I looked around for a moment, trying gather myself and all of the pieces of me that had been chipped away. Looking down, my body was clean and unscathed. There was no ram’s blood or spider guts on me anywhere, and my stomach was still firm and unstabbed. Running my hands through my hair, I tried to realign myself and make sense of what just happened, but it was hard trying to distinguish what was real and what wasn’t.

“Are you okay?” Madison asked beside me, and I threw my head back to look up at the ceiling, which was tall and white. The room was featureless, and it seemed if I let myself stare at any one place or spot in the room for too long, I might sink back into that nightmare. I couldn’t even feel my heart dropping in my chest. Maybe that was what had spiraled away from me in the madness of that torture. I knew I was still cold. That at least made sense. I was very, very cold, but I was far past the point of shivering. My hands and feet felt like stone to my neck and face, the only things left of me that actually still felt warm.

“I really don’t know,” I finally said, rubbing my hands together. Bringing my hands to my mouth, I breathed on them to try to warm myself up. My voice sounded normal, and I was able to move with ease, but I didn’t feel okay. I glanced back down at the rope and gingerly picked it up. It felt cool in my hands, but it did nothing. Looking closer, I could see the rope was actually some sort of braided, thick black hair. I decided to bring it with me.

“You made it through, okay? That was pretty intense. I don’t think most people could survive something like that. Knowing the monsters you hide, I’m almost surprised you managed to beat them,” Madison said softly, raising a hand to my shoulder.

“Did I actually make it through, though?” I asked listlessly. Something was missing, or maybe it was still gravitating in the orbit of my person, having not found its way back to a place it will fit. Something was definitely missing from me, but I wasn’t in a position to wonder what it was or how to put myself back together.

She sighed and said, “Your guess is as good as mine. It can’t get much harder than that, though, right?”

Shaking my head and taking another deep breath, I sighed. “Don’t say that.”

Looking around again, I asked, “Where am I?”

Shrugging, she said, “Honestly, couldn’t tell you. I don’t think we’re on earth anymore.”

“No? How can you tell?”

“When you’re dead, you get a little more in touch with the world around you, and this doesn’t feel like the world I’m used to,” she answered, her hands snaking up to rub her arms.

“They must have a pretty obscene plan.”

“Do you know what it is?” I asked, walking toward the door.

“Not a clue. I just figured if they kidnapped everyone, it must be pretty obscene.”

“That’s logical, I guess,” I said, opening the door slowly. As soon as I opened the door, Pythius’ voice rang out from I don’t know where. “Are you serious, Belial? Get your shit together!”

Pressing myself to the wall, I walked down a white hall lined with doors similar to mine, except that from the outside, the doors weren’t white, but clear so that you could peer in at whoever was within the room. As I passed each door, I saw various people that I’d never seen before but had a vague connection to. I didn’t linger long enough to get a good look at any of their faces, but there was something vaguely familiar about each of them, as if I’d known them from somewhere, but I had no idea where. They reminded me of faces that I saw in my dreams. Each person was in some different state of terror, depression, rage, or paralysis.

“What is this place?” I whispered to myself as I crept down the hall silently, a vague sense of horror hovering about as I looked at each tortured individual.

“Probably the torture chambers,” Madison said, walking casually beside me. Grimacing, I looked around trying to find something that might lead me somewhere else. I needed to escape, but I also had to find everyone. Despite everything I felt and what I might have done in that room, I at the very least needed to find the others. Deep within my mind, that thought engraved itself into the foundation of my will, and gritting my teeth, I pressed on down the wall, glancing in each door quickly and silently.

Vance, Joana, Esteban, Agatha, Azazel. Vance, Joana, Esteban, Agatha, Azazel. Vance, Joana, Esteban, Agatha, Azazel. Those were the five people I was going to find and leave this place with.

“What do you think happened back there?” I asked Madison quietly, who was still walking leisurely down the hall. She was dead. No one but me could see her. I was almost jealous of the ease she felt, but obviously I couldn’t die. Not yet, at least.

