One Patient Short

  The town was a dark and depressing place constantly shrouded in a fog of smoke and grime. What little industry remained paid little heed to regulation or safety it just plodded on offering some employment. 
  The streets were dark at night, as little maintenance as possible was carried out , it was a miracle if one in ten street lamps worked. The streets were ingrained with the dirt of countless decades of industry and strewn with months’ worth of rubbish.   
  In the corners and cracks of this once mighty city, a few people eked out a living with nothing but their hands, their wits and any opportunity that presented itself to them.

  They were called the rats. They were not a street gang so much as an organised rabble of half starving homeless people huddling together, pooling information, time and what little they had to survive. They lived in the abandoned units by the train station. They begged off or ran errands for people but mostly they sifted through the rubbish for anything that could be recycled-aluminium, copper, brass, lead-things like that.
  Short was a wiry, lithe, dark-skinned girl just turned eighteen. Her birth name was Juliet Clair but she went by the name of Short. She was pretty under the dust and grime and pretty good at her job. She could fit into places that the other rats couldn’t. 
  She was an orphan who had run away age twelve and never looked back. She was at the train station and wore a ragged pair of sweat-pants, a pair of sneakers that had once been white and red but were now a sort of faded gray. A canvas jacket with various pockets stuffed full of anything hallway suspected to being useful was hung loosely over a black patched tee shirt. She called it her lucky shirt. A wool cap was pulled over her short hair, to keep her warm. She carried a mail bag full of aluminium cans.

  There was no-one about on the station. It was dangerous and filthy but she waited for a train to pass then jumped down onto the track. She rolled into the space between the track and the station and started to search through the mound of rubbish. Within a few minutes she found a can. Up against her magnet there was no reaction, it was aluminium not steel and into the bag it went. 
  She searched slowly through the space. Train after train went past, she lost count. Short found a packet of sweets. Someone had dropped it, probably by mistake waiting for a train. It was sealed so into her pocket it went. Finally, when her bag was full with aluminium she carefully checked for a train then extracted herself from the station.

  It was a short journey to the rats’ home. There was a van outside and the scrap man stood there, slowly doing business with the rats-exchanging a few dollars for whatever they had collected. He looked at her day’s work, shrugged and handed her what was little more than pocket change. Short kept her mouth shut. She was glad of the money and knew how one-sided this relationship was. 
  Doug, for what of a better word was the rats’ leader an old grey haired man. He tried to keep everyone busy and tried to keep them fed. He gestured over to her;   
    “Short, I want you to check something out. That old building on Dean Street- can you see if it’s vacant now and if we can get onto the roof and strip the lead? You might be able to get up onto it from the next door building by the fire escape.”   
  Short grabbed a ladle and poured herself a cup full of whatever was in the bubbling pot-it didn’t help if you could identify the meat. She gulped down the dubious stew; 
    “Sure Doug. I’ll head out in a minute.”
  A fight broke out between two of the rats. They both had their hands on a large roll of electrical wire-a few seconds and they were cursing pulling and pushing. The scrapper looked impatient for the last bit of scrap. Mother Gray was an old woman in her eighties, probably no one was sure she cooked food and repaired thing and kept order. The two men fighting were fifty years her junior in a moment she had them both by the ear telling them to apologise to each other and split it Fifty/Fifty. Short watched the two shake hands then she was gone looking for a way onto the roof of the big old hospital on Dean Street. She absentmindedly opened the sweet bag and popped one into her mouth. She chewed hesitantly, a bit rubbery but still edible so she put the rest of the packet back into her pocket and kept chewing.

