Chapter Text
“God wanted me dead, now you get to find out why.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Jonathan threw his hands up in the air waving the knife around with reckless abandon. “God wanted you dead?”
“You are the one that saved my life. That was your choice. Now I’m your problem.” The girl that John had just saved from getting shot on the ground like an animal being slaughtered stood up and brushed off her pants. She seemed completely unbothered by the fact that she was almost killed.
“How in the world are you now my problem?”
“It’s part of the code. You saved my life, I now owe you a debt.”
“Like a favor?”
The girl laughed and rubbed her hand down her dirty face. “I wish. I owe you my life now, so more than a favor. My life is no longer my own, it’s yours.”
John blinked a couple times, trying to process what he had just been told. “So, you give me the years of your life?” John paced back and forth for a second, and stood in front of her again. “How the fuck does that even work?”
“I answer to you now, you are one of my priorities. I help keep you safe, and die doing so if necessary. That’s how.”
“What code makes you promise something like that?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the girl laughed sarcastically and stuck her hand out to give John a handshake. He didn’t take it. “My name is Casey, and I am a part of DEVIL. Welcome to the ranks.”
John dropped to the ground, dropping his knife in the process and holding his head in his hands. Of course, the one time he decides to save someone, they are a part of DEVIL. He’s really done it this time, the one thing he has been avoiding for years, and now he’s here.
“Is there any way I can take that back?”
Casey shrugged, “You could kill me.”
John looked up into her face. Her facial expression was passive, as if she had just said something about the rain outside, not suggested her own death. “Why, do you want to die?”
“There are worse things,” Casey sighed, looking away from John’s face. “It would also get you out of this. It’s an oath, and because I owe you my life, I can’t fulfil my oath without you joining. I come back without you, I have broken my oath, and they shoot me there. I don’t come back, they hunt me down and shoot me wherever that is.” Casey turned her back to John to look out of one of the holes in the wall of the abandoned house they were currently in. “Either you come back with me, or I die. If I die here, it is less shame on my sector.”
John turned his head to look at the peeling wallpaper.
Casey cleared her throat. “I’ll give you five minutes to think about it. I’m going outside to smoke a cigarette.” Casey strode out of the room and out of the hole where the front door would have been and onto the crumbling front porch.
John was at a loss. Either he could kill the girl that he just saved and walk away, or his entire life could change. He could join the ranks of an organization he promised himself he would never join. The organization that ripped his mother away from him at a young age. But could he kill this girl? She looked like she was in her early twenties, so maybe girl was the wrong word to use for her. John leaned over a bit to see out the front door. She was standing there smoking, completely calm. John had spent his whole life doing everything he could to stay alive, his worst fear being his own death. How could she face her death with such an uncaring attitude? It unnerved John greatly.
He sat with himself and weighed his options. If he had known who she was, he never would have saved her. Getting involved with DEVIL is never something he even wanted as a choice on his plate. However, John was now not sure he could kill her. That would go against everything he himself tried to stay true to. He wanted to save lives with what little he had. However, to continue to save hers, he would have to essentially sacrifice his own. He knows he wouldn’t die, at least not immediately, but he felt like he was signing his life away. And he was, in a way. You belong to DEVIL when you become a part of the system. Your life is no longer yours. They scoop up the street kids, give them faith that everything will be alright, and then use them to accomplish their own goals. John swore to himself, as he watched others succumb to their lies, that he would stay away, no matter how desperate things got for him. But what about her? Could he let her death rest on his conscious, knowing that he was, directly or indirectly, responsible for her death? He would think she was lying, and truly he doesn’t know, but he knows enough about DEVIL to guess she is probably telling him the truth.
Her boot lands on the hard flooring, resonating through the room as she walks back through where the door would have been and over to John. John looks up to her face again.
“Have you made a choice?”
John squints his eyes, “What would happen if I didn’t make a choice?”
“Nothing good,” Casey drones, “and I suggest you don’t find out. Now, have you made a choice?”
John sighs and picks himself up off the floor, drawing up his shoulders so he stands straight, around half a foot taller than her. “Lead on, I guess. Not like I have much other choice.”
