Big Hands started forward, eyes suddenly all furious and blazing again. ‘Hey, you can’t just come in here—!’
Handsome Guy ignored him. He helped Jake to his feet. ‘There, there—easy now. Not too fast. You’ve had a nasty knock.’
Jake stood, his legs feeling all rubbery and uncertain beneath him. He stared around the room. He had the feeling he wasn’t getting murdered anymore—something he should have felt happy about, though he didn’t. He was just so confused. ‘Okay, so can somebody please tell me what’s going on before I lose my frickin’ mind? Who are you people? Where are we?’
A handful of uncertain looks from around the room.
Handsome Guy shot the others a look. ‘I see you forgot to fill him in, too. Honestly, it’s like you people don’t even work here sometimes.’ He reached into his pocket again, this time producing a little sleek contraption, like a garage remote.
Jake stared at the little device, frowning. ‘What—?’
Handsome Guy thumbed the button.
Immediately, the walls began to thrum. There was a vibration—what Jake initially took to be an earthquake, before the walls surrounding them suddenly began to roll upwards, revealing new walls behind them, these of thick-looking glass. Through the glass he could see what looked, unbelievably, like an office—and not a small one, either.
Desks. Tables. Computers. What may or may not have been servers, all lined up against the far wall, blinking random lights and colors, stretching as far as the eye could see. Men and women hurried along the corridor that stood just outside the glass, looking professional and determined, all dressed, unsurprisingly, in more of those expensive-looking business suits.
Jake stared through the glass, his mouth open. ‘But... I don’t—’
‘Jake Fisher,’ said Handsome Guy. He gestured through the glass with a wave of his arm. ‘Welcome to the Human Defense League.’
Jake lasted approximately five seconds.
He stared through the glass, watching the people as they scurried about like worker ants, bound for places seemingly very important, his already battered mind struggling desperately to make sense of what he was seeing.
He did not feel his knees when they buckled, or the thud of his head as it ricocheted off the floor.
All he knew was one minute he was standing upright, staring through the glass with his mouth hanging stupidly open like a blow-up doll. The next he was lying on the cold, tiled floor, the darkness stealing in around his vision again—only this time, Jake didn’t fight it.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, Jake’s world went black.
Only this time, he was grateful.
NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE
‘Jake? Jake, are you still with us?’
Jake flung open his eyes. He was in a small room. There was a man standing over him. White lab coat. The label on his nametag said DR. MARCUS: MEDICAL.
He blinked. ‘What?’ He felt dazed, his mind still trailing the remnants of the dream he’d just been having; something to do with guns and monsters. He recalled a sense of dread, so heavy he could almost feel it pressing down on him like an actual, physical weight.
Then he looked over the man’s shoulder, saw the group of suited men and women staring intently back at him from the room’s other side, and realized that it wasn’t a dream, after all. The nightmare was real. All of it. So that was probably a bad sign.
‘See? Told you I didn’t hit him that hard,’ said Petite Girl. She thrust an elbow into Big Hands’ side, who grunted indifferently.
Jake rubbed at his eyes. ‘What happened?’
‘You passed out,’ said Lab Coat.
‘I—what?’
He nodded. ‘Yup. It’s a normal reaction, however. No need to feel embarrassed.’
‘I’m not embarrassed.’
‘Oh. Well—good for you.’ He shined a light into Jake’s eyes, seemed to be satisfied with whatever he saw there.
There was movement from over his shoulder.
Handsome Guy stepped up beside him. ‘It was my fault, I’m afraid,’ he said, offering Jake a sheepish smile. ‘I should have realized—what with all you’ve been through recently—dropping all of this on you would be too much. Please accept my most sincerest apologies.’
‘Umm… sure?’
Handsome Guy smiled. Jake noticed his teeth were very white. ‘Excellent! Now, if you’re feeling better, I’d say it’s about time we showed you around, wouldn’t you?’
Jake began to protest, but then strong hands were pulling him to his feet.