  The old hospital looked abandoned. The walls were dirty, grimy and in a state of disrepair. There was a sign that had appeared six months ago- ACCQUIRED BY SV LAND FOR FURTHER REDEVELOPMENT-but nothing seemed to have come of that. There didn’t appear to be sitting security or camera’s or anything else. 
  She did notice that the locks on the front door were new and they gleamed shiny against the rest of the rusted fixtures. All the windows were boarded up even the ones that no one could possible reach without a crane. It was strange. 
  Picking up details like that were what got you the difference between getting away and getting a beating or worse. Short was good at climbing and good at squeezing through things. She was up and over a chain link fence and onto the water tower of a nearby property. A short climb and she was on the fire escape. It was quite badly repaired with cracked and missing treads but Short was able to get up and over it until she reached her goal.

  As she got up on the roof she could hear something running. She looked around and saw there were air conditioning units or something like that. They looked new but who would put new a/c units on an old abandoned building like this, maybe it wasn’t so abandoned? Maybe someone had just started to refurbish it from the top? Maybe someone had something going on here and maybe that information was worth something? Had some idiot had just left the dam thing plugged in when the hospital was abandoned? Maybe it was part of a plan to sell the place, make it not look like such a shit heap? Maybe, maybe, maybe...
  She got near to the top of the roof and there was a fan motor going. She got closer to it, there was a faint light coming from somewhere. Nervously she got out the packet of sweets and took another one. She slowly, thoughtfully chewed it to try and decide should she go on or go back. She fumbled and the packet dropped into a grating on the roof where the air was coming from. She hesitantly reached in. Her hand couldn’t reach it. She sighed and pushed on the grating. It opened up on a hydraulic arm. Short reached further into the dark place. She was at the tipping point of her balance but she felt her fingers just brush the top of the packet.
  The blackness rose up to swallow her, her arm reached out, flailed and gripped the side of the wall but the packet skidded off down a vent. There was a creak and her fingers slid off whatever she was holding onto. With a clank her shoulder struck the wall and pain sparked through her body. 
  Then the youngster was rolling! Her hip struck the side of the vent and she was skidding she felt her head smack against the wall and stars lit up her closed eyes. 
  Short hit the floor and there was a creak. A vent or grate was below her. She opened her eyes and turned over. The vent she was lying on groaned and moved as if something was about to break...

  She shook her head, her vision fuzzy and looked down. There was light, it took a few seconds for her vision to adjust to the bright white light the place was not abandoned but what was there was hard to believe!
  There was a whirring noise and suddenly the sound of footsteps. Something moved in front of Short’s view, a girl. She didn’t look much older than Short maybe nineteen. She was as pale as milk, almost completely white. Her hair was a shoulder-length bob a straw blond very pale. She was completely clean and had some sort of jacket on. She wore no shoes or trousers and she walked strangely. Short did a double take her torso was covered in a very tight white garment that seemed to have a slightly silvery metallic tinge to it.

  The girl was in a straitjacket! The straps down the back had some sort of high-tech release mechanism and they were very tight showing the girl had some curves on her...
  Her arms had to be very tightly restrained. The ends of the jacket sleeves were practically meeting! Her legs were long and toned. Her bottom was round and quite well proportioned. The poor thing had a wide crotch strap fastened between her legs so tight that it moulded the flesh around her body-it must be driving her crazy-Short imagined!
  She had a tattoo that looked like a barcode on the side of her right thigh. Short noticed that she had some sort of mechanical device clamped to the back of the collar of the jacket then something else came into view.
  It was large and bulky and had a dozen arms coming out from it. One of the arms was attached to the jacket forcing the girl to walk. Short shifted her position to try and get a better look at what was going on but the grill chose that moment to fail!   Time seemed to slow down as she felt herself falling, the grill coming away. The pale girl must have heard the creak and turned around. 
  She was beautiful-high cheekbones, soft skin and bright blue eyes. She looked into Short’s brown eyes and Short looked back. The interloper had lived on the streets, she had met guys and she had met girls-she preferred girls. She had a nervous look on her face they seemed to stare deeply into each others eyes for a minute but it was only a fraction of a second.
  The pale woman was dragged forward and Short found herself landing on some sort of mechanical equipment, some sort of delicate, spinning piece of precision stainless steel and motors and glass running some automated test. With a splintering crash the device was reduced to scrap. Short felt pain shoot up her side and she rolled of the table just as soon as the alarm went off overriding the numb feeling. Short scrabbled behind a table and got the first good look at the machine that was marching the pale girl about the lab. She could see the back of it. The robot was completely white, it was quite large-about eight feet tall, guided on a set of caterpillar twin tracks. They looked like rubber & ran on the floor connected to a boxy section. A round column lead to an oval base it had six long arms that made it look a little like a spider. One of them was holding the pale girl by the collar, the rest were idle. The robot turned around and Short ducked under the table.

