Seconds to Midnight: A Maiden of Midnight Prequel

Cain- Day Ten

The streets of London were mostly abandoned as I made my way down them, Destiny prowling at my side, the both of us hunting down the list of targets we had been given by the Manor. Today, President Stephan Schleiubaum and three of his sons, Daniel, Marcel and Konstantin Schleiubaum, were the targets. They were lasted sighted near the Tower of London- one of the first locations to be destroyed by bombing. The Geiger Counter on my belt was clicking uncontrollably, but the wards Des and I wore would keep us safe for another week before they needed to be replaced. Glancing at the counter, I winced. There was more than enough radiation to kill a human in this street. Around us, people coughed and choked on their own blood, many of them laying weakly in the streets, barely able to lift their heads to look at us passing by. Several reached toward us, pleading for water or food. Knowing it would make no difference to their fates, I forced myself to turn away, grimacing.

Destiny was whistling cheerfully, the sound attracting humans, who poked their heads out from their various hiding spots, while I could hear others who scrambled even further into their hiding places; well acquainted with the Manor and my cousin. The argument in Demonic we were having in between her song wasn’t helping alleviate their fears. Much like Operation Model Madeline Maladur, the argument was a distraction, something to keep Demonic soldiers away from us while we made our way down the road. The only thing more dangerous than a Demonic Prince and Princess was an angry Demonic Prince and Princess.

Both of the packs on our backs were loaded with supplies, since this was meant to be a long road-trip, or rather, hike. The car we were given could not travel through the streets, not with bodies and rubble piled sometimes as high as the houses.

First, here in London, was the German President and his sons. Then, it would be travelling up to Edinburgh to meet with one of the Manor’s allies, a Scottish Queen eager to get as many of her people out as possible, and willing to sell anything to do it, even allying herself with the British Manor. When we reached her, the instruction booklet for how to get to the Divider, and the passcodes to tell the soldiers guarding it, would be handed over to her, and we would jump on a private plane she owned to track down Satalari Paradoxin, the human who had started the war having returned to Alaska to try and hunt down her family.

Only three nuclear bombs had been dropped so far. The initial attack, which came from America, had been fired on its own citizens, and near the laboratory where Satalari had opened the Rift. According to accounts from witnesses, people claimed to have seen some kind of creature crawling out of the Rift, but Satalari refused to close it, citing that she was ‘crazed, and shouting about finding someone, and proving she was right’. The explosion had closed the Rift, shutting the creature within. The launch of that first nuclear weapon had led to Britain firing its own weapon, and not long after that- America fired back. Huge chunks of London were gone from the map, which I’d carefully marked for us to keep away from. So were parts of Midwestern America.

Satalari had not lost anybody, to my knowledge, so who could she possibly have been looking for, and why in the Rift?

After mulling it over with Destiny last night, we’d both come to the conclusion that the Rift, which was a powerful portal to other worlds, had simply fried her human brain like a can of baked beans over a stove. There was nobody for her to find. It was a fiction made by her broken mind. Still, she’d had enough sense to run after that initial explosion. She was on one of the first planes destined for Alaska, ghosting both the Manor’s attempts to contact her in the preliminary moments of war, and ever since.

Now, Satalari was going to be learning the same lesson Morven had learnt- You did not ever, ever run from the Manor. We would always find you.

Once we made it to Alaska and polished off the human scientist, we were to head to Russia, intercept forces there, where Manor intelligence told us a division of Assassins were rising up against the Manor and its ‘deplorable selling of tickets out of a poisoned world’, put a stop to them through any means necessary, and then make our way across Russia, dipping up to Finland to meet with some more allies there, gather more supplies to bring back to the Manor, and then come back to the Manor.

Once we were in London again, we were to help filter out whoever was left of the world by that point. Destiny and I would be entrusted with deciding who went through the Divider and lived, and who was left behind to die.

Already, the Sins and other Heirs were waiting in the new world, gathering the funds from the allies who had already gone through so a new Manor could be built. We were to join them once we were done. I couldn’t help but worry that this was just a clever tactic to kill the both of us off. Our supplies were minimal, and with no contact to the Manor, we were on our own out here. The walk from London to Edinburgh, not accounting for any diverges in routes thanks to fighting, would take about twelve days of walking.

Who knew how long this war would last before the remaining countries simply blew each other to Hell with whatever nuclear weaponry they had left?

If we were anywhere else but here in London, we could be wiped out with them.

The thought had me itching to hurry my pace, eager to complete the missions we had, Des cutting her whistling short to chase after me, struggling to keep up while monitoring the street around us.

“Cain, slow down!” She cried out when we’d made it to the end of the street, where I had to clamber over a pile of broken down rubble from a nearby collapsed building, leaping up to use a broken, bent out of shape bit of metal supportwork as a bridge. She struggled to follow me, not tall enough to follow the same path I had. Reaching back, I pointed to the pillars she could use instead, the final, treacherous items that she would have to balance on. Once she stepped off the last one, she would be just beneath me in the rubble.

They wavered over a large drop in the ground, where a bomb- not nuclear, thank the depths of Hell- had blasted a hole in the Earth that ran deep enough I could see gas piping slicing through the hole. Steam shot out from one of them, hot enough to instantly burn, and water was gathering at the bottom, heated by the gas pipes beneath it and the steam above it. Shucking off her bag and satchel, she tossed both to me, waiting until I threw them over my back to jump onto the first pillar of stone and brick, feeling it sway under her weight. The rubble shifted slightly, but remained mostly intact. There were twelve pillars, all in a row, and in a soft voice, I murmured, “It’s just like dancing. You can do this.”

