The Bottom Line

When Cass woke up, he was lying on a cold metal table.

His vision was blurry as he blinked and tried to let his surroundings come into focus. He groaned, and every part of his body was sore and achy as he tried to move.

“Take it easy,” a voice said.

Cass tried to reply, but it came out as a garbled mess of consonants.

“You’re so stubborn. Do you have any idea how many nano-meds I had to give you just to save you? You seriously could’ve freaking died.”

He knew that grating voice anywhere.

“Mina?”

Cass felt Mina put a hand on his forehead. “God, you're burning up, but I’ve already done as much as I can. The nano-meds are stitching you up inside and out. I hope you survive this, Cass. Oh- sorry, I know you hate it when I call you that, it’s just that I had to remove your wig to apply the nano-meds on your skull, and the wig was super bloody so I couldn't tell what the color was, I don’t really know what your name is today-”

“Rambling…”

“What was that?” Mina leaned her ear towards Cass’s mouth.

“You’re rambling, Mina,” Cass croaked out in a raspy voice.

“Right, um, let me give you some water.” She stood up and left, rounding a corner out of Cass's field of view. 

He looked around. It was a warehouse. Probably one that Mina's family owned, considering that she had access to it. Cass spotted the upended boxes of Nanotech Emergency Medical Packs, Mina's family's most successful business ventures. Just one of those things costed thousands, and Cass counted at least seven opened and empty boxes of the stuff.

Cass gripped the side of the metal table and forced himself to sit up despite how dizzy it was making him. When Mina returned and saw him sitting, she rushed forward to stop him from falling off of the table. Mina raised the glass to his lips and forced him to drink.

“How long has it been? How long was I out?”

“Well I found you bleeding out at the bottom of New York earlier today, and it’s only been like 8 hours since then. It’s night time right now.”

“How’d… How’d you know where to find me?”

“I saw the news about the security footage and I wanted to come and help you. I knew that was Cassio in the video. I checked your apartment first, but you weren’t there. Then I arrived at Rowan University and I noticed a trail of blood splatter on top of the university's bridges. You must’ve hit every single one on your way day. I went lower and lower in the hover car, and I found you at the very bottom. You were lucky. If it were a straight fall from that high up, you would’ve died on impact with the ground.”

“Thank you, Mina,” Cass said. “If someone else had found me I would’ve died anyway. I’m glad it was you.”

Mina crossed her arms and smiled. “Consider it your last favor. I’m only doing this because I felt really guilty about the wedding. I knew I shouldn’t have invited you. I’m sorry.”

“You made up for that stupid wedding a thousand times over,” Cass cracked a smile too. He bent a leg over the edge of the table and put his foot on the ground.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Mina touched Cass’s shoulder, but he winced so she quickly let go. “Those nano-meds take at least 24 hours to properly do their job. You’ve got internal bleeding like crazy right now. Your limbs, your insides, and your bones are all being held together by nanotechnology, and those nanobots aren't finished stitching you up yet. You also lost a lot of blood. You need time to recover.”

“They have Sylk and Amir.”

Mina ran a hand through her hair, this time on the pink side. "The android from the security footage?” She asked.

“Yes. I have a pretty good idea of where they’re being held. I can’t waste any time. They’re fucking around with soul technology, Mina. They managed to put a soul into an android and I still don’t know how.”

Mina bit her lip as she considered this new information. "Is it that really important to you?"

Cass nodded.

"I suppose it makes sense, because of the whole android soul thing-"

"Not, that's not it. I think... I think I love them." Cass felt some tears pour down his face. "Well, I'm not sure yet. I'm still trying to figure it out, but I really need to save them."

Mina had both of of her hands clasped together, and she was smiling at him proudly. "Really? You love them? Both of them?"

"Yes," Cass said decisively.

Mina stood up. "How far are you willing to go to save them, Cass?" She asked. He had never seen her so serious, but he clenched his fist even though his muscles were on fire.

"I'd easily die for them. I'm going to become my worst character yet. A heartless, evil bastard. Just for tonight, I'm going to lean into my soullessness again. I need to be merciless so that I can get them out of there, and I'll fuck up anybody who gets in my way."

Mine sucked in a breath, seemingly satisfied with his answer. “Okay fine, but you can’t do this alone. Tell me what you need and I’ll help you. Consider it your last favor, then we’re even.”

