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resembled pity.

… and somewhere, Agent Frederickson screamed as a razor-toothed earthworm fourteen inches long burrowed hungrily into his open eye…

… and somewhere, a man in an orange jumpsuit huddled in a hallway full of smoke and gas as a hooded figure in a plague doctor's mask glided by, muttering indistinctly about a cure…

… and somewhere, a woman turned and ran from a blank white mask hovering in the darkness of an infinite stairwell, but could not escape the death that followed…

… and somewhere, a man sitting before a computer screen depicting a black-and-white map of the world saw the icon located over Yellowstone Mountain change from red to black…

… and in that period of time, Cain finished laying Adrian Andrew's bleeding body next to that of his comatose lover's, stepped through the steel doors, and entered the chamber of The Bloom.

It waited for him, resplendent in its infinite colors, iridescent petals stretching across the dimensions, slowly fading in and out of view as it turned gently in space. The cosmic flower at the heart of the world. The thing that had allowed humanity to try and try again when they had failed. The fruit of knowledge, the reflection of eternity.

It had been so, so long since he had last been allowed to witness its glory.

Cain heard an animal growl behind him. He turned, knowing already what he would see.

His brother, the murdered murderer, stood in the doorway. A pair of black swords were clutched in his hands. His eyes were cold. Dead. Emotionless. Just as they had been after Cain's old hands had finished committing their one unspeakable sin.

Cain's new hands, the ones made of steel and fire, clenched tightly. Blue flame erupted from between the joints of his artificial arms. They were matched by the crimson flames that burst forth from his brother's demonic tattoos.

Able took a single step forward…

Kirche

 Note: So Long shit

 

The German Border, near Dresden
February 15th, 1945
Calling them members of a charitable foundation was half-right.

The instant the bombs stopped on the fifteenth, a platoon from Prague — Baker-Six-Six, aka "Rare Mediums" — had been deployed to Dresden. They were relatively close, barely an hour and a half away. The Yanks had decided to take the Axis from two ends, and as such, bombed both Prague and Dresden, so a good part of B66 was behind aiding in recovery efforts and trying to prevent things from getting even worse.

Officially, they represented the "Allied Relief for Victims of the Conflict in the European Theater Foundation", and they had all the trappings of it; fake documentation, supply trucks full of emergency rations and water filtration, bandages for the wounded.

Dresden was close to both the southern and eastern borders, and they were desperate for any kind of relief, for fear that the Soviets would come in from the east and deal them the killing blow.

Anastazie Dvorak kept her head down as they passed through the checkpoint; too often in the occupied zones, she had been stopped because of her 'Jewish eyes', whatever that meant. someone else had told her that it was a perverse compliment, and that it meant that they wanted to take advantage of you.

Her handler, a kind Ukranian man who she just called Humphrey — because he looked so much like Humphrey Bogart — had finished talking to the German at the checkpoint, and soon, they were bound towards Dresden. It was a fair distance into the country, still, another half-hour.

"Are you all right, Ana?" Humphrey asked. His Czech was passable, at most, but she could hold a conversation with him.

"Yes, thank you." She swallowed, looking towards the northern horizon. "…I feel so much sadness from there. So much loss. They're saying twenty-thousand dead?"

"Two-hundred thousand, Ana." He glanced at the driver of the transport, and then looked back at her. "But word is that the Fuhrer is inflating the figures. I'm sure it's far less than that!" He had a genuine smile on his face, hiding his own unease.

"…they're lying again, then." She felt at her uniform; a nurse's garb, for their cover. "Why do they lie about the number of deaths? It's dangerous and will induce panic."

"I think they know that," Humphrey said, looking north with her. "I just don't think they care."

He didn't have the same sensitivity that Ana did. He couldn't talk to the dead. He couldn't cause spots of cold. He wouldn't faint or scream in the presence of death and destruction. He was just there to make sure she was kept safe.

But you can't kill something that's already dead with a bullet. He clutched his Bible in his breast pocket.

The bombing had stopped at half-past noon. By the time they got there, it was almost five o'clock. The city was dead silent, except for the burning of the flames in the distance, and the sound of the trucks. Every now and again, they would see clothing sticking from the rubble. Ana tried not to think about it. She just focused on the pain she heard.

This city would forever have a psychic scar on it. Even if the wounds were to heal, the mind of this city would be forever concussed, shellshocked. After ten, fifty, one-hundred years, there would still be something in this city to remind the people of Germany — and the world — of what happened here.

"What the hell?" someone asked in Czech. It was the driver, who she called Clark, after Clark Gable; he had the same voice as the actor. "Her ears are bleeding."

"Dammit." Humphrey reached forward to dab at her ears with a handkerchief. "That bad?"

