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The attack had come a little over 3 months after darkcoms first push into hell.
Not that the hard working sciencetists manning darkcoms premiere lab, tucked away neatly under the organisations head offices received much news about the intricate comings and goings of what was happening on the front line.
To most of them, all that really mattered was that recerch specimens came in, were analysed and whatever knowledge could be gained from even the smallest fragments of armor, tooth or blood was extracted and put to use.
Tucked safely behind a combination of wards, bunker walls made to withstand a direct nuclear strike and a literal army of guards, they had good reason to expect that nothing could reach them where they where.
Oh, how wrong they where.
-
The first sigh of trouble was every electrical system in the lab flickering for a second.
Dr Clara Collins looked up in confusion from her perch, microscope and skin samples breafly forgotten about as she watched the bank of monitors across from her flikker and glitch again, alternating between black screens and rainbow static, before returning to normal .
A feeling of dread settlied in her gut, the sort that she hadn't felt since she'd been dragged away from her old job as a lab assistant in the medical wing up stares and re-assigned down here.
Since she'd come face to face with the specimen that she was currently using a skin sample from to compare the efficiency of the newest recipe of 'liquid demon destroyer' agenst the old.
She could still hear his screams ringing in her ears after all these months.
When no emergency alarm sounded, she reluctantly went back to what she was doing.
Reaching down into a insulated container, she pulled out the sample of scaled hide that one of the field operatives had sent back, and carefully used a scalpel to remove a small piece.
The ruddy brown hide had faint, almost mackerel like green spotting to it, and she had to admire the way the speckles caught the light as she worked.
"You must of been a beauty" She murmured "terrible, but beautiful."
She had just slipped the bit of hide under the microscope, pippet of fluid at the ready, when the room rocked.
To be more precise, the room shook like it had been bitch slapped by God.
Alarms blared, voices started shouting from somewhere beyond the doorway, and just like that, the entire complex plunged into darkness.
And the chaos began.
-
Mary had taken to visiting the hellblood between shifts and missions.
Usually it was down time for the people monitoring his vitals, being eather the very early hours in the morning or somewhere around lunch time, so it was just her, and the poor, trusting soul who she had betrayed.
She hated herself now, for what she had done, but mary could not change the past.
If she could, then she'd of fixed a great many regrets already.
....... He looked peaceful, at least, floating there in the cryo-tube, suspended in the viscous liquid. Just sleeping deeply, without a hint of pain on that youthful face.
(She'd never found out how old he was. The scientists didn't care)
Today had been no different, until it wasn't.
She had been at one of the work stations that existed to monitor da.. the hellblood, and wrote up the daily report on her laptop, trying to detail the training mission she'd been overseeing in a somewhat positive light, when the lights blinked and flickered once, twice, and shut off all together as a earthquake rocked the room she was in, sending her crashing to the floor.
"The fuck?" She dragged herself straight back up, squinting to try to make sense of what just happened.
Washington was not an earthquake prone state.
And then the screams started.
The back up generator kicked in, bathing the room in a creepy red as the emergency lights blinked on, and mary bolted out into the hallway, weapon in hand.
Eather they were under attack, or someone had just fucked up massively.
And Mary was now in the middle of it.
-
She ran to the sound of gunfire, busting through a door to the sight of a head, belonging to one of one of the many guards assigned to the resident eggheads, sliding cleanly off his shoulders like there had been nothing attaching the two in the first place.
The culprit was a demon, or perhaps even a devil, graceful in its movements and deadly in its actions.
As she watched, mouth agape, it almost seemed to be dancing between it's victims, blade singing as it cut cleanly through limbs and weaponry in equal amounts.
Mary rased her gun, anti demon rounds already loaded in the chamber, and carefully aimed at the center of the blue demon's body mass, and fired.
They deflected it with the literal katana in its hands, splattering the liquid core across the ground in front of it's feet in a neat arc.
The devil locked eyes with her across the room.
The beasts head had a passing resemblance to a samurai helmet (went well with the sword, once you thinked about it), and was clad in dark blue and ebony scales with silvery white accents that looked bloody in the emergency lights.
They snarled at her, pail teeth standing out starkly agenst dark lips.
Dimly, as Mary did her best to stare her opponent down, she was aware that the devil in front of her was not alone. Other shapes, shadows of beings both humanoid and not were darting though the red emergency lights, dragging people off onto the darkness.