  The robot had one large red camera lens at the front. There were three lasers, one above, one to the right and the left which probably had something to do with distance measurement-she could only guess. The robot’s camera could move up and down, scanning. 
  The six arms on the robot were mounted on a track around its circumference. They clustered towards the front of it making it look even more like a spider. The robot focused on the damaged equipment and then tracked up to look at the damaged vent. The robot activated some sort of override and the machine stopped. Short was cautious. How smart was this thing, could she get out of here?

  She ducked back under the table as the robot turned this way and that looking for something, probably her. It lifted the pale girl bodily up by the collar and moved to one side of the laboratory. 
  There were about a dozen panels on the wall each was six feet high by three feet wide. There was a click on one panel as a lock disengaged, the second panel from the right opened up and it was padded on the inside. Inside the room was white, clean and every surface was padded. There was the glint of a mirror at high level. The pale girl turned around and looked at Short. She smiled and winked. Short moved out from under the table a little further. The pale girl was pulled across the room. She winked again then looked back towards the padded room.
  There was a whirring at the other end of the lab. A door opened and a piece of machinery rolled into place it looked like a cross between a dentists chair and an electric chair. The robot tuned to the machine it looked at the pale girl and turned her around to read the barcode on her thigh. The door to the padded cell closed but instead the robot started to drag her towards the chair. The pale girl made a whimpering noise shaking her head she was dragged.

  Short moved behind a piece of laboratory equipment that seemed to be some sort of computer bank. The pale girl was struggling violently but it was doing her no good. Short had to help her, had to do something. 
  She got closer, moving behind bits of equipment. Was there anything she could do? What sort of people would run a place like this? It had to be illegal! Why else hide it in this building? The pale girl was certainly no volunteer for a medical trial!   
  Short had volunteered for a few of them in her time just to get some cash. The pale girl was pushed into the chair. Clamps activated at her waist at her ankles. Slowly a syringe filled with some sort of green liquid was positioned at her neck by the mechanism.

  Short reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of metal she’d used to jimmy open locks. She waited for the robot to move away. A few seconds and it was busy clearing up the mess she had made earlier. The pale girl’s face was screwed up in terror, her eyes tightly shut. 
  Short got closer and closer she could see a scar on her throat she didn’t seem to be able to make much noise the scar was old it seemed that someone had decided to keep her quiet some time ago. Short was over by the chair. The syringe started to descend and she pushed it out of the way so it injected its contents into the padding of the chair and not into the pale girl. 
  The girl opened her eyes, looked at the syringe, looked at Short and mouthed the words thank you silently. Short nodded. The pale girl smiled and looked at her restraints. Short pushed the metal spike into the gap between the ankle cuff and the chair a little wiggling and the mechanism popped free. 
  The pale girl stretched her leg, wiggling her ankle. A few more seconds and short had popped the other lock on her left ankle. A few more minutes and the lock on the waist clamp also popped, surrendering to her skill and determination.
  Short grabbed her by the jacket and pulled her to her feet. As soon as the pale girl’s weight was off the chair an alarm sounded and the robot abandoned its attempts at repairing the laboratory machine turning around. 
  It focused on Short and assumed a combat stance its arms wide, ready to catch her. Short had no intention of being caught by this robotic monster though! The pale girl hid behind her and Short dodged left as the machine advanced. 
  The machine reversed and tried to catch her. Short ducked down and jammed the blade into the robotic eye of the machine. It staggered, sparked and went back starting to flail around. Short moved back away from it hoping not to be hit by one of its flailing limbs. She looked at the pale girl, she was terrified and excited at the same time. The robot’s body shifted and two sensors were deployed from it they looked like microphones. 
  Short pulled a piece of scrap metal out of her pocket and threw it away from them. The robot slowly went towards the noise. Short looked at the pale girl showing her finger over her lips the pale girl nodded. The two of them slowly crept around the blind robot. Short put her foot down on something-it was the packet of sweets she felt her footing go out from under her. She gasped as she went over landing with a thud there was the sound of movement. Short grunted and got up. There was a whirring from behind her and a mechanical hand in the centre of her back pushed her to the floor. She screamed something, jabbed her in the left buttock-a syringe and she felt her body going limp. It went dark. She struggled against the weight of the machine pushing down but she couldn’t keep awake.

