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CHAPTER 1

Renata Salcedo wasn’t sure she was going to make it through the rest of the year, let alone enjoy a long and healthy life as biology dictated. That might be asking a hair too much. The last few months had been too wild of a ride. The world was taking a disastrous direction into something like the Modern Dark Ages. There were numerous plagues. The bees were vanishing. Water sources were contaminated. People were comprised mostly of lead or micro plastics. Maybe there were less cults, but now student loans were a thing. There was no shortage of new disasters.

She was out of school for the first time in her entire life and two years deep into a multi-step plan to get herself an archivist position at the Smithsonian. She was currently stuck in a too bright mini-warehouse in the middle of the night with about twenty other people sat at different desks, in various states of wakefulness. Everyone pretty much kept to themselves as it wasn’t a naturally chatty place. Good for Renata, as the stress of social interaction and reciprocation often made her freeze up like a deer about to kiss a truck grill. She preferred to spend her hours staring numbly at a bright light while her fingers flew across the screen with the ease of someone whose misspent youth was lost to chatrooms and mainlining early memes.

To be fair, none of them appeared too thrilled to be there either. The job? Cataloging the newest shipment of artifacts to be transferred to the Chicago Natural History Museum. Intake had to get done quickly according to her superiors.  So, in the middle of the night with the rest of the bedraggled, underpaid twenty-to-thirty-somethings and soon-to-be retirees, Renata did the monotonous part of the job that she didn’t really mind. 

Adult life felt like little more than survival mode rerouted into a series of baby steps. It rarely required more than the skills of a conscious, organized lemming with thumbs. In this specific instance, she just had to make sure the bags were sealed, scan a QR code, and double check the description against each bag’s contents. First though, she really needed to clean her glasses. Then she could move on to the next item in her workspace and pass it off to be photographed.

She hoped to pawn off the handing-over part to someone else. Her eyes flashed over to the one doing the photography: Chad. There was relief in the way she no longer flinched at the mere sight of him. She was never actually a healthy, whole person with him. Far too concerned with the inconvenience of her own existence to care about being treated bad or tolerating mediocre sex. Fear bubbled enough in the back of her mind to keep herself from forgiving and forgetting too soon, but the love is long gone. 

Though it wasn’t like Chad made it difficult for her to choke down some boundaries and start living her life like she might give a shit. The asshole had cheated on Renata again and she’d finally been manipulated into thinking it was her fault for the last time. Even the shitpile the world might be becoming wasn’t deep enough for her to believe that human train wreck was worth riding again.

Renata chuckled sardonically as she took off her glasses to clean them. She multitasked, as women are wont to do, placing them back on the table as she slid another artifact into place on her desk. The plastic bag contained a book archaeologists had recovered from decade old earthquake rubble in Turkey. About the size of an average laptop, the book’s cover was annoyingly blank and crafted from a thick, unidentified animal skin. It was not enormously thick, and was surprisingly light despite having thin plates of green stone sandwiched between the dark brown covers. The most intriguing aspect was the line of small latches spanning the entirety of the book’s edges like centipede legs of silver. Each little latch gleamed vibrant in her bright desk lamp despite the rest of the book’s aged, worn look.

She couldn’t identify a lock on any of the tiny little latches, so she hoped the little pouch  inside the bag contained some sort of key. She’d always loved checking out historical manuscripts. There was unending knowledge to be gained by looking back through the eyes of someone alive during an entirely different time. As much as the world around her changed, some things seemed to be universal to the human experience, even throughout time. There was a reluctant comfort in the horrors of history and what needed to be learned from it.

Renata shook her head out of the trance she’d fallen in and noticed some markings along the spine that were too faint to identify. Something in the back of her mind called for concern, as she was pretty damn proficient in a handful of ancient languages. She reached for her glasses to get a better look, but knocked them to the floor instead. Renata sat back and rubbed at her eyes for a minute while she took a few deep breaths, which were rumored to be calming. Exhaling, she felt somewhat lied to about the experience as misguided rage clawed at the back of her ribcage. She glared at the glasses and had to will herself not to groan like a child as she bent in half. Giving a slow scoop of her tired arm, her fingers clasped the delicate curve of the temples, and the horrifyingly familiar sound of gunshots disrupted the bored, silent shuffle of the room. She’d have been a fool to pretend she did anything but hit the floor with a velocity once thought incapable of the human body, forcing air to whoosh out of her lungs in a scream. Thankfully, the sounds of ricocheting bullets and her colleagues’ panic covered her wails.

“All right! All right! Calm down!” A man with a deep midwestern twang yelled above the din. As the screaming died down to a whine of melancholic distress, Renata stayed curled on the ground with her glasses cradled against her chest like a newborn babe.

“Patrick?” Ida’s soft, watery voice rang out in the silence. A pleasant lady who had worked for the museum long enough to retire, and baked baklava that was as good as currency, she was friends with everyone in the building. “What are you doing?”

