Kieran was a guide demon, he was the one tasked with bringing newly-arrived sinners to meet Lucifer for judgement. He was revered for his position, looked up-to by everyone he surrounded; Kieran was considered something of an adoptive son to the ruler of Hell, the two were close, and with that status, came respect.But Kieran had an issue…it didn’t go unnoticed to him, how everyone he talked to, sinner and demon alike, had some memory of their life on Earth. That’s something Kieran lacked. If he were to look inside himself, he saw nothing, he felt nothing, there was no sign that he’d even existed before arriving in Hell. A complete amnesiac, Kieran felt as though he were missing massive parts of himself.When asked, Lucifer revealed that he’d purposefully hidden Kieran’s memory, the experiences of his past life. Kieran found it difficult to trust the man he was so close to, and, over the course of centuries, the two drifted apart…Nina was an assassin. Vicious, uncaring, unfeeling. She found her home in the unforgiving steel of a dagger and the warmth of blood. So, she didn’t find herself too surprised, when she’d opened her eyes to fire and brimstone.But Kieran saw something in Nina. More than just a sinner, he saw an opportunity.Knowing she had nowhere else to go, he extended a deal. He would spare her from the eyes of judgement, and all she had to do was to help him attack Lucifer, stealing a piece of his heart in the process. If Kieran were to eat just that piece, he could regain his memories, and all his questions could be answered.In reality, his end of the deal was…stretching the truth, to say the least. She didn’t have to know that, though.Interested purely in self-preservation, Nina agreed. She was used to these sorts of deals, what’s another body count to a murderer?Unfortunately, things didn’t go precisely according to plan. They weren’t able to catch him off guard so easily, Lucifer defended himself against Nina’s attacks—knocking her to the ground—as he turned his attention to Kieran, betrayed by his son’s actions.Lucifer wasn’t angry. When Kieran looked up into his father’s eyes, he saw hurt. The boy unraveled with the guilt, and confessed his feelings to Lucifer, confessed that he felt empty, missing, broken, without his memories. He was truly honest for the first time, and told him that, without being able to trust the only man he considered family, he felt he had nothing.Lucifer met Kieran’s grief with compassion, encasing him in a hug, he whispered a sincere apology to his son.Nina looked on, and within her, something brewed.
Years of repressed emotions; hate, fear, anger. Things she was never allowed to express, a humanity she was never afforded.Nina had been used as a tool for as long as she’s been alive, an instrument of murder. And here, yet again, she felt simply used. It wasn’t fair, that Kieran got to have his happy family at her expense, while she was made an object—a means to an end.Fueled with her most primal of instincts, Nina stood behind Lucifer, and forced her arm through his torso. It was surprisingly easy, to pull his heart from his chest. It was even more satisfying, to watch the spark Kieran’s eyes die out, giving away to shock and horror, as his father’s body collapsed onto him.Wordlessly, and through tears she didn’t know she was crying, Nina ate all of Lucifer’s heart. Magic coursed through her veins, and for the first time in her life, she felt she was truly empowered.

_{Summaries by Carbon Monoxide}

Content warning: Topic of Sexual Assault
Reader discretion is advised

• Continue

A Tejano born and raised in Austin, Texas, Leonardo James Vela was a wide-eyed young man with a bright future ahead of him. Both of his parents worked most hours of the day, it took a lot of effort for them to make a living, but Leo didn’t mind, he was grateful for the hard work his parents put in to give him the life he had.More often than not, Leo’s parents weren’t able to come home until late into the night. Unable to afford a babysitter and concerned with his safety, they decided to place Leo in the care of their church; they trusted their local priest—a man of good community standing and a decent family friend—to watch over him when needed.In retrospect, it was the perfect cocktail of factors. Leo had no other siblings, he was a loner by choice and kept to himself most days. What his priest ended up doing became more a matter of opportunism, and the knowledge that no one would believe the word of a child over a man of God.Being a victim of childhood sexual abuse had fundamentally changed the course of Leo’s life. Frustrated by the lack of support systems for victims and failed by the community he was supposed to trust, his goals had shifted, and he decided to become a detective, seeking to enact real justice.It was made quickly evident, however, that real justice didn’t seem to be in the cards for people like him. The system simply wasn’t interested in accommodating victims of abuse, it was a badly-kept secret; everybody seemed to know it, but no one seemed to want to do anything about it.No one until Leonardo Vela, that is. Taking things into his hands, he became a sort-of vigilante. He had access to the records, and a back-log of cases to be inevitably shredded, so it was just a matter of picking up the gun. With his own two hands, he became a murderer, striking terror into the hearts of predators, and bringing peace to their victim.It was by his 17th murder that he was inevitably caught. By then, he became something of an urban legend within the location he occupied, so when his identity was confirmed, law enforcement and the court rushed through his trial as quickly as possible in order to sentence him to death. At that point, he became something of a media sensation, and had the press stumbling over itself to get a word in from him.Restrained for lethal injection and pressed for a final statement, he left the world with one last sentence;
“All of them got what they deserved. But that last piece of shit? He had it coming for years.”When Leo opened his eyes again, he was met with the foreboding figure of Lucifer, towering over him in Hell.
“Ah, Leonardo Vela,” He said, with a wicked grin, “I’ve heard of your…talents, back on Earth. What say we make a deal? One I think you wouldn’t want to miss out on.”In the afterlife, Leo serves as the head of the Department of Lust, taking it upon himself to torture the sinners guilty of sex crimes.

_{Summaries by Carbon Monoxide}

Sarai Nassif was only a young girl when she and her family had immigrated out of Bangladesh. Like many others, they came to London to seek out a better life for themselves. Sarai’s parents risked it all to bring her to safety, left behind everything for the chance of a better future, and for that, she would be forever grateful.She was raised in a neighborhood of other like-minded immigrants. Her community was disenfranchised, their schools underfunded and homes run-down, but there was a deep love and sense of shared struggle that connected them together. Sarai acted as the beating heart of that community. Her parents owned a small local bakery that served desserts and pastries from her childhood home. The best cure for homesickness was a warm meal, her mother always said.Sarai would do anything for her community, she told herself. She knew the names of the regulars, of their religious leaders and school teachers. Sarai worked overtime to make extra food to give to the homeless, and free banquet spreads for events and birthday parties which would’ve otherwise remained without any treats.So she found herself in a sticky situation, when her little neighborhood began changing upon the whims of gentrification. Opportunistic businessmen saw their home as low real estate costs and an ‘untapped market’, rather than the sprawling, interconnected web of cultures that it was. Their business struggled over time, and Sarai’s family were confronted with a decision, either to sell the bakery, or to have it fail altogether.Anything for her community, she said…with a heavy heart, her parents signed the deal.New ownership was awful. Her little bakery became an imitation of itself, cutting costs to turn out a profit, with focus shifting to margins and numbers rather than the quality of the food. As an inevitable consequence, the business had failed to get back on its legs, and it was no longer seen as the pillar of hope and warmth that had once appealed to its guests. Business was so slow, and the quality was so poor, that rumors began floating around that the bakery was being used as a front for some kind of criminal organization.As quickly as he had bought it, the new owner wanted to get rid of it. Inundated with his greed, he wanted to burn down the whole thing—blame it on the ‘uppity locals’—and collect the insurance money to pave the way for a new apartment building. It would’ve been the perfect plan, had Sarai not stayed up working late the night it was to be enacted.It all happened so fast. One second, Sarai was stocking inventory, and the next, everything she had worked for, everything she had loved, had gone into flames. Knowing there was no way for her out of the fire, Sarai scrambled to find any sort of escape route, only to find sight of the new owner, with a jerry can in his hands.Her mind going a mile-a-minute, Sarai was furious, and in the midst of the chaos, she dragged him back into the flames. If she was going to lose everything, if her parents were going to be left without their daughter, she wanted him to lose it all as well.Upon her death, Sarai woke up in Hell, confronted with the foreboding presence of Lucifer. She was initially panicked, but he’d calmed her down, and informed her of a business deal he knew she would love.Sarai knew a thing or two about bad deals, and this wasn’t one of them. Shaking his hand, she was quickly crowned the head of the Department of Gluttony.