  Short dreamed she felt herself falling, there was a black void all around her and she was falling faster and faster, she could feel the force of the wind. Her hat was gone then her jacket seemed to be torn off by the wind. Her trainers seemed to go then one sock then the other. She was falling in the black void. She felt her sweat pants torn away by the wind. The wind tugged at her lucky shirt she held onto it she had fought a stray dog for that for over twenty five minutes. Then it was gone she screamed in her dream.
  She felt the last of her clothes pulled away by the wind then she was falling, huddled into a ball. She looked down there was something below her an ocean of black churning water. She screamed as she fell into its depths. The water closed in on her she tried to swim but she was dragged down by a current. 
  She was panicking. Then she saw something glowing in the deep water, a mermaid-all white she looked just like the pale girl but she wore no jacket and had a tail instead of legs. She was swimming towards Short and Short tried to swim towards her then Short felt something coil around her ankle and pull her upwards suddenly she was being pulled through the water. The pale mermaid tried to follow but could not keep up. One moment she was in the water, the next she was pulled out. She could see a black blob of ooze it was at the shore of the ocean, one line of slime wrapped around her ankle.

  She tried to fight, she didn’t want to go anywhere near the dam black slime but she was drawn into it, she fought with everything! The mass of slime enveloped her, it pushed its way between her lips and clamped down over her mouth gagging her. She felt her arms wrapped around her body, tightly locked in place, punishingly so! Struggling, she felt her ankles were shackled and it was getting tighter around her body!
   She woke up with a start there were bright lights her head hurt and her body didn’t feel right. She looked around she was in the padded room that the robot had been about to throw the pale girl in. The pale girl was kneeling in one corner watching her intently. 
  Short tried to speak only to find her jaw was painfully prised open with a huge plug shaped gag. It tasted like plastic, rubber and disinfectant-disgusting! She shook her head trying to dislodge the monster it would not budge a millimetre and muffled any protest she tried to verbalise. There was a mirror high up on the wall short looked into it a big pair of scared brown eyes looked back at her over the top of the large panel gag. She was not used to looking at herself without a layer of grime over her skin it was unusual. The gag was strapped behind her head with a single large wide strap. The gag was made of the same material as the straitjacket-a strange white material with a silvery shine. Short had a straitjacket to match the one the pale girl wore it was very tight. 
  She examined it closely, it had a tight collar, a central loop and then side loops for good measure. Her ankles were in cuffs linked with a foot long strap. She had a barcode tattoo on her thigh. Short also felt the uncomfortable sensation of a plug nestled between her tight buttocks it was both painful and humiliating. Short realised that she had been stripped naked, cleaned and restrained.
  She screamed into her gag and began to thrash about against her restraints. She got on her knees, gritted her teeth and strained her muscles against the restraints pulling as hard as she could, twisting and contorting her shoulders and arms against the jacket ignoring the strap between her legs she pulled hard left right up down there had to be a way to get out of the dam jacket there had to be! She twisted forwards and backwards anything to get the slightest millimetre of slack. She looked at the pale girl to see if she could work on the restraints the pale girl shrugged her shoulders and came over she tried to do something with her teeth for about a minute pulling and tugging against the strap that held short’s arms in place but with no success.
  Short curled into a ball and began to cry into her gag, hot salty tears running over her gagged mouth and onto the padded floor. The pale girl nestled up beside her trying to comfort her. There was something in the corner. Of the room short ignored it but after a few minutes the pale girl got up she moved over to the item it was the packet of sweets. She managed to manoeuvre the packet until one sweet dropped out in a second she fell on it and gobbled it down. She went back over to Short. 
  Short looked at the packet of sweets-the accursed thing! She looked at the bag more closely, at the barcode on her thigh, the one on the pale girls thigh and the barcode on the packet, the ghost of an idea formed in her head.