The name Patrick was familiar enough to Renata, especially when paired with a voice that had given her the shudders a time or two. She could picture the aging security guard with salt and pepper hair. His slick blue eyes always held a voracious gaze that took too many peeks at the backsides of ‘feee-male’ employees. Renata didn’t like him very much, but Ida’s question was valid. He seemed like a moderately settled old guy, if somewhat unencumbered by his misogyny. There was obviously no good reason for him or anyone to be shooting up the archival room of the museum in the middle of the night.

A single gunshot stunted the silence, followed closely by the watery thump of something like a watermelon chucked at linoleum, making Renata’s stomach spasm. Everyone started screaming again but she was too scared to open her mouth, unable to trust what would come out. She bit down on her lips so hard a whimper eked out and she tasted blood.

“Shut up!” Patrick roared over the screams of her colleagues and it quickly cowed them into a shocked silence. “Now we’re in here looking for a book...” The familiar voice chuckled with a confusingly darker lilt, it echoed in a way that made Renata’s ears itch. 

Renata peeked out from behind her arms, but could only see out to the expanse of shelves and archives packed with file boxes and shrink-wrapped mysteries. Normally, being at the back of the room was a benefit. She was close to the exit and no other desks were in her immediate space, and she could work without distraction or small talk. Right now it just meant she was very, very alone.  

“A very special book...” The voice travelled, coming from the front. Far away from Renata, but far closer to where her one friend Sandra was supposed to be working. Her stomach bottomed out. “Someone better start talking before I start killing again. And make it good, cause I don’t want to make a mess if I don’t have to.” Renata could hear his menacing words curl into his smile. The low shick of metal sliding against metal rasped through the silence, the cocking of the gun sounded like a snap in slow motion.

“I-I-I can help!” Lauren, the supervisor, shouted and the moment chimed with a stark tension.

A thin stream of blood and saliva trickled out the corner of Renata’s mouth as she tried to exhale. Maybe she didn’t much like the woman that Chad had cheated with, it was a lot less than she hated him, sure, but, dear shit, she did not want Lauren to get shot by a disgruntled white man.

“Good! Bring her here.” A chorus of hearty laughter harmonized with the sounds of footsteps and rustling clothing. Renata could pick out Lauren’s fright-filled pleas, but still couldn't see much from where she was tucked beneath her desk.

“Your boyfriend is sure putting up a fight there, miss,” Patrick drawled with an unnatural chattering in the back of his throat. Renata used his distraction with Lauren to turn beneath her desk. She leaned down and peeked through the crack near the floor. From her limited vantage point, she couldn't see more than a few assorted pairs of knees and shoes. Then there was Ida’s lifeless stare gazing up at the ceiling, her head cratered at the back, resting in a pool of crimson. Renata’s violent urge to vomit and scream was disrupted by the shock of a conversation moving on like there wasn't a dead body at their feet.

“He’s not—,” Renata heard Lauren protest, then stop herself. “What book do you want?” Renata had to hand it to her. Lauren faced these maniacs without a single waver in her tone.

“Brown book about fifteen inches across, green pages, locked down tight. Should have come along with a small pouch.” Patrick rattled off the details with an alarming and specific calmness. 

Renata’s eyes bugged out of her skull. She pulled in on herself further, hands beginning to shake as they gripped her creaking glasses. She knew a book like that. It was sitting on her desk, out in the open for everyone to see. All she had to do to save all her colleagues is speak up, but she was too scared. She couldn't move. She could hardly breathe. Sound refused to leave her mouth and even if it could, she was unsure she could form the words.

A beat of silence hit before Lauren spoke again, her voice still sort of strong. “I haven’t seen something like that logged yet.” Renata heard Patrick take a step towards Lauren, and the supervisor’s next sentence shook on each syllable. “If we could just - if you’d let us continue our work we could - we can find it and - and no one has to -,”

Patrick’s impatience with her stammers became palpable before he grumbled “Well, that’s disappointing.” 

Another gunshot exploded through the warehouse, only for screams to immediately drown its echoes out. Lauren’s lifeless body, a bloody hole in her forehead, dropped into Renata’s slice of vision. She jolted in surprise, flinging her glasses without care, but with a lot of fear. She jammed her hands over her mouth to keep in whatever was trying to get out, and breathed heavily through her nose as tears stung her eyes. 

Then she heard Patrick yell, “Prep for the ritual, kill them all, and tear the place apart!”

Renata sat trapped in a tinny sense of space and time. Clutching in her screams, she stared at the mixed company of corpses and legs while her colleagues and their attackers all started to scramble and fight for their lives. The cold, wet sound of knives slicing through flesh filled the air. Gurgling screams and pleas to live echoed while the men who eviscerated them laughed. 

They laughed.

With that vulgar chorus echoing in Renata’s ears, something bleak and knowing wiggled into place. Icy cold hate steeled her spine and spite pulsed the helplessness out of her limbs. Renata hoped these men remained distracted, and regretted what a coward these killers made of her. To survive, she tucked away those feelings and evaluated her options. She certainly couldn't defeat a significant number of armed men, and it was clear they were intent on butchering a group of innocent people. Despite her complete disadvantage, however, her petty streak rose with a vengeance. Because maybe she couldn't save everyone, but that didn’t mean the bad guys deserved to get what they wanted. She could do something about that. 