_{Summaries by Carbon Monoxide}

There was a lot you could do to a child, if you were to simply dangle a sense of love and security above their heads.As far back as her first ever memory, before she’d so much as learned to talk, Nina knew danger. Orphaned at an extremely young age, she quickly learned the most important lesson she was ever going to learn, and what she would carry with her for the rest of her life; the only thing she’ll ever truly have is herself.Dr. Macias saw something within Nina. He saw a young, lonely girl, desperate for family. He saw enumerable amounts of pain, he saw a gentle soul that could easily be molded to become something dangerous. He saw an opportunity.Nina understood from day one what her role was. She was a replacement for Dr. Macias’ late assistant. Although technically her father, he refused to ever allow her to call him that. It was always ‘Doctor’, or ‘Mister’, whatever was most impersonal. Over the years, Nina was experimented upon, she was conditioned and eventually turned into an assassin for [REDACTED], she understood herself as nothing more than an object, a thing she knew could be discarded as soon as it was deemed convenient, existing only for the purpose of bringing [REDACTED] back to life.Nina told herself she was only ever interested in self-preservation. She was cold, hardened, strong, worthy. In reality, that little girl Dr. Macias had set his eyes upon was still alive, a part of her she never dared to acknowledge. Deep within her, she wondered, why it seemed that the world deemed her unworthy of having the only thing she’s ever really wanted, a family to call her own.

_{Summaries by Carbon Monoxide}

Cana Somlit Sayavong never seemed to have the best of luck in his love life, to put it mildly. Having been born in a small town in Washington, a child of Lao immigrants, he never seemed to find people to connect with; he was often derided as being too strange. From his interests to his gender, he never felt as though he’d been aligned with anything that was expected of him.
That’s how it was, for most of his childhood, up until he met someone in high school. A classmate of his, a young man who didn’t seem to mind that Cana had little interest in skirts and an intense fixation on lizards and insects. He’d been lonely, for the longest time, so he had no way of knowing that his new boyfriend had been dismissive, cruel, and distrustful. Cana was simply grateful to have any sort of a positive relationship with someone.During their senior year, Cana’s boyfriend began to grow distant, showing little interest in his partner while, at the same time, growing increasingly more controlling of where he went and what he did. Until, one day, he’d walked in on his boyfriend cheating on him.Cana was hurt and outraged, he wanted to break things off right then and there, but his boyfriend begged him not to. He’d started by playing on Cana’s pity, talking about how hard his life had been and how every man cheats. When Cana wasn’t sympathetic, the appeal to emotions turned into abject rage. In moments, they were screaming at each other, the altercation had turned physical, and things quickly took a turn for the deadly.Cana’s boyfriend seemed to harbor some deep sense of resentment and ownership over Cana, and, outraged by not having control over him, brandished a knife, seemingly with the intention to kill. Cana didn’t know what to do, and after a fight where he’d suffered a stab wound in his side, Cana ended up being the one to murder his attacker.It had been obvious, to every legal practitioner in the state, that Cana had acted in self-defense. His stab wound and the multiple bruises were evidence of the severity of the situation, and the woman Cana’s boyfriend had cheated on him with provided her own witness testimony, backed up by the accounts of neighbors who’d heard the fight go down that night. Despite this, murder was still murder, and although, legally, he’d been just fine, his reputation and finances were forever undermined.Cana’s ex had family in high-ranking positions, sitting among the wealthiest of his area, and they ensured that the legal process was as financially debilitating as it could possibly be. These same family members had a lot of social influence as well, so the few people in his life who may have been sympathetic to him were now convinced he’d been a cold-blooded murderer.Now all Cana had left was his family, as they’d been the only people who’d been on his side unconditionally, and they were forced to file for bankruptcy and sell their house just to afford paying off the legal bills. At just 18 years old, Cana had been labelled a murderer and an evil individual; the social ostracization had gotten so severe they’d been forced to move to Seattle, to live with extended family who’d been willing to house them until they got back on their feet.If nothing else, the move helped Cana try and start with a brand new blank slate. He’d been able to transition in this new environment, changing his name and appearance drastically, and there was no way now that anyone from his past would be able to identify him. All that being said, the guilt weighed down on him heavily, not just for what his family had to endure, but for the act of murder in and of itself. Although it was done in self-defense, it was hard for him not to feel as though he were an evil, irredeemable monster.Now considered a high school dropout and being unable to find a good job with his legal record haunting him, Cana had tried to raise money for his family in all sorts of unconventional ways, not the least of which being streaming and becoming a VTuber. Cana had always had an affinity for gaming and performance arts, and he thought of it as a good way to redefine himself after the move and transition. Surprisingly enough, though he started streaming just off of his cousin’s cheap computer, Cana began amassing an audience who’d adored him.Cana rode the wave, and ended up earning some decent revenue off of viewer donations and sponsorships. It helped that VTubing allowed Cana to dissociate from his life and past, to put on a character that was essentially a stranger, even to himself, to remove himself from his guilt and past reputation. It was with this new development that his family had been able to get a place for themselves, and for just a moment, things were finally looking up.That’s when he met Brooke Adams, a fellow streamer within the same space he’d occupied and someone who’d made her admiration of Cana’s success extremely apparent. She was fun, bubbly, even a little clingy, but Cana saw her as being well-intentioned and earnest. She’d even lived within the same area, and they would often collaborate so that Brooke could get a little bit more attention on her channel.One day, Brooke confessed to Cana that she’d been in love with him, and Cana felt…awkwardly about this confession. It was true that, to some degree, the crush had been mutual, he would’ve been open to trying out something romantic, but he was still too scared to get into another relationship; emotionally, he just wasn’t ready. As politely as he could, he turned her down.That was when Brooke’s demeanor had suddenly changed, she’d turned serious, and said that she knew of Cana’s secret. His heart had suddenly dropped, Brooke threatened to reveal him “as the murderer he really was” to his audience if he didn’t comply, and everything he would’ve worked so hard to rebuild would be gone in the snap of a finger.It was there that Cana realized Brooke wasn’t asking a question, she was making a demand. Reluctantly, he agreed, for what choice did he have?His life had fallen into a sickeningly familiar rhythm at this point. Every interaction, every ‘date’, every collab they’d done together was underscored with the idea that Cana would be brought back to square one if he had dared do anything other than what was asked of him.Brooke took great pleasure in this, she loved being able to break him down, to ruin him and reduce him to flesh with the audacity of pulse. She estranged Cana from his family, forcing him to move out and live with only her. She demanded access to every little facet of his life, and he couldn’t say no.Over time, the fear he’d bottled up turned into a deep, simmering rage. It was visceral, and it expressed itself through lashing out at Brooke verbally, ‘biting back’, so to speak, out of a desire to express any of his own individuality or free will. Any time this happened, however, Brooke would say that, of course, a murderer like him would act in such violent ways. That always seemed to shut him up.Arguments happened daily, if not multiple times a day, Cana never knew any peace living within her. Some days, he felt like a vessel for his rage, like what ‘Cana’ once had been was replaced with indignance and violence; there was one day where, after a particularly scathing comment, Brooke had struck him, leaving him with a black eye.She’d apologized later, kind of. In a, “You shouldn’t have made me that angry,” sort of way. Cana grew resigned, receding into himself. Now more than the emotional manipulation, he was afraid of what she would do to him physically; he flinched any time she touched him.In his dreams, the one part of his life Brooke couldn’t violate, Cana’s pent-up anger expressed itself in violent, homicidal visions. He’d picture his hands around Brooke’s throat, a knife to her jugular, anything and everything that would’ve led to her death. At points, these dreams bled into his own reality, they’d grow so strong that they’d invade his vision anytime she was around him. They made him feel awful, this wasn’t the person Cana wanted to be.One night, when Brooke was in the shower, she’d left her phone on their bed, unlocked. Cana wondered if there was anything he could find on there that would potentially get him out of this mess, so he snooped. After only a couple of minutes, Cana found something shocking.As it turned out, Brooke’s parents worked at some sort of organization named Kismet. Cana had never heard of it before, but they had specialized in espionage, and it didn’t exactly seem…legal. Apparently, Brooke had orchestrated everything since day one. She’d fallen infatuated with Cana, and also held a deep, sick jealousy towards him. She wanted to hurt him, to ‘humble’ him, she wanted to take him down and also have him all to herself.Looking at these chat messages overwhelmed Cana, they made him realize that nothing about their relationship could’ve been anything other than sick and violent. That had been the point of it, it was all on purpose. He’d been so engrossed and disgusted, he barely noticed when Brooke came out of the shower, already having dried herself off.Brooke looked at him expectantly, her expression unreadable. Cana couldn’t take it anymore, having been abused for so long and in such an awful way, he’d been the one to initiate the physical altercation. He fought for survival, some part of his brain had felt that he needed to kill her in order to escape. Maybe, deep down, he knew Brooke wouldn't let him leave this encounter alive after finding out about Kismet. He’d been reduced to a scared, snapping animal, what else was he to do but become the monster he was told he’s always been?Cana fought valiantly, having dealt heavy blows to her, he very well could’ve killed her, and he wanted to. But at one key point, he hesitated; it was only for a second, but it was a second too late, and it gave Brooke the upper hand. The night ended with Cana having been strangled to death on their bed.When Cana opened his eyes again, rather than Brooke, he’d been met with Lucifer’s towering figure.Knowing how he met his end, knowing that he’d fallen victim to Brooke’s violent bitterness, Lucifer offered him a specialized position in Hell; to work as the head of the department of Envy, punishing sinners who’d landed themselves in his domain, until the end of time.

