of Vengeful Valkyrie.

The chorus of the other Manifest inmates called back in response.

She crawled in front of the next vent over. From this vantage point, a cell was visible.

The woman inside it stood naked with her hands up in the air as if to acknowledge and praise something that could not be seen.

She threw kisses into the air, and she swayed up and down on sprightly articulated toes. Her arms and legs were extended, and her neck impossibly long. But she did not appear corrupted, she appeared beautiful.

Her face shined pearlescent but slowly turned the ruby red of ancient Mayan goddesses.

Her hair turned from deep brunette to a golden hue and then back again, all the while Tasìa watched.

Tasìa backed away from the grill by a few feet, so no guards would accidentally catch sight of her. She needed to study the layout of the ductwork.

On this side of the SIU, she had no idea how they connected to the ducts on the opposite end to which Tasìa had grown so familiar.

Tasìa opened Heloïste's mobile PA. Unfortunately, she had spent almost no time studying it. Events got well beyond her control.

On the homepage, an icon for a file read - 'ready for encryption'. The file had not been there merely a few hours earlier. Tasìa would have definitely noticed it when she double-checked to make sure that the device had not been tampered with.

Tasìa pressed on the screen to pull a list of options. She clicked on the console mode – entered a series of commands that allowed her to examine the metadata.

It told the story of what Tasìa suspected, Heloïste did something very common in her line of work.

She created a dead-man's switch. If anything happened to her, her secrets would not go to the grave as well. Indeed, the file had been posted several times in secured cloud servers throughout the world.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The file consisted of a video clip that read 'For Andujar' attached to a large set of zipped folders cachéd together.

Tasìa ran the video file.

Demona Heloïste sat at her desk. Burgundy blouse, brown jacket. Her thick and coarse brown hair carefully coiffed, and held back with pins half-hidden above her ears.

Her face was animated with a smile. She appeared to be in her mid-forties. Dark brown tone lips, contrasted with the light caramel of her skin. Her eyes appeared dark as well.

The only bio Tasìa had discovered on Heloïste said she was born in Morocco. Father Belgium, mother a native Arab.

She was handsome in a way that verged on beautiful, but not quite so, for her motions were too purposeful to be any fitting object for figurative study.

There was nothing artful in the fitful way she moved her hands, jerked her head, and tensed her neck.

Heloïste began to speak.

"Andujar, my dearest friend. I often get word from our mutual acquaintances that you have been asking about me.

"You are never far from my thoughts. But it frustrates you greatly that I never adequately explained why I chose the career I have over a life together with you.

"I owed you an explanation years ago, but I was not at liberty to do so. Now I find myself in a peculiar predicament, so it is time I told you the truth.

"If you are watching this, don't waste another second of your life fretting over me, because it will have been too late to do anything about it. This is one of those videos with an eternal goodbye attached to it, my love."

Demona Heloïste studied her hands. Her face bore a churlish smile. She was enrapt in memory. Her eyes peered up, of a sudden.

She blurted out an excited rush of words.

"I could have told you this at any time after we met. That first year of college when we lived together, I often laid there beside you, after we made love with the truth on my lips, ready to say the things that needed to be said, but I never did, for the truth would have made me appear most insane.

"Still, I should have trusted you.

"In the culture I was raised, the child of eurocrats, what I wanted to share with you would have been a career breaker. But in your South America, you accept the existence of ghosts and the creatures of the supernatural like you accept the wind and the rain.

"But, in Brussels, we are a different people than that. We possess some rather stupid presumptions about what underlines the functionality of this world.

"By that standard, I am indeed insane, for I am like sainted Fatima, guided by voices, as it were.

"When I was twelve, I dreamt of Hell. Not the one of fire and brimstone used to scare children into obeying their parents, not the one of demons bearing barbed lashes to frighten entire nations into utter servility.

"No, this was the hell of Lord Lucifer, the light-bringer. A place so beautiful my mortal mind felt pierced to its very essence. It was so overwhelming that I could only comprehend a fraction of what I witnessed.

