Pandæmonium

There was a time, long, long ago, when Varrigan City was pure. Families arrived, bright-eyed and full of hope, their futures laid out before them. There was a time before skyscrapers blotted out the sun in the financial districts. Before hovels sprawled across every available space like a filthy calico mosaic of aluminum and steel. A time before guns and drugs flowed through the city almost as easily as the unclaimed bodies left in the sewers. There was a time, believe it or not, when the boogeyman was just a story, and children had the luxury of fearing monsters that existed only in their minds.

A time before Horzine. A time before Doctor Strauss.

The company seemed to spring up overnight; nobody could quite figure out exactly when it had arrived. They started small, a pharmaceuticals company with a handful of under-the-table deals with gangs and the odd cartel. Combat stimulants designed to unlock the hidden potential of the mind and body. Designer narcotics that hooked people with just the slightest whiff. They sold the good stuff, and soon enough, people took notice. Money rolled in, drugs rolled out, and like a hungry infant, the company grew. The city was alive and drug money was the blood pumping through its veins.

With the right people paid off, nobody noticed if a few vagrants disappeared every now and again. A few bums here and there, a hooker or two, maybe an orphan - people nobody would miss, and never enough to raise any eyebrows. It was only a matter of time before the boogeymen got bolder. Civilians disappeared. Respectable, working men and women - or at least as respectable as you could get in Varrigan. Children were snatched from school yards in broad daylight. Fed by the city, Horzine had grown into a monster.

Soon enough there were two classes of citizen in Varrigan City: those that worked for Horzine, and those that didn't. Even if you didn't work for them, chances are that you were only alive because of their money. Those that flourished lived in high-rise apartments that radiated around the Horzine HQ like a swarm of piglets suckling at their mother's teat. The city centre was a burnished metropolis of business suits, fancy cars and not a clean conscience in sight. Beyond that square mile of luxury were the concrete tenements of the not-so-lucky, who could at least thank their God of science for at least letting them keep their heads above the surface of the filth. The rest of the city was dominated by shacks and shanties on land owned by Horzine and controlled by a new batch of gangs every day.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before it all came crashing down. Like the fall of Rome, Horzine's empire was struck down in the blink of an eye. All six bridges off of Jefferson Island now only led straight into a cold, watery grave and the single tunnel out fared no better. Cell towers were destroyed, phone lines were severed. Varrigan burned and its master had fled, leaving beasts and madmen to flood the already hellish streets. The citizens would answer for what they allowed to pass.

✱✱✱

Eliza Thorne let out a strained groan as air filtered out of her bruised lungs. It took several more moments for her the fire in her mind to finally ignite. She peeled her face off of the cold, hard ceramic floors every stiff joint and muscle screamed in protest. A stabbing pain shot through her right ankle as she tried her best to stand - sprained, no doubt. With a sigh of defeat, she did her best to pull herself over to a wall to sit against. The grimey, green-tinged corridors of the Horzine HQ were eerily silent, she noted. Even her walkie-talkie was oddly mute, and after a few vain tries, she confirmed that it was either dead or being jammed.

Thorne took a deep breath, staring into her lap as she tried desperately to remember what had happened. The last thing she could recall was seeing her only ticket out of that hell hole go up in flames in front of her eyes. Everything seemed to get fuzzy after that. There was running, screaming and shooting. The details were all lost to an andrenaline-induced haze.

Protocol Ten had been a lie. No - not quite a lie; an ommission of fact. No one in the security team had known exactly what the protocol entailed; everyone always just guessed that the city would either be burned or blown up. The only instruction any of them had been given was to defend the building at all costs. Thorne snorted, a short chuckle born of morbid mixture of anger and amusement. Of course they would be holed up in the building. It was the most heavily defended place in the city. Of course, that meant jack shit if what they were supposed to be defending against came from within. Then it just turned the stalwart defenders into fish in a barrel.

A large clock on the wall told her that it was just about six o'clock in the evening - which meant that she had been knocked out for the better part of an hour. Even in that short span of time, Thorne could feel a prickling, tingling sensation clawing at the right side of her body like some creature trying to break free. She would need to get to her quarters soon. She couldn't go for too long without her medication or else... things she didn't like to think about would start to happen to her.