A moment later, they were standing outside the door to the medical suite, on a gallery overlooking a huge room—what looked to Jake to be some kind of command center. Men in suits with stern expressions sat rigid behind fancy-looking computers, fingers tap-tapping off the keys at impressive speeds. On the wall at the other end of the space, big as a movie-theatre screen, stood an enormous steel door—like a vault. Jake thought it was the biggest door he’d ever seen. And he’d seen plenty of doors.
What in the name of God…?
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ said Handsome Guy, having to shout a little to be heard over the cacophony of people working diligently below them. ‘All those bodies, working in unison. A well-oiled machine, if ever there was one.’
Jake just continued to stare.
‘But where are my manners?’ Handsome Guy went on. ‘First, let’s introduce ourselves, shall we?’ He took Jake’s hand in his own, began to pump it furiously up and down. ‘My name is Pete Vogel, and I am head of Intelligence here at the New York branch.’ He pointed over at the waiting group of people behind them. ‘The man in the lab coat there is Jim Avery—he’s R and D. That stands for Research and Development.’ He pointed at Big Hands. ‘And the man standing there with the permanent scowl? That’s Coleman. He’s head of Operations. Don’t mind him—his bark’s a lot worse than his bite.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Big Hands.
Handsome Guy—Vogel—ignored him. He gestured toward Petite Girl. ‘Elizabeth, I believe you’ve already met.’
She gave a cheery wave. ‘Hello!’
He turned back to Jake. ‘Now you’re probably wondering why you’re here—’
‘Boy, you can say that again…’
He scoffed. ‘I’m sure. So please, allow me to explain.’
They began to walk along the catwalk. Looking down, Jake saw more rooms on either side, boasting more things he couldn’t comprehend, but that made him dizzy all the same. Men in suits and lab coats, ferrying a large contraption between them that could have been anything from a gun, to a water purifier, to some kind of new, overly elaborate sex-toy. Long rooms with absolutely nothing in them besides a single chair lay dotted along the catwalk on either side—what may or may not have been more interrogation rooms, like the one Jake had awoken in, in what now felt like a gazillion years ago.
‘Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a man named Warwick Thomas discovered a network of tunnels running below New York City while seeking to establish the city’s first working subway system,’ Vogel went on. ‘Investigations into the tunnels led to the eventual discovery of what we here at the HDL know as “The Below”.
‘The Below?’ said Jake. ‘You mean China?’
Vogel offered him a look. ‘What? No—lower.’
Jake frowned. What could be lower than China?
He blinked as a thought occurred to him. ‘Wait—are you talking about Hell?’
‘Does that surprise you?’
He shook his head. ‘Actually… no. I can totally believe there’s a portal to Hell beneath Manhattan. It would actually explain a lot.’
For a moment, Vogel looked confused. He cleared his throat. ‘Er… right. Well. Little is known about the origins of the Below. What is known, is that there was a battle. The leaders at the time knew they had no chance of winning. So they built the Gateway you saw a moment ago and sealed it shut, where it was decided that a group be tasked with maintaining an
d watching over it in the event the forces of Hell ever attempted to force their way through again. That is when we, the Human Defense League, were founded.’
‘So the thing that tried to kill me back at my apartment—you’re saying that was a demon? Like God, Satan, Jesus on the cross—all that stuff?’
Vogel considered this a moment before shaking his head. ‘Not quite. The HDL holds no religious bias. We think of the Below as “Hell” simply because that is the easiest way for a person to think of it. In truth, nobody really knows what lies beyond that door. Some say Hell, others an alternate dimension. It is of no consequence, really. All that matters is that the Door remain forever closed. Because—should it ever open—it would mean not only the end of the world as we know it, but the end of all humanity.’
Jake blinked, confused. Something was nagging at him, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. ‘But, wait—if the Door’s “closed”, how did that thing attack me?’
