Takezo and I stepped into the Tokyo of nightmares.

  The change of air felt even sharper this time. One minute ago, I was in a peaceful depot on a sunny day in Philadelphia.

  Now, I stood in a torched wasteland that smelled like the insides of a torched animal. The sky was yellow-black, like an old bruise, the sun not visible, but the city burned with a sick, rotten daylight.

  We headed into a post-apocalyptic hellscape.

  Takezo set the usual pace. Yes, moving fast could attract demons, but moving slowly gave them more time to find us. My skin tingled under the suit. Even though the suit shielded me from the ever-present radiation, my nerves felt like they were being tickled from the inside.

  Or I had withdrawal symptoms from not being around Isabella. One of the two.

  We were alone though.

  Not even a sign of any demons anywhere. No hounds, no vultures, no vehicles, nothing. I wondered why they didn’t move around. Or, at least, I would have expected them to be patrolling for us or any survivors.

  Although, there were likely no more survivors outside of nuclear shelters, and the demons clearly could find, and they could open them like cans with sardines.

  We passed things that reminded me of demons though. Half-decayed bodies often resembled the steel hounds. But they were decayed, covered in what looked like metallic fungal growths.

  I stopped by one of them. “We didn’t do this.”

  Takezo walked to me. He eyed me with a glare, clearly not happy to spend any time here. “There’s an anti-demon virus in the air. It doesn’t work on me, most likely because it’s tailored to infect Kallisto-made demons, but I feel it. This might be its result.”

  “Does that mean the demons will eventually be wiped out?”

  “No. They will evolve to become immune to it. If I were to guess, Kallisto is creating variations of the lowest tier of demons and sending them around to see if any variation doesn’t become immune to it to speed up the process.”

  My mind still refused to bend around the idea of demons simply being created here on Earth. Too bad I couldn’t go argue with Kallisto that she shouldn’t have been able to do that. “That’s what they also study in the lab, isn’t it?”

  “Possibly. They need to solve the virus, but also how to best adapt the demons to Earthen conditions. Void has no gravity or air, but Earth has both, so the steel-based demons probably aren’t optimal. She needs to figure out how to make demons suitable for Earth. And that needs experiments.”

  “So, we really want to blow that lab up, and to kidnap her top researcher.”

  “Precisely. The plan Isabella and Saito gave us is perfect. We just need to manifest it into reality.”

  I nodded and continued walking. About ten minutes later, Takezo stopped at a crossroads, checking a rusted, corroded street sign with characters so warped I couldn't read them.

  "This way." He turned. Ten minutes later, most of which was climbing over toppled and burnt skyscrapers, we reached a small courtyard besieged by the debris. “This place will do. The lab is nearby, and our portal isn’t far either.” He took out one of the bombs from my backpack.

  I took down my backpack. "How many of these do you think it'll take?"

  He placed the first bomb. "About eight, if I use Saito as an approximate measure for his toughness. They don’t come with a remote, do they?"

  “No, but I was thinking that if we half-trigger the lever on each of them, then the first one going off will pull the rest, causing a perfect chain explosion.”

  He nodded, placing the first bomb.

  We arranged the trap. It wasn’t much, just eight vortex bombs spread in a circle by the debris around the courtyard.

  We overviewed the trap. Since we knew what to look for, it looked obvious. But the black boxes visually meld with the burnt steel of the skyscraper debris, so it shouldn’t have been too noticeable.

  “Now comes the dangerous part,” Takezo said, dusting off his hands. “I’ll trigger the bombs myself, so don’t come close when bringing him here. To lure him in, we ideally take something from his lab that he needs. How many bombs do we have left?”

  “Four.”

  With a short nod, he headed out.

  We made it ten steps before a second sun appeared over the horizon. A smooth white ball, brighter than any light I’d ever seen.

  Takezo grabbed me and pulled me back and down. “Take cover!” He dove behind a thick steel beam, dragging me with him.

  I landed on the ground, confused. “What was—”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  A complete white-out blinded me, killing the words in my mouth. The not-so-distant explosion deafened me. The air hit us like a sledgehammer. Even in the shelter, a storm of dust, debris, and broken glass flew over us. Heat followed. Even through the suit, I could feel every cell in my body burning at once

  I screamed and didn't hear it. The world was static, absolute pain.

  It lasted but a few seconds, but they felt eternally long. Just as suddenly as it happened, it was gone.

  I was blind, on fire, my skin burning and itching at the same time.

  I blinked, and my vision returned. Takezo huddled near me, shards of glass and steel struck into him like spikes of a hedgehog.

  “You alive?” I asked, removing the largest glass fragment from his back.

  He grunted, unable to speak.

  Everything burned, but I could move just fine. I picked the pieces from him, the wounds left behind not even bleeding. None of the shards dug deep, all lodged in the flesh beneath his skin.

  The burning subsided, so I could move freely. I took out the last piece from him and sat next to him, panting. “What the hell was that?”

  He grunted again, then cleared his throat with a rough cough. “Thanks. I think I’m fine.”

  Demonic regeneration must have kicked in. For me, I was kind of fine. Nothing hurt anymore, just my vision had a few light spots in it. Dust swirled all around us though, so there wasn’t much to see.

  “A nuclear explosion.” He pulled himself up to his feet. “Let’s go. This is a perfect cover.” He led the way into the dust storm.