Ana nodded. "The worst yet. Remember Trafalgar Square, four years ago?"

"You wouldn't stop seizing," Humphrey nodded, taking out a white pill and a bottle of water, offering both to her. "Kept saying the children there could taste the war rations, and they were hungry for chocolate."

"Yes." She nodded. Ana took the pill placed it under her tongue, and swallowed it with some water. "It… it wasn't good."

The truck came to a stop. "We're here," Clark said, stepping out of the cab. "I recognize the building."

They stepped out onto the street, in front of what had once been some form of church. It could barely be recognized as one; only a few walls were left, and in the center, some rubble of what had once been the dome and spire. The chancel was the largest part left standing, all dark stone; whether the surroundings smouldered in such a way that it looked dark, or if it was naturally that way, none could tell. The altar, somehow, was mostly intact.

Clark looked at the photograph they had been given, then at the remains of the church, then waved Ana over to inspect it. She herself had taken the picture, with a special camera; 'spirit photography' she called it. It depicted the remains of the church, with dozens, if not at least one-hundred, black-eyed, pale beings looking at the camera. It had frighted her, the Foundation, and the New Dawn Initiative enough to come and find it.

"Who are they?" Humphrey asked, disembarking from the back of the transport.

"I don't know." Her hand balled up in her uniform. "Better question might be what are they. You've heard reports from where Husiatyn Woods used to be? Black-eyed men being seen in the remnants?"

"Then why could you see it?" Clark looked at her, worried. "You said your gift only works on ghosts."

"I'm not— oh." Ana's balance failed, and she leaned against the chancel. "…oh god."

"What is it?" Humphrey rushed to her side, supporting her.

"Someone… someone's underneath. Screaming. Screaming. They're dead and they're screaming. Oh…" She sat down in the rubble, and started crying. Her voice changed, distorted, into first a child's, then a man's, speaking in German.

"Vater, vater, bitte, es heiß! Es schmerzt! Vater!"

"Alec, schließe deine Augen, mein Bärchen… schleiße deine Augen…" She broke down crying in a masculine voice. "That's what they're saying. They burned to death, in the chapel. They were seeking solace. And they died." She began bleeding from the mouth.

"God in Heaven…" Humphrey looked back at the truck, at Clark, and at the half-a-dozen agents that had stayed there. He said, in English, then Ukranian, "Don't just stand there! Let's dig this up!"

The various agents — all men, all soldiers of some form, whether under the New Dawn or the Foundation — all took up pickaxes meant for removing the rubble. "Where do we dig?" Humphrey asked Ana, holding onto her.

"Crypt… they burnt in the crypt…" She looked skyward, at the setting sun. The heat from the freshly-bombed city had made her forget it was winter. The sun was setting so fast.

"Petros!" — Humphrey was addressing Clark here, in Ukranian — "Get on the radio and check with the other teams. See if any of the other mediums are having a reaction like this."

"Yes, sir." Clark ran back to the transport, speaking into the radio.

Ana, eventually, was able to stand. "…give me a pick."

"Are you sure?" Humprhey asked. "You look like you could fall at any moment."

"I have to see them," she growled. "It is the only way I can put them to rest and get them to stop screaming."

The rubble beneath their feet shifted in a motion violent enough to knock one of the diggers on his front. Everyone stopped to look at it, suddenly afraid of what they would find under the ruins of the church should they continue digging. For something dead to move rubble that extremely required a lot of pain, and a lot of anger.

Ana had taken a break after they had set up the work lights. A few civilians had stopped by and offered their services in the excavation; while grateful, they were turned away with emergency food, water, and supplies. They were masquerading as an aid organization, so they had pitched some tents for those who could find them to sleep under.

The church, as it turned out, was a landmark. A younger couple who had survived the blasts had come by for food and mourned how they were to be wed in it in March. Humphrey — being a New Dawn Initiative pastor — had offered to wed them on the spot, so he was off doing that. Something good could come of this, at least.

They were sitting in the cool of the night air, winter suddenly creeping back into the devastated Dresden. They hoped that snow would not come, or else it would mask the cold spots that the mediums in B66 often relied on to detect spirit activity.

The rubble shifted again. It kept getting closer to the altar, and the vestments on it were starting to shake. It was a miracle that it had managed to survive when the rest of it had been burned to the ground. The stone didn't melt, but it was hot enough that everything supporting it broke down.

"I hate Americans," Ana concluded, muttering in Czech so that the Americans from the Foundation wouldn't hear it. "I hate that they can destroy a city like this for no reason."

The rubble shifted once more. Ana jumped, as she was at the back of the chancel, and it had come almost at her feet. She carefully walked around it, and called to Humphrey, "It's gotten to the back!"

"What has?" he