The Perfect Run

An atheist had once told him that though he never believed in God Almighty, the Chapel Sistine made him doubt.

How could anyone question the existence of God in this room? Cardinal Andreas Torque had seen many sinners repent in tears the moment they raised their head at the ceiling, to witness the glorious work of Michelangelo. No man’s heart could remain unmoved at this architectural and visual perfection. Most only remembered the Creation of Adam part of the frescos, but Michelangelo had painted many more stories, each marvelous in their own way. The Cardinal could spend hours marveling at this divine feast for the senses; and the sight of tourists taking pictures of this wonder without appreciating it made him weep inside.

But these were not the opening hours of the Vatican Museums. Only a single man’s footsteps echoed in the chapel to join his superior, as the clock struck midnight.

“Father Torque,” Inquisitor Ambrosio greeted the Cardinal, dressed in the black garments of the Roman Catholic Church. Ambrosio was more than twenty years Andreas’ senior, his head balding, his golden beard falling off at the edges. Yet his green eyes shone with the same witch pyre that warmed Andreas’ heart.

Andreas Torque was one of the youngest Cardinals in the Catholic Church, by decree of His Holiness Jean-Paul II; he had not yet reached forty. Many had questioned his appointment, his virtue, and his achievements. He had no great deed to his name, and he liked it this way.

His work was best done in the shadows.

The Malleus Maleficarum, the Vatican’s secret service, did not exist, even to most of its members. The Church was officially neutral in world affairs, and only worked through its extensive diplomacy network.

It was a lie, of course. The Catholic Church had many enemies, and needed fiery swords as much as quills. The Malleus Maleficarum’s purpose was to keep His Holiness aware of all dangers threatening the true faith, and to advance the Catholics’ interests across the world.

When Andreas had joined the service, he had been nothing more than an Inquisitor, the lowest rank of this secret fraternity. The future Cardinal had spent most of his career undermining the communist plague that had infected Eastern Europe, and revitalizing the Church’s influence in the broken USSR’s regions. When he eventually became the organization’s Inquisitor-General seven years ago, Andreas Torque had worked on His Holiness’ behalf to check the influence of terrorist groups in the Middle East. Even though Jean-Paul II was on his deathbed, surrounded by scheming Cardinals, the Malleus Maleficarum worked tirelessly to fulfill the Pope’s wish of universal peace.

In short, Andreas Torque was used to fighting human evil.

But the horrors they were facing nowadays… were something else entirely.

Something unnatural.

The two priests sat on a bench, with Ambrosio giving his superior a twenty-five page long file. Only two words were written on the cover.

‘Stanford Incident.’

Andreas’ eyebrows furrowed deeper with each line he read, and the priest outright scowled when he reached the first picture. “Who else knows?” Torque asked.

“Only the Americans for now. And us.” Father Ambrosio joined his hands, a thoughtful frown on his face. “But a video already made its way on the internet. It’s only a matter of time before MI6 and the Russians find out too.”

The internet made keeping secrets from the world harder than ever. The Cardinal was surprised the Americans could keep something that big under wraps, but he wondered for how long.

They could hide a village’s destruction, but not a roaming monster.

The photo showed an abomination straight out of the deepest pits of Hell. A white-skinned, faceless beast lifting a car as easily as a chair. The arms were abnormally long, and a luminous light glowed where the face should have been. Considering the height difference with the man it crushed underfoot, the monster had to be six meters tall at the very least. A shroud of blue mist surrounded it like swirling winds.

All his life Andreas had only ever seen the hand of man at work. But that thing… what could it be but a true demon of flesh and blood, as described in the Holy Scriptures?

“This is Satan’s work,” Andreas declared firmly. “A demon.”

“This was a man, Father,” Ambrosio replied grimly, sending shivers down the Cardinal’s spine. “Keep reading.”

Andreas skimmed the report’s content, summarizing it out loud. It helped him memorize information. “Stanford, Nevada, two-hundred and two inhabitants. On its way to becoming a ghost town since their iron mine dried up. Half of them are dead or missing, and the other half in government custody.”

The event happened on November 14th, six days before the report reached the Cardinal. According to survivors, the monster had burst out of the local clinic at around seven and a half in the evening, and gone on a rampage. The beast tore men apart with its bare hands, and breathing the mist that followed in its wake turned people feral. By the time survivors managed to contact the authorities and the government quarantined the area, the monster had escaped into the Mojave Desert.

The lack of internet and telephone coverage had made it hard for the government to respond quickly, but easy to cover it up afterward. Always the same pattern.

“All the previous incidents took place in similarly isolated areas,” the Cardinal noted.

“But never with such deadly consequences,” Ambrosio replied. “The monster is out there, and the USA’s government hasn’t caught it yet. It won’t stay hidden forever.”