“I mean you do, but whatever. And you aren’t going to decide half way back…” Casey pauses, and then waves her hand in front of her face. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. Come on then.” She turns her back on John, completely trusting him to follow, or maybe to kill her by surprise. Maybe she just really did not care about her own life. “Miles to go before we sleep.”
John walked behind Casey almost in a daze as they left the house, walked down the overgrown gravel pathway, and onto the street. He really was still astounded with himself that he had agreed to follow her. Follow her into the one thing he said he would never walk into. He felt a little regretful of this, but he really felt trapped. He knew he could not have killed her, he had talked to her, it had registered in his mind that she was a person. The people he had killed in his lifetime he had killed out of self-defense or to save someone else. He knew they were killers, or knew what they had done, and had little to no concept of who they were as people. He had enough of a picture of her to know she was human. That made everything harder.
Johnathan’s mind drifted to his mother, the reason he promised himself he would never join DEVIL. She had already been a part of it when he was born. She managed to keep him hidden, and DEVIL never knew of his existence. That was all well and good for him, because after her death he was not bound to them and could go off on his own, but it was partly the reason for her death. DEVIL had figured out she was hiding something. Secrets were not tolerated amongst the ranks of different sectors, and certainly not between a person and the superiors of DEVIL. They knew she was hiding something, but he was so well hidden, they never found out about John. Instead of continuing to investigate after months of trying, they just killed her. Better to dispose of her than have a person amongst their ranks that kept secrets so was therefore untrustworthy. John was twelve at the time, barely able to care for himself, and suddenly finding himself having to. John swore he would not get himself involved, for the sake of his mother’s memory and his own safety, but now he has found himself in a position of throwing away that promise.
He studied Casey’s back as they walked. The option to kill her and walk away was still there. It was there until she reached wherever she was taking him. Until the knowledge of him existed in DEVIL, he was still outside of the circle. He could do it, kill her and walk away. His hand twitched toward the knife in his pocket he had quickly picked back up before they left the house. He knew how to do it, a quick stab through the right part of the back would reach the heart and it would be over before she even realized what hit her. It seemed so easy when he thought about it like that. He could even run away, he was taller than her, and he assumed probably faster, though he had no guarantee of that. However, if he ran, he could not help but feel she might kill him at that point, just to save her own skin. She was probably a street kid first, and they tended to have little to no compassion, or just care mostly for their own survival.
John figured he might as well see where all of this leads to, at least for a little while longer. Maybe she was lying to him, just trying to scare him. DEVIL was well known after all, especially amongst the street people. Not everything was known about them, but they were known to be harsh and cruel, especially amongst the adults. She could be pulling a prank on him, but somewhere in John’s mind, he knew she wasn’t. This was real, and if he continued to follow her, he would be walking straight into a cave he swore he would never even look into.
“Hey, this way,” Casey pulled on John’s arm and yanked him into an ally. John realized he must have zoned out while walking, as they had gone from the abandoned suburbs into the outskirts of the city without him realizing. Casey pushed him back further into the dark of the ally and skirted in front of him, staring out of the shadows onto the street. John followed her eyes to a man walking towards them, coming from the opposite direction that they had. There seemed to be nothing noticeable about him, but John knew that did not make a person trustworthy or harmless. Casey seemed to think that this man should be avoided, and for some reason, he found himself trusting her judgement.
The man hesitated for a moment as he was about to pass the ally. He stood seemingly inches from them, completely frozen. John felt himself holding his breath, watching the man over Casey’s head, unmoving. The man’s head turned toward them slowly, a grin spreading over his face that seemed to get wider and wider, and his eyes stopped, staring right into John’s. John felt as if his vision narrowed, like his mind was being sucked into the eyes of the man staring at him with the too-wide grin. He felt time stop around him, like everything was floating, frozen in the spot it was sitting in unable to move. The air felt like soup, and John felt panic begin to crawl up his throat. And then, a bang, and everything stated to move again, slowly.
John’s eyes followed the man’s body as it hit the ground, his forehead suddenly bleeding with a dark hole in the center. John stared. John felt a hand grab his arm like a vice, shaking him, a voice saying something he could not understand. His eyes moved slowly up to meet the eyes of another face. He stared, at the face. Who was this face? And sound, feeling, and time slammed into him, the world suddenly back in motion.