With an uncommon grace, Renata slipped from under her desk without a sound, keeping herself crouched behind it, now thankful to be tucked away from the rest of the group. She reached up from where she’d hidden, her hand sliding over the smooth table as she tried to ignore the fresh stench of blood and refuse along with the chilling screams of people being torn to shreds. Her teeth clamped down on her tongue to keep her sobs from forming and she fought the urge to scream as she stretched further, cursing her damned T-Rex arms. Her tears blurred her vision as she lost track of where the misery ended and she began, but she kept an eye out for any approaching men with guns or knives. She would not fail the dying in this way.

Ferreting about, her fingers finally hit the smooth plastic of the book’s intake bag and she snatched the cursed thing down onto the floor with her. She yanked it to her chest with a righteousness that wanted to come out as giddy laughter, but she stayed silent. Grabbing her bag from the floor next to her, she yanked out her hoodie to make space and jams everything inside like she’s ramrodding a musket. With a surprising capability, she slips both on in the right order despite shaking like a rattle underneath her desk. Then, for the first time in many, many years, she sent something like a prayer out into the universe for help.

The screams didn’t die down, nor did the questions that the men with smoking guns had for their new toys. Renata scrambled onto her hands and knees across bits of open space, crawling behind the large, stand-alone workspaces to hide before moving onto the next. The old oak desks provided her with adequate coverage as she worked her way to the archive shelves. In lines along the back, the shelves would hide her until she could reach the back corridors that lead to the exit. She’d get to the police. She’d give them the book. She’d never leave her house again.

She had to apply single-minded determination to force herself to crawl away from the blood and the screams. Even so, she wanted to wail and cry and vomit with every shuffle of her hands and knees. She couldn't think about the fact that Ray, widowed father of three, was probably being cut open and bled to death while his kids slept peacefully in their dorm rooms across the country. She didn’t want to think about Chad... As much as she hated him for the cheating and abuse, she didn’t want to think of him as a gurgling bloody mess of flesh. The remnants of the many years they shared broke down and deconstructed into a blob of something she once thought she loved.

She couldn't think about Sandra, fighting with every last breath and movement, so undeserving of such evil in her life. The far wiser woman with her decade of experience had taken pity on the new employee and gently started enforcing a timid friendship. They ended up talking more at work, having sporadic lunches because they often shared shifts. Renata was thankful for the small grace of someone friendly who didn’t seem weirded out by the way Renata was just so tragically herself. And now one of her only real friends was dying in the most horrific way Renata could have imagined. What remained was one singular, horrific choice. Renata could do nothing useful but run or die.

She managed to escape the warehouse without anyone catching onto her. As she silently navigated the back corridors of the museum's archival wing, she wiped away her tears and pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt. The building’s exit was in her sights and relief would soon be at her fingertips.

“Hey! What’re you doing?” The voice was gruff with that twang of the middle of the country that, normally, she found pretty charming. She doesn’t find it as such at the moment. 

Renata definitely didn’t stop. She ignored him, and her feet carried her closer and closer to the service exit. Her pace hopefully didn’t scream ‘I’m fleeing, you ninny!’ but she could’t exactly sprint off in a leisurely manner either. She acted like any other employee, grateful to leave for the night, hopeful not to die on their way out. 

“Stop, you dumb bitch!” He growled with that unnatural echo that sent a chill through her limbs. Then his footsteps clomped down the hallway in her direction, thundering against the tile floor.

She pushed herself into a sprint, but despite her lead, the pudgy white man was on top of her with some sort of inhuman speed. He spun her around to get a look at her, throwing her against the door of a service elevator. She let out a startled yelp as she flew backwards and shifted into a scream as her shoulder rammed against the rattling yet unforgiving metal.

“Not so fucking fast…” the man spat. The hands gripping her shoulders were crushing, and she heard the bones beneath his fingertips creak. He grinned down at her, looming in close with something sinister stretching his lips. “You got something for me, pretty girl?”

“No,” she bit out through clenched teeth, trying to wrench herself from his death-sure grip.

His smile grew as she wriggled in his grasp. “I’m sure I could figure out a good use for you anyway…” With a single blink, both of his eyes went pupil-less and green.

Radioactive, gods-damned, entirely fucking glowing green.

Instinct kicked in from the years of Renata's aunt’s paranoid self-defense training. She allowed her body to go slack, then rearranged her feet, planting them, bending her knees, and tucking her chin. With a sinister chuckle, he crowded her further to keep her upright, but before he realized what she was doing Renata sprung up, and rammed the top of her skull into his face with every inch of strength in her 5’4” frame.  The crack reverberated down her body and into her toes, but the impact made the man keel over like a felled tree.

“Shit…” Renata froze, momentarily stunned. Her assailant was now on his back, out cold, with blood streaming out of his nose and across his face and neck. “It worked!” She whispered, frightened, delighted, and definitely frenzied. The top of her head throbbed like it had its own heart beat. After a fist pump of victory the moment rightfully deserved, she stepped over his sprawled form towards the exit. Running out into the empty blackness of night, Renata did not intend on stopping until she was far, far away from the museum.

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