“No, it won’t.” Whoever was responsible was getting bolder, more reckless. Andreas flipped the page, until he found the picture of a thuggish-looking man so skinny, that the Cardinal wondered if he suffered from malnutrition. “James Poole?”

“Some dirt poor repairman,” Ambrosio said. “He was due to receive a second shot of Tetanus vaccine, after the first was found to be a placebo. The town’s doctor, Jason Hopfield, was supposed to receive him at seven and thirty.”

The report indicated that the doctor’s body had been found in the wreckage, gutted chin to groin like a fish.

“Both the vaccines came from a private company called New H,” Ambrosio continued. “You know the Americans, they always mistrust their healthcare. Some think their government puts microchips in them, and so they look for ‘alternative’ sources.”

A microchip would have been a kinder fate than turning into a monster. Andreas offered a prayer to both the doctor and patient. “What do we know of this company?”

“Little, except that that paper trail leads nowhere.”

The Cardinal grit his teeth. “So it’s another dead end?”

“Not quite,” Ambrosio said, as his superior flipped the report’s pages. “The town’s sheriff took a picture of the vaccine’s deliverer. Something about her behavior unsettled him.”

Her.

That woman again.

Andreas quickly found her photo, and scowled. It was her, short black hair, blue eyes, eminently plain, thirty-something. She had worn a cap when she made that delivery, but it was the clearest picture of her that the Malleus Maleficarum had found so far.

November 14th, November 14th… A doubt wormed its way into the Cardinal’s mind. “At which hour was this photo taken?” he asked his fellow priest. “Universal Time Coordinated?”

“One AM UTC, I think.”

Torque closed the file, clenching his jaw. “Inquisitor Silus sighted her near an illegal laboratory in an Uzbekistan frontier town at two AM UTC, before he went silent.”

They hadn’t yet recovered the body, but though the Cardinal prayed for his agent’s survival, he knew better than to expect it. The laboratory had turned into a smoking ruin by the time reinforcements arrived, with Silus nowhere to be found.

Ambrosio registered the words and frowned. “Are you sure it was her?”

“Silus’ description matched that photo.” The agent had been tracking that individual down for a year, since she had been sighted during the Burning Woman incident in Tajikistan.

“How can a woman move between two sides of the Earth within an hour?”

“Or she was in two places at once.” Who was that woman? What was that woman? Some kind of witch or demon? “Have you used our facial recognition software on the photo?”

“Yes, and it came up with a name,” Ambrosio replied. Though most priests were too old to understand new technology, the Malleus Maleficarum had invested heavily in them, to always keep an advantage. “Combined with the previous sketches, the program came up with a name: Eva Fabre.”

Eva Fabre, Eva Fabre... The name sounded familiar. Thankfully, Andreas had a prodigious memory, and he quickly remembered where it came from. “The GEIPAN French files,” he said. “The Antarctica mass-suicide of 1992.”

The French kept a not-so-secret archive about UFOs sightings, and Andreas heard rumors that they intended to make a few of the files public… but none of the truly interesting ones, of course.

France might have split from the Catholic Church a century ago, but the Faith still had friends in high places. A French general had shared with the Malleus Maleficarum a copy of the GEIPAN files, some of them were quite disturbing.

for a fact that France once had a second, secret laboratory deeper inland called Station Orpheon. Secret, because the station had been dedicated to studying bacteriological weapons

skies, and then an unidentified object crashing in a glacier nearby. The French authorities had lost contact with the station two days afterward. When French soldiers reached the station to investigate, they

experimental, deadly bacteria had escaped and infected the staff. The soldiers thought it had been an accident, until they checked the radios and

incident, and after five years of searching for the missing scientist, closed the file. Eva Fabre had probably caused the outbreak before killing herself, they figured. Isolation drove men and women mad. Neither had the investigators found any trace of a meteorite impact, not even with satellite surveillance. The event had joined the other strange tales of the GEIPAN files, and

for a photo, which he handed to his superior. Torque raised an eyebrow,

only could Eva Fabre teleport, but she hadn’t aged in nearly twelve years

the Cardinal wasn’t

Andreas asked, after putting all the pictures inside the file and closing it.

the vehicle used for the delivery,” Ambrosio explained. “It was purchased through an American

bank that funded the illegal lab in Uzbekistan. “Find someone and make them talk,” Andreas ordered. “These incidents are escalating in severity, which means they’re

informed me that one of the bank’s administrators could

sake of his

sake of his bank

deeply when his agent told him the amount. “That’s a hefty price. Even Judas only asked for thirty silver

than ever nowadays, Father Torque.

was the next

I

of. Communists, terrorists, they’re all humans in the end. But that woman, and

time

can you doubt it now?” the Cardinal asked. “If this snapshot made it to us, then it means she isn’t hiding anymore. His Holiness will perish soon, and

the Lord be with us,” Ambrosio prayed before taking his leave, leaving

reaching for

2002, all in the southern hemisphere. Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Tanzania… hundreds had vanished without a trace with nothing to tie them together. Nothing, except the fact they happened in isolated areas, and the same woman

laboratory was discovered in Siberia, with human test subjects found inside. Some had extra organs, or limbs, and all were missing people from last year. A scaled thing capable of turning invisible was

Serbian war criminal in his own home, only for authorities to learn that the killer had been made of bolts and wires.

