The Sin Hunter: Double or Nothing

The Worst in Jack

The Sun Hunter paced around the room, clutching his jaw while Cynthia and her daughter inspected the morgue shelf with Liana preserved inside. "My god...I've never seen anything like this before..." Cynthia gasped, covering her mouth in shock. Jules remained silent, keeping her arms crossed with a pistol in one hand. "Mom, didn't you say that there were demons here in the Living World?" Cynthia shook her head, turning to a very anxious Jack. "I did. But for the duration that I knew Liana, she was never a demon. Or, at least, she was really good at hiding it." Jack paused, his footsteps muting the conversation.

"No. Liana was no demon." Jack moved toward the shelf, clasping his gloves at the edge of the table. "I've run secret DNA tests on all of you for a few months now. When the pandemic broke out, I started experimenting on different samples to see what the outcomes would produce." While Jules took a step back in panicked shock, Cynthia remained in place, rolling her eyes. "You took DNA samples? I'm somewhat impressed by that, Jack." The detective thanked Cynthia for the compliment, returning to his deduction. "Liana was not a demon. So whatever did this to her was a mutation, probably not naturally." Cynthia nodded, but Jules offered her own thoughts.

"You mentioned how, y'know, this isn't naturally occurring for a person. What if it had something to do with your stimpaks?" Jack tilted his head up, eyeing the young protege with suspicion. "The...stimpaks? Explain your logic." Jules waved a glove, closing her eyes as she formulated her thoughts. "Gladly." Jules sidestepped around a bucket from a cleaning cart, motioning to the body. "You mentioned that a transformation like this isn't naturally occurring. There's a possibility that, if this is some kind of chemical reaction, maybe someone tried drugging her?" Jack placed a glove on his chin, examining the explanation more thoroughly.

"I see where you're coming from. Doc, is there any kind of medical record we pulled that could tell us how Liana might have died?" Cynthia extracted a folder from behind her lab coat, folding the paper open as she inspected the clipped documents. "It says here that Miss Liana Winters had officially died of a diagnosed drug overdose." At the reveal, Jack's expression grew dark, his pupils narrowing into sharp white slits beneath his fedora. His gloves scrunched with leather as they clenched and unclenched. Jules put a hand over her mother's chest, pushing her back beneath the shelf. "Mom? You really want to back up for this one."

But as Cynthia and Jules ducked behind the shelf, leaving the Sin Hunter to shudder uncontrollably, the door into the morgue smashed open as guards in tactical armor swarmed into the room. "Hands in the air!" "Get 'em up NOW!" "Drop your weapons!" And most important of all these cries and more was the bloodchilling, bone rattling shriek uttered by one of the demon guards as the Sin Hunter flew across the room, blocking out the light fixtures above as gunfire tore through the morgue. Cynthia and Jules pressed low beneath the shelf, Cynthia transforming into a small mouse to allow her daughter more wiggle room. "Well THAT happened right on time!" Jules shouted as gunfire tore through the air.

Up above the shelf, one guard slammed into the wall nearby, half of their rib cage torn wide open. Blood splattered the walls and floor as Jack threw himself into the crowds of guards, slashing, tearing, even biting through the scaly, furry, feathery and leather-stained flesh of the monsters, leaving only one guard remaining. It was a twisted, unbridled blur of blood, reds and blacks, a wonderful swirl of art and passion in a deadly dance as the Sin Hunter slashed and shot at every target in his view. The wounded guard struggled to crawl away, part of his leg somewhere, the other one in the trash bin nearby. Something moved in the silence. The guard struggled for the door, trying in vain to jam his knife through the lock to pick it as a whip cracked around his neck, sending the guard slamming into the floor.

Turning slowly, the demon shrieked in pain as the Sin Hunter's boot stamped on their neck, nearly severing the head from the spine in a chilling crack. A radio on the guard's belt crackled with static as a voice replied. "O Five! O Five, do you copy?" Jack knelt slowly, scooping the radio from his belt before swallowing his stamina, clicking the button on sending. "I'm afraid O Five has had a horrible neck issue to deal with. But I'm here to help." Jack's voice scraped across the wall like a bloody knife, his fists and his revolver soaked in guts and demonic remains as the radio crackled, dripping with O Five's blood.

"You're not O Five! Who the hell are you?!" A panicked tone replied. Jack clicked the button again, whispering now under a shuddering breath. "You tell the highest ranking coward with the cushiest seat on that end that the Sin Hunter beat your guys to it. And I know about your little demonic shenanigans." The radio buzzed with static as Jack marched back across the room, standing in the center of the morgue beside a broken light fixture. Beneath his boot, one guard's head faced upward with a gouged eye while the rest of his body lay still on its stomach. "O-oh god, oh Christ!" And then, in one swift moment, the Sin Hunter shattered the radio against the floor, leaving the room in a panicked, deafening silence.

As Jack lowered his eyes, quivering and trembling, to the floor, something behind him shuffled. Whipping around in the dark, his revolver barrel raised to the target, Jack's eyes exploded open, horrified by the sight he had witnessed. Standing in the dim light of the hallway outside of the hospital, was Jules and very mortified Cynthia, both staring at their friend in wide-eyed, panicking silence. Jack lowered his revolver, realizing that he had almost shot and killed his protege and his best friend in blind anger. Not a word escaped from Jack's lips as he stumbled forward, crashing onto the floor in a sudden blur. Cynthia and Jules both screamed as they backed up, watching Jack's fedora flop on the ground next to him.