“No. No, this is a stupid idea. This is a horrible idea!”

“Eric, be silent.”

Muse rubbed her hands on her temples, listening to them fight. Eric’s insistence of the idiocy of the moment was strongly backed by both Mal and Victor, it just happened that the little blond was the loudest.

Honestly, she didn’t know what to think.

The five of them stood on the top of a small embankment by the line of trees that marked the transition from forest to field. But it wasn’t the foliage or the grass that were the current concern. It had everything to do with the huge Vatican military base that they were staring at.

The place looked like a fortress. Roughly rectangular, it was surrounded by a large stone wall. Large spotlights dotted the walls, casting huge circles of white light on the inside and the outside of the wall. Like some bizarre Medieval castle, she saw soldiers walking the line on top. She could only assume they were soldiers. It wasn’t their white and gold tabards that was the giveaway, so much as it was the M16’s they were carrying.

Muse really rather agreed with Eric. This was a dumb idea.

“Why does the church have a military base?” Muse asked.

Isaac put his hands in the pockets of his long black coat. “They feel the Retribution never truly ended. When the UN ordered a truce between the undead and the Vatican forces, they succeeded in negotiating the allowed continuance of several sporadic bases. This is one of them.”

“Great…” she replied.

“I don’t like this,” Eric said again.

“We gathered, yes, thank you.” Isaac let out a slow breath and turned his attention to the other three men. “I am aware that none of you think this is a brilliant decision. But we are going to do this, one way or another. If you disagree so strongly as you would resign, so be it. You may leave.”

Muse watched as Victor, Mal, and Eric stood there, internally debating. Finally after a long few moments and no one had moved, Isaac spoke up again. “Very well.” He walked over to a stump and shrugged out of his long coat, neatly folding it up as he continued. “You three are going to be in charge of the infiltration and the retrieval of the object I described to you earlier – the golden container. It should be in the shape of an ankh. It is very old and very fragile... please be gentle with it. They have it somewhere in there, I’m sure.” He dropped his coat over the stump, now standing in a well-coordinated vest, tie, shirt, and pants. The man could put together an outfit, she'd give him that.

“So you want us to just… barge in there… into a heavily armed military base… with a bunch of other soldiers and who-knows-how-much artillery?!”

“No, Eric,” Isaac replied sharply, shooting a scathing look in his direction. The sorcerer had been short on his patience the entire day, and Muse wondered how bright Eric was to keep prodding the subject. “You will have assistance from myself and Muse.”

“Wait, wait… What am I doing?” Muse blinked.

“You and I are going to be a distraction.”

“A… I don’t like the sound of this.”

“Come now, Muse – You are the only one here who can be shot without any repercussion.” Isaac smiled at her, although it was a rather sick, sarcastic smile. “Would you prefer one of them took your place?”

Nervousness plucked at her. Between the devil and the deep blue sea. Or rather, between the devil and a bunch of heavily armed Vatican soldiers, anyway. Unfortunately, what he said was true. The ones with the bullets couldn’t hurt her. Isaac - on the other hand - would, could, and had readily done so before. “Fine…”

“I thought as much. So.” Isaac turned to the three men, none of whom looked at all thrilled. “Go around to the other side of the base and wait.”

“How will we know when to go?” Mal asked.

“You’ll know.”

Muse stood next to Isaac, now alone with him. Walking through the grass towards the base, she had that 'spider sense tingling' feeling again. There they were, like it was nothing, strolling towards what she'd expect Area 51 to look like.

If Area 51 went to bible camp.

And had more guns.

This was not a good idea. "Isaac..?"

"Yes?"

"How're we... going to... distract them?"

Isaac turned his head to face her. "Simple." He undid his cufflinks. Slipping them into his pocket, he began to roll up his sleeves. "By killing most of them."

She really wished she hadn't asked.

"Now, your job is simple. Because I am... under the weather, you are to draw their attention, and assist in my retreat, should I need the help. Otherwise, I will not expect you to assist in their deaths. I know you are still... squeamish... about unnecessary violence."

"I won’t kill people."

"Yes, so I surmised."

Judging by the yelling and the bright white spots now aimed directly at them, they had been noticed. They stood some thirty or forty feet away from the wall that loomed up over them. "Ooooh... oh crap..." Muse froze in mid-step, looking up at the soldiers that stood on the wall, some fifteen feet up.

Isaac stopped as well, but he seemed completely unconcerned by the shouting or the many guns now pointed in their direction. Humming a tune under his breath, he began to move his hand in the air slowly - almost like he was conducting whatever music was in his head. The sound of gunfire split the air, and what must have been thousands of bullets began impacting the invisible shield that she had seen him use before. But she knew that wouldn't last forever. It had failed before, what would keep it from failing now?