_{Summaries by Carbon Monoxide}

For all his life, Isaiah Orunitemi Ogunkoya had been surrounded by illness in some way, shape, or form. Born in Manchester and being of Nigerian background, his community was very important to him and his family even moreso.It was at a very young age that Isaiah had learned that some people’s bodies were just different, in ways that created unique challenges and varying needs. His grandmother, for one, always seemed to be unwell. It was like she was always sick, he noted, and as he was told later on, he wasn’t exactly wrong. In fact, Isaiah was made aware that his grandmother had a specific kind of sickness, one that would never go away.She wasn’t the only one who was ill, this type of thing was hereditary, so himself, his parents, and siblings all had to learn how to handle chronic illness. But for Isaiah’s grandmother, having grown older, these things took a much larger toll on her body than anyone else’s. As Isaiah grew into an adult, he dedicated himself to being the one to take care of her in her final years.Isaiah’s grandmother was strong-willed, she had a fire in her chest and breadth to her voice, but she also understood when to let go of things she couldn’t control. Though her body was failing her, she was still very much exuberant and alive, up until her very last breath.Isaiah, for all that he grew up with, had never been afraid of illness. His grandmother’s life and legacy left a strong impression on him, and with him struggling with auto-immune diseases himself, he threw himself head-first into the world of medicine. It was far from easy, but with the support of his family, and the knowledge of how to manage his own conditions, he made it far within medical school, specializing in bio-medicine and the research of end-of-life care.Soon enough, he’d earned a role as a medical assistant to a set of clinical trials, helmed by Dr. Owen Maddox. His role was simple; he was to overlook the care of patients with terminal cancers of varying types, and administer controlled doses of Psilocybin (colloquially known as ‘magic mushrooms’) to see if the hallucinogen, combined with intensive therapy, could help patients find peace within the existential nature of their conditions.Almost right away, however, Isaiah noticed there was something odd about his patients. They were afraid, not just of their conditions, and not as a result of the hallucinogens, but of his supervisor. He got to spend a lot of time with them, talk to them about how they felt, how they were treated, and learned that they were in massive amounts of pain.Isaiah wasted no time investigating for himself, but when he approached Dr. Maddox, he was merely shrugged off. Told that the drugs were likely making them imagine things, told that the nature of their symptoms were interfering with their perceptive skills, that what they had to say couldn’t be trusted at face value. But Isaiah knew what it was like, to spend time with those nearing their end of life, and had done hours of research into what his patients were afflicted with. Something wasn’t adding up.Perhaps against his better judgement, Isaiah went digging through documentation his supervisor had been keeping hidden. What he found was unlike anything he could’ve imagined, Isaiah had uncovered something truly horrific.Dr. Maddox was helming an operation dubbed ‘Project Tithonus’, which sought to uncover the science behind immortality, and was using those with terminal conditions as low-risk test subjects he could enact horrible things on. This included replacing ‘diseased’ vital organs, cell networks, and entire systems of functioning within the human body with ‘healthy’ ones taken from other subjects.When they inevitably died as a result of the experimentation, no one would investigate the cause of death. And, if they were being administered mind-altering drugs as well, surely, no one would take whatever they’d say about the abuse seriously. Shocked and appalled at these findings, Isaiah knew that something had to be done about this.It seemed, at this rate, that confrontation was inevitable. Meeting his supervisor at a rooftop, isolated from prying eyes, Isaiah revealed he knew what he’d been doing. Dr. Maddox didn’t seem surprised or ashamed at all, he said, merely, that this was the cost of doing science, that suffering is the price of progress. He revealed to Isaiah that he’d been working with an organization entitled ‘Kismet’, and that he planned to become the face of this new innovation in science.Something within Isaiah snapped upon hearing this; though he’s not a violent person, he found he couldn’t bear to put up with one more second of this. To think of human lives as so easily disposable, to benefit off the abuse of the vulnerable simply to feed his sense of pride, it rattled Isaiah to his core. Faster than he could think, he tackled his supervisor, getting into a tousle that ended with the both of them hurtling off the edge of the roof, the two of them plummeting to the hard concrete below.Through everything, Isaiah was defined by his sense of justice, his drive to do good things and to protect vulnerable people. He understood that his life expectancy was naturally shorter by nature of being chronically ill, but that didn’t deter him from using the time he had on Earth to try and do good for people, to give his time, energy, and life for his values.Just because he was dead didn’t mean that had to change any time soon. Having been a victim of one man’s hubris in thinking he could usurp the natural order, having been the one to bring that man down, Isaiah was assigned the head of the Department of Pride by Lucifer himself.