She blew out and said, “I really hate repeating myself but I have no idea what is going on. It probably had something to do with that rope on your wing since the shackles weren’t real. But damn, Ama. You’re a certified stone cold Betty. I don’t think any of us could have faced our demons down like that and still made it out. We knew it was going to get crazy, but I didn’t think it would ever get that crazy. That was a literal nightmare, Ama. We all felt it, what you saw and went through, but not like how you did that was . . . that was terrible. And low, super low.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “they pulled out all the stops with that one, huh. Did I actually kill that ram?”

She shrugged and said, “My bet’s on no. When you came to, you were all clean, so I think it was just a vivid hallucination.”

“God, this feels like a really bad trip,” I muttered. The sound of nails scraping against the ground behind us sounded and carried down the hall. She and I glanced back, and there was a monstrous looking man rounding a corner I hadn’t seen before.

I cursed under my breath and quickly ducked into the nearest room. Inside, there was a man screaming bloody murder, sitting in the corner and rocking back and forth. There was a puddle beneath him. I stayed on the opposite corner, trying to think through his screaming. He hadn’t noticed me coming in. He was  trapped in his own nightmare, and I saw there was a similar black rope around his neck.

“What is going on with that guy?” Madison asked, looking over to him warily.

“I don’t want to know,” I answered under my breath. The door was blank and white inside the room, but I knew if the demon peered its head in, it would see me, so I kept myself pressed to the wall, listening intently.

“Stay here,” Madison said, walking straight through the door. Glancing over at the man, his cries suddenly quieted, and he was staring straight up at something I couldn’t see. His mouth started moving rapidly, and if I listened hard enough, I was certain I would hear him praying. Madison suddenly appeared and she snapped out, “He’s coming this way.”

I cursed again. Panic surged through me as I pushed myself against the wall. There was nothing I could do. There was nowhere for me to hide. I flashed back to all the school drills I’d had in the past. My best option was to hope that he wouldn’t see me hiding against the wall and see if I could escape that way. My hand gripped tighter on the rope, and I realized I was still holding onto the pearl—Pythius’ Truth. I jammed the black piece in to my pocket and waited anxiously for the door to open.

When it did, the demon’s horns poked through first, the tips of them grazing the top of the doorframe as he ducked into the room. The rest of his hulking massive body followed. The demon stood at least a whole two feet above me. He had the lower half of a horse, but the upper body of beefy, muscular man. He reminded me of a minotaur without the whole head of the bull. his back was turned to me, but he definitely had the head of a man. Holding my breath, he walked up to the praying man on the ground, a whip strapped to his waist. His arms looked beefy and were scarred from knuckle to shoulder.

“Move!” Madison hissed at me, her eyes trained on the demon, but I was frozen. He hadn’t noticed me just yet, but he would the longer I stayed, and here I was, still stuck anyway. Somewhere deep inside me, speaking past a wall I didn’t know had been built around me, someone said, “Let me do this,” and then my body was no longer my own as my hands moved to wind the rope around my hands, securing a strong grip. Moving stealthily, I crept up behind the demon and sprung up high, the rope taut between my hands as I wrapped once, then twice around its neck and pulled with all the strength in my body, my wing shooting out briefly to propel us down.

He let out a guttural cry of surprise as my arms pulled tighter at the rope. Instead of falling straight down, he bucked with his demonic strength and slammed me straight back into the wall, and though I lost my breath, my hold did not loosen. My hands and arms pulled the rope tighter around his massive neck, and I could hear him struggling for air. His hands reached up to grab me, but with my legs free, I managed to crouch in a semi-standing position on his back, forcing his body away from me while still pulling taut on the rope. The demon suddenly began bucking in an odd and frantic motion, and my body struggled to keep hold of the rope and my position on his back, but soon, his movements slowed and he eventually fell to his knees and onto the floor. Quickly, I stepped off of his back, and grabbing both of his horns in my hands, I jerked his head violently to the side. A loud crack echoed in the room, and I stood back, breathing hard and fast through my nose.