Cass nodded. “I’m gonna need a blowtorch, a bobby pin, a SOULEMP, one of those weaponized boots with spikes on the bottom, a hairbrush, red spray-on hair dye, and one of those nonconductor suits- and by god it better still be an awesome outfit.”

She squinted her eyes at the last bit, but Mina nodded and started making phone calls.

𓆩♡𓆪

Cassian looked down at the Medriago estate. It was on the upper east side of the city where all of the well-off families could live on rooftops or penthouses. Some of the richer families could own multiple rooftops and move freely through 3 or 4 buildings via bridges or stairs, and the roof space served as their estate grounds. One building would house their main mansion, and the others usually had gardens or hedge mazes. A really well-off family could own four buildings side by side, if they were lucky.

The Medriago family owned ten buildings, all next to each other. They were all fairly similar heights, and if you caught the roofs at the right angle you could almost convince yourself that it looked like a mansion that had been built on a regular grassy ground. The roof with the main part of the estate sat on top of what was actually 4 buildings, all of them connected together by a flat platform. Stuff like that was frowned upon because it cast a shadow under the connected buildings and didn't allow for bridges underneath.

The problem with rich people was that they constantly underestimated people that didn’t have as much wealth. There were guards posted here and there, but Cassian could easily find a ladder leading to rooftop access via a nearby building and from there connect to the Medriago estate's main buildings. Cassian also recognized that all of the scanners around the estate were soul scanners. He would not show up on them at all.

Sneaking through a bridge and up a ladder that was not in line of sight of the guards was easy. If they saw a shadow scaling the wall, it could be anything. Birds, rats. However, with every rung he crawled up Cassian winced. Mina was right, the nano-meds had not finished fixing his body. 

There was no time to sit around, though. He had to help his friends. He had to help them for all that they did for him. Sylk, who was constantly there for him even when he didn’t deserve it, and Amir who gave him a purpose in life and made him feel like a human again.

Cassian was wearing a dark red nonconductor suit that resembled a jumpsuit. He had to put on a belt, a leather jacket, and undo some of the top buttons to make it look more aesthetic, but it would do. He had sprayed his hair red, and then painted some war paint on his face and neck.

Once he muscled his way to the top of the ladder, he carefully and quietly pulled himself over the edge and fell onto the neatly cut grass of the Medriago lawn. There was no way he could run through such an empty field without being seen.

Cassian took out the SOULEMP. If the Medriago family wanted a battle, then they’d get a war.

Pushing the button, Cassian saw the immediate effects. All of the soul sensors around the estate started blinking rapidly. In the house, he saw some of the lights go out. Any Tamashi watch, or soul blade, or even just a soul mood ring, blipped out and stopped working.

The guards around the gate began to look around and leave their posts, and Cassian took that opportunity to run like hell.

He kept almost falling. Every thump of his foot meeting the ground beneath him made him want to scream. At some point he was bending and falling and standing up so often that sometimes it looked like he was sprinting on all fours.

Two guards were posted at the front of the door of the Medriago mansion.

Cassian knew he'd have to fight them even if his body was technically broken. When the guards saw Cassian heading at them with full speed, they readied batons.

The batons wouldn’t be able to actually do anything. It usually got an extra kick of energy from the wielders’ soul, but that soul tech wasn’t working now. It was just two normal batons against Cassian, and they didn’t stand a chance.

“What the fuck is that?” One of them managed to get out before Cassian pounced on him and bit into his neck. Enough to draw blood, but he was careful to avoid biting into the lethal part.

The other one just started screaming. He dropped his baton and ran away. Cassian did have that effect on people. He only became this character when he needed to be a crazy motherfucker, an arsonist, a madman.

To this day, Cassian had never lost a fight, even when he was defending himself against mountains of bullies that kept trying to come at him back when he was in grade school.

The guard he was biting was also screaming, his baton forgotten and dropped on the ground. Cassian loosened his vice-like grip on the guard’s neck and grabbed instead his face, then slammed the back of the guard’s head onto the door three times. “Knock, knock, knock!” Cassian said with each hit. On the third one, the guard’s body went limp and Cassian let him fall to the porch.

Blood was leaking down his chin that Caspian didn’t bother to wipe away. It’d be a good scare tactic for whoever or whatever he had to face in there.

Cassian would bet his whole life that the big, main door had to be opened with soul-scanning technology and a lock system that responded to particular souls.

When he tried the handle, just as he suspected, the doors were disarmed, unpowered, and unlocked.