With a pained groan, Thorne pushed her injured leg outward and focused on her foot. Something inside of her twisted and churned, something not quite magical nor biological that shaped flesh and muscle like clay. A muffled scream escaped the scarred girl's lips as she tried to yank her foot free of her boot. Pain stabbed at her foot as bone began to reshape itself. Her hurried hand pulled her combat knife free of its sheath and rammed it down the boot, desperate to cut it open. A moment later, the boot came free after she had sliced through the side.

Thorne stared as flesh churned beneath her skin, knobs and spikes appearing and disappearing within moments. The girl stuffed the knife's hilt in her mouth to keep from screaming. She could either endure a minute or two of agony, or be forced to limp her way through a warzone for a week. Her soulgem had lost its spark long ago; the Doctor's experiments had rendered it little more than a fashionable accessory. It didn't accumulate grief, sure, but Thorne was also robbed of her magic.

The now ex-security chief slumped back against the wall as the pain subsided and her knife tumbled into her lap. Fumbling around on her utility belt, she grasped what looked like little more than a standard insulin pen. Thorne yanked off the cap and measured the clear liquid inside. Only one dose was left. With a disappointed sigh, she jammed the needle into her neck, thumbed the top button and relaxed. Almost immediately, the tingling sensation in her right side dissipated - even the scarring seemed to fade away slightly.

Pulling herself to her feet, Thorne gave her toes an experimental flex before putting her weight on the freshly healed foot. Sure enough, the pain had vanished. She couldn't help but smile, grateful that her foot had regenerated properly; not even an extra toe or anything unusual this time. As she took a cursory glance down the halls, the security officer could already spot shards of glass from broken light fixtures and office windows littering the floor. With one last grumble, Thorne did her best to tie her boot back together and began her journey to the stairwells.

Eliza (she had always preferred the name over 'Elizabeth') Thorne had never been particularly lucky. She could barely even remember her time before the experiments. She was snatched up from one of Varrigan's over-populated, unhygenic orphanages somewhere around the age of ten, then Shanghai'd into a contract with one of the incubators - probably the Thirteenth - and finally handed over to the good Doctor herself. Thorne couldn't even remember what she wished for anymore or how long she had even been a real magical girl for. Not terribly long, at any rate.

Thorne had the good fortune of being the first magical girl to survive the Maerorus procedures. With no magic left, the Doctor was generous enough to give her a job on the Horzine security team. She proved to be a good shot and a decent leader in the field, so long as someone else was telling her her objectives. Thorne had the pleasure of knowing just about every horrid abomination locked up in the deep, dark bowels of the building. Hell, she had even made friends with a few of the more recent Maerorus subjects.

As she rounded a corner, the first sounds of activity reached her. Immediately, her training kicked in and she crouched against the wall, pistol drawn. Thorne peered around the corner, forced to peek out a little more than she would have liked because of her bad eye. In the distance, she could see a figure slowly making its way further down the hall. It looked human - an adult man by the looks of him - but his movements weren't quite right. He looked ill, taking sudden, jerky steps forward with heavy footfalls.

Thorne rounded the corner silently, still crouched as she crept up to the man, her gun trained on him the whole way. He was wearing the same security uniform as her, which meant he had to be one of her subordinates. As she crept closer, Thorne couldn't help but notice a faint buzzing coming from the other security officer's direction. It wasn't until she was less than ten feet away that she called out.

"Freeze!" Thorne shouted, standing upright. "Turn around slowly and keep your hands where I can see them!"

The man froze. His head lolled to the side as he shuffled around slowly. It wasn't until she could see the man's blackened eyes that the head of security realized exactly what she was looking at.

Thorne had made a bad call.

She recognized him as an older guard by the name of Masterson. He was one of the few security officers who had actually been around longer than Thorne. Few managed to survive anywhere near that long. The front of his uniform was torn open and his entrails hung loose, covered in buzzing flies the size of a man's thumb. The insects flitted about, circling the officer before crawling back into his chest cavity, bloated on flesh and other unmentionable matter. Every now and then Thorne could see moving bumps of roughly the same size moving around just beneath his skin.

