Barely Dead

☠ s i x t e e n ☠

☠ s i x t e e n ☠

"Quietus!" a voice said cheerfully as the Reaper ducked inside the warehouse. "Boy, am I glad to see you!"

"Hello, Jace," Quietus replied, pulling his jacket of himself. "Any more news from the Council?"

"No, Sir. They only requested you be there, and said nothing more," he said.

Jace was an intern. His mother had sold his soul (keep that in mind - his mother sold his soul). The Underworld took cases like Jace's to employ people. Of course, they haven't been many cases of people selling souls anymore, due to the media making many movies to tell people that was a pretty bad fucking idea, so the staff was limited to a few people. They did have the workers who had been sold from long, long ago, when people would sell their souls to the devil for petty things like money, except those people weren't interns. Instead, they'd probably hold higher positions.

Jace was no more than seventeen, if even, and his age was evident on his boyish face. Quietus didn't doubt that Jace could have had a better life than this, but there wasn't much to be done. They could only wait for Jace's mother to die so she could be sent to Hell, or for someone to bargain their soul in exchange for his. Sam and Dean have done it before.

Quietus walked with Jace by his side before they both entered the nicely furnished room that held the door to the Underworld. This door was a direct passage from the mortal world to the Judgment House. The furnishings were modern, and mostly black, white, and red - because what else would the color scheme be? It was the introduction to the Underworld, after all.

Quietus laid his jacket onto the couch before walking back to the entrance and sealing the door to ensure no one would be entering the room while they were in Hell. It resembled a submarine’s door, except more discrete. The room was very luxurious looking, a room a thief could only dream of coming across. Except it might not be wisest to steal from the Grim Reaper due to obvious reasons.

The door to the actual Underworld wasn't hidden in a bookcase, or behind an ancient painting. It was actually right there in plain sight. The door blended in so well with the wall - it was a seamless finish. However, the door was built from only the finest metal the world would ever see, which was only accessible in Hell. This metal was particularly magnetic, except it only attracted smaller pieces of that same metal, known as Imortus. The little piece would be drawn to the door, and the identification system would automatically know it was Quietus and unlock.

He tossed the Imortus like a coin, and within seconds it was drawn to the door, and stuck to a certain spot - the identification system. In no time, it cracked open, and revealed a thinner “wooden” door.

The texture of the door seemed wooden but the little box of plastic to the right gave away the fact it wasn’t wooden. He flipped open the plastic and all that could be seen as a little sheet of aluminum. Well, that’s what it looked like anyway. It was really a breath analyzer.

The breath analyzer was helpful because humans couldn't get through this test. Their breath was always warm. Nothing could be done to make their breath cold like Jace or Quietus', except maybe chewing on ice, but even then there would be hints of warmth. And since Quietus should be dead, his breath was cold and... Just different. It was a good way to distinguish those from the Underworld from those in the human world, seeing as eye analyzers were no good as could be surgically removed once dead and used for identification.

There had been cases where a girl had attempted to try and rule the Underworld by murdering a demon and using his disconnected eyes to get through the system.