"I was in the White Palace of the Lightbringer. The structure before my eyes was a thousand shades of alabaster. I would tell you, far from being a place of chaotic malevolence it was absolutely peaceful, but even the Peace of Lucifer's Palace could not be quenched.

"If Hell is the absence of satiation as some Buddhists define it, then it was not peaceful in the least.

"It was like an event horizon where repeating over and over was the moment just before all the pieces in the gestalt of our greater purpose is made complete.

"You see what this dream did, Andujar? It snapped that fuse-breaker in my head. You always knew I was batshit. I could not hide that from you."

Demona laughed.

"So what does this have to do with the choice I made? That I chose the life of an intelligence operative over you? Trust me, I'm getting to that.

"Lucifer approached me as I walked around the halls of his palace's immaculate architecture. I gave him a fetching smile. As handsome as you are, Andujar, Lucifer was ten times more so. Don't be jealous. After all, we are merely pale reflections of our creators.

"He waited patiently for me to speak. When I did, I asked him, what is this place. He answered me, 'my Palace of Lies. Come with me, young Heloïste. I have something to show you.'

"He took me to a library. The shelves lined against rounded walls that seemed to recede into infinity. Volumes were being written before my eyes. Like an endless series of encyclopedias, bound in platinum and white gold.

"Once more, I asked Lord Lucifer, 'what is this?' And he told me, 'all the lies of mankind. Every lie that has ever been spoken by every man who has ever lived.

'They have to be contained so they do not spread corruption to the creatures that know nothing of lies.'

"He asked me to join his cause. And if I sought it with my heart true, I would find it, and I would know what to do to serve his Great Purpose.

"Throughout my youth, I sought for a way to give that dream substance. I joined satanic cults, both officially recognized by the EU, and those that remained hidden.

"Many of them, frankly, disappointed me.

"They seemed to be searching for a darker Lord than I did, for my soul was joined as one with the Lightbringer, not some supernatural sadist.

"Still, I learned much from even those with the worst of intentions. Journeys of the spirit are often like that."

Demona smiled devilish.

"All that time, Andujar. You did not know you slept beside a Satanist. You thought that room in the cellar, I kept for my own purposes only, was for mere meditation of a secular nature.

"No, I practiced my rituals down there. Now, you must have been a little suspicious of my little accomplice, Alabaster. You must recall quite well, my big, white Persian cat with the emerald eyes. Admit it, he scared the hell out of you.

"Remember what you would say? 'if it's Tuesday, that cats going to bring us a gift. Birds, rabbits, squirrels, snakes.'

"How right you were. And you thought it odd, that Alabaster never killed them. Just weakened them for ease of transport.

"He would save that for me to do, as part of our ceremonial sacrifice. That is right. I would sacrifice the gifts he brought. Together, Alabaster and I would consume the Lord's feast."

Demona tilted her head up, her long neck craned, and she laughed, once more. Her fingers fluttered like bird wings.

"You once accused me of hiding Chinese takeout down there to eat while you starved. Nothing encapsulated your ever so quaint naïvite than that remark. I loved you for that. That is also why your's was a world that I could not have. It didn't belong to me.

"At around the same time, through my Satanic connections, I was developing contacts amongst European intelligence agencies. Eventually, I was offered a career, and a chance to build a White Palace of my own.

"So there you have it, Andujar. You now know just how incongruent my internal world was to the life we had together.

I just want you to know, you were a damn good lover, and even a better friend."

A sad little grimace crossed Demona's lips, she hit a button. The video ended.

Tasìa realized then that there were more people below. A commotion was occurring. She crawled forward to peek down again.

There were a dozen guards. Most of whom bore heavy equipment she could not at first identify before she realized it was a set of robotic assemblies.

In the center of the East wing atrium, someone stood.

He yelled out.

"I'll give you this, Tasìa del Alma-Gris, you have a dozen tricks up your sleeve, at the very least that many, but you are not ready for this one. Not by a long shot."

It was the Chief. He didn't sound like his cool, collected self.

He was pissed.