He restrained himself from walking into the center of the main room and shouting for Salazar Medriago. As much as he’d love to directly fight him on an even playing field, no soul technology in their way, Cassian had to secure Sylk and Amir first.

As he snuck through the mansion, he began to learn about the type of family this was. The floors were marbled, the walls lined with paintings that probably cost millions. Gold inlay some of the intricate detail work of the carvings on the walls. Cassian tried his luck with a door he thought might lead to a basement. Well, a basement on one of these rooftop buildings just meant a connection to the floor below, which would technically be the top floor of a skyscraper. New York was a confusing city.

It didn’t lead to anything, and his search continued. He had to find them quickly or else the effects of the SOULEMP would be resolved.

He was on the second floor now, listening carefully at each doorway. What could all of these rooms possibly be used for? The economy had become a lot more balanced ever since better leaders were established, but some people still just had too much money for their own good.

Finally, he reached a room where he heard creaking. Something swaying steadily back and forth. He put his ear up to the door. He couldn’t hear anything else. It was the only room he’d found so far that had anything going on behind it, so he wanted to take a chance before his opportunity went away.

Cassian tapped twice on the door.

“Who’s there?”

It was a female voice. Could someone really still be awake at this time of night? Maybe a maid?

He didn’t answer. He just waited until he heard her footsteps get closer to the other side of the door, and when he saw the handle turn he kicked the door with all of his might. It flung inward, hitting the mystery woman heavily.

She stumbled and fell back onto the floor, and Cassian rushed inside.

On one side of the room was a rocking chair, on the other a baby’s crib, and sitting there tied up in the middle was Amir. He was staring wide eyed at Cassian, but the bottom of his jaw was completely disconnected and sitting in his lap. It didn’t look like he was bleeding, so someone must’ve carefully unlatched his bottom jaw to make him unable to speak.

“Amir!” Cassian rushed forward and hugged the android. He thought that Amir wasn’t returning his hug because his arms were tied behind his back, but upon closer inspection Cassian saw that his arms were also detached, and laying neatly on the floor behind the chair Amir was sitting in. He was tied up to the wooden chair with a rope around his torso.

“Weird ass family. What have they done to you?” Cassian gingerly placed a hand on the side of Amir’s half face. The android closed his eyes and leaned his head into Cassian’s touch.

Cassian was grabbed by the neck and pulled back. Amir snapped his eyes open, and the woman was screaming, “You won’t take him away again! He’s mine. Mine!”

Undeterred by the chokehold, Cassian put all of his body weight into leaning forward and he flipped the woman over his head. Once she hit the floor again, she went unconscious.

“Now, let’s get you out of here.” Cassian got to work on putting back the pieces of his robot friend. Some part of him couldn’t help but see the irony of the situation, and Sylk’s words echoed through his mind.

She broke you. I can’t be the one to pick up the pieces. I’m always the one who picks up the pieces.

“It’s my turn to pick up the pieces,” Cassian muttered.

𓆩♡𓆪

They removed all of Sylk’s cybernetics, down to the ones that were merely decoration. Since every strand of her hair was technically an enhancement, they had removed all of it and she was tied up and bald.

It didn’t bother Sylk to be bald. She had willingly shaved off all of her natural hair to get the cybernetic hair in the first place, but it had been a while since she’d taken it out so she felt weirdly light.

She kept trying to ask them what their plan was with her, but nobody bothered answering her questions.

Sylk had already figured it all out. They only took her because her face was obvious on facial recognition cameras, but Cass changed so much and so thoroughly with each change that they didn’t recognize Cassio as Cassidy.

They also took the lacey fabric that she’d gotten from Amir, the mysterious backstory lace.

Hours passed, and the day ticked away in silence. They put her into a windowless room and closed the door, which left her sitting there tied up to a chair for hours. The only light was the strip lining the bottom and top walls of the room. Nobody came to check up on her, they didn’t even bother giving her food and water when she asked for it to see if there was anyone posted outside the door.

Sylk honestly thought it was one of the most boring kidnappings ever.

The only thing that really bothered her about this whole thing were the souls around her. Or rather, just two souls. There was a presence in this place so melancholy and bitter just a couple of floors above her. She felt it, and even saw part of the dark soul leaking through the ceiling when she looked up. It was sharp, jutted around the edges and poking out like knives. It was the soul of someone who was grieving and who hadn’t gotten over it. The kind of loss that a soulerist would take months trying to navigate through.

The other soul was also quite large.. A giant mass of a soul, colorful, moving fast, and bright. It was something young. It was a rainbow of sensation and emotion. Sylk didn’t understand the souls, and she’d never felt or seen anything like them before.