Vogel nodded solemnly. He rubbed at his perfect chin. ‘Hmm, yes—a Breacher. As it turns out, there are places where the fabric separating our two worlds is, for lack of a better word, “thinner”. Occasionally, one of them will break through, cause a whole lot of chaos—though how exactly they accomplish this feat is still currently unknown. Alas, that is when we, the HDL, step in.’
Jake leaned forward against the railing, his head spinning.
He couldn’t believe it. All his life he had been told that monsters and demons were the stuff of fantasies and bad dreams, that the things that went bump in the night were nothing more than the invention of parents to trick their unruly children into not misbehaving. Now it turns out they were real all along. He wondered what else was real—the tooth fairy, perhaps, or Santa Claus.
He frowned as a thought suddenly occurred to him. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’
Vogel seemed to think very carefully before opening his mouth again. ‘Your grandmother—Miss Meunier?’ he said, his eyes meeting Jake’s own with an intensity Jake did not like one bit. ‘Up until her death, she had been the acting head of this branch.’
And that, right there, was when everything fell into place.
Or, you know—not.
‘Grandma Stella?!’ he said. ‘As in, my Grandma Stella?’ He shook his head. ‘No. No way. That’s got to be some kind of mistake. Grandma Stella was…’ He tried to think of the right word. ‘Old. She couldn’t have possibly—’
Vogel smiled patiently. Christ, those teeth. ‘It’s true, I’m afraid—but there’s more.’ He turned to the others to grab their attention, before turning back to Jake. ‘Before she died, your grandmother left very specific instructions to be carried out in the event of her passing. It was her wish that you, her only surviving relative, take command of the HDL’s New York Branch in the event of her death.’
Jake stared, speechless.
Now he knew he was dreaming. It was all in his head. All of it—it had to be. Nothing else could have explained it. The girl had hit him harder than he’d initially thought, and now this was his coma-dream. Because, seriously—him in charge of a secret group of well-dressed demon fighters? Hell, he couldn’t organize a sock draw.
There was a chorus of outraged cries from the group.
Coleman stepped forward. ‘You can’t be serious!’ he said, forehead creasing furiously. ‘Look at him—he’s a kid!’
From behind him, the man known as Avery nodded. ‘This is highly irregular, I’m afraid.’
Vogel held up his hands. ‘It’s all there in the will, gentlemen. You’re welcome to read over it whenever you like—and besides, you know it’s the branch head’s right to choose his or her successor.’
‘But a kid, Pete—!’
Vogel held up his hands again. ‘It’s done, Coleman. No point in arguing about it. Now—’ He turned and stepped over to a door opposite the catwalk—a door Jake hadn’t even registered was there. He reached into his pocket and produced a little plastic card. He pressed it to the wall, the door sliding up instantly, like how they do on Star Trek.
He turned back to Jake. ‘And here, Jake, is your office—this I imagine is where you’ll be spending the majority of your time.’
Jake looked past him into the room.
It was pretty modest, given what he’d seen of the place so far—much unlike the room’s contents, that was, which were anything but. A desk sat in the center, upon which another of those fancy computers lay. On the wall behind it he could just see what he thought was a fireplace, shelves standing either side of it boasting what looked to Jake to be hundreds of books. A Leopard-print rug covered the floor almost in its entirety, the rug alone cleaner than Jake’s apartment had been in all the time he’d spent living there.
‘And this is all… mine?’ He had to say it out loud just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. It just didn’t feel real. For a coma-dream, it wasn’t half-bad.
Vogel nodded. ‘We haven’t changed a thing since your grandmother—well, you know—though you are of course free to decorate it however you see fit.’ He turned to Jake fully, showed him his teeth again. ‘So, Jake; what do you say? Ready to take the helm? Because—and as I’m sure you’ve no doubt already deduced by this point—yours is a position men would literally kill for. You must be fairly excited, no?’
He beamed at Jake, his hands planted solidly on his hips.
Jake stared back.
He took a deep breath, and…
*
‘Jake? Jake, come out. This is silly,’ said Eliza.