  The pale girl came close to her and kissed Short on the forehead gently. Her deep brown eyes looked into the pale girl’s deep blue eyes. The girl blushed and looked away for a second. She pulled herself closer to Short and the two of them stared at each other for moments. 
  The pale girl began to nuzzle Short’s neck and jaw-line. Short closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of the woman. She smelt soft and warm with the faint smell of disinfectant. Short was not unappreciative of the attention but she wanted her hands and voice back. That however, was not happening any time soon!
 The two of them cuddled then her lips were everywhere then the two of them were bucking against there restraints entwined together then they slept, spooned together. 

  The robot came an hour later. Short was ready as the door opened. She had the barcode from the sweet packet held in place over her own tattoo, using her elbow to hold it there as she crouched. 
  The machine had either repaired itself or had been repaired by someone or something else. The eye worked as it was meant to. It homed-in on the barcode and paused in an error message. Short took her opportunity and dropped the packet kicking it out into the lab.
  The robot followed the barcode on the sweet packet and not her. She gestured with a nod to the pale girl the two of them ran while the robot was hunting for the packet under the lab equipment. The machine blundered into the other lab equipment sending it spinning. A table was knocked over and landed on the pale girl knocking her to the floor and pinning her to the ground. The package was caught by a gust of wind and swirled about the robot reached out hitting the doors to the padded cells. It shuddered and was silent. A code appeared on it error override rebooting in 20.

  Short was about to run for it when she looked back at the poor pale girl. She pulled herself over, wiggling herself between the gap and the table, braced and pushed. Grunting into her gag with frustration she pushed again and again. 
  The table moved an inch. It was heavy and she was one small girl but she pushed again and with the pale girl pushing at the same time there was a creak and the desk moved! Short got her breath back as the pale girl pulled herself to her feet. The robot trembled and started to twitch, booting back up. 
  The two girls looked at each other and then ran towards the door. The doors were shut fast, no exit button no handle. Near the door was a console, it had a plastic cover over it. The robot was starting to move.
  There was a big button labelled Release Emergency Override. The pale girl got her teeth around the edge of the cover and pulled, lifting it up. The robot was getting closer. Short smacked the button with her forehead. There was nothing. She hit it harder then. Suddenly there were noises through the building and far larger things moved about. There were creaks and cracks, slams and the sound of things being torn muffled by walls and distance. The two girls ran through the door.

  An alarm sounded;
    “REMOTE EMERGENCY OVERRIDE PROCEDURE!” 
  There was a sliding door down the corridor and it started to close. Short ran for it with the pale girl close behind. The door was closing, the smallest gap remained. Short dived and was through the opening but she was triumphant only for a second, looking back and see the pale girl behind the glass the other side of the door. She looked sad and banged against the door with her shoulder. Nothing happened and a tear rolled down her face. She mouthed silent words-run don’t look back. Short looked at her and shook her head. She kicked the door but it didn’t budge.
  The robot appeared down the hall, approaching. There was a crash like thunder and something came through the wall right next to the robot, tearing right through its armour plated hide!
  The creature was large and angry, having to practically double-over to fit into the corridor. It looked like a fusion of dog and man! It was angry and snarled. There were patches of greying fur, some missing-burned off. Leads and tubes came out of its body and sensors and bolts were stuck into its flesh. It looked at the pale girl and it looked hungry. The pale girl screamed a wordless scream. The creature was looking at her or through her at something else.