And now this?

Torque was finally starting to see the bigger picture, the trend that united all these

Tests.

into monsters. That was the only explanation that made sense to

was a threat to the world’s natural order, and she

confess her sins so that she

of half a dozen mob wars, a titan in a red suit bought with drug money. The Cardinal could almost hear the blood dripping from his hands, though they looked clean. His cold, heartless eyes didn’t hide

“Janus,” the Cardinal said.

shark-like glint

am. We live in strange, dangerous times.” The Cardinal invited the mafioso to sit

would prefer we meet in the classical art gallery,” the mob boss replied. Unlike any sensible soul, he didn’t even bother looking at

but he served the

Though many men would have shaken in dread at this man’s presence, Andreas Torque

deep breath, having hoped not to resort to this. “I need

your funds. If you clean

The Malleus Maleficarum needed a black budget,

that if he let this man sink his claws into the organization, he would corrupt it as he did with many others. His influence over the Neapolitan Camorra was almost unmatched, and from what Andreas had

miles away. “The situation must be dire for you to ask for so much,” he said, examining the priest suspiciously. “If you need my

“The Lord protects me.”

was not to be underestimated. He had filled entire cemeteries, cementing his empire of sin with blood and tears. “But I

are a necessary evil as

boss chuckled. “A necessary evil you say? I suppose it is appropriate. I do separate the worthy from

taunt. “Do you think of me as

good or evil, Andreas, but I do wonder what your pope would think upon seeing us together. Somehow I doubt he would approve of

Holiness does not know cannot harm him,” the Cardinal replied, though his resolve was slightly shaken. “I do the dirty

believe him, if the amused look on his face was any indication. “No matter,” he said. “So long as you

the taunt, remaining dignified. “How is

softened. “She asked me

couldn’t help but smile. “She is wise beyond her years, but still

wife says that I’m spoiling her rotten. What would you have me do,

say. I never had

suit. “Speaking of gifts, I

who caught it on instinct and

mob boss replied with a

a smile appeared at the edge

an attempt to contact the higher realms of existence, and the Cardinal had wondered if perhaps they had stumbled on to something. He had never dared to test his theory on himself, since it would have been a sin,

though? Did he have

It was all a

yourself to be, you will.” His smirk widened. “But if I

leaving Andreas alone with his

inside the Vatican,

chapel’s doors, which Andreas had barricaded with benches. They would get through, he knew. None of his agents

failed, and the world had gone mad. The world didn’t know it yet, but iron pillars had risen from beneath Sarajevo and half a dozen other cities in the Balkans, pouring out metal men and drones. Other human monsters

causes. The Lord had mercifully recalled him to spare him the horror ahead. Father Ambrosio had perished too, but his demise had been less kind. Eva Fabre had him shot, alongside his Swiss informer. But before he died, he had sent Andreas enough

imagined. Couldn’t imagine,

had wiped out the Malleus Maleficarum in days, before the Church could stop the worldwide distribution. They had known. They had known all

ago, Andreas Torque was

equipment, but never trusted, never knowing anything. She had hired hundreds of companies to make the deliveries, none of them aware that they carried bottled poison to millions across the world. He had tried to warn others, but she was everywhere, always getting in his way. Intercepting his messages, making him fear for his

was not

Was she ever?

made sense now. Who better than a fiend in

and he pointed it at the barred door. The noise on

flash of blue light behind him,

dozens of them in the chapel. Women in blue suits with strange weapons that looked like rifles made of both flesh and metal. They all were her, but not exactly the same either. Some had eyes of a different color, others different

to hide the fear in his voice, but didn’t

name once,” she said, her voice

priest replied, trying to keep the legion at bay by threatening them with his gun. But there were dozens, maybe a hundred,

out there, Father. But they are not below our feet.” Some of them looked

Eva said, with burns on the left side of her face. “In other worlds, they

Andreas warned, his finger nearly

universal master race, mankind must evolve,” one of the mad women said, so close he could

Fabre

trigger, and shot one in the

blue particles, as if she

in the end, they forced him to his knees and disarmed him. They searched his