Finally, after this long bout of silence, Sylk heard the door knob jiggle. She’d been leaning her head forward, on the cusp of taking a nap, but she perked up.

A woman in a white coat and one of the men with soultech gear entered.

Sylk recognized the woman from the pictures Cass had shown to her. She had shoulder length silvery hair and dead gray eyes. “Lorraine Medriago, lovely to make your acquaintance. I’d shake your hand, but I’m all tied up at the moment.”

The matriarch of the Medriago family, the mother of Zola Medriago and the wife of Salazar Medriago, raised an eyebrow at Sylk's comment instead of smiling.

“I'll cut to the chase. I need to know who your little friend was in the security video, and you’re not going to resist. You're going to tell me,” Lorraine didn’t say it as a question, but a simple statement of fact.

“Oh, okay. So that’s it. I was wondering why you were keeping me alive,” Sylk hummed. “Sorry ma’am, but my lips are sealed.”

The woman sighed. “Nobody's coming to save you, Silvania Rane. Only girl in a long line of brothers. Factory worker dad, drug-addicted mother. Born a soul seer through sheer luck. You grew up poor and then you had dreams of moving to the big city and becoming a fashion designer. You want to create clothing designs based on the souls you see that inspire you, if your college essay is to be believed,” Lorraine snapped her finger and the man took out a taser-like weapon. Only now did Sylk start to look disturbed.

“Yes, that’s right, I’m quite meticulous when it comes to my research,” The woman smiled. “Now tell me, Silvania, what do you see in my soul?”

Sylk looked. She really looked. She only knew one other person who was that empty. “Nothing. I don’t see anything. You don’t have a soul.”

“Correct. Give the girl a cookie,” The man leaned forward and electrocuted Sylk. It was like no other taser that she’d felt before. The pain dug deep into her, and even her soul could feel it. She screamed.

What kind of soul weapon was that? Soul weapons could attune to the user’s soul and borrow a bit of their soul energy to pack a better punch, but they weren’t supposed to be able to hurt the soul of the user or the soul of the one on the receiving end.

“Do you like that? Just some new things we’re working on. The Medriagos are going to revolutionize the tech industry yet again. We’ll keep the launch quiet, though. Only the ones at the top will be allowed to use our cutting edge soul tech. We intend to make the world right again, back to before soul technology ruined everything. It made the world boring. It got rid of conflict, got rid of poverty. Without people at the bottom, how am I expected to stay at the top?”

“You won’t get away with this. I have friends-”

“That feisty friend you had on the bridge was very interesting, yes. It’s unfortunate that she took a tumble right over the edge.”

Sylk looked up at her angrily. She hoped the woman was bluffing, but she couldn’t tell because there was no soul for her to read.

The woman gave the man a signal, and he started to lean forward as if he was going to taze Sylk again, but then the soul weapon hummed and fizzled out. The light in the room flickered and dimmed.

The woman sighed and began walking towards the door, motioning for the man to stay there and watch the tied up girl.

“Wait!” Sylk said.

Lorraine turned around and raised an eyebrow.

“I have a friend just like you. They thought they were unsavable, that they couldn’t feel anything because they were born without a soul. But they were wrong. Your soul isn’t something that someone can just take away from you. It isn’t something that can go missing. No matter how disconnected it is from you, you can still find it in yourself to feel it somewhere. You can get it to grow back in you, piece by piece. All you have to do is be willing and open to having the connection to it.”

The old woman waited for a moment to make sure Sylk was done talking.

"Are you done yet? Those are nice sentiments that you have, but you should know what this was my choice. I gave up my soul willingly.

"That's impossible! A soul can only be extracted from a living thing as they're being born, or when they're dying," Sylk knew this to be true. She'd witnessed it herself when one of her brothers was born, and again when her mother died.

Lorraine just smiled at her, like she was some stupid girl who didn't know anything, then she turned away and walked out wordlessly.

𓆩♡𓆪

Amir and Cassian were low to the carpeted ground. Amir was carrying a baby swaddled up in his arms, who was fidgeting around, but fortunately not crying.

“I should tell you, while we have the chance… I know why I have a soul now Ca- oh, friend, what is your name today?”

“Cassian. Try to stay quiet, Amir.”

“I know why I have a soul now, Cassian.”

“Now’s not really the time for that right now.” Cassian peeked his head into the hallway to make sure they could safely cross.