_{Summaries by Carbon Monoxide}

Micah Xuan Tien had always lived life on the razor’s edge, she liked it that way.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, she studied music business and worked in accounting; when she was in college, she met her soon-to-be husband, Cyrus Ngo, who’d been studying criminology. The two fell in love almost immediately, and were married as soon as they’d graduated during a weekend stint in Las Vegas.Life was good for a little while, grand, even. Cyrus became a private investigator, whilst Micah worked her desk job in the mornings and sang in Jazz clubs in the evenings. They lived comfortably in the heart of Brooklyn, where it seemed nothing could go wrong. But beneath the surface, trouble had been brewing.As soon as he was out into the work force, Cyrus grew quickly disillusioned with his work. He went into the field of criminal justice from a desire to do what was right, something he was deeply passionate about, but as had become quickly apparent, justice, as it was administered by the state, was not exactly just.Though the money was nice, a sense of cynicism quickly overtook whatever naive passion Cyrus may have started out with. One day, while idling at his work desk, he came across an old newspaper clipping, one from around the 1970s, about an ex-detective in Texas who left the force in order to hunt down and murder sexual predators on his own. This novel story was truly the spark that lit the match, it inspired something within Cyrus’ heart.He proposed to Micah that they start their own organization, a syndicate named ‘Kismet’, that would deliver their own justice independent of the state. Free of corruption, he posited that Micah handle the business side of things, while Cyrus would handle tracking down, investigating, and disposing of the criminal scum that managed to slip past the cracks of the judicial system. Micah, sharing in Cyrus’ values, agreed wholeheartedly with this operation. Together, they felt as though they could take on the world.To describe Kismet as a contracted murder business would’ve been crass, but not inaccurate. It was fronted and laundered out of a popular casino, one that Micah owned and operated, while Cyrus would get in touch with and hire hitmen to carry out the dirty work. As it turned out, there were many people in the city who were in the business of such services; cheating spouses, murderers, abusers of all sorts, all it took was a stack of cold, hard cash, and they’d be silently wiped off the map.Micah and Cyrus had started Kismet from a reasonably-noble cause, but as the popular idiom goes, money corrupts, and power even moreso. Though they were never destitute, the two of them were seeing wealth beyond their wildest dreams, and Kismet grew at a rate neither had ever expected. As a result, the standards for what constituted ‘justice’ had slowly become more…subjective.Micah was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. Having worked directly beneath the hood, she was well-aware of the ways the both of them were losing sight of the point of Kismet’s existence; it was a truth that nagged at her, one that made getting a silent night’s sleep near-impossible. But she wasn’t the one actually taking part in the operations, of course, that was all out of her control, she told herself. All the dirty work was Cyrus’ domain, so it would’ve been all his responsibility if things were to go off the rails; it just so happened that Micah got to indulge in the fruits of the murder, is all.Living a life of opulence and wealth, Micah turned a blind eye to the way Kismet’s goals had morphed, and enabled the atrocities being run by her husband. Up until the point that Kismet grew to be a monster, a tumor spreading far beyond Micah’s control, and, one day, things had become personal.As it turned out, nothing was truly sacred. One of Micah’s close childhood friends, a civilian none too different than your average Jane Doe, was marked as a victim of one of Kismet’s hitmen. It was silly, really, for Micah to feel so betrayed by the product of her own negligence, to only begin caring about her misdeeds when they started affecting her personally. But it was a sobering moment, one that made her realize the monster she’d become, none the better than the evil she swore to destroy.The truth was, Micah wasn’t powerless or defenseless in any way. To deny that she had agency in what Kismet had become would be to deny the role she played in the death of a loved one, in the deaths of many people who truly may not have deserved it. Maybe no one could be reasonably expected to hold this much power and control in one lifetime, and to have assumed that she would’ve been any better, that she was somehow an exception to human nature, was to have fallen to her own hubris.It wasn’t enough to personally fess up to everything, or to disengage from what she’s done, Micah decided. If she was going to do this, she had to go big or go home. She planned to confront Cyrus, kill him herself if she had to, then turn herself in to the police, releasing all of Kismet’s secrets and documents in the meanwhile, making sure that the empire she created would topple at her own discretion.It was quickly evidenced, however, that Cyrus had not shared in her clarity or self-reflection. Micah knew upon confronting him that he would be outraged, resistant, that he would put up a fight; she didn’t think it would’ve mattered what he did or didn’t know, if she would dispose of him anyway. But as it turned out, Cyrus had more hands-on experience with their services than she expected him to.That night, the two of them entered a tousle that ended with the both of them dead, having met their respective end through the barrel of a gun held by their other half. Leadership of Kismet was passed down to the next in line, while Micah would awaken within the pits of hell.Though undeniably a sinner in her own right, rotten in her ways, Micah held valuable perspective and experiences within the mind of a killer. She was crowned the head of the Department of Greed, having been both victim to and perpetrator of the sin, she found that her life in Hell shared striking parallels to her legacy on Earth.

_{Summaries by Carbon Monoxide}

VIII. ROT

Sa’eed Al-Shamsi was born into a world much too complicated and convoluted, with rules that were simultaneously inflexible and yet entirely arbitrary. At home, things were simple. Only the strong survive.Having been born to an Iraqi father and Sudanese mother within the town of Fujairah, Sa’eed knew of struggle well before they had so much as left the womb. Their father had worked long hours in Dubai for slave wages, while their mother helped get them and their siblings by in whatever ways she could. They took care of each other, because in a life where poverty was just one missed paycheck away, their family was all they would ever truly have.Though Sa’eed had been labelled as an outcast growing up, ostracized from their peers, that didn’t matter to them. In fact, they were more than fine with being relegated to the margins of a society that was so cruel to begin with. That was, until tragedy struck, and their father had been injured badly during a construction accident, leading to him losing his job. This would be disastrous enough on its own, but their family had initially immigrated to the United Arab Emirates under the conditions of a work visa, and thus, they were at risk of deportation.Being the oldest of their siblings, it was on Sa’eed’s shoulders to find work. But all the things that made them strange in childhood; their sensitivity to bright lights and loud noises, their inability to understand social conventions, the exhaustion they would experience just by going about their day, made them seemingly unhireable. When, one day, they were contacted by an organization known as Kismet, an American “entertainment agency” seeking to expand markets into the Middle East, the prospect was too good to pass up.Sa’eed knew well what kind of business this actually was. They had not been contracted as an assassin, rather, they worked in tech and software, creating the digital infrastructure for which Kismet operated. They knew well what their talents were being used for, but, in the most literal sense of the term, they couldn’t afford to care. Their desperation made them a prime target for predation, what made them vulnerable was what made them valuable.It was a kill or be killed world out there, moral concern was a privilege afforded to those who didn’t grow up hearing their father cry himself to sleep from the pain of his manual labor job, squeezed in with four other siblings in a single bed.If nothing else, at least the money was good. They didn’t have to talk, or stand, they could just keep their mouth shut and code. This made them an ideal employee, but an even easier target.As it turns out, most people who would choose to work in an assassin’s agency weren’t exactly the kindest. Though Sa’eed kept to themselves, they were still somehow immediately clocked as being an “other”, regardless of how they chose to mask their more unique behaviors. Their co-workers sought to mock and otherwise torment them for seemingly innocuous things. It started off with just some biting comments and light ribbing, but when Sa’eed didn’t respond in the way they wanted them to, things began escalating.Within their peers existed this irrational, deep-seeded hatred for the other, for those who had the audacity to reject the social norm, regardless of how ultimately inconsequential. But maybe it wasn’t even Sa’eed’s strangeness that made them so hated, rather it was their unwillingness to let it be minimized.Sa’eed wasn’t here to make friends or allies, they weren’t interested in the social conventions that everyone else sought to enforce. Thus, when one person would bite, they would bite back, and escalate in-turn. No longer bothering to mask the anger that had lived within them since the day they were first made to feel so shunned and ashamed. When, one day, an instance of a cruel prank played on Sa’eed turned into a physical altercation, ending with Sa’eed’s tormentor in the hospital, they knew their time here was probably limited.It wasn’t a very smart idea, for someone like them to make enemies within the underground, but Sa’eed had never been one to easily intuit social rules. It just felt so good to let loose, to release that pent-up aggression onto a target that deserved it. Regardless, they knew they were playing with fire. After such an altercation, their vulnerabilities would be identified and exploited, and though they didn’t care much for what came of their own safety, their family’s was of much greater concern.But they were always a step ahead. Throughout their time at Kismet, Sa’eed had been embezzling money through the systems they were developing. Routing that money into a private bank account and converting it into cash, keeping it within a locked safe, buried within the outskirts of the town. It was only a matter of time before this scheme was inevitably discovered, and with their past track record, Kismet was not interested in keeping their separation bloodless.But why just kill Sa’eed for an act of treason when things could be made so much more interesting? The plan was simple; kidnap Sa’eed, rough them up a little, and record a ransom video, demanding the millions that they had stolen to be given back. Then, rather than actually set them free, have them be killed in front of their parents, simultaneously tying up a loose end and acting as a lesson for all who witnessed their death.And all was going according to plan, at first, until Sa’eed had refused to comply with the ransom script. Rather than begging for their life, or reacting in any way that would’ve implied weakness, they remained silent.Perhaps it was easy for them to dissociate from it all, knowing what they had in store. They knew how Kismet operated, better than anyone else, and were able to predict this very scheme. Prior to the kidnapping, they had placed traps within the room, designed to electrocute anyone who had the misfortune of being in it, including Sa’eed themself. Knowing that, by doing this, they were at least able to guarantee an avenue of escape for their family, knowing that their father had the location and code to the safe, it made pressing the button just that bit easier.Throughout their life, Sa’eed had known anger better than any other emotion. Physiologically, it felt like they were simply designed to feel anger only in extremes, and perhaps it didn’t help that they were born and socialized within a world in which anger was the only sensible, safe emotion to feel. This, upon their death within the bowels of Kismet, awarded Sa’eed the position of Head of the Department of Wrath.