  A window shattered and a man was standing in the corridor. He must have been seven foot tall, a Hispanic but his bulk was immense like a power lifter or body builder. He wore a leather trench-coat, wide-brimmed leather hat, black leather boots, gloves and trousers. A scabbard was across his back and in it a sword, seven feet long, just inches from the floor, completely impractical and yet he drew it with ease. 
  He seemed to dip and blur. The sword was half drawn there must have been a line in the scabbard then it was free. The beast snarled at him;
    “Breaker ... I, w-will k kk kill you!” 
  Short was horrified that inside the monster was a voice-a human voice! The edge of the sword gleamed purple. He pushed the glass doors out of the way like a piece of tissue paper. 
  There was no battle, one moment the man was standing twenty meters from what must have been a werewolf, then in the blink of an eye he had closed the distance and chopped the werewolf in half before it could react. There was the faint glow of golden light, it looked for a second as if the man had wings made of energy they seemed to fold and fade away just as quickly as they appeared.
  The pale girl was gone, her mind retreating back inside her to some other place. Short tried to nudge her to get her to move, to react. What remained of the werewolf slowly started to desiccate until it was a dry husk looking like a bear skin or bag of bones. 
  The man took out a small box, he flicked a handful of salt onto the remains then took out a match, lit it and flicked it onto the remains they started to burn. He turned and just as quickly he was looming over them. He looked at them deeply.

  His voice was loud, booming with the echo of cathedral bells. He was not human, not in the slightest bit-something else;
    “Human vermin! Not the uninvited, just the unenlightened. It would be a mercy to kill you now rather than let my cousins of the sage clan continue their experiments with you!” 
  Short looked confused and backed away. What was going on? Monsters that spoke like men and men that spoke like monsters. The mountain of a man continued;
    “I don’t want to recruit you like the esoteric clan. However much they train humans they can never stand against the demons,” He paused and looked thoughtful, “...if it were up to me I would exterminate you as the rats you are-that’s the best way to deal with this world but the battle clan is not in the majority of the council. We will be one day.” The man stepped back, “I think you can escape as you are. Let luck, good or ill decide your fate!” He charged into the hole that the creature had left.

  The pale girl was slowly coming back. She followed Short with a little nudging. The girls cowered in the corridor, their options looked limited. 
  Whatever was running this place was experimenting on monsters and humans, they had turned off the security and now the monsters were loose! They had no hope of fighting or running from anything in this place. There was a growl and something came around the corner...
  There were four creatures. They looked mouldy and rotten, emaciated. Their skin weak and flaking, completely bald-they looked like walking skeletons with sunken and hollowed eyes. One looked at them, “Food!” It hissed. 
  The girls backed away from the ragged, starving creatures.
    “Police, stop!” Was shouted from behind the creatures. They didn’t stop. Four shots rang out they were dropped. There was a police officer strolling down the corridor. He looked concerned. He approached Short and reached behind her head. There was a sound like screeching metal then the strap on the gag was loose. She spat it out and worked her jaw.
  The officer spoke;
    “My name is officer Davis Goldman. Do you know what is going on here?”     
  Short looked at him;
    “You got here awfully fast what do you know about this place?” 
  They were interrupted by a creature crawling along the corridor, half snake half man. The officer looked at it and shouted; “Police stop!” Before firing twice at it. The creature did not stop and seemed unaffected by the bullets. 
  The large man was suddenly back in the corridor. He casually looked at the girls and the police officer, making no move to stop the snake creature. Short looked at him;
  “Hey! Just a second, that gag was locked on how did you break the dam lock with your bare hands?”
  The tall man laughed;
    “She has you! Cut the dumb flat-foot act! This facility belongs to your clan-the Sage!”
  The police officer looked insulted;
    “This facility was never sanctioned by the clan council! I was sent to destroy all specimens and neutralise any witnesses.” 

