Chapter 5: Monsters in Human Skin
The lock gave way in a spray of splinters and shattered brass, and the door creaked open onto a room Gamma would spend the rest of his life wishing he'd never seen.
For a fraction of a second, his mind refused to process it — some old, stubborn defense mechanism trying to buy him a moment longer of not-knowing. Then the moment passed, and there was no way left to not-know.
Gia lay on the bed, wrists and ankles bound with rope worn dark from struggle, her uniform reduced to rags, bruises mapped across skin that should have healed a dozen wounds in the time she'd clearly been left here. Her antennae — usually held high, sharp, alert, the same proud tilt he'd watched across a hundred mess tables — twitched now with a weak, arrhythmic tremor that his medic instincts catalogued before the rest of him could stop them. Shallow breathing. Inconsistent. Blood loss, prolonged. Time since last treatment: unknown, likely days.
The clinical part of his mind kept working, the way it always did, because that was the only part of him steady enough to still be useful.
"Gia."
Her name came out cracked, barely a voice at all.
Nothing. No response. Not even the flicker of recognition he was braced for.
He crossed the room in two strides and dropped to his knees beside her, hands already moving toward the bindings before some deeper, colder instinct — the one honed by two decades of finding people too late — caught up with the rest of him and made him stop.
He pressed two fingers to her throat.
Nothing.
He told himself it was equipment error. Told himself his gauntlet's sensors were compromised, damaged in the crash like everything else on this godforsaken planet, and ran the check again, and again, watching the readout refuse, three separate times, to give him an answer he could live with.
No pulse. No respiration. Time of death: estimated 15-40 minutes prior.
She'd been gone before he ever broke down the door.
Something in his chest went very quiet and very cold, the specific silence of a system shutting down non-essential functions to survive a catastrophic failure elsewhere. He didn't have a word for it yet. He wasn't sure he wanted one.
"Gamma?"
The voice from the doorway wasn't hostile. That was almost the worst part — the easy, uncertain familiarity in it, like they were meeting in a mess hall instead of over a corpse.
He turned, slow, weapon already rising on reflex before his eyes fully registered the shape in the doorway. Not armor. Not a soldier of this world. A worn ship-issue jumpsuit, torn at one shoulder, a face he almost — almost — didn't recognize under a week's growth of beard and an expression gone strange and hollow.
"Frank?"
The man took a hesitant step into the room, eyes flicking between Gamma's raised weapon and Gia's still body with an unreadable blankness that made no sense at all against the horror of what should have been in front of him.
"...Who are you?"
Gamma's jaw tightened beneath the visor. "It's me. Gamma."
Nothing. Not even a flicker.
"Who?" Frank said again, and there was something genuinely, unsettlingly lost in the word, like the name had simply stopped meaning anything to him.
"The Altian who kept the cargo manifests. We shared a table on the Perseus for six months, Frank. You survived the crash?"
A long pause. Frank's eyes drifted, briefly, to Gia's body, and something in his face flickered — there and gone too fast for Gamma to name it.
"...Barely," he said finally.
Gamma's mind raced ahead of him, cold and fast. If Frank survived, others might have too. If Frank's here — if he found this room before I did—
"What happened to her." It wasn't a question. His voice had gone flat in a way that had nothing left of the mess-hall familiarity Frank's tone was still, inexplicably, offering.
Frank's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"We need to move," Gamma cut in before whatever answer was coming could arrive on its own terms. "Get her untied. I'll cover the door. We're getting out of here, and then you're going to tell me exactly—"
A gunshot cracked through the small room, deafening in the enclosed stone.
For one full second, nothing in the world moved at all.
Then pain detonated across the back of Gamma's skull, white and total, and the floor came up to meet him before he'd fully registered falling.
He didn't lose consciousness — not fully. The armor's impact dispersal had eaten most of the round's force, enough to keep him upright in mind if not in body, vision swimming, ears ringing with a high, thin whine that made Frank's voice sound like it was arriving from underwater.
"You're... still alive?"
Gamma pushed himself up on one trembling arm, the world tilting and slowly steadying, and looked up at Frank — pistol still raised, still trembling, aimed now at the space where Gamma's head had just been.
"Frank." His own voice sounded strange to him, too quiet for what was building underneath it. "What did you do."
"It was an order." The words came out fast, rehearsed-sounding, like a man reciting something he'd repeated to himself so many times it had worn smooth of any real feeling. "I didn't— I wasn't the one who—"
"From who."
Frank's grip on the pistol tightened. He didn't answer.
Gamma got his knees under him, slow, deliberate, giving Frank every chance to lower the weapon and every second of that chance going unused. "From who, Frank."
A long, shuddering breath. "Hiro."
The name landed like a physical blow — worse than the shot, worse than anything Frank's pistol had managed. Hiro. First Officer Hiro, who'd run drills on the Perseus with the kind of by-the-book precision that used to make the younger recruits complain, who Gamma had personally vouched for during three separate command reviews.
"Why."
Frank's composure cracked further, the pistol dipping slightly as something closer to genuine distress broke through the rehearsed flatness. "We've been down here a week, Gamma. Maybe more, time gets — it gets strange down here. Hiro said we needed to 'secure the perimeter.' Said anything non-human that survived the crash was a liability. Compromised. Couldn't be trusted not to talk."