It wasn't long before she had her answer. Muse had to resist recoiling from him as she felt... something. The power started to roll off of him in waves. It was almost palpable, like the air somehow got thicker, and yet didn't change at all. If she didn't know better, she would have blamed her imagination. The world seemed to be getting darker around him, the shadow he cut against the spotlights seemed sharper in contrast.

Humming the same strange, melancholy tune, Isaac reached out both hands in front of him, fingers spread, and simply curled in his fingers. A horrified noise escaped Muse's throat as she watched as nearly a dozen of the guards on top of the wall simply... vanished into a mist of blood and flesh. She heard the screams of their compatriots who were forced to watch as the men were destroyed like nothing more than insects on a windshield.

Muse wished that she was a normal living human and that her eyes wouldn't have been able to see past the glaring white spotlights. She was given no such mercy, and she could not bring herself to look away from the show in front of her. Blood was now oozing down the outside of the wall, darkening the cement in slow, uneven rivulets.

Somehow, in a show of bravery that Muse couldn't even begin to understand, the soldiers were still firing at them, the bullets crackling off of the shield in small bursts of white-blue light.

Pulling his hands into fists again, Muse looked down to see a glowing white circle appear in the grass around them. The writing around it was in some strange archaic language she had never seen. She tried to read it, but she couldn’t grasp on to the shapes, no matter how hard she tried. It began to swirl to one side, and Muse got dizzy watching. It was easier for her just not to look.

Humming louder, Isaac opened his hands, palms down. The circle around them suddenly shuddered and some strange low-pitched vibration ran through her. It seemed like the ground itself was somehow moving. A scream caught in her throat. From out of the shadows around her - from the shadow cast by every stick, rock, from Isaac's shadow, from hers - crawled out what she could only think of as nightmares.

Darker than the night around them, darker than her own shadow, the shapes that emerged were somehow sentient, somehow living. Flat against the ground, conforming to the shape of the terrain like two-dimensional shadows, their eyes shone like dull white lights. Deformed claws, bodies, each one seemed to be its own twisted doodle. There were dozens of them now - no, must be near a hundred - splitting off from each other. Staring at them in horror, she wrapped her arms around herself.

Isaac pointed towards the base.

They moved with a sickening speed, covering the distance like they were only images curling along the ground, projections from some unseen source. The shadows flicked up the walls and seemed to attack the soldiers, instantly vanishing when they reached them when... everything stopped. The echoes of the deafening gunfire rung in the trees in the distance, leaving a throbbing silence in its wake, somehow louder than the noise before. Even Isaac had stopped his strange humming.

Muse desperately wished the silence had stayed.

The screams. The screams she knew would haunt her. Thanking whoever would listen that at least she could never revisit this in her sleep, she wished she could throw up, wished she could pass out, wished she could somehow escape this. The howls of twisted agony from the wall and beyond were nearly inhuman, nearly impossible.

It took her a few moments to realize what was happening.

Each soldier was screaming in useless horror as their bodies were controlled by the strange monsters. They stood there, clawing at their own flesh, their nails ripping at their faces, tearing away skin and hair. Fingers dug into eyes, tore open throats.

Those who were armed with knives suffered the easy deaths at the end of their own weaponry. Those who were not so lucky met whatever horror that the nightmares could seemingly think up. Some died gagging on their own fists as they drove their arm down their own throats. Some died after they had pounded their own skulls open on the stone. Some, blinded from their own hands, only collapsed as their bodies went into shock, bleeding out where they lay. Some of the soldiers threw themselves off of the wall, falling to the ground in crumpled, twitching heaps, their bodies gradually going still.

She wasn't sure how long this went on. She wasn't sure how long it took for every single one of the soldiers to rend themselves apart. Slowly the screaming tapered off, slowly silence took over again. Silence, except for a sound that Muse couldn't recognize at first.

Sobbing.

Someone was sobbing.

Oh.

It was her.

She was shaking, locked on the remains of what she saw in front of her. It took her a long time to realize someone was talking to her. Even then, she couldn't grasp what was being said. Suddenly, she was being shaken by the shoulders, looking up into a face it took her a long time to recognize.

"Muse?" Isaac was calling her name, trying to get her attention.

"O-oh God," she stammered out.

Isaac pulled in a slow breath and let it out. He looked exhausted, his expression thin and pained. Every word seemed an effort. "Muse... I think I may have misjudged. You should not have witnessed that. I should have left you behind or sent you with the others. I should not have thought that-"

The sky above them shown orange and an angry yellow as the ground shook with a sudden rumbling explosion from over the wall. The spotlights flickered and went black, sending them into darkness, the fireball curling into the sky the only source of light.

"It seems you may not have been better off with them, after all..."

Eric ducked around behind the wall, gun raised, narrowly evading the bullet that ricochetted off of the wall across from him. "Goddamn it!"