_{Summaries by Carbon Monoxide}

IX. Run Rabbit Run

Alice Engström was a young girl born in Helsinki, Finland, and before she had so much as taken her first breath, her fate had been determined for her.Alice was born to parents that had both worked in Kismet, and from birth, they sought to raise a daughter who would fit right into the ‘family business’, so to speak. Someone who could be programmed from birth to follow orders and rules, for whom the dirty world of contracted murder would be just another part of home life, a clean slate that would never know a rebellious thought.But unfortunately, this ‘project’ of theirs never came to be. And a significant reason as to why was the fact that Alice had been born with a rare genetic disorder colloquially named albinism, which had significantly hindered her vision; though she had some limited form of sight, she was considered legally blind.Additionally, by the age of eight, Alice had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which led to chronic pain and fatigue. Then, as she had developed, her growth was severely stunted, her height maxing out at 4’10”, her frame seeming sickly with hardly any muscle or fat on her body. It seemed that, to her parents, Alice had been a complete failure.That wasn’t for lack of trying from Alice, however. She was desperate for love and attention from her parents, she worked herself until she was sick and in agony, just to try to prove herself to them as a daughter worth being proud of. She began work at the age of 14, tasked with disposing of evidence and collecting money; quickly, however, this type of work proved to be overwhelming for her, as it would for anyone her age. Despite her very best efforts, there was nothing Alice could do to ever be enough.As soon as she had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, she was already considered a lost cause, and was pawned off to her younger brother, Lewis. Unlike their parents, Lewis had been present for Alice, having been the one to teach her literacy and math skills, to find ways to make the world accessible to her; truly, in a world this cruel and this cold, they had been the only ones there to care for one another. Eventually, Alice grew disillusioned with her parents, and chose instead to look to her brother.Alongside Lewis’ help, Alice’s potential was able to be realized. She was exceedingly smart, analytical, and had a knack for solving puzzles well beyond what was expected of her age.Lewis, too, had been in the ‘family business’, though he was much more favored by his parents for his able body. The truth was, however, he and Alice had been a team in their own right; there was no way he would have been able to make it this far had it not been for Alice’s help in coming up with smart strategies and exit plans. In each one of their excursions, his sister had been the one to do all the thinking, Lewis merely knew how to carry her plans out.This, of course, mattered little to their parents, who sought to move Lewis up another rung of the corporate ladder. There was just one issue holding back his perceived progression, however; Lewis had potential, but also came with a caveat, a vulnerability that could easily be exploited. A proper hitman needed to have no earthly attachments of his own, so this was just another way in which Alice had been considered a burden by her parents.When Lewis had become proficient enough, he was told that every Kismet professional needed to go through one more trial before becoming fully integrated into the organization. It was a rather simple test, all things considered; before he could ‘graduate’, he had to kill the person in his life whom he was most attached to.It was a test of dedication and rigour, he was told, but Lewis saw it as nothing more than simple cruelty. Though he was good at his work, he didn’t particularly enjoy what this profession did to him or how it had endangered both him and his sister. Secretly, Lewis and Alice had been collecting money of their own, hoping to save up enough to where they could run away together and escape this hell, a project helmed and budgeted by Alice herself. He hadn’t wanted to give up on that dream yet.For his disobedience, Lewis had to be punished. Discipline was the primary value of a trained Kismet professional, and if Lewis had to learn this lesson the hard way, then so be it.That was the sight that Alice happened to stumble upon, at that moment. Her brother, the only person in her life she cared for, beaten and bloodied on the ground, his right eye ripped from its socket.Something within Alice had snapped at that moment. Her whole life, she had been trampled on, walked over, made to feel lesser-than for things that weren’t her fault, abused for the audacity of being born the way that she was. Maybe she had been too permissive of all she had faced, but this? This wasn’t something she could put up with.Alice’s parents had made one fatal flaw, and that was vastly underestimating her and her abilities. After all, what could one small, sickly girl ever do that could be of real concern? They let loose secrets, codes, and classified information around her, careless with their words. Alice, too, had been raised within the world of crime, she knew how these things worked.What began as an altercation quickly escalated into a shootout that had lasted an extended period of time, where Alice, though frail and at a visual disadvantage, was able to kill both of her parents, shooting them in the chest. This exchange didn’t go about as smoothly as she would’ve liked, because Alice found herself with a bullet embedded within the flesh of her side.The real irony was that it wasn’t even the gunshot that had ended up killing Alice, it was the shock and subsequent heart attack that took her life. She had been failed, in every way imaginable by the adults that were supposed to protect her, but in her last moments, she had taken things into her own hands. She held the cold, unerring black steel of a pistol, and used the power it had granted her to change fate. If not for herself, then for the only person she truly loved.Alice found herself at relative peace during her final moments. Lewis had been the only survivor of that horrible night. She died knowing that, if nothing else, he would at least be safe from hereon out.When Alice had awoken once more, she found herself within the deepest bowels of hell. All her life, from the moment she was born up until her last breath, she had been a victim of her parents’ sloth, their unwillingness to care for a child that didn’t meet the conventions of what an able body looked like, who lacked ‘use’, and by extension, worth. With her intimate understanding of the sin, she had been crowned the Head of the Department of Sloth.