Madison was standing in the corner, wide-eyed and almost horrified.

“What the hell was that?” she hissed.

Catching my breath, I panted out, “I think it was Azazel.”

Pat his body down, she spoke in my head, but her voice sounded off. There was only the whip strapped to his hip, but when I pulled it off, I realized there was a knife hidden in the handle of the whip. Wrapping the whip around my own waist, I straightened and looked over to the man, who was back to rocking in the corner.

“What should we do with him?” I asked, glancing at Madison.

“He might know something about this place,” she suggested. “Cut the rope off of his neck?”

I nodded, slowly approaching him. I didn’t know if he could actually see me, but I had the knife ready and drawn in case he got irate and aggressive. He didn’t notice me, however. His face was buried in his knees, and carefully, my hand reached out to the rope on his neck. He was probably too far lost in his own nightmare to notice anything. I wiggled the knife carefully beneath the rope, and it cut easily, but also leaked a thick, red liquid. Grimacing, I snatched the rope away from his neck and threw it off to the side, wiping my hand on my pants.

He froze for a second, then looked up wildly, and his eyes focused on me. He was an older man. He looked to be in his forties, maybe fifties, and his eyes were brown and blood shot. His hair was salty and his face had deep lines along his forehead and around his eyes. He stumbled back upon seeing me, and he asked, almost awestruck, “Is it really you?”

I glanced at Madison, and she shrugged, and I asked, “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re the chosen one,” he spoke in a whisper. Curling in on himself, he bowed to me, and I said, “You don’t need to do that. I wanted to know if you knew where we are or what we’re doing here.”

He looked up and, as if not hearing my question, he said, “If you’re here, that must mean the Lady Azazel has finally made contact with one of us.”

“Wait, are you an Azelian?” I asked, crouching down in front of him.

“I am. I am the Grand Moderator of the Sixteenth Branch, Arlo Kincaid,” he said, looking up at me as a different kind of tear sprouted from his eyes.

“The Grad Mod of the Sixteenth Branch?” I asked, glancing back at Madison, and then the realization dawned on me as it did her. Looking back at the man, I asked quickly, “Are all of the people in these rooms Grand Mods?”

Clearing his throat, he sat up and back and said, “I don’t know about other people in other rooms, but I know we are not on the earth anymore. We’re somewhere below it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Azazel gave me geosense. I know where I am no matter where it is on the planet, even if it’s inside,” he answered, looking up and around at the white room. “I don’t know why I’m here, but the last thing I remember is seeing a bald pale man in a black suit walking out from the woods near my home.”

“Pythius,” I spat. Straightening, I offered Arlo my hand and said, “We need to try to find a way out of here. These demons are planning something and I have no idea what it is. I already don’t like what’s happening, though.”

Taking my hand, I hauled him up, and carefully, we crept back out and down the hall. As we passed the rooms, Arlo murmured, “These are the Grand Moderators from America. I don’t know how they managed to find all of them, but that’s who these people are. That’s Tanya Weaver. She’s from the Second Branch, and that’s Hector Suarez from the Twelfth. Can’t we free them? They must be going through something very terrible like I did. How did you get out of yours, anyway?”

“I’d love to stop and free them all but they’re honestly probably better off in there,” I said bitterly. “I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going, and I’d rather not drag everyone else along if the path ends up bad. Besides, I don’t think—I hope—they won’t be killed. If they’re all here, they’re probably supposed to do something.”

“How did you escape? I was put through a psychological torture, and I’m sure they are, too, which must mean you were as well, right?” he asked, glancing back behind us.

“This guy sure does talk a lot,” Madison murmured, walking along casually. I shot her a look, but answered him anyway.