“Who puts a turret in between two random buildings?!” Victor jumped around past him, grumbling, glaring down at the large hole in his mid-thigh black coat.

“The Umbrella Corporation?” Eric suggested helpfully.

“Well, clearly the Vatican,” Mal yelled from the other side, having taken cover on the other side of the intersection of two alleys.

"I don’t care, I have bullet holes in my coat!" Victor yelled indignantly.

"Why don't you go all... misty and go fug ‘em up, then, Vic?" Mal rolled his neck to the side, loudly cracking the vertebrae and then his knuckles.

“You know I can't turn into mist, dumb-ass. I missed that day in 'Vamp Ed. 101' okay?" Victor and Eric both recoiled as another volley of bullets rained down the hallway. "So what're we going to do?”

"I could just... I don't know. Stomp down there and break their necks." Mal shrugged.

"Mal, I don't care how many bullets you can take. I think the phrase is - I don't know how many it'll take to stop you, but I know how many they're gonna use." Eric said, pulling his coat around him tighter and buckling the strap at the neck.

“You stole that off the TV,” Victor smacked his brother in the arm. Eric slapped him back, and he resisted the urge to start a wrestling match while being shot at. Something told him that wouldn’t end well.

"Yeah.. yeah... You girls hold onto your panties. Gimmie a sec." Mal lumbered down the hallway in the other direction, disappearing around a corner. The two blondes looked at each other and shrugged helplessly.

Both of the men reflexively ducked as they heard a loud and sudden tearing noise - the unique popping-rending noise of metal being ripped apart. Looking down the alley between the buildings, they saw Mal heading towards them, carrying a large metal blast door - the large metal hinges on one side bent and torn like they were paper. The door was at least six inches of solid steel. Victor and Eric let out whistles at the same time, impressed.

"Now you two bastards better stop callin' me names," Mal grunted and put the metal door down for a moment - letting out a puff of air, taking a deep breath after the exertion.

Victor blinked. "Yeah, okay, Captain Blast-door. Y'aren't going to hear anything from me for a while."

"I second that." Eric raised his hand.

"Right, well, c'mon then. We ain't getting any younger."

"I ain't getting any older," Victor said with a broad grin.

"Aw, shut up." Mal gripped the door, keeping his fingers as far back away from the edge as he could, and took a deep breath. "One... two... three!"

Mal stepped into the middle of the hallway and was met by a rain of bullets, impacting the door, causing neat little dents to form on the side closest to him. He roared in rage and began running down the hallway, Eric and Victor following close behind. Mal continued to yell as he barreled along like a freight train. Victor could barely differentiate between Mal’s scream and the screams of the men on the other end as the huge metal door bowled over the turret in the center of the alleyway. Mal kept going, crushing the gun and the man operating it in one go - slamming the unfortunate man up against the wall behind him.

Victor leaped out to the side onto one man to the left, snapping the unfortunate soldier’s head a full hundred and eighty degrees around in a quick snap. He dropped the man, and dashed quickly around to the side, moving too fast for the second man to see and coming up onto the side and uppercutting the man hard to the jaw. He couldn’t turn into mist - but that didn’t mean he wasn’t useful. He heard the familiar noise of Eric's heavily modified gun firing a few times behind him. Then, blessed silence.

The three of them looked up at the large building that was the target of their search. They had covered every other possible building. It had to be this one. Looking up at the warehouse, Victor noticed a window on the second floor. “Hey, guys?” Victor pointed up. “I could get in there pretty easy.”

“Hrm,” Eric tapped his chin thoughtfully, looking back and forth along the building. “We aren’t going to have much more time. I say go for it. Mal and I will look for the entrance around the side, meet you in there.”

“I’m bored,” Mal grunted.

“Yeah, well, then, c’mon, let’s go kill things.” Eric slapped his brother on the arm again. “We’ll meet you inside.”

“Word,” Victor said as he took a few steps back. The cement side of the building wouldn’t be too hard to scale, but he needed some momentum. Focusing on his goal, he ran towards the building and jumped. Gripping onto the small lip by the window, he pulled himself up. Shattering the glass with his elbow, he rolled inside, and waited.

Nothing. No footsteps, no alarm noises. Nothing. Man, Isaac must be doing one hell of a show out there. It looked like he had wound up in some office. Standing up and brushing the remaining glass shards off of his coat, he stepped out the door.

Darkened hallway after darkened hallway, nothing but the red glow of the ‘exit’ lights to cast shadows on the ground, Victor slipped through the building. Luckily he didn’t need the light to see.

“Here, stupid little glass thingy... Here stupid little glass thingy...” he said in a sing-song voice, barely above a whisper. Although he didn’t know why he cared, there was no one around. He couldn’t smell anyone.