_{Summaries by Carbon Monoxide}

X. Aurora

Olivia García, a talented young woman with a heart larger than life itself, and Nicolás Macías, a smart and shrewd man gifted with an inspiring work ethic. Two bright individuals born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a beautiful future ahead of them; to an outsider, it appeared they had the perfect life. Things wouldn’t remain so sweet for long, however; they say that you never really know someone until you see them at their worst.The pair had been high school sweethearts, both being at the top of their classes, popular and respected in their own right, the school ‘power couple’, to put it simply. Soon after graduation, Olivia found out she was pregnant, and they were met with a difficult decision, a crossroads, so to speak. On the one hand, they were both only kids themselves, being only 18 years old, and a child would inevitably change the course of the rest of their lives. On the other hand, both were devoutly religious with decently traditional family and ideals, so termination, if it were to be considered an option, would not be one taken lightly.Luckily for the both of them, their families would agree to support them in whatever ways they needed; both immediate and extended members offered their hand in helping raise the future child. With that in mind, they decided to keep her, and on December 21st, 2133, Aurora Macías was born a beautiful, healthy baby girl.With such a vast support system, both of them were able to make it through University, with Olivia studying journalism, and Nicolás majoring in biology and chronokinology, a relatively new field of research focused on the study of time. For the next decade or so, they seemed to live what many would consider to be the perfect life; Aurora was a bold young girl with her own blinding future ahead of her, having taken after her parents with an interest in all things academic, and she was showered with nothing less than boundless amounts of love from her family. Though Nicolás and Olivia’s relationship had its ups and downs, they seemed to be able to get through just about anything thanks to a shared love for their daughter.Eventually, the two parents were able to support themselves financially, primarily on Nicolás’s earnings, while Olivia took care of the baby. All seemed to be going well for them.That was until one February day in 2143. The family had gone on their yearly vacation to Mar de Plata, and Aurora, being a bit too eager to start learning how to swim, rushed into the ocean with her parent’s backs turned towards her. One second, everything was perfect, and the next, their beautiful little angel was taken from them, drowned in the tides of the cold, unerring sea.It’s in moments like this that one remembers just how brittle human life can be. Not everyone deals with that fact in the same way.This tragedy created a rift between the couple, a space between them that would only expand and never contract. A tide that ebbed and never flowed, a moon that would wax and never wane. In grief, they had become strangers to one another.While Olivia looked towards her living family for support, focusing on acceptance and in living for those who still needed her, Nicolás did not share in this same sentiment. The man, stricken with a deep mourning he never wanted to face, developed a dark fixation of his own.All love, whether it had ever even been there in the first place, had died in that relationship. Every conversation became a fight, every glance became a look of disdain. Nicolás’s hatred for himself became increasingly more severe, he spent nearly every moment he was awake replaying that day in his head, punishing himself for his failure as a father; the miscommunication began because Olivia hadn’t seen that, she was not given access to his internal world, he didn’t allow her to. Instead, all she saw was his resentment towards her, as, to some subconscious degree, Nicolás saw her refusal to suffer in the same way as morally repulsive. The ideas and beliefs he held were innately illogical in that way, that’s what grief does to even the smartest of men.One night, after another one of their heated arguments had driven Olivia to spend the night at her parent’s, she received a call from Nicolás. Through alcohol-laden lips and a heavy tongue, he confessed that he had wanted to put his degree to good use, that he was determined to unlock the key to time travel through research, and go back in time to prevent the accident that had taken away their daughter.Olivia had been appalled at this. Though she missed Aurora more than anything else in the world, she viewed doing something like this as equivalent to playing God; it wasn’t right for the common man to dabble in the domain of the divine, to usurp the natural order of the universe and to try and reverse the course of death itself. Though Olivia had grown estranged from her religious roots after her daughter’s death, she was adamant that this was one line that should never be crossed.Nicolás, then, had accused her of never having loved Aurora in the first place, that she just couldn’t understand the grief he was in, and that anyone in their right mind would think the same as him. As though she weren’t the one to carry the baby to term, risking her life giving birth to her, as though Nicolás hadn't been the one to flake on attending her funeral. As though Aurora hadn’t been her daughter, too.After hours of argument, it had become obvious that they just weren’t going to agree with one another. Nicolás had entered a state completely resistant to change or progress of any kind, where he genuinely believed that mourning his daughter meant leaving her behind, where he denied the process of healing and acceptance on principle. More than a stranger, he'd become the antithesis of everything Olivia thought she had once loved about him.The divorce was finalized quickly, and Nicolás’s dark ambitions had become so all-encompassing that he had even been cut off by his own close family. Life went on, Olivia moved forward, and Nicolás stood right where he was, and where he would forever be. Until the end of time.