“There’s something that is ‘uncorruptable’ about me, and I found it and held on to it and used it to pull myself out,” I muttered. Even as I said it, it felt like a lie. I didn’t do anything. It was like my father himself had pulled me out. He saved me.

We approached a corner, and I held a finger up to my mouth for him to be silent. Madison walked on, and she said, “It’s clear.”

Quickly, Arlo and I scurried around the corner, which opened up into another long hall full of doors. He and I quickly made our way down fast, and came upon another hall, and another, and another.

“Are we walking around in circles?” I snapped, looking around. Everything looked the same as the hall we had escaped from, but I didn’t know where I escaped from anymore. Arlo was looking around, too, and he said, “I think so.”

“Do you have any idea what this place is?” I asked exasperatedly as I turned to look at him. “Like, are we in a building, or a maze or something? Because I know for a fact we’ve been going in circles.”

“How do you know that?” he asked, concern on his face.

“Look,” I said, gesturing to the woman he had identified as Tanya Weaver. “If we were actually going anywhere, we wouldn’t have seen her again, but I’ve already seen her twice.”

“I don’t know, maybe if we keep going . . .” he said, trailing off and looking away. Pursing my lips, I spun and kept walking. Of course he wouldn’t know. We’re inside the earth, and maybe knowing where we were didn’t matter. All that mattered was that we were trapped here, all of us.

“Ama!” Madison suddenly called out, and I whipped around just in time to see Arlo with the rope between his hands, about to wrap it around my neck. Pivoting quickly, I just missed his grip. His face had suddenly taken on an animalistic, fearful look, and he cried out, “I’m sorry, I have to do this!”

“What are you doing?” I yelled, backpedaling from his advance.

“They said if I kill you, I can have my son back,” he said, his brown eyes screaming sorrow as his body yelled murder. He pounced on me and pinned me to the ground. The rope cast aside, I fought his arms off as best as I could until he managed to snake past my hands. He wrapped his hands around my neck and pressed hard, and the air immediately stopped moving through my body. Beating savagely against his arms, he was stronger than he looked, and he was sobbing. Bucking my hips hard, he then crouched above me to avoid getting thrown off, and I kicked my legs as high as they would go, and though I managed to lands hits, they weren’t enough to knock him off.

My hands reached up, clawing at his face, but he didn’t budge, even as my nails raked deep lines across his skin and drew blood.

“Ama, the knife!” Madison was yelling beside me. Looking at her, I was shaking my head, but she was yelling back, “You don’t have a choice, he’s going to kill you!”

“I’m sorry,” he was saying over and over, tears still rolling down his face, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

My face was on fire, and I was growing weaker, and the edges of my vision began to darken. My lungs were screaming for air, but I was helpless then. Not helpless; I was allowing this to happen. I was letting this man kill me, because he thought if he killed me he would get his son back, just as I killed that ram to stop the spiders from crawling on me.

In a last ditch effort, I reached for the knife, and I slashed hard against his wrist. Blood immediately spilled down onto my face and neck, and he jumped off, cradling his arm close to his chest. Bolting upright, I was gasping for breath and I scrambled as far back away from him as I could. He was still crying as blood poured out of the gash on his arm.

“I’m sorry, I have to do this,” he was saying, moving toward me. Holding the knife out in front of me, I concentrated on him, determined to keep him in my gaze, and I coughed out, “No, no you don’t have to do this. They’re lying! They aren’t going to give you back your son!”

“You don’t know that!” he cried, lunging at me. Rolling to the side, I stumbled to my feet, and I yelled out, “You don’t know, either!”

A stricken and agonized look came across his face, and he asked in a ragged whisper, “Do you know what it’s like to lose your child?”

I halted, shook my head. I said, “No, I don’t know what that must feel like. I don’t know how someone can go on living when it happens, but Arlo, look! Here you are! You’re alive now. Isn’t that what your son would want for you? For you to keep living? Keep fighting?”

