Lucifer's Lottery

(I)

A hundred Pipe Fitters—mostly half-Demon, half-Human Hybrids—clustered down below about the Main Sub- Inlet. What are they doing? Favius wondered, looking down from his precipitous sentry post on the ramparts. This was the end of the stupendous Pipeway that, Favius knew now, started all the way across the Quarter in the harbor of Rot Port. The Conscript studied the end of the Pipeway’s Inlet, a great circular maw sixty-six feet wide. He marveled at the sheer volume of fluid that the Pipeway would be able to transfer. But still he thought, Why? Why? And what were the Technologists doing down there now? Teams of the Hybrids began scaling the Inlet’s outer rim via ladders made of cured intestines, while others remained in the basin as if in wait . . .

But in only minutes more prison wagons hauled by strange, mutant beasts crossed the basin itself and stopped.

Immediately, Favius thought, Corpulites . . .

From the bared wagons, dozens of unfortunate victims were extracted: naked Hybrids bred especially by the Hexegenic Factories. Naked, yes, and bald, blinded, and bulbously obese. The Corpulites were a particular Organic Materials invention—living beings whose deliberately corrupted gene mechanisms caused grievous obesity. Satchels of fat hung from the arms, legs, bellies, and backs of captives. Horned Scythers were quickly dispatched, wielding great flensing blades, which expertly carved slabs of fat from the shrieking contingent. The blades glimmered, each downward flashing arc dividing still more fat from the living bodies of the Corpulites.

Now Favius’s question had been answered. The fat was then passed up to the Pipe Fitters scaling the Inlet and promptly used to grease the fitting seams.

An immense shadow crawled past the perimeter; Favius was not surprised to see Levitators moving in a huge Y-connector. Magnificent, he thought. The screams of the butchered Corpulites soared like a thick breeze as Scythers continued to slough off the necessary fat, and when the great seam had been sufficiently greased . . .

Incantations boomed from megaphones, retarding the Levitation Spell and hence lowering the Y-joint perfectly into place, after which the Pipe Fitters amassed to lock down the bolts with their spanners.

Favius understood now—the Y-joint split the direction of catastrophic inflow into dual directions, making dispersion more even and efficient.

When the Fitters were done, they disembarked from the site on Balloon Skiffs, onto their next assignment. The Corpulites, however, were not so lucky. Now bereft of all body fat, they were left to bellow and squirm on the Reservoir’s gritty black floor, knowing that eventually they would become one with whatever manner of filth soon filled this place to the brim.

Another great wonder on another day in Hell, the Conscript thought. And I am honored to be a tiny part of it, a tiny part in Lucifer’s plan.

What greater gift could anyone ask?

(II)

So this is it, Krilid thought, half-queasy as he gazed down. It was in the mouth of an illegally duplicated Nectoport that he stood, leaning slightly out. The technology amazed him, and it verified rumors he’d heard for years that certain anti-Luciferic sects had engaged their own White Sorcerers to psychically steal the secrets from Lucifer’s own Bio-Wizards and copy them for their own use. A Nectoport could be thought of as an invisible tunnel that, snakelike, covered great distances in seconds because it existed in a different phase- shift and therefore inverted true space—the ultimate achievement in occult science. The “tunnel” was reportedly capable of extending indefinitely, and all that was ever visible of it was the forward Egress and Observation Port.

But even with the security tether, Krilid found little piece of mind; the tether itself could break (causing a fatal fall), while this very assignment, for all he knew, could be bogus. In Hell, information was like character. One never knew what to trust—indeed, if trust even existed in this infernal sprawl.

Approximately a mile above the very spot in which Conscript Favius stood on his rampart, Krilid hovered. The spotty black clouds hid him fairly well, yet he could take no chances of detection. The clouds were patrolled now by demonic troops in balloons, and there were always the heinous Gremlins who lived and hunted in these clouds, semi-weightless monsters with saw-teeth and mouths that opened vertically beneath globose, black-veined eyes; not to mention untold flying things and Levatopuses, which were like bedbugs only they lived off the sooty waste in the clouds rather than a sleeper’s blood. Krilid’s direct field commander—the Fallen Angel Ezoriel—had provided not only the Nectoport but also a Hand of Glory, whose flame-tipped fingertips imparted a skirt of invisibility, which prevented unwelcome observers from seeing the Port’s floating green rim of light.

Down there, he thought, staring at the Reservoir’s nearly endless basin. Empty now, true, but soon it would be filled with six billion gallons of . . . something . . .

Something, yes. But what?

Krilid was a Hellborn Troll, squat, heavily muscled, but with a smushed head that looked lengthened and lopsided. This anomaly was caused through punishment a long time ago: Krilid had been captured by Municipal Golems, while stealing a box of Ghoul Steaks from a delivery vehicle in Boniface Square. He’d spent the night in a Constabulary jail, and the next day a Torture Detachment had slowly yanked his genitals off with pulleys, and then he’d been treated to the “Head-Bender,” a later-model torture device in which the convict’s head was placed in a specially constricted pipe-vise. Krilid’s skull was pulverized to bits and then remolded, whereupon a Re-Ossification Spell caused the crushed bone to adhere after the fact. The pain was incalculable, such that he prayed they’d kill him and be done with it—Trolls, unlike the Human Damned, were mortal—but the officers of the Constabulary would have none of that. It served Satan far better for the deformed to live, protracting their misery.

And miserable Krilid had been, but he’d also been mad. Being born a Troll is bad enough, he knew, but having to walk the streets with a bent head is even worse.

Krilid wanted revenge. He could kill himself, sure, and then this horrific existence would be behind him, but somehow, now, that wasn’t good enough. And going back to a life of petty crime seemed boring and scary. Those bastards bent my head, damn it, so I’m going to get them back.

That’s when Krilid had joined an anti-Luciferic terrorist cell.

Ezoriel himself had recruited him, and through some manner of clairvoyance had already known of the dismal Troll’s angst, pain, and yearning for revenge. “Serve God, in this place abandoned by God,” the Fallen Angel had told him in a voice that shimmered. His face shimmered, too, like sunlight on a rippling lake, such that its details could not be perceived. “Join the Contumacy and be a part of God’s glory when we overthrow Lucifer and take over. After that, rest assured—we shall convert this canyon of sin, hatred, and blasphemy into a place of hope, a place full of the love of God.”

Krilid didn’t know from God, but Ezoriel’s recruitment speech was just what he’d needed to hear. These people were terrorists who raided, bombed, harassed, and/or destroyed anything or anyone serving the Morning Star. The Troll’s biggest beef was with the Torture Detachment; hence, Ezoriel had granted his first request: to drop Sulphur Bombs on the place from the Nectoport. He’d scored multiple direct hits.

Since then, he’d bombed several targets in the Industrial Zone, had kidnapped a Grand Duke, had taken out several demonic police chiefs with a matchlock muzzle-loader, and had helped blow up the Central Research Grotto at the Klaus Barbie District’s Hexegenic Virus Labyrinth. They used a separate Nectoport to pipe in millions of cubic yards of methane pilfered from the Waste Pits at the city’s largest Pulping Station, then set it off with limelight bombs. Most of the Labyrinth’s service passages had collapsed, while the Central Research Grotto had exploded with such force it had cause a Hellquake that split the District in half. Krilid had partied hard that night at Ezoriel’s fortress, and had even been rewarded with a liter of distilled water.

Now, though?

The Troll wondered as he hovered. His sextant showed him the area that Ezoriel had called the “Target Extraction Point,” and on this mission, the “target” wasn’t a building, nor was it a living target to be assassinated. Instead it was a living target to be “extracted.”

Alive.