"Oh no," she muttered, taking one terrified step back. "No, no, no..."

"Sssisssssster," the man breathed, sounding more like a wheeze than a word.

"STAY BACK!" Thorne screamed. "Take one more step and I'll shoot!"

Masterson - or what was left of him - jerked as a sharp breath escape his nostrils. A laugh. They both knew the gun would be useless. Thorne already knew what was wrong with him. She'd seen it dozens of times before. Of all the terrible, hideous experiments she could run into, it had to be...

"Typhus," she whimpered. "Don't do this ! For the love of god, PLEASE-"

The man took a jerky step forward, making the girl's breath catch in her throat.

"Wheeere... is Motherrr?" He asked. "We cannot fiiind herrr..."

"She- She's gone!" Thorne wailed in reply. She could already feel her eyes getting warm and wet. "Just don't move!"

"GONE?" 'Typhus' glanced around the hallway, as though expecting to find her there. "Wheeere... has she gooone?"

"I don't know! Just please don't... please," the security officer pleaded, trying to wipe her tears away, "not like this..."

"Whyyy do you cryyy, sissster?" The man's brow furrowed. "Whyyy... would we hurrrt one of ourrr... BELOVED sissstersss?"

"Then what?!" Thorne cried. It was clear from her voice that her hope had already left her. "What do you wan-"

"You wiiill help us FIIIND Motherrr."

"Don't you get it?!" The girl wailed, growing angry in her desperation. "She's GONE! She left the city hours ago! Who knows where she is now!"

The man stopped, and for a brief moment, even the ever present buzzing went silent, too.

"Then," he mutttered, "we mussst go afterrr herrr..."

Thorne froze, almost forgetting to breathe. She couldn't afford to let Typhus leave the island. No force - mundane or magical girl - could withstand Typhus' wrath.

"N-no, Typhus," Thorne said, trying to collect herself. "Where- Where are you? I'll come down. We'll talk! I'll explain everything! Just- Just don't do anything rash, o-okay?"

'Typhus' stopped as he absorbed the security officer's words. Finally, after what seemed an eternity to Thorne, he nodded.

"We shall take you to usss," he answered. "Thisss man will..."

"Escort?"

"Essscort," the zombified guard repeated, nodding as he tried the word out. "Yesss... Thank you, sissster. Now come..."

Thorne smiled gently, wiping the last of her tears away as the man shuffled around. She almost even giggled. It was easy to forget that Typhus, Host of the Destroyer Hive, was nothing more than a frightened little girl looking for her 'mother'.

✱✱✱

True to her word, the fly-ridden guard led Thorne down into the labrynthine depths of the Horzine HQ, never straying too far to scout ahead. As they made their way down, more of the shambling zombies began to follow along until it seemed a full squad of Thorne's former subordinates had joined them. Strangely, it didn't seem to bother her, seeing her former comrades as shambling, fly-ridden corpses. She had never felt entirely at home among them. Eliza Thorne was a strange existence caught between being human, magical girl and something else altogether.

When they finally reached holding cell forty-nine, the men stepped aside and stood at attention, like a band of royal guards. Thorne stopped and took a deep breath, trying to maintain her composure. As she pushed the door open - surprisingly without the need for her security card - her ears were immediately assailed with a buzzing far louder than that coming from her guide.

The room was hexagon shaped and cramped. The concrete walls and stainless steel furnishings made it look more like a prison cell than anything else. A metal bed topped with a thin mattress and sheets sat against one side, while a toilet and sink were attached to the opposite wall. The rest of the room was populated by shelves with a handful of books, toys and other knick-knacks scattered about. In the very center of the room stood the source of the god-awful, incessant buzzing noise. Typhus was at least a head shorter than Thorne and dressed in a ragged, hooded robe. Beneath her hood, what little of the girl'ss face could be seen was wrapped entirely in dirty bandages that seemed to shift and rustle every now and again. Holding herself upright with an enormous, rusted and grimy-encrusted scythe, Thorne almost wanted to call her the littlest Grim Reaper.