_{Summaries by Carbon Monoxide}

XI. La Marea Sube

December 21st, 2158, Nicolás had that day circled and highlighted on every one of his calendars, digital and otherwise. On this day today, Aurora would have been 25 years old.In the 15 years since her death, a lot had changed, but even more had stayed the same. Nicolás’s ambitions were still set strongly in his mind, in fact, they’d only gotten more intense. Every day without her back in his arms again was a reminder that he could do better. Thanks to his dedicated research, he had become a professor in chronokinology at the University of California, Los Angeles; no doubt he had been supremely proficient in his field, but until he could finally be able to call his life’s work complete, any such accolade or accomplishment would feel hollow to him.At some point, he had tried alternate methods of coping with the loss, but nothing he did ever felt good enough. Once, he had decided to adopt a son, a young boy he had spotted at an adoption center named Elías. His parents had died while out on a camping trip, they were the outdoorsy types, apparently, and would frequently make these elaborate adventures while Elías was at home with a babysitter. It just so happened that, this time around, they didn’t come back home; the only thing Elías had left of them was a little silver locket that the traumatized boy kept close to his chest.Nicolás saw something within Elías; the poor thing looked miserable, having barely been 6 years old and already with these hollow, dead-looking eyes, his skin sallow and voice scarcely used. Maybe, this poor young boy could fill the hole within his empty heart. Maybe, he could be of some use.Nicolás decided to go through with the adoption, but realized soon after that nothing could replace the warmth and joy he had remembered from his Aurora, especially not this stranger’s child, with its cold reluctance and quiet, reserved demeanor. In fact, the first time Elías had called him ‘dad’, Nicolás’s face contorted with disgust, and he’d scolded the child, making him promise never again to call him that word.All that this experience had taught Nicolás was that he really couldn’t spare any expense.To tell the truth, Elías had become something of a bother towards the scientist, no longer motivated to even care for the child’s basic needs, Nicolás would have his own students and laboratory assistants babysit him. He had a goal in mind, after all, and the closer he got, the less he seemed to care about the real, tangible world around him.During the course of a research sabbatical, Nicolás had created a brand new prototype for his time travel machine, and was seeking to test it on someone. One of his students, a bright young man named Carlos, was designated as the first to test out the machine. What had started as a controlled test ended in tragedy, as Carlos had simply…vanished. No body, no footprints, no sign he had ever been here, he had just disappeared into the nothingness of spacetime.What everyone else had seen as a catastrophe, a scientific anomaly with grave consequences and even worse implications, Nicolás saw as progress. Finally, he had felt like he was actually getting places. No one else saw the allure and seduction of the dangerous unknown the same way he had.Now with a criminal record and murder charge chasing him, Nicolás saw it in his best interest that he run away from the chaos he created. Taking Elías along with him and little else, he ran to the only place that would ever take him in, a global criminal empire known as Kismet. No longer limited to just contracted murder, Kismet was split into several smaller divisions, one of them specializing in espionage.The terms of Nicolás’ contract was simple enough to understand; he would be provided protection, a roof over his head, food and other such basic amenities in exchange for him developing new technology dedicated to the acquisition of data and sensitive information.But, if he had wanted a bit more out of this deal, there was a simple modification that could be made. In exchange for being provided with the proper amount of funding he would need for his time travel research, he would have to give up ownership of Elías. He would still see the child, of course, they would live together and whatnot, but Elías was to be considered property of Kismet, for them to do with him whatever they saw fit. For Nicolás, this exchange was a no-brainer.Elías was only 10 years old when he saw his father willfully give him away, selling his soul and agency to a criminal organization, handed off like cattle. Though Elías had always been a calm, quiet child, the betrayal he had felt at this action was immeasurable, it tore his heart to shreds.It was true that Nicolás had never quite been the most patient or outwardly loving father, but Elías wanted desperately, more than anything else in the world, to have some sort of connection or bond to him. In the young boy’s eyes, Nicolás had saved his life, had given him a home when he was at his lowest, and, to someone who’s only ever known connection as a series of transactions, that meant that he was indebted. Maybe, the only reason that Nicolás had never been kind to him was because he simply hadn’t paid off his debt yet.And so, Elías went along with it. Being put into a grueling assassin’s training program, where he was taught to kill, to fight, and to withstand torturous amounts of physical pain. He excelled in this program, not because he enjoyed it, but because he wanted to someday see his father smile upon him with pride.Elías would also be used as a test subject in lab experiments from Nicolás, for which he eagerly volunteered, regardless of how uncomfortable or painful they would be. As time had gone on like this, Nicolás’s obsession with Aurora would continue to grow and fester; the closer he got to his goal, the more his spirit would contort, the more he’d fixate on overcoming nature and playing God. He was too far gone to do anything else, all he could do was double down.At some point, when the kid was only 14, Elías had come out to Nicolás as a trans girl, stating that she felt she had always, inwardly, been aligned most with her sense of girlhood. Nicolás didn’t particularly pay much mind to this, merely nodding his head, and asking what she’d like to be called now. She answered, Nina. Because, if she closed her eyes any time her name had been called, it would almost sound as though Nicolás was saying mi nenita, an affectionate nickname he had only ever used when referring to Aurora.Over time, Nina had come to resent Aurora. Nicolás had left pictures of her throughout their apartment, old drawings and stories she wrote when she was little, family photos of three happy strangers smiling together; to him, it acted as a way to keep motivating himself to continue his research. To Nina, they served as reminders that she would never be good enough for Nicolás.Despite all the memorabilia of his old life scattered around the laboratory, it was also a topic shrouded in mystery and dark taboo, something to look at, but never ask about or speak of. Once, Nina tried asking about the woman in the pictures next to Nicolás and Aurora, and Nicolás told her to simply be quiet. The next day, her face had been cut out of every single one of those photos. Nina never got to learn her name, but she seemed warm and kind.On some level, and to some degree, Nina could even say she hated Aurora. She hated her smile, her hobbies, the storybooks she had drawn about capybaras, and the effortless way she was handed everything Nina had worked so hard to get mere scraps of.Maybe it was unfair, it wasn’t like Aurora had done anything wrong, but at the same time, Nina felt as though she was the only reason she had been barred from any and all forms of paternal love. No matter how much she killed, how hard she worked, how much abuse and torture she went through, giving up everything of herself to serve the needs of her father, she would never be enough. It was easier for Nina to point that adolescent rage towards someone who would never be able to feel it, to someone who was just a memory now, rather than the man who had inflicted this type of abuse on her to begin with.At the same time, however, Nina would stay up at night, haunted by the thought of some sort of time line, in some alternate universe, where the three of them got to be a happy family, where Aurora had been her sister rather than someone she felt this bitter, acrid jealousy for. Maybe even alongside the mysterious woman from the photos, who still didn’t have a face, even in Nina’s dreams. The thought made her feel so warm and sad, she craved it as much as she was terrified of it, ignorant to the fact that, in a world where Aurora was still alive, Nina would just as quickly be disposed of.And the worst part was that, at one point, Nina had almost felt like she had that family. When she had been 15 or so, still in the midst of training, Nicolás had met someone at Kismet, a man named Hector. They began dating for a little bit, it was apparently just something casual to get Nicolás’s mind off of the stress of work, and the sudden change was…jarring, to say the least. Hector, at first, was intimidating to Nina, she didn’t like someone else encroaching on her space and family like he had, but as time went on, she would soften up to him.Hector was warm, and had been the first person to actually show concern to her. When she would come home from training, bruised and bloodied, he fretted over her, he patched her up gently while insisting she be careful. Where Nicolás had been cold and distant, Hector was earnest, showing her a type of vulnerability that wasn’t supposed to be scary. It was a strange feeling, a kind of warmness she hadn’t felt since before she could form memories.Then, in a cruel twist of fate, Hector turned out to be a mole, a spy meant to take Kismet down from the inside, and he’d only been with Nicolás in order to get more information out of him. As soon as she had learned this, Nicolás had commanded her to kill him, citing that he would take down their operation, and thus, tear them apart from one another. It had to be her, he said, because in order to become an assassin, in order to graduate Kismet’s training program, she needed to prove having no earthly attachment of her own.Nicolás had identified a weakness within Nina, and had to remind her just how dangerous such a thing could really be. Disposing of Hector, watching the life leave his eyes as the blood pooled beneath his cold body, it would be the last time Nina would ever hesitate before taking a kill.And in the aftermath, Nicolás had praised her, commended her, he wrapped her in a hug while she’d been dripping with the blood of another man, and all she could think was that she’d finally done it; covered in violence, having been born-again as the product of concentrated cruelty, she was useful. Even if it was just for a moment, she had been enough.The desire for a family hadn’t magically left her after that point, in fact, it had only gotten louder; the only difference was that Nina knew how to better suffocate such a shameful, weak craving.Any and all emotion, anything unsightly, unworthy, any ugly, useless feeling that would crop up in Nina’s mind would soon get buried. Deep, deep down, beneath the beat of her heart. These things got in the way of the tool she was supposed to be, and to be appreciated as a tool was the only way Nina was ever appreciated, it’s all she had. Anything that would compromise that had to be disposed of, no matter what.On June 16th, 2180, Nicolás had finished what he thought was the final rendition of his working time machine. Eager to test it out, he called upon his usual test subject, his daughter. It was that day that Nina Macías would meet her untimely death at only 24 years old, killed as a result of the experiment going awry. She would find herself alive again, but only within the heartbeat of Hell itself.The night prior to this experiment, Nina had been fiddling with the locket, the one her birth parents gifted her when she was just a baby, when suddenly, it snapped open, revealing a small letter on yellowed paper. Years of holding onto it must’ve rusted away the locking mechanisms on it, ones she didn’t even know existed. Reading the letter, it was a profession of love, one that was meant to be opened and read on her 18th birthday, about what a beautiful person she was, about how her parents had loved her more than the moon itself.For the first time since Hector’s death, Nina found herself hesitating. Rethinking her role in the world, what she was meant to be, the kind of relationship she had with Nicolás and whether it was truly worth it.It’s a shame, then, that she didn’t find this out sooner. Things might have been different. If nothing else, Nicolás had at least left her with the gift of a quick, painless death.And though her heart was wounded and weak, an ugly, shriveled thing, she found a sense of purpose for herself in the afterlife, when Lucifer’s own had passed through the threshold of her teeth, and she feasted on its tender, blood-red piety. All that had happened to her throughout her life, the pain and agony she went through, left without resolution, she had finally been able to turn the table, to be the one to inflict that suffering onto someone else.As Kieran’s horror and betrayal lit his eyes aflame, she thought to herself, finally, someone understands the pain I’ve suffered. She had plunged a ready hand into her chest, ripped out a piece of her own heart, and fed it to him, watching with excitement as his own memories had come back to him, all at once and in the span of just a moment. In the end, even this act of brutality, the violence she saw fit to inflict, had been a plea for empathy. Death had been her language, cruelty her muse, so, really, lording over Hell itself only made sense for someone like her.