  The police officer’s hand glowed white. He struck the Lamia with his bare hand, shredding it. The large man nodded respectfully;
    “Angel glyph magic-a lost art of our heritage. There are few masters. You must be the Breaker of the sage clan.” 
  The police officer nodded;
    “That would make you the Breaker of the Berserker clan, nothing but inhuman raw physical power.”
  The man-mountain nodded smiling;
    “They call me Goliath. I will one day rip the arch demon to shreds and put his heart on my sword. Is there another from your clan with a similar level of power wielding an artefact of power?” Davis shook his head;
    “Not my clan but I can sense another of our kind maybe the esoteric have someone here.”

  Officer Davis threw some holy water over the remains of the snake creature and its remains shrivelled, then turned to dust. Something came running around the corner it was large and pale, shaped like a man with hungry red eyes. The two fangs screamed vampire!
  Goliath looked at it;
    “A vampire regent, over five thousand years old. I wonder how they caught him?”
  The vampire looked left at officer Davis who’s hands were glowing white, a flaming spectral sword appeared in them. He looked left at the mountain of Goliath who’s sword was unsheathed and glowing purple. The vampire decided that it was better odds than whatever was behind him. The two hunters struck, their blades falling together. The vampire was able to catch one blade in its left hand and one in its right. It was in great pain but it was able to hold the two swords at bay.
  A figure appeared in the corridor behind the vampire. A pair of bronze single edged short swords flashed and the vampire turned to dust. The man wore a black trench coat. A black leather hat covered his head, a beard and long hair peaked out from under the hat. He had a back-pack it was old and battered. He was over six foot tall but there was more, the man had enormous physical presence, he seemed to loom like he was eight feet tall. He opened a bottle and poured holy water on the vampire’s remains. 
  Goliath looked at the twin blades, a look of awe in his eyes before they were sheathed;
    “The blades of fate and destiny! The blades that the original hunter, King Samuel used to slay the first arch daemon?” The hunter smiled;
    “Yes, the council of the esoteric clan granted me their use after I was recognised as the breaker of my clan.”

  A man ran into the corridor. He had the remains of shackles on his arms and legs and his eyes burned red. Around his fingers, flames formed. 
  The three hunters looked at him and Goliath spoke mockingly;
    “Sorcerer going to summon a little daemon for us to fight?” 
  The man grinned and started to chant. Before he got two syllables out there was a shotgun blast and the sorcerer toppled forwards dead. There was a woman standing behind the dead sorcerer;
    “That was the last of them.” 
  She wore a trench-coat, a piece of armour-a chest plate could be seen peaking out of the coat. Davis looked at her as the sorcerer’s remains turned to dust;
    “What did you use and are you human?” Goliath looked at her; ‘Its odd, I cant tell. She seems to be one of us and a human at the same time.’
    “The name’s Kathy. It was blessed silver shot and I am human.”
  Samuel looked at them;
    “I have the ability of a battle aura. I can extend it over humans and give them our abilities.” 
  Goliath shook his head;
    “A waste of power.”
  Samuel turned to the two other hunters;
    “I know you by reputation. The Breakers of the other two great clans Davis the glyph master and Goliath the walking mountain range.”
  Both of them nodded Goliath was less polite.
  Samuel looked at the two girls;
    “You have a decision to make. We could let Goliath here end your pain, some do not wish to live after seeing such things. We could let Davis take you back to an asylum where they would burn away your mind with drugs and electrodes until you could not remember this incident or you could come with Kathy and I and we can teach you how to hunt daemons, what do you decide?”