Arlo straightened and looked down at his bleeding hand and he said, “Yes, he would want me to act like the superhero he thought I was.” Without warning, he lunged at me again, and before I had time to move, he lodged himself on the knife, and he looked up at me with the worst pain I’d ever seen in a single person. Unable to handle his weight, I fall backwards, and he was on top of me as his blood spilled out around the knife and onto my body. With blood dripping from his mouth and on to my face, he asked, “But what’s a hero if there’s no one to save?”

Frozen, his blood continued to drip onto my face, mixing with his saliva and what I assumed was also bile. A second later, a cold and dark sigh escaped his mouth, and his body went limp, and I began screaming as I pushed him off of me and scrambled away from him. Pythius’ laugh sounded throughout the hallway then, and he seemed to materialize from the wall. Breathing hard and fast, I watched him as he walked over to Arlo. He appeared as he had at the cabin, all gaunt and gray and veiny and gruesome. The wound on his chest had closed more, but it was still pulsing and open. Looking down at him, he kicked him with his foot, and let out a bark of cynical laughter.

“Oh, man, I didn’t think he’d actually go and off himself!” he cried out, doubling over at the waist with laughter.

“What is wrong with you?” I yelled out, not moving from the ground. He looked over at me, a skin-splitting smile on his face, and he said, “I hate you. Gah, I’m never gonna get tired of saying that. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. So, so much.”

“It’s not my fault your man fell for Azazel, you petty bitch!” I snapped out, using the wall to help me stand. His face suddenly dropped, and he was standing before me in an instant. Without thinking, my hand shot up and deflected his hand from wrapping around my neck.

With his other, he punched the wall next to my face, and he said, “I don’t want to hear any of that nonsense coming from your mouth. You don’t know anything. You’re just her incarnation.”

Swallowing around the coppery lump in my throat, I stared deep into those terrible yellow eyes and said, “It doesn’t take much to see through you. You were always like that.”

He didn’t speak, just stared at me like a fox stalking a rabbit.

“Duck,” Madison whispered suddenly, and without another word, I dropped to my feet and rolled to the side. One of his tendrils had lodged itself into the spot where my head was. I scurried to Arlo’s body and pushed him to lay on his back, and I snatched the knife from his gut. I quickly spun around to see Pythius, low to the ground in a crouching position. I stared at Pythius as he slowly turned around and gave me a measured stare. He burst out laughing again, and he said, “I’m already so tired of your quick wit. When are you just going to shut the hell up?”

“When I get out of here,” I panted.

“Ah, but you’re not getting out,” he said, crossing his arms and shifting to one leg.

“I’m getting out of here,” I said, slowly standing, still watching him, studying him with all of my perception.

“How do you expect to get out of here when you don’t even know where you are?”

Glancing to the wall where he had come out of, I quickly darted to it, pretending to see a door instead of a very solid white wall, and Pythius shouted behind me, “That’s not the way out!”

But the wall gave way beneath my body, and I went crashing through a glass door to a bigger room that was much darker, screens covering a wall. Looking behind me, the door I’d crashed through was still open. Quickly, I went to slam it shut. There was a deadbolt on it, and I slammed it into place. Pythius’ body slammed against the other side a second later, and I jumped back, watching the door warily.

“Amor, you better let me out of here!” he bellowed in an inhuman, multi-toned voice. There was something special about that door, because no matter how hard Pythius beat on it, it stayed in place. Taking deep breaths, I calmed myself down and looked around the room. One wall was covered with various screens of each of the different cells. One screen in particular was scrolling what looked like stats on a person. I leaned in closer to see that there were several stats on different people, but I didn’t know what they were or who they were supposed to be monitoring. There was another door adjacent to the door leading out to that strange endless corridor. I looked around the room once more, but didn’t find anything that might have told me where anyone was.

“We should move,” Madison said, “We might be better off trying to find them on our own than risk getting caught in here.” Nodding at her, I tucked the knife away into the whip and moved on toward the door. Opening it slowly, I was shocked to see the place outside of the door looked like an old office building. I mouthed a curse to Madison, and she just shook her head and shrugged, an equally confused look on her face. I pushed on, peering through certain doors curiously.