“You have to snap out of it, come on! We have to go! You need to run!” Casey, that was the person screaming. Why was she yelling? “I know you don’t know what is happening, but we have to go. Move!” Casey pulled on the arm she had grabbed, and started to jog. John felt his feet begin to stumble behind her. What is happening? What is going on? Who was that? Did something happen? What was the noise? John felt his feet continue to move after Casey as his mind continued to drown in questions, unable to keep up with anything happening around him. Time drifted to the back of his mind, and he lost all sense of direction.
John had no idea how long they walked, when they stopped, or where they were when he finally came back to himself. He was sitting on the floor of some basement, he assumed at least from the lack of windows in the large, cement room, and Casey was sitting a couple of feet away picking her fingernails with a pocket knife. John stared at her hands, watching as the knife moved rhythmically for a moment, before he shifted his legs into a different position, wincing as the blood rushed back into his limbs. Casey looked up.
“Back in the land of the living, are you? I expected you to be out for a while, but not quite as long as you were.” She stood up and walked over, putting her hand on his forehead. John flinched away. “Would you stay still, I need to make sure your body temperature is normal again.” John froze and she huffed, placing her hand on his forehead again. After a moment, she removed her hand a backed up a few paces. “You’re still a little cold, but almost normal I think. You should be alright.” She sat down again, closer to John this time, with a sigh. John turned to look at her more directly.
“What was that?” Casey took a deep breath and laughed hollowly, leaning her head back to look at the decrepit ceiling. She was silent for a moment, and John waited, watching her fingers drum on her knee. Finally, he heard her take another deep breath and sigh. He looked up again, back to her eyes, which were already looking at him.
“That is the reason that DEVIL was formed. That is why you have to join. They know you are connected to me now.” John frowned.
“How? Who is they?”
“They are…” she trailed off. “They can see…”. Casey rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, dropped them into her lap, and closed the pocket knife she had been holding, returning it to her jacket pocket. “I was not supposed to be the one who explained this all to you.” Casey looked up and met John’s eyes again. John leaned back against the wall, settling in, his back was hurting from sitting up in the same position for too long. Casey stared blankly at the wall for a moment, and then took a deep breath.
“They can feel the connections between people. They know who knows who, not why they know them, but they know that one person knows another. It’s like…” she trails off again, staring at a nick on the opposite wall. “It’s like, they can see a string that connects one person to another.” Casey paused, and John waited for a moment.
“But who are they?”
“We don’t know,” Casey turned back to John, making eye contact with him again, “But we do know that only people connected to someone who can see them, can see them. You can see them. Which means you really need to come with me.” John frowned again, turning his head to the side in thought.
“Why would that make a difference?”
“Because that is what we do.” Casey sighed again, and looked as if she would rather be anywhere but where she was seated in front of John. “DEVIL fights them. We keep them off the streets to the best of our ability. To keep everyone else safe.”
John breathed deeply and looked at the dirty floor, trying to process. If what Casey is saying is true, he might have the complete wrong idea of DEVIL in his head. However, he still did not understand why these creatures made it so he really had to come with her. “I still don’t understand why I have to come with you because of them.” He looked back up at Casey and met her gaze.
“Because,” Casey sighed again, and shoved her hair away from her face. “They know who knows about them. They know who is connected to those who know about them.” Casey braced herself and shifted, shaking out her arms before looking back at John. “They know you are connected to me, and now they know you can see them. You are a target, and it’s best you know how to fight them.”
John looked back down at the floor and ran his fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp, “I still don’t understand.”
“Well, there is not much I can do for you about that.” Casey stood, the end of her sentence was cut off a little from the strain of standing. “If you come with me, someone can explain everything better than I can.” She mumbled something else to herself under her breath, but John couldn’t hear what it was. Casey reached down, offering her hand to pull him up off the floor. John huffed through his nose and grabbed her hand, letting her take a bit of his weight and get him standing. “We need to get moving again.”
John checked that his knife was still in his pocket. It was. “Do you know if that thing is gone?”
“I can’t know for sure, but if it isn’t,” Casey looked up from picking at her nails with her fingers and into his face, “don’t look it in the eye.”