Rounding another corner, he came across a locked door. It had every sign of ‘something important is behind here.’ Large ‘Cleared Personnel Only’ signs, orange and black stripes, everything. The doorknob had one of those fun little keypads with all the little numbers on them. Too bad Victor didn’t have his brother’s passion for puzzle solving. Taking ten steps back, he ran, shoulder-checking the door.

“Oooowww!” he whined and rubbed his shoulder, hopping from one foot to the other in pain. But luckily the impact had done the damage, knocking the door half off of its hinges. Grinning, he kicked the door the rest of the way in, the door landing on the ground with a clatter. Freezing, expecting to hear guns or the familiar shouts of ‘Die, heathen,’ he heard nothing. Shrugging, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, he walked in.

“Well slap me silly and call me Sally,” Victor said to himself as he stepped into the room. It seemed like some bizarre medical lab, plexiglass boxes, computer systems and metal tables everywhere.

More importantly, there, sitting on a desk across from him, was the gold-liquidy-ankh-thingy that Isaac had described.

“Sweet deal.”

Victor walked forward, humming under his breath. He reached out to grab the ankh.

Beep.

Blinking, Victor looked down at a large series of angrily blinking and beeping red tubes at his feet.

“Huh.”

Muse had come to the conclusion that at this point in time, staring at the ground between her feet where she sat on the bumper of the hearse was much better than looking up at Isaac. The man in question was standing there, hands in his pockets, watching the red and orange flickers of light over the trees as the military complex continued to burn.

They had sat there in silence like that for easily twenty minutes. Muse refused to talk to him, and he wasn't exactly offering any conversation.

Muse tried to grasp what had happened, what she had seen. It shouldn't have surprised her. That is exactly what Isaac was capable of. She was stupid to think any different. She had seen him incinerate a man, toss another man out a window. Mass murder of that scale and... It shouldn't have surprised her. Pulling in a shuddering breath, she let it out and put her head in her hands.

"No! Put me down!"

Muse stood up quickly hearing the shouts. Mal emerged through the trees, carrying a frantically thrashing Eric under one arm. Both of them were battered, and Eric looked like he had suffered burns on his neck and one of his hands - the real one, she noted. Mal put him down, only to have the blond try and rush back into the trees around him, but the bigger man would have none of it. He shook Eric by the shoulders roughly and pushed him back towards the car.

"What happened?" Isaac asked quietly.

Eric turned to face them, his face streaked with tears. Muse stepped towards him quickly, her horror over the situation nearly silenced by her worry for someone she had come to think of as a friend. She put her hand on his arm as he stammered and shook his head frantically. "He... He... He.. Oh Christ, Oh god..."

"What... happened?" Isaac insisted again, slowly.

"Vic... Vic.. he.. he went into that building, and he... Goddamn it, Isaac! You stupid moron, they knew we were coming! They blew up that whole building! He went in there after your stupid..." Eric broke off in a choked sob and tried to turn to go back into the woods. "We need to go... we need to go get him."

"Hold up, lil' man..." Mal stopped him again with a huge hand on his chest. "That place is swarming with guards, helicopters... you'd only die, too."

"He's not dead!" Eric yelled. "He's not dead! We need to go in after him!"

"No," Isaac said.

"What?!" Eric rounded on him.

"We will not be going in after him. Mal is correct. It is too heavily guarded now, and we have no guarantee that your brother is still moving," Isaac said thinly, turning towards the hearse.

Eric ran over to him, grabbed his arm and whirled the sorcerer to face him. That apparently was the last of Isaac's patience. The taller man grabbed the blond by the leather coat and slammed him up against the side of the hearse, leaning down to speak harshly, quietly, very close to Eric's startled face.

"We will not be going in after him. It is suicidal, and I am hardly in the mood nor the condition to go and correct your brother's mistakes. Do not test my resolve." Isaac released him and climbed into the passenger door, the resounding slam the final punctuation on the argument. Mal watched the scene with a sad, weary expression. Walking around to the door he climbed in, silently, leaving Eric and Muse alone.

Muse walked up to the frantic man slowly and pulled him into a hug. She frowned as Eric wrapped his arms around her and sobbed into her shoulder. "I know. I know... C'mon, there's nothing we can do right now. You're hurt, and we're all tired. Let's just go home..."

"But Vic, he..."

"I know... we'll talk about what to do, okay?"

"He's... he can't be dead."

"I believe you."

Eric lifted his head. "You do?"

Muse nodded. She didn't know if she was lying. Maybe he was alive, but judging by the size of the explosion, it wasn't likely. "We'll figure out what to do."

Eric silently nodded. She climbed with him into the back of the hearse. Keeping an arm around him, Eric slumped against her.

The drive home was long and painfully silent. Muse looked out the window at the slowly lightening sky as dawn crept over the horizon.

Don't be dead, Vic, Muse silently pleaded. Please don't be dead.