Typhus was the most recent of the Maerorus Project's victims behind Valnikov. She was more powerful than any of them by far - almost incomparably so - but the procedures had left her body feeble and sickly. The Doctor, as any who had worked for her knew, had very little tolerance for flaws. Because of her physical condition, Typhus had been cast away and nearly forgotten in the dungeon-like depths of the building. Thorne couldn't imagine the girl was any older than fourteen, but where she came from and how the Doctor had come upon her was anyone's guess.

The smaller girl took a timid step forward as Thorne shut the door behind her.

"Sissster?" She asked, her voice strained and raspy, sounding like a much younger, more feminine version of the guard who had brought Thorne down.

"H-hello, Typhus," Thorne answered, trying her best to look friendly.

The little hooded figure took another step toward the security officer before erupting into a fit of violent coughing that would rival a chain-smoker. Thorne took the smaller girl's hand - pale and surprisingly dainty - and led her over to the bed, sitting them both down beside each other.

"E-excussse usss," Typhus muttered, letting out several more coughs. "Now... wherrre hasss Motherrr gone? Ourrr doorrr wasss unlocked today. Motherrr sssaid it shhhouldn't be unlocked unlessssss it'sss... an emergencccy."

Thorne held the girl's hand, stroking it with her thumb like a mother and child. "She, erm, left the city, Typhus," the black-haired girl answered. "She's gone far away now."

The tiny reaper stared up at her 'older sister', bright crimson eyes shimmering with a child-like innocence. "Whyyy... hasss she gooone?"

"She, um," the security officer thought for a moment, not entirely sure of how to proceed. "Some, uh, some bad people took away her job. And they wanted to take away her company and her money, too. So- So instead of letting them do that, she let all of her experiments out so they could live in the city."

"Whyyy... diddd the peopllle do thattt to Motherrr?" Typhus asked, still starring up at her 'older sister'. "Whyy diddd theyyy want to steeeal from herrr?"

"Be- Because they didn't like what she was doing, Typhus. They didn't want her to keep doing... things to girls. Li-like she, um, did to you," Thorne hesitated, then added, "or me."

The young Maerorus was silent for some time, her gaze falling to the floor as she let out a muffled sniffle.

"Beforrre she... leffft," the hooded girl muttered, staring at the floor, "sheee came to visssit usss. She... tooold usss that she lovesss usss... She sssaid thaaat we werrre alwaysss herrr favourrrite..."

Thorne smiled gently, before wrapping an arm around the girl's shoulders and resting her cheek on her head. Somehow, the sensation of squirming and writhing under Typhus' robe didn't bother her nearly as much as she expected.

"I'm... I'm sure you were," Thorne cooed softly, rubbing the girls' shoulder. "She was so excited after the procedures were finished..."

She remembered the event so vividly. The Doctor had gathered nearly every one of Horzine's science personnel to witness the birth of her most perfect creation - which made it all the more disappointing when the girl could barely stand on her own, never mind handle a close-quarters fight.

"Whattt... nnnow, sissster?" Typhus asked. "Do wwwe... finnnd Motherrr?"

"N-No, we need to, um," Thorne stammered as she tried to figure out an excuse. "We need to look after the city for the Do- for Mother! We have to gather supplies and- and- and make a plan!"

The small girl nodded. "Ifff... Ifff we takkke caaare of the cccity... Willll Motherrr returrrn?"

"I- Maybe? Maybe... she'll come back if you're good."

"Th-thennn... weee shalll be good," Typhus answered, nodding. Thorne couldn't help but smile after seeing the look of sincerity in her eyes.

"Good. Now get some rest, you," the security officer muttered, giving the girl's head a good pat. "I'll go find what we need. Can your, erm, men help me secure the building?"

Typhus nodded vigorously - or as much as she could in her condition. "Theyyy willll fffollow orrrdersss anddd keep you sssafe."

"Great. I'll be sure to look for a nicer room for you, too," Thorne said as she took a glance around the prison cell of a room. "I'll be back later. Take care, sis."

Making her way to the door, Thorne couldn't help but smile as she looked back and watched the tiny reaper tuck herself in. Somehow, despite everything, she felt as though things would start to get better. She had finally caught the lucky break that had eluded her for all twenty-one years of her life. It would take a lot of work and a lot of patience, but for the first time, Eliza Thorne had a home and a small, loving family.