“But it’s the main thing you wanted to know, your big question when it came to my existence. It’s the only reason you helped me and I promised to return the favor by telling you this information so that you could kick me out-”

Cassian snapped his head up, “Maybe I don’t want you to leave anymore, Amir. Stop talking nonsense and point me in the right direction.”

Amir fell silent for a moment, but then he smiled.

“She was taken to a lower part of this building like you thought, but the entrance looks like any other door on the first floor, it’s not distinct. I remember which one it was though, so follow my lead.” Amir tiptoed forward carefully, counted down which door was the correct one, and pointed at it.

“You sure?” Cassian asked, Amir nodded.

Cassian tried the handle. It was locked. A traditional lock, not a soul-based one. He took out the bobby pin from his pocket and started to pick it. It took a couple of minutes, but Cassian was eventually able to get the handle to turn.

When he opened the door, a dark stairwell met him. It only went down, and it was squarish and turned at an angle like the types of stairs you’d see in a hotel staircase. It was probably the staircase for the actual building below the Medriago estate.

The baby began to cry.

Cassian snapped his attention to the child and looked up at Amir. “Shut that thing up.”

Noise and movement could be heard coming from the stairwell. Distant voices from a few floors down. Amir rocked the baby gently, “Um, I don’t know how-”

“You grabbed their pacifier, right?”

Amir held it up and nodded, “Yes, but there’s no way the people down there haven’t heard us-”

Cassian snatched the pacifier out of Amir’s hand, then took the baby into his own arms. He placed the pacifier into the baby’s mouth to get it to stop crying. Footsteps echoed through the stairwell.

“This is good now, actually. Distraction. I’m gonna need you to run as fast as you can. Meet me and Sylk above the museum later, okay?” Cassian then stepped behind the door as Amir nodded and turned around without wasting a second.

The men all thundered past Cassian as he hid behind the swinging door. The security didn’t bother to look behind the door they were running past, they just blindly chased after Amir.

Once they all made it through, Cassian and the baby slipped into the stairwell and went down. On the floor directly below him, There was another series of unmarked doors. He was getting sick and tired of this, so he just began jiggling handles and calling out her name, making sure that he used his other arm to properly hold the baby.

“Sylk?” Jiggle jiggle. It was locked. No reply.

Cassian tried the next door. “Sylk? Are you in there?”

“Cass! Oh my god! I’m-” Cassian heard a thud on the other side of the door that cut her off, but that was unmistakably her voice. It was her voice and she was in danger.

He didn’t bother wasting time trying to pick the lock. Using both hands to secure the baby’s body and head, Cassian did a roundhouse kick and busted the door’s hinges. It was hard to balance while holding the baby, but Cassian kept steady. From there he did a front kick and the broken door flew into the room.

Sylk was being held hostage by a man in black soultech gear. He had a hand over her mouth, leaning her head back to expose her neck. In his other hand he held a knife, poised and ready to slit her throat and kill her.

“Wait, let’s talk about this,” Cassian said calmly.

“Put down what you’re holding!”

Cassian looked down at the bundle in his arms, incredulous. “You mean the baby?”

“Put it down!” The man demanded.

“Okay, look, I’m gonna lay the baby here, all right?” Cassian slowly placed the baby on the corner of the floor, then took three steps away from it.

“Now get down on the ground and stay there, or the girl gets it.”

Cassian licked his lips, where the blood was still on the bottom half of his face from biting into a man earlier.

He put his hands up in the air and bent down slowly. Cassian put one knee down on the ground like he was in a running pose. Then, he used his other foot to launch himself forward and sprint at the man. The man dragged the knife across Sylk’s throat right before Cassian slammed into him with the force of a rabid dog.

Cassian went to scratch at the man, but his arm disconnected at the elbow midair. Cassian still had control of it, but it stretched off of him, thin spools of metal pooling from the open wound. The nanobots were desperately trying to keep him together to make sure his muscles and veins stayed connected. This was what Mina meant by him not being completely healed. His body could literally break apart in front of his very eyes.

The nanobots were doing their job. The hand was still receiving electrical signals form his brain due to the spools of medical nanobots, and despite that fact that Cassian's arm had flung away from and him and was only connected by what looked like metallic strings of thread, his hand landed on the man's face and knocked him down to the floor. Then, when the rest of Cassian's body caught up to his hand, the nanobots clicked his arm back into his elbow. It hurt like a pain he'd never experienced before, but it was effective. He began to tear, scratch, and claw at the man below him.

