Chapter Text
“Do you even believe in God?” John had been following Casey for two days now with very little talking, and he had no idea exactly where they were headed. He was losing his patience a little, he just wanted answers, and he still only had questions. Even with all the walking, all the time to think about what he had experienced and what little he had actually been told, he still had no idea what exactly he had gotten himself into.
Casey snorted. “What brought that up?”
“Well, the first thing you said to me was that God wanted you dead. I was just wondering, I guess.”
Casey stopped and turned around, cocking her head to the side and looking up at him, squinting. “What does it matter?” John shrugged.
“I guess it doesn’t.”
“Then why ask?”
“Just…” John paused, “making conversation.”
Casey rolled her eyes and turned back around, continuing in the direction she had been going, and John was left with his thoughts again. He was just getting into another scenario that he was pretty sure was not possible when Casey called over her shoulder.
“For the record, I don’t. It was just an expression.”
“Oh.” The silence dropped between them again, and John resolved himself to the knowledge that his attempt at conversation had failed. He had not learned much about Casey in the last two days except that she seemed to hate talking, at least talking to him. John was beginning to hope that this journey to the DEVIL “base”, or wherever they were going, would end soon. This surprised him a little as he began to notice this feeling, because he never thought he would be eager to go anywhere potentially associated with DEVIL. He also never thought he would find himself in a situation even remotely like the one he was currently in, so that could be what was changing his idea about the whole thing.
If John was being completely honest with himself, he would have to say that the events of the last two days had made him feel the need to re-evaluate his entire life. For once, something had happened unexpected since the death of his mother. It seemed to John that since that moment his life had been one day after the other, all of them blending together, all exactly the same. Since meeting Casey, everything he thought he knew had been thrown completely off the rails, and John was still unsure about how to feel, or if he really felt anything at all.
John suddenly stumbled into Casey’s back almost tipping himself over. When he got control of himself again, he looked up to find Casey had barely moved, and was looking at him with confusion and irritation.
“Are you blind?”
“Um, no,” John stumbled over his words and shook himself mentally.
“Well then, look where you’re going,” Casey grumbled something under her breath and turned back around. John finally looked up and realized why she had stopped.
Spread out in the deep valley below the hill they stood on was a hidden village where nothing should have existed at all. It was nothing extravagant, yet one of the most beautiful things John had ever seen at the same time. Crocked buildings made from strange combinations of stone, wood, and brick lined packed dirt streets that wound around with no specific spacing or direction in mind. Fluttering sheets covered where doors or windows would have been, moving in the light breeze that flowed off the hills and down into the valley like wings. The place was obviously broken down, built by people with little money and limited recourses that did not want to be found, but it was one of the more wonderful things John had seen in years. Evidence that people who did not have much could find somewhere to go. John caught himself. This is what DEVIL did, they roped you in, tried to tell you everything would be better, and then you would end up roped in and die. He told himself he would not get involved. He may not be able to hold up that side of the promise he made to himself, but he can keep himself from being sucked into their lies.
“You coming, or should I leave you here to rot?” John snapped out of his thoughts, and looked down the hill to where Casey had shouted at him over her shoulder. John jumped a bit, and tripped down the hill after her.
John followed Casey though the winding streets, absorbing the sounds and sights into his brain as fast as he could. Everything was strange and new; people speaking languages he had never heard before, crashing and shouting coming from inside of homes, people in mix-matched outfits bumbling into each other in their scramble to get to their own personal destinations like colored birds. Everything was like a story from a fairytale, and John’s mind could not keep up with the speed at which it passed him by. Everything was moving so fast, and he felt as if he needed to look in every direction at once. Something grabbed his wrist, and John jumped out of his skin.
“Are you going to do that shit every time I need to get your attention? Come on, you’re falling behind.” Casey yanked him by his wrist, and John jogged slightly after her to keep up, and not to get dragged down into the dirt by the hurry she was in to get to their unknown location.
The sound began to fade as they walked further into the broken city, and was almost gone all together when Casey finally slowed to a stop in front of a door. This was the first actual door John had seen on a building since getting here. Not only that, but the building was built of brick, and actually looked like it could have passed a building code inspection at one point. It loomed three stories high over them, casting a shadow where they stood. John looked up slowly, and took in the boarded windows and severely weathered brick that made the building look less out of place in the city it resided behind. The only thing that really made it seem so out of place was the feeling. It was off, dark. Nothing like the city they had left behind of bright people and ringing sound. This is what John had imagined when thinking of DEVIL. This is what he expected when he followed Casey to his inevitable end.
Casey stepped forward, seemingly unbothered by the change in tone, and knocked on the door with firm certainty. The sound echoed into the building, and faded into silence. For a moment, nothing happened. A clunk of a bolt sliding, and the door opened. A tall man, with shoulders as broad as the doorway and a scowl that would kill small animals where they stood, was behind the door, staring at the two of them. He locked eyes with Casey, and stepped aside to let them in. Casey reached back and grabbed John’s wrist again, dragging him behind her through the door. It swung shut behind them with a final bang.
The inside was dark, with nothing that John could see but empty stone floor, dirt, and years of dust. Casey kept moving toward the only thing in the room, a staircase that looked just as old and questionable as the rest of the building. The thought of protesting the assent to the upper floors crossed John’s mind, but he didn’t dare for fear of being called out by Casey again, and the mysterious man who looked like he could punch his brains into the floor with a single blow. The stairs groaned their own protest to their climb upward, and John braced himself to be brutally murdered, or tricked, or any other number of things that he could never possibly prepare himself for all of them. This is what he got for trusting her so far. She just made him suffer a two-day trek to a remote location to finally kill him, or send him on some ridiculous suicide mission so they could cross off a box and get rid of someone that was expendable. John was suddenly blinded by artificial light.
Nothing could have prepared him for what he walked into. Computers lined the walls with monitors as large as television screens. People shuffling papers back and forth, yelling things to each other across the room that John could not process. White walls reflected the florescent lights, making the room a blinding shift from the lower floor. Casey continued to pull him along behind her into the center of the room, where a woman stood alone, watching over the whole thing, drinking something from a mug as meticulously white and clean as the rest of the room.
“Casey,” the woman chimed with a bright sarcasm and turned on her heel to face them, “what a pleasant surprise.” John had a feeling there was nothing pleasant about this surprise.
“Wanda.” Casey’s response was short and clipped. John would say that was also suspicious, but he was yet to really hear Casey talk to anyone without being short and clipped. However, this was the only other person he had ever heard her talk to besides himself, so he knew he didn’t really have anything to compare her attitude to. “Where’s Clive?”
“Out,” the woman Casey’s question off. “What brings you back so soon? We were not expecting you to darken our doorstep for another month.”
Casey whipped around and pointed her finger right at John, who was trying, with little success, to blend into the wall behind him; “that.”