She cursed, slipping as she leapt from the first pillar to the second, slamming into it with a grunt before hauling herself up, shouting, “I hate dancing!”

“Fine, then it’s like the Dome training! The one where they have you balance on the tree stumps outside, over the coals!” She snorted in response.

“If I fell then, it would only hurt a little. If I fall here…” She looked down, her arms extended to help her balance, and her face turned green, “If I fall here, I get boiled like a lobster.”

“I hate lobster,” I teased lightly, and she mumbled, “I would hate to become one.”

Her Demi-Sin ability flickered over her, like it intended to do just that, and she shook her head, pleading quietly under her breath to regain control over her powers.

When they settled, she eyed the third pillar and the distance between.

“You can do it.” I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt. Glaring at me, she snapped in Demonic, “You don’t smell like you believe that!” If she fell, I wouldn’t be able to catch her from up here. She would die. Rather than tell her that, or admit my worry that she might miss the jump, I teased instead, “You wouldn’t smell very nice as a boiled corpse.”

Huffing, she argued, “I always smell nice!” and jumped. The landing was much smoother this time, on her feet rather than clinging for dear life to the pillar.

The fourth and fifth pillars were smooth, my cousin beginning to build up momentum. She eyed the sixth pillar with a confident smirk, and leapt.

At the same time, a rat dropped down from the metal above me, startling me so much I fell over, landing on the rafter I stood on and jolting the rubble. It moved, the sixth pillar shifting, and Des dropped with a scream, missing the pillar entirely.

“DES!”

In a stroke of fate, the shifting rubble caused a wall of bricks to fall, blocking the steaming hot water by a metre, my cousin bouncing off the bricks, sliding down until she slammed into the side of the dirt hole with a ‘CRUNCH!’. She slumped, going still, and kicking the rat away from me, I scrabbled toward the edge, peering down and shouting, “Destiny! Can you hear me?! Des?!”

With a groan of pain, she lifted her hand up from underneath her, giving me a thumb’s up, before grumbling, “I think my face is broken.” I snorted at the dramatics, thanking the depths of Hell that she was safe. If that brick wall hadn’t fallen also, she would have been very dead.

“Wait there, I’ll find a rope for you.”

“There’s one in my bag,” she choked out. I found the rope in a minute, tying it to a piece of metal jutting out of the ground, checking it was secure with my own weight before dropping it down after her. Lifting her face from her hands, I cursed at the sight of it. A blue and black bruise ran down one side, where she’d collided with the ground, and black blood dripped from somewhere in her scalp, the cut hidden by her hair.

“I look like a Daemonit after she tried to cheat her buyer,” my cousin complained, earning a snarl from me, “Don’t say that about yourself!”

Gripping the rope, she braced her feet against the wall and scaled it with ease, taking my hand when she got closer to the top, allowing me to haul her up the last half metre.

“This is your fault.”

“It is not!” My argument fell on deaf ears, because she snatched a jar of blood from her bag, draining it and tilting her head back.

The skin knitted over in her scalp, the cut vanishing, and the bruise faded into nothing. Other than the dirt coating her and the fear I could smell, it was like it never happened.

“Let’s just get out of here.”

“I think we both agree to avoid towering piles of rubble from now on.”

She huffed her agreement, cursing me again, rubbing at her face like it still hurt. Pinching the tip of her ear, I ruffled her hair and laughed, “You are so dramatic.”

Her fist connected with my gut, making me double over, and with a grunt, I leapt forward and tackled her when, laughing, she tried to run, the both of us dropping into the snow in the street. With her pinned beneath me, I playfully mimed biting at her throat, feeling her squirm beneath me, a lighthearted snarl erupting from her.

“You want to play, Des? Very well!”

She let out an indignant shriek when I aimed for her face, twisting just in time to avoid it, my fist slamming into the snow and ground instead. Howling in pain, I avoided her kick to my side, reaching up and landing a hit to her jaw.

“Let’s see how good Zeella’s Greatest really is!”

The challenge accomplished exactly what I wanted; Des’ second snarl was more vicious, laced with indignant anger, and she threw herself at me. Using her momentum, I braced my back against the ground, and connected my foot with her gut, flipping her over me. When she landed in the snow, trying to hit me, I straddled her, pinning her wrists and dragging one of my fingers over her throat.

“Dead. You’re not a very good Assassin, I must say.”

She thrashed against me, managing to slip out of my grasp and leaping atop me, dragging her fingernails down my back. Thankfully, they weren’t poisoned claws yet. The pain distracted me enough that she got another hit on me, before wrapping her arm around my throat, trying to choke me out.

Rolling, I crushed her between my body and the snow, and she bit me, her sharp teeth piercing my skin with ease.

“You little savage!” I laughed mockingly, eyeing the bite wound on my hand as it healed, where she’d nearly crushed one of my fingers. A surprised giggle erupted out of her, and she danced lightly across the snow, stepping out into the street, wagging a finger at me to come get her. The challenge roared through me like a tsunami, but she was faster, always two steps ahead whenever I tried to grab her now that she was on her feet.

I rounded the corner of a building, expecting to find her there, since her footprints ended right in front of me, only to have Destiny’s fist slam into the back of my head at the same time her fingers pressed down on that evil nerve…