She let off shots in the direction the shadows where darting, only for the devil to suddenly appear right in front of her the moment she broke eye contact.
She yelped and immediately rased her gun, only for the beast to slam the scabbard of there sword into the side of her skull, cutting off her lights in one sharp motion.
--
-----
She reawoke on the floor.
As her brain continued to reboot, she realised that she was laying on her side, bound hand and foot, on the floor of the cryo chamber room.
And in the pail light that was being given off by the hell-blood's tube, she realised that she was not alone.
She was layed out amongst a gaggle of battered and brused scientists, lead researcher amongst them, and some other uniformed darkcom troops.
All of them where tied up with everything from electrical cables to clearly stolen neckties.
And they where surrounded.
Mary squirmed herself into a kneeling position, and shot angry glares at the slightly ragtag looking group that had her and the other now hostages at weapon point.
There where demons armed with everything from swords to glaves, humans with the air of mercenaries armed with everything from rifles to wicked looking sickles, and of course, the blue devil from before, who was sitting like a resting samurai up by the cryo-tube, sword sitting across its lap.
It growled in a low, warning tone the moment it realised mary had awoken.
... oh, they where all in trouble, weren't they.
"Ah, you are awake." A voice cut the air, prim and level in a way that could be nothing but a warning.
Twisteing around to face this new voice echoing out of he darkness, Mary met the eyes of a tall, white haired gentleman who looked like he had walked out of some high fantasy victorian-era novel.
Between his chest length, slightly wavy hair, the little skull shaped adornments that glistening in the pail blue light and his regal purple three peace suit, compleat with a beautifully embroidered long coat, mary had the distinct impression that this guy could pass for count dracula with ease.
"I was wondering if that tap to the head might of been a little much, considering how fragile the human skull can be."
Ah, so he was talking to her. Shit.
The man, if he even was a man, walked leisurely around the group, coat swaying slightly with each step, jeweled shoe buckles glinting.
"I do apologise for the...abruptness of our little meeting. I was hoping to catch you outside of work, but... well, what's that old saying about mice and men?"
He came to a stop in front of the group, looking up at Dante's sleeping face.
"Plans really do go astray, don't they, my boy?"
He turned gracefully on his heels to face the group.
"But, we will get to all that shortly as, currently, we have more pressing matters to get to." His voice sounded so.. polite, genteel even, even if there was a dangerous edge in there somewhere. "Namely- who out of all of you is responsible for this."
No one replied. Just silence, shuffling and whimpers from the scientists around her.
"No one?" The man tilted his head, seeming all the more unsettling with the back lighting the cryo-tube was providing. "No one wants to own up to this marvel of technology?"
He paused, waiting for a reply.
"Or how how to work it?"
More silence. Mary carefully started working on the electric cables binding her wrists.
"No one? Well, then."
The man looked just a little bit disappointed in the lot of them, in a fatherly sort of way.
"Looks like we are going to have to do this the hard way. Shame, really."
A murmured agreement rumbled through the group of mercenaries.
"A little history quiz for you all, do any of you know the old world punishment for stealing?".
"No?" One of the research assistants squeaked out.
The man smiled, revealing way too sharp teeth.
"Classically, the punishment was having the thief's hand removed."
You could hear a pin drop in that room. Even the constantly humming machinery that permeated every inch of the labs seemed muted.
"Now, you all must be wondering how this applies to all of you. Which is a perfectly valid question considering we did drop in on you all rather suddenly." He paused, pale blue, almost white eyes seemingly focusing in on certain captives. "You see, you all, seated here."
He gestured to the group as a whole whith a wickedly sharp looking naval dirk that he pulled out from under his coat with a flourish.
"Have stolen something very, very precious to me, and have treated that something rather poorly to boot."
"Hang on a second-" the head recercher suddenly spat out, making the people around him jump. "- what are you blabbering on about! We own all of the specimens in this lab."
"We?" The man tilted his head, a motion mimicked by the blue devil.
"Darkcom, and the us army." Dr Maxwell puffed himself up a little to try to look a little intimidating in his battered white coat and cracked glasses
"Ah. I see...."
The man slowly approached Dr Maxwell.
"You are saying that, in your eyes, that every specimen, living or not, are property? If not yours personally, then of the company you work for?"
"Yes."
"Even if that specimen is, say, an 17 year old boy, kidnapped off the streets of new york?"
"Uh.."
