The Sin Hunter: Double or Nothing

You'll File Anyways

A dusty steel grate smashed into the floor of the quiet storage room, rattling the shelves and shaking dust off of the oldest boxes as flashlights beamed into the room below. After a minute of searching, Jack leapt through the grate, boots striking the ground as quietly as possible, rising from the balls and lowering to the heels. It came off so quiet, one would be forgiven for never hearing a thing. Jack rose from his hunched position, his flashlight swinging around the room. "Do you see anything there?" Jules whispered. Jack checked through every corner and crack visible to himself, then turned to Jules with three fingers raised and a motion to stay quiet. Jules nodded, then leapt down herself, sliding a pistol with a silencer into her hand.

As soon as Jules rejoined her mentor, the Sin Hunters opened fire on the shelving spaces, not only disabling the security in the room, but also effectively taking down three demon guards. Upon inspecting their corpses, Jules confirmed that the guards were certainly not human, boasting mutated limbs and rippling frames. Jack nodded, tucking his flashlight over a velcro strap on his shoulder. "Great work, Jules. C'mon, let's get these files figured out." Jules nodded, reaching for her own stack of boxes. "What are we looking for?" she asked. Jack stuffed a box back into the wire rack shelf, extracting a different one five spaces down. "Medical staff arrange their files in near alphabetical order. I say near, however, as some files need to be stored elsewhere for the records.

"We, however, are looking for a file that starts with a W. It was Liana's last name, Winters." Jules chuckled softly, placing her box back as she grabbed another one. "What a pretty last name." Jack grinned, remembering their first encounter at the horse stables. "Yes, it was," he replied, when the door into the file room burst open, bathing the innermost walkway in gold light. Jules and Jack both froze, turning to one another in shock as they shoved their boxes back into the shelves, leaping for cover. As beams glossed over every surface, the Sin Hunters ducked for somewhere to hide. Jules threw herself over a shelf up top, pulling some boxes around herself to better support a nest.

Jack, on the other hand rolled himself tight beneath a shelf to his right, the cold stone floor seeping into his insulated jacket as the flashlights continued to scream across every surface. "I was confident I heard bodies and talking in here." "You're too drunk for the job, Talex. God, why do I aways get paired with the worst guys?" "Hey, you act like you're so perfect, Jag." The Sin Hunter froze tight, turning his head to see Jules on her top shelf, carefully screwing the silencer of her pistol on and aiming in the direction of the flashlights. Jack clenched his jaw tight, eyes wobbling in panic. 'If she misses that shot, we're hosed," he told himself, removing his own pistol and silencer, screwing it on as his shoulder jostled a crate.

Flashlights swerved in his direction. "The hell was that?" one voice responded. Jack froze, clutching his mouth and nose tight as he finished screwing the silencer on, pointing the barrel down toward approaching footsteps. When the boots stopped inches from the Sin Hunter's shoulder, they scanned everywhere but downward. "Huh. Probably some little critter looking for a snack. Poor fella." Jack felt his chest cramping from a lack of oxygen, but as the guards finally moved away, one guard staggered back, collapsing to the floor. Jack turned in shock, only to see that the guard had lost their human disguise and traded that for a bullet hole to the forehead. In a flash, Jack rolled out of the cabinet shelf, throwing himself into the hallway.

The guards turned in surprise, flashlights nearly blinding the Sin Hunter. Two demons, guns and a nightstick. Jack opened fire, his revolver coming out as well. Bullets rocked the shelves, and demon brains splattered the inside of their helmets when both guards crashed to the floor, their tactical armor shaking in the motionless stances. Jack rose from the floor, smoke curling from his guns as he turned to the shelving unit Jules rested on. "Nice shot, kid." Jules leapt down from the shelf, dusting off her jacket. "Thanks, Jack. First time I've shot a pistol in a long while." The Sin Hunter approached Jules, clasping a hand on her shoulder. "Well it's a sure fine thing that you've been practicing regardless."

As the Sin Hunters returned to their searching, a voice echoed from the doorway. "Looking for something, ladies?" Jack turned, then laughed when Cynthia walked into the room, holding the file they had been searching for in her right hand. "You really thought they'd let the file sit here with the rest? Nah. I got a copy from disguising as the head surgeon in this facility. All the copy records were in her desk." Jack gave a thumbs up, keeping his revolver in his left hand. "Great work, Doc. Jules, you coming?" The younger Sin Hunter nodded, jogging through the shelves to reach her family while the group exited the file room, closing the door shut behind them.

"Now according to this diagram, the morgue site should be just ahead." Taking the elevator down thirteen floors and taking down a handful of corrupt guards in the process, the trio entered the morgue without any further hassles. Jack picked through the door, swinging into the frigid operating room as Cynthia and Jules followed after him. Jack turned both ways, his fedora clumped on the edges of the doors before he closed it tight, drawing the blacked in window cover to hide suspicion. Jack then switched the lights on, bathing the dark morgue in light. Cynthia remained in the center of the room, tapping her foot. "So which one are we looking for?""Maybe this one?" Jules replied, wrapping her glove around a shelf labeled, "L.W". 

Jack joined Cynthia by the shelf, shrugging. "Nobody else in there with those initials. Let's give it a shot." Jack helped the younger Sin Hunter to open the shelf, revealing a tarp bundled over a body. Jack closed his eyes, sucking in a long and deep breath. Cynthia nodded, clasping her hands at her sides. "I understand, Jack. It's not easy seeing your loved ones dead." Jack nodded, opening his eyes again as he reached for the tarp. "I get that. Now we should get this over with." As the Sin Hunter tore the tarp back, everyone froze, horrified by the bizarre sight underneath the tarp. "My God..." Jack paused, unable to bring himself to see his former lover. Cynthia stepped forward, inspecting the quiet, frozen corpse.

"This is Liana, all right," she said, but pulling the tarp back forced the biologist to reconsider her words. "But why does she have a pair of dragonfly wings and a claw on her body?"