  I couldn’t see more than a dozen feet ahead, so I did my best to not lose him. I kept up just fine though. It was he who was limping, in spite of trying to hide it.

  With his defenses being based on shields, he got seriously hurt when they weren’t enough. Sure, I got hurt much worse, but I recovered fast.

  Then again, I had a multi-layer armor while he wore a regular suit with no extra padding.

  As we walked, I realized what had happened.

  The Secret Societies didn’t figure out a way to get rid of the demons, but they knew nuclear warheads could damage their ship. So, probably like once a week, they dropped a nuke on Kallisto’s ship to keep it pinned down here in Tokyo.

  I wasn’t even surprised.

  That was exactly the type of solution Isabella would come up with. But it almost surely wasn’t her. The world of Secret Societies was run by people like Isabella, so she was more a product of the system than some wild exception.

  I mean, who cared about Japan, right?

  It already got nuked twice, so might as well add a nuke a week on top of that.

  The next stretch was easier. Nothing alive wanted to come out after a nuke. We made it to the outer rim of the lab compound in under ten minutes, following the winding, buckled street. The lab itself showed us a new kind of horror. It looked like three office towers fused together by an acid trip. Mostly glass and steel, but with random chunks of meat and bone wedged into the architecture. The entrance had a face. A real face, twelve feet high, made out of plastic, skin, and cables. The eyes looked around, as if alive.

  We stopped behind a pile of debris. “I suppose this is normal in Hell.”

  “Not really. Succubi hate creepy stuff, and Hell’s full of them, so this wouldn’t fly in there.”

  But it was fine for Earth, apparently. “So, our target is someone that would be considered a nutjob in the literal Hell.”

  “Yep.” He left the hideout sideways.

  With a heavy sigh, I followed the path. We circled around the lab and entered through a gap in the wall. Not a hole, a gap. They just didn’t bother to seal all the walls.

  Inside was even worse than the outside. There was no electricity, but the hallways pulsed with their own light, a teal glow that came from veins that lined the ceiling. They pulsed, and every so often, a chunk of fluid would drip from a vent and sizzle on the floor.

  Takezo didn't flinch. I did, but I kept moving.

  We took the side entrance into the main building, which was covered by a curtain made of skin. We ascended on a stairwell full of disassembled mannequins. Some had real skin, some didn't. All watched as we passed.

  I planted a bomb at the base of the stairwell, because whatever this was, it deserved to be blown up. With no remote, we had to trigger the bombs manually as we passed them, but this looked like the place we would use to run, anyways.

  We snuck upstairs. The building had three floors, and the second one looked like the main laboratory. At least, it smelled like that, heavy in ammonia stench.

  The second hint was the sounds. There was crying, a lot of it, but not human. Like animals, hundreds of them, all mixed up. The laboratory itself, as far as we could see, was a mixture of tanks filled with clear liquid, in which floated… things. Or beings, I wasn’t sure, as each looked like a hybrid more twisted than the other.

  No demons moved around though, just automatons, or so they looked metallic, sliding around in rails, moving stuff with needle-like arms. Takezo took one bomb, pulled the lever halfway to activation, and threw it across the lab.

  It landed on the opposite wall, latching onto it.

  I placed another vortex bomb by the stairs.

  We continued up the stairs. No mannequins lay on these, but there was this blue-ish goo splattered all over the walls and the stairs’ sides.

  We reached the top floor. Here, the stench of ammonia intensified. If I didn’t have a helmet with a futuristic-tier filter, this would have melted my nose and lungs.

  A research room spread in front of us. In its center, among canvases with twisted schematics, floated the man himself.

  Salieu.

  He looked nothing like I'd expected. Tall, thin, but perfectly human-shaped, just with blue horns that sprouted from the side of his skull, looping backward in fractal spirals. He had extra arms, two of them, mechanical, emerging from his back, one holding a book, the other, a pen.

  Tubes and wires ran from his body, seemingly from itself into itself.

  He turned as we entered. "Visitors," he said, voice surprisingly normal. "What a delight. Usually, I have to hunt for subjects for experiments. Rarely do they come to me willingly."

  Takezo slipped by the side.

  I stepped forward, entire body tensing. “Not quite,” I shouted with faked confidence. “Kallisto sent us to ask about your progress, or more like, the utter lack thereof. She ran out of patience for your uselessness a week ago.”

  He froze. I made an outrageous lie, but I did manage to deliver it confidently, so for a few seconds, it made him think, and it forced him to question himself. Takezo was a demon, he could surely sense that, so I didn’t feel like a demon might have been a misread on his side. “Nonsense,” he snapped. “Goddess did not send you.”

  “Really? Is that the excuse you’ve got for today? I’m sure our Goddess will be impressed with that.”

  From the corner of my eye, I caught Takezo having slid by the wall. He reached a terminal and opened its side. Inside lay a power core connected by a hundred different tubes.

  Salieu glowered at me. Again, he hesitated. In the armor and the mask, my face wasn’t visible. I was a man armed to the teeth who walked in with a demon he didn’t know. He couldn’t know Kallisto didn’t recruit me as her ally or something along those lines. “Prove that you serve the Goddess,” he commanded.

  Takezo tore the power core from the terminal. Alarms wailed. He bolted to me.

  Salieu’s aura flared. Whatever doubt I managed to create vanished. “I’ll stuff you into my smallest tanks for this.”