_{Summaries by Carbon Monoxide}

XII. Garden of Eden

Born in South Central Los Angeles to Salvadoran immigrants, Sofia Velázquez-Flores lived a simple, satisfying life. Her family didn’t have much to their name, they grew up in relative poverty, the kind where even a single missed paycheck meant someone didn't get to eat that night. Due to this, in tandem with being the oldest of three kids, she was tasked with taking on her fair share of responsibilities.Her mother worked as a house cleaner, her dad a mechanic, so even before Sofia had woken up, they were already off to work. Her schedule had her starting her day at 5:30AM, making breakfast and packing lunches, getting herself and her siblings ready for school. Then, when they got home, she was the one to clean up and study. It wasn’t an easy life, but it was her life, and she wouldn’t have traded it for the world.Sofia picked up a lot of her good habits from her mother, Camila. She instilled into her the value of hard work and dedication; for people like them, ones who had tight budgets and hungry mouths, they couldn’t afford anything other than the absolute best. Anything less, and the system would eat them alive.Perhaps, despite Camila’s good intentions, she may have introduced Sofia to this life much sooner than would’ve been appropriate for her age. Even as a young kid, she had this burden to shoulder; Sofia learned how to stay up nights keeping two fussy babies– Mateo and Miguel– calm before she had learned her multiplication tables.This exact issue was only exacerbated then, when one day, when the young girl was only 10 years old, Camila left for work and simply never came back.Sofia didn’t remember much about that day, the story she got was that her mother had died in a sudden car crash. Things were hazy from there, but Sofia could remember this hollow ache in her chest, immense and unyielding, the staggering feeling of learning something valuable was taken away that she would never be able to get back. But she didn’t cry, not at first, at least. When she got the news, the first thing she thought to herself was, ‘How am I going to break this to the twins?’Something strange happens to the mind of a young kid when exposed to the painful reality that life was this brittle, fickle thing that could be taken at any moment. It’s a truth too much for even adults to handle, so for young Sofia, her mind had become fixated on doing anything and everything to follow in her late mother’s footsteps. Becoming the exact person she would have wanted her to be.To her, that meant hypercompetence and an unbreakable facade. Her father, Lorenzo, would work overtime to support the family now that her mother was gone, so Sofia did everything. The cooking, the cleaning, taking care of the children, and yet still excelling in her school life. She thought to herself that, if she couldn’t be someone her mother could be proud of, then she had no right being anything at all.Things got more complicated, then, when at the age of 17, Sofia had realized something big about her own identity. Suddenly, several things from her childhood began to make sense, once she was able to put the pieces together and realize that, internally, she had always thought of herself as a man.That realization answered some questions, but introduced about a million more. Choosing to go by the name Carlos, he’d been terrified to come out for the longest time. He was able to identify something vulnerable about himself, and was now forced to find some way to express that to his family. Carlos wasn’t good with vulnerability, he was terrified of it, in fact, it was a feeling that just wasn’t allowed in his emotional ecosystem.And more than that, he’d been terrified that coming out and transitioning would’ve betrayed the expectations his mother had set for him, that he would no longer be loved in the same way Sofia was.Once he came out, however, his family accepted him with open arms. Carlos’s father told him that what it took to do this, to realize his true self and attain that potential, was real bravery, the kind that Camila would’ve been proud of. The two of them held onto each other close, and Carlos allowed himself to cry for the first time since the aftershocks of his mother’s death rocked his world.What had made that year even better was that, just a couple of months afterwards, Carlos had gotten a letter of acceptance from the University of California, Los Angeles. One that declared that his exceptional talent and academic achievement got him a full-ride scholarship to the school’s Chronokinology program.But just because he’d done one important, difficult thing, didn’t mean that the hard work was about to stop any time soon. In fact, it would only be doubly as important that he do well, especially considering that his advisor, an eclectic man named Dr. Macías, had acted as the head of the program’s department chair.Dr. Macías was a curious old man, some would describe him as…strange, but really, that just made him connect with Carlos even quicker. Dr. Macías praised Carlos for his hard work and strong ethic, and they bonded over facets of their shared identity. One night, while staying up late during one of Dr. Macías’s labs, they got into a conversation about family. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or the fact it had been raining that winter night, something that always brought back bad memories, but Carlos had let slip that his mother had died in a car accident. With a serious look Dr. Macías said that he, too, lost a family member to a tragic accident.After that point, Dr. Macías had insisted that Carlos call him by his first name, Nicolás. Throughout all of his college life, Nicolás was right behind him, guiding him and giving him all the advice and help he would need, something that was much appreciated, because it meant Carlos got to dedicate a little bit more time to his family. By the time Carlos had graduated with a bachelor’s degree, Nicolás had established himself as someone more akin to a friend than a superior, and wanted to hire Carlos to come work with him while he took a research sabbatical.This was something that Carlos simply couldn’t say no to; he knew well how harsh the job market was to new graduates, and Nicolás promised him a pay rate much above what the average 21 year old would expect to make. With this amount of money, Carlos could guarantee so much more financial security for his family. Maybe his father could go back to working with reduced hours, and finally give his failing, aching body a break from the hard labor his job demanded. Surely, his mother was smiling down upon him now. Surely, she would be proud of him for this. He accepted with nary a second thought.Working with Nicolás proved to be much more of a challenge than Carlos had expected, at least more than it had been when he’d just been a student. Nicolás’s work was nothing short of incredible, as he worked on developing the first prototype of a time machine, but the work environment itself was…chaotic, to put it lightly.It was here that Nicolás’s reputation really began to show itself, because he certainly was a lot less professional than would’ve been expected. For one, communication with Nicolás himself was an absolute nightmare; it was strange, because they’d spent a lot of time together when Carlos was a student, but suddenly, it had all but halted as soon as he was his employee.Second, there was a high turnover rate within the staff. Employees would be cycled through like they were working through a revolving door, everyone seemed to be rushed and stretched thin to meet impossible deadlines. The work certainly was difficult, but it was nothing Carlos hadn’t already known as the norm, so maybe he’d just been a bit more acclimated to this sort of lifestyle.Third, and maybe most alarmingly, was that Nicolás would bring with him his adopted son to work. It seemed that, for whatever reason, he wasn’t interested in hiring a babysitter. Rather, he expected his own employees to watch over the kid during work hours, which…had to have been some kind of break in policy, right?All these factors lead to Carlos considering quitting at some point or another. But any time he tried to talk to Nicolás about it, he was told that it would make his mother proud to see him stick through something so difficult. Especially with all the money he was bringing in, didn’t he want to do good for her name and legacy? Why would he consider quitting now, of all times? It would only make things so much more difficult for his family. Carlos couldn’t find a good rebuttal to any of these points, so he continued on his way.The workplace issues kept piling on from there, with Carlos being pressured to take part in experiments that could’ve potentially caused him physical harm, because he just didn’t know if he was allowed to say no. The pressure was immense, the guilt even moreso, so he went along with it.One day, Nicolás revealed to Carlos the first, completed prototype of his time machine. It was a beautiful work of art, Carlos had to admit, and he had been the first to see it, out of anyone else. Nicolás told him he was special, a truly industrious kid whose work ethic knew no limits, and because he’d been such a perfect employee, he got to be the first to try out the time machine itself.Carlos had been earnestly flattered, to the same degree he’d been made a little uncomfortable. Alarm bells were ringing, but he had long since learned to snuff those out, that his intuition of danger hadn’t actually meant anything. For the time being, he was just ecstatic that his hard work and dedication had finally been recognized by his superior.Hesitantly, Carlos decided to take a step onto the machine. If this really worked, then he would be the first ever human to have experienced time travel, what an honor that would’ve been. Surely, his mother would be proud of him for this. Surely, she was smiling down upon him from the heavens.The machine was brought to life, gears were whirring and the smell of electricity and ozone filled the air. At first, there was agony, no faster than a clap of lightning, his body had rended into nothingness, where every atom and cell and nerve was plucked apart, piece by piece. Excruciating pain that was replaced by absolute numbness as soon as it was processed.Then, there was peace. Everything was an incomprehensible blankness, it felt like nothingness, but his mind had still existed, the pure, most literal form of solipsism that one could experience.It was curious. He thought, through an ambient consciousness, that when he would die, there would be…more than this.

_{Summaries by Carbon Monoxide}