I was almost angry to see there were demons behind the doors working in cubicles. Some of them, the ones that could wear it, had on business casual clothes. Some suits, some ties, some blouses. Groaning inwardly, I saw an elevator at the end of a hall and quickly ran to it. The elevator opened before I could touch a button, and a man with reptilian eyes and green skin walked past while studying some files in his hands. I sneaked in after him, and he looked up, having not noticed me at all, and called down the hall, “Has anyone seen Lord Pythius?”

Pressing myself to the side, I smashed the ‘close door’ button repeatedly until the door closed, and I stared at the floors it gave me. It gave me nine options, but next to each button was a name instead of a number. From one to nine, they went: Satan, Beelzebub, Astaroth, Abaddon, Pythius, Belial, Merihem, Asmodeus, and Mammon. Furrowing my eyebrows, I looked closer at the third button, where Abaddon’s name was.

“What’s up with this?” I asked, throwing a glance over my shoulder at Madison. She leaned in closer to me to get a better look at the button, and she said, “Maybe we’ll find something there.”

“Sure,” I murmured, clicking the button. It lit up with a purple light, and an old-fashioned screen above the door rattled to life, and it said ‘Belial’ before it began moving.

“I guess we were on Belial’s floor,” I sighed, leaning against the wall. “Jeez, what is this place?”

Madison slid down to sit beside me and she said, looking up, “Maybe we’re in Hell. Maybe the Nine Circles?”

“Really? The Nine Circles of Hell are real?” I asked, dumbfounded. “Human conspiracies and fiction must not be too far off from the actual truth.”

“Could be, but it could just as easily not be,” she offered. “I’ve never heard of a person who went to Hell and lived to tell about it.”

“Yeah, you’ve got a point,” I said, clearing my throat and standing as the elevator stopped at Abaddon’s floor. Standing tense in front of the door, it slid open with a bit of a racket, and I winced internally. The floor it had opened up to was barren and looked abandoned. The elevator opened up into a large and roomy space that looked similar to an empty warehouse. It was dim, and fluorescent lights overhead were flickering in and out of life. There was a stale stench that hung in the air, but I couldn’t quite make it out. It was like an old metal smell, but it wasn’t quite blood. It smelled bittersweet.

Slowly, I walked in. The ground was made of concrete which was cracked and stained in some areas, and there were towering support beams every twenty or thirty feet. Peering out into the vastness, I could see walls on either side, but they seemed to move farther away from me the more I walked into the floor.

“What is this place?” I asked quietly, but my voice echoed throughout the whole floor and came back to me sounding like a shout.

“I have . . . no idea,” Madison said, looking around at everything. In the distance, along those retreating walls, there were large boxes and containers, but we couldn’t get close enough to make out what was written on them.

“This is wild,” I whispered, but my voice still came back sounding like thunder.

“There’s nothing in here. The place is abandoned, huh,” she said, stooping down to study a stain more intently. “I don’t think this is blood?”

“No?” I asked, crouching down beside her. In the dimness of the floor, I could see that the stain on the ground had dried and was dark red, but it shimmered slightly. Running a finger across the stain, I found that it burned my fingers gently, like bleach almost.

“This is too weird.”

Somewhere off in the distance, the sound of rattling chains echoed to me, and my head shot up, trying to find the source.

“You heard that, right?” I asked once the sound had settled. Madison was looking up and around, too, and she said, “Yes.” Slowly rising, I tried peering around, but the further I looked, the further the walls appeared, giving the whole floor a sort of impenetrable dimness. The chains rattled again, the sound not moving closer or further away, but still, I couldn’t figure out where it was.

“Maybe it’s a person. Maybe you can read their mind?” she offered.

“Amor,” her voice called, and I recognized it instantly. My wing fluttered slightly against my back, and I called out, “Azazel?”