"A 17 year old that in no way consented to being drugged, 'arrested', taken across state lines, imprisoned unjustly and experimented on whith out the knowledge of his family?"
"Now hang on a moment...."
He paused, right in front of the now trembling again scientist, looming over him as everyone around Dr Maxwell did there best to squirm away from what ever was about to go down.
"Now, I know definitions of words can change drastically over the years, but when it's put like that, it sounds less like theft and more like slavery. And for as much as hate thieves," the man's voice suddenly gained an icey, dangerous hiss that made Mary's heart sink to her stomach. "I despise slavers."
"And for the record, Jacob Maxwell" the man in purple crouched down to look dr Maxwell dead in the eye "that 17 year old? The one you've spent the last couple of months ripping chunks out of to order? He is my son. And I am taking him back."
Mary finally felt the knot on her wrist bindings give way, and she acted on her chance in a flash
The captor closest to her (an older, grizzled looking gent with a scarred up face) had a pistol on his hip at just the right hight and angle for her to grab in a single motion and discharged at the man in purple, aming to hit him in the ribs and neck.
His form seemed to shimmer and smear slightly, and suddenly he was back up in front of the cryo-tube, Dr Maxwell dangling by his neck from one of his gloved hands.
She swung to re-aim at him, only for the blue demon to crash into her, ebony claws digging deeply into the flesh of her shoulders as it roared directly into her face.
The merc she stole the gun from roughly snatched it back with an apology aimed towards the man in purple. (He sounded.. European, but Mary couldn't distinguish where from exactly).
"Not a problem, Aries, I'm surprised she didn't do something sooner."
Mary did her best to hiss and spit up at the devils face. If this thing was going to eat her, she wasn't going to make it easy.
The devil gained a look of what she thought was almost a hint of respect.
"Vergil, take miss Arkham to where we discussed. Unharmed. I believe your brother will want to talk to her in person once he's awake."
The blue devil, 'Vergil', looked back at the man in purple with a suppriseinly childish pout on his face.
"Yes, unharmed." The man sighed. "Wipe that look off your face, or I will put you in a binding circle and make you watch Dante raid your lindt supply."
Vergil let out a pouty whine as some of the mercs snorted with laughter.
"I will. Don't think I won't. And he will be hungry. Get going."
Vergil turned back to mary, very much looking down his nose at her. He huffed once, and dragged her not only upright, but clean off her feet. He was taller than her, much taller. She was not exactly a small woman, but this devil had a good foot on her, maybe slightly more, so my the time he'd fully straightened up, her feet where left dangling.
She yelled and kicked, only to be thrown over the devil's scaily shoulder.
There was what looked like a flash of metal, what felt like a pressure burst, and screams and yelps of supprise and they were moving, stepping trough a glowing rift in the air. The last thing mary saw before the portal closed again was the man in purple, terning back to Dr Maxwell, and tapping the knife against his chest.
--
Sparda watched Vergil leave through his portal, and turned back to his new 'friend.'
"So. Where were we." He tapped the derk thoughtfully over where the whimpering human's pounding heart was located.
"Ah, yes. Getting my child back."
Dr Maxwell's name had cropped up time and time again in the documents that his little spies had ferried back to him in the past couple of weeks, in memos, email chains, and along dotted lines signing off on procedures that reduced his son, his beloved little survivor, to nothing but a lab rat.
Such a shame. Sparda had read through some of the man's recerch papers concerning growing artificial tissues and organs, and he had some interesting ideas that could of day might become life lines to a great many people.
But instead, he was using that research to create weaponry for this shadowy little branch of the us military.
He was just a little bit disappointed. Juuuust a little.
"This is how things are going to go. You are going to free Dante from this outsized ice cube mould, or I am going to start taking hands. And hearts, if you still continue to be stubborn."
Dr Maxwell's eyes went wider.
"So, good sir. How's it going to be?"
-
--
By the time Vergil slipped back in via portal, the room, the captives had been shuffled off somewhere else, and the pack of Redgrave operatives that father had picked to act as extra eyes, hands and muscles where working quicky to barracade the room from the inside.
Vergil scanned his eyes over the proceedings, taking note of who was where, before finally zeroing in on the most important thing in the room: his brother.
Dante was out of the tube, and was layed out on the floor with father's coat acting as a barrier between his brother's still form and the cold metal grating.