The soul-based gear was not protecting the man as much as it normally might, and any bodily enhancements that were attuned to his soul had been disrupted. Cassian grabbed  the man’s neck with his sharp fingernails. The man tried to use his hands to push Cassian away, but he bit onto his fingers and stayed attached like a clamp, his teeth tightening around them the more the man screamed and tried to pull his hand away.

Cassian placed his own hands around the man’s bloody and scratched up neck and began to choke him. When the man went limp, Cassian stopped immediately. He only wanted him to go unconscious, not die.

Then, he stood up, breathing heavily. He looked over at where Sylk was laying and watching him. “You okay?” He asked.

Sylk nodded. “How did you know that the knife wouldn’t hurt me?’

He pointed at the blade on the ground. “Soul knife. The physical blade is super dull, like a butter knife, and only gets sharp when you’re able to connect it with your soul.” Cassian sighed, “Honestly, these people rely too heavily on soul tech nowadays. One little SOULEMP rendered them useless.”

The lights in the room suddenly brightened. Cassian tsked and shook his head. "Speak of the devil." Soul power was back on.

“Right, um. I’m glad that you’re alive. What… What's your name today?”

“Cassian.”

“Cassian,” Sylk repeated. “I really don’t think I’ve met this one yet.”

The boy covered in red used his tongue to fish out some skin that had gotten caught in his teeth. He spit it onto the unconscious man.

“Hey, do me a favor and grab that baby.”

𓆩♡𓆪

Sylk followed Cassian while holding the baby. They were staying low to avoid detection. Cassian got a sense of déjà vu, but shook it off.

“We're not going back the way I came, it will be crawling with guards. I also don't think escaping through the building below's stairs is a good idea either. You’re gonna have to leave through a window from the main estate building."

“What about you?” Sylk asked.

“Unfinished business.”

Cassian opened the door to one of the many bedrooms on the first floor. The room was nice. It had red curtains draped in front of the window and a fireplace in the middle of one wall. Cassian proceeded to grab a fire poker. “Step back,” Cassian warned.

Sylk went to stand by the back wall while Cassian swung back the fire poker and broke the glass of the window. He made sure to clear off the sharp bits at the bottom of the window frame so that Sylk didn’t hurt herself while leaving. When he was done he motioned for Sylk to get out.

She stepped forward as if she were going to go, but then paused when she was next to Cassian.

“There’s something you should know…”

“Tell me later,” Cassian took out a blow torch from his bag, and began to walk away from her, but she put a foot out to stop him since she needed both hands to carry the baby.

"It can't wait, Cass."

"You have my attention for two minutes."

"You have a soul, Cass. You already have a soul. I noticed it sometimes as a tiny spark, almost unnoticeable until I really focused. Then I began noticing it more when you hung out with me and Amir. Your soul was shaped like a tiny sun, with wavy rays sticking outward and flowing towards something. Always in the same direction, though. Up. Like you're trying to connect with the rest of yourself, but it's somewhere above us."

Cassian stared at her blankly. "But it's not in me right now."

Sylk shook her head. "It's not. Are you doing that yourself? How can you just... turn off your soul like that? How do you have such a level of control with a soul that's not even a part of your body anymore?"

"I don't know, Syl, but you need to get out of here. Meet Amir at the top of the museum. I'll catch up to you guys. If I'm not there by the time the sun rises, just leave without me."

Sylk look like she wanted to say more, but instead she just bowed her head through the window and climbed out.

When she was gone, Cassian held the torch under the red curtain.

As the flames began to pick up, Cassian slowly began to back out of the room. He went out into the hall and held the blowtorch out and against the wall as he walked forward. Every time he passed by a painting or a tapestry it caught fire beside him.

“YOUR SOUL LACKS A SOUL, YOU FOUL AND FIENDISH MORTALS! FEEL THE FIRE OF THE DEMON YOU CREATED!” Cassian screamed.

One of the doors swung open in front of him, and guards began piling out and blocking the hallway’s path.

“Stop right there!”

They all pulled out taser-looking weapons, the electricity glowing at the ends of the weapons dangerously. Cassian was dangerous, too. 

The only way out was forward. 

Cassian stomped his boots onto the ground, and the spikes protracted out of them. He ran towards the group of guards in a blur of red and black, like a deranged escaped convict from Hell itself.

He was going to become a monster again. He was willing to be the demon in the story if that's what it took to protect the people he cared about.