It was five minutes later. He was kneeling hunched in his couch-fort, peeking through the little window he’d made for himself, his eyes narrowed to slits. He’d assembled it from the cushions of the multiple couches that filled the office. Not exactly Fort Knox, true, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
He shook his head. ‘Go away! Leave me alone! You people are crazy!’
‘Jake, please—you’re being childish.’
‘I know you are, but what am I.’
‘Jake—’
He let out a breath. How could she not understand? This was crazy. Even crazier than those homeless folks you always see out roaming the sidewalks with the bells and the sandwich boards and those crazy unkempt beards, spewing stuff about aliens and government conspiracies and the freaking… Illuminati, or whatever. Demons? Seriously? It was Loco. Just pure insanity. And now she wanted him to come out, join her in their little cult, maybe get all naked and go dance around a mulberry bush or something?
He shook his head. It was just so unfair. A week ago his only aspiration in life was not getting murdered in a botched mugging while cycling back from Pete’s. Now all of a sudden he was the head of a secret organization tasked with keeping the door to what may or may not have been Hell closed, lest it bring about the end of the human race? What?
She scooted up closer to the window. ‘Look, I understand this is a lot to take in—’
‘DO YOU?!’ He was becoming hysterical.
‘Yes. But hiding isn’t going to make it all just go away. This is your reality now. Like it or not, you’re going to have to try find a way to deal with it.’ She thought it over. ‘And it’s not like you can exactly stay in there forever...’
‘Yes, I can.’ Over her shoulder, the guy called Vogel made to step back into the room, but Jake thrust a finger at him. ‘He stays out!’
Eliza let out a breath. ‘Okay. Enough of this—’ Before Jake could realize what it was she was doing, she suddenly stood, and with a brisk swipe of her arm, tore the roof off his couch-fort. Cushiony walls flumped to the floor like dominoes.
Jake yelped, feeling suddenly all naked and exposed. He wrapped his arms tight around himself. ‘Argh!’
‘There—see?’ she said. ‘Nowhere to hide. Now come on. Time to go face reality.’
She offered him her hand.
Jake stared hatefully at it. He didn’t want to go face reality. Reality, right at that very moment, sucked. But she was right. H
e couldn’t stay in his couch-fort forever—not now, anyway.
He sighed. ‘All right. But I’m doing this because I want to, got it? Not because you may or may not have compromised Fort Sanity’s structural integrity.’
She smiled. ‘Of course.’
They stepped outside together, where the rest of the gang stood patiently waiting, looking down at their shoes, their hands shoved deep into their pockets.
‘Ah—Mr. Fisher! Feeling better?’ said Vogel hopefully the second he was outside.
‘I want some coco,’ said Jake, scowling. His parents had always made him coco after a bad dream—not that he was still kidding himself in that respect, or anything. But the heart wants what the heart wants. And he was very thirsty.
Vogel blinked. ‘Of course; after all, you’re the boss—’
‘And a sandwich. A big one. With ham—no mayo!’
Vogel nodded. ‘Absolutely. Yes. I’ll get that done right away.’
Jake folded his arms and looked away. ‘Well—good.’
He waited while Vogel turned behind him, began speaking with another suited man—this one blonde, with a wicked scar over his right eye that Jake noted, with some disappointment, was not, in fact, shaped like a lightning bolt.
After a moment, Vogel turned back. ‘So—does this mean you’re on board?’
Jake stared around the group. He knew if he stayed, his life would never again be the same. There would be—quite literally—no going back. But then, if he were honest, it wasn’t really like he had much to go back to, was it? He had Pete’s, sure. And his apartment—which, while admittedly a piece of crap, he’d still grown somewhat attached to. But maybe they were right—maybe it was time for a change. And besides, it wasn’t like he could just un-see all the weird crap he’d witnessed over the past twelve hours. If only.
He let out a long sigh.
After all—a facility filled with heavily armed men and women whose sole purpose in life was keeping him safe?
What was the worst that could happen?
We Hunt the Night: (Tales from the Supernatural Frontline) (Imperium Book 1) Page 3