There was blood on and under the control panel and a hand, detached from the arm it had come from, laying near by, hinting that things had managed to go sideways in the little time it had taken to dump Mary the fowl mouthed menace in one of the (rarely used) dungeon cells under father's castle.
She'd fought him. The. Whole. Time.
And Modus and Baul had stood back and laughed at his efforts the. whole. time.
Traitors, the both of them.
His brother was out of his icey coffin, and Vergil could clearly see his slow, deep breathing from across the room as he approached. He was alive. He looked, frankly, terrible, but he was alive, and was already starting to show signs of life.
"Good timing, Vergil." Father glanced up from his spot by Dante's side. "Don't mind the mess back there, apparently that apparatus had some sort of 'specimen termination' button, and the late and great Dr Maxwell tried to hit it."
"Looks like he regretted it." Vergil carefully knelt down next to to his brother.
Dante had been slim when they'd finally reunited as a family just over a year ago, but now he looked borderline gaunt.
That was a little concerning.
"Indeed he did."
A distant series of thumps and shouts caught there ears, signalling that Darkcom reinforcements had arrived, and was likely in the process of busting there way though the blast doors.
Time to go.
Sparda quickly called the troops over to him, picked up Dante limp form, all swaddled up in his coat, and signaled Vergil to open a portal back home.
Vergil was more than happy to comply. This place had a permeating stench of metallic rot and soul crushing cold, dragging up red tinted memories Vergil did not wish to revisit.
-
---
Postscript: in the light of day.
Dante was warm when he woke up. Very, very warm and cozy, like he was snuggled into a bank of fluffy cotten candy clouds that somehow smelt like old books and older growth forest.
And the air felt so fresh, much fresher than the last couple of times his conciseness had breafly won out over whatever was keeping him asleep.
Gingerly, he cracked open his eyes.
Ah.
He recognised that ceiling.
A quick glance to the side confirmed his foggy suspicions. Across a sea of plush, baroque patterned bedding, and next to a painted portrait of a majestic looking grayton, a gothic-y arched widow was propped open, revealing a beautiful alpine vista.
He was in his father's castle.
Dante blinked.
He was in his father's bed.
... why was he in his father's bed?
His body protested greatly as he sat up, pulling the duvet up around him to ward off the sudden chill.
How and when did he get here, exactly? It hurt to think right now, but he was sure that the last clear, non painful memory he had was on at bridge in new york, next to officer trigger happy.
... and it was spring.
The little digital clock/calendar thing next to the bed was reading June.
...
Huh
...
His ears caught the sound of someone moving about in the adjoining room.
"Dad?" Hells tits His voice sounded like he'd gargled bleach. "Verg? You there?"
The face that breafly peaked around the door was clad in onix scales. It was Modus, the chill one out of his father's former students turned trusted alies and keys to busting out of hell jail.
Dante caught the flash of sheer joy on his face before he disappeared again, audibly calling for sparda as he went.
-
"Vergil was the one who rased the alarm."
Sparda gently nudged his son into eating a little more of the soup that had been offered.
"He wanted to check in on you after that mess in new york, and was greatly alarmed to find a massive hole in the side of your apparment."
"Yeeeeeh. It was a wild half a day." Dante winced. "Sorry I didn't manage to get your sword back."
Sparda gave his son a wry smile.
"You are more valuable than any sword, Dante. You and your brother both." He insisted. "And speaking of your brother, he's.. ah, been having fun trying to keep our new house guest under control."
"House guest?" Dante tilted his head in confusion.
"Young commander Arkham." Sparda clarified. "Since she was the lynch-pin behind your capture, I suspect you have things you want to say to her."
Dante did, infact, have things he wanted to say to her. A great many things. Many of which would likely earn him a mouth full of soap if mum was still alive.
".... and Vergil hasn't tried to kill her?"
"Oh. He wants to. Especially after she tryed to gut him with a spoon earlier "
Now that was an fun mental image. His big brave brother, who had faced down many a foe whilst mundus' captive, being terrorised by a human armed with cutlery.
"Anyhow, she is safe, if very unhappy, where she is, so you focus on healing, and resting, for the time being." Sparda pressed a soft, loving kiss onto Dante's forehead. "And I already have some leads to where force edge was taken, don't you fret."
Dante blinked sleepily. That was good to know. He'd been in new york to find that sword, after all.
"Now rest. Vergil will be up to see you shortly, once he's finished scrubbing oatmeal out of his hair."