"She's crew." The words came out of Gamma low and shaking, each one costing him more control than the last. "She bled for that ship. For all of us. For years."
"I know." Frank's voice cracked. For a moment — just a moment — something like the man Gamma remembered surfaced through whatever had hollowed him out. "I know, I told him it was wrong, I told him—"
"And yet here you are." Gamma was on his feet now, fully upright, armor's diagnostic quietly flagging the concussion he was ignoring. "Holding the gun."
Frank didn't answer that.
"The people here," Gamma said, very quietly, forcing himself to ask the question his gut had already answered somewhere back in that corridor, listening to two guards talk about angels. "What do they call us? Gia. Me. The ones the locals mistake for something we're not."
Frank's throat worked once before the word came out, barely above a whisper.
"Demons."
"And you?" Gamma's hands had curled, slowly, into fists at his sides. "What do they call you, Frank?"
A long silence. When Frank finally answered, he wouldn't meet Gamma's eyes.
"...Angels."
The word hung in the small, blood-scented room like something toxic released into the air, and Gamma understood, all at once and completely, exactly what he was standing in the middle of — not an isolated cruelty, not one bad order from one compromised officer, but the first visible edge of something built, deliberate, already spreading roots into a war this world hadn't even known it was entering.
He looked down at Gia. At the dull, empty stillness where her eyes should have held twenty years of shared history, shared war, shared survival against odds that should have killed them both a dozen times before this room ever got the chance.
His comrade. His family.
Murdered — not despite what she was, but because of it. By someone who used to share a mess table with her too.
"Traitor," Gamma said, and the word came out of him barely louder than breath, and somehow heavier than anything he'd said all night.
had attempted to cut Gamma down lay in a pool of his own blood, his own sword rammed through his throat. Another knight stepped forward, gripping his blade tightly, fear and determination flickering in his eyes.
Gamma didn't move.
His body acted on pure instinct, honed from years of war. He didn't even bother dodging as the knight swung at him. The sword slammed into his armor with a metallic clang—not a dent, not a scratch.
Gamma grabbed the knight's wrist, crushing bone beneath his fingers. A scream tore from the man's throat, but it was cut short as Gamma drove his fist into his neck. The knight crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut, his windpipe crushed.
More rushed in.
Gamma didn't hesitate.
A backhand to the ribs shattered a knight's chest plate—his lungs collapsed instantly. Another lunged with a spear, only for Gamma to sidestep, grab the shaft, and drive it through the attacker's own gut. Blood splattered the stone floor.
One tried to retreat. Gamma closed the distance in a heartbeat, grabbed him by the back of the head, and slammed his face into the castle wall. Bone cracked, and the knight slumped lifelessly to the ground.
In mere seconds, six men lay dead. Their once noble armor drenched in their own blood.
Gamma exhaled. No challenge.
As he descended the castle corridors, a robed figure stepped forward from the shadows. A wizard.
A glowing magic circle formed beneath his feet. Ancient runes shimmered in the air as a sphere of flames gathered in his palm.
"Ignis Flamma!"
A fireball burst forth, roaring through the air, scorching everything in its path.
Gamma's armor registered the rising temperature—200 degrees Celsius. Not enough.
The fireball struck. Smoke and cinders filled the hall. The wizard smirked—until the smoke cleared.
Gamma still stood. Unmoved. The armor's heat-resistant plating absorbed the flames like a sunbaked rock.
The wizard's smirk vanished.
Gamma took a step forward.
Another spell—"Ignis Lancia!" A flaming spear shot toward him.
Gamma raised his gauntleted hand. The spear of fire struck, dispersing into harmless embers.
The wizard's confidence crumbled into sheer terror. He turned to run.
Too late.
Gamma was already upon him.
One powerful swipe—his talon-like gauntlet tore through flesh. The wizard's head detached from his body, rolling across the stone floor. Blood gushed like a fountain.
Gamma stepped over the corpse and kept moving.
As he reached the castle's outer gate, a group of archers took aim from the walls. Crossbows loaded. Bows drawn.
And in front of them stood a knight in glowing armor. A paladin.
"Devil!" the knight spat, stepping forward, gripping his enchanted sword. "How dare you defile this holy ground?"
Gamma sighed. "Oh, shut the fuck up."
The knight's eyes flared with rage. "Ars Incendia!"
Flames burst to life along the paladin's sword. His body blurred—his movement speed enhanced by magic.
Gamma barely acknowledged it.
The knight lunged at inhuman speed, flames trailing behind his blade. But before the burning steel could reach him—
Gamma raised his pistol.
BANG.
A single shot.
A hot laser pierced through the paladin's skull.
The knight collapsed, the fire on his sword extinguished as his lifeless body hit the ground.
The remaining soldiers atop the towers loosed their arrows. Some were enhanced with magic—fire, lightning, wind, even water-infused projectiles.
Gamma didn't care.
He ran. Not away—but toward them.
His gauntleted fingers dug into the stone wall. The servo-motors in his armor activated, boosting his strength. He scaled the wall like a beast.
Panic spread through the archers.
"Where—where did he go!?"
One turned—only to find Gamma right behind him.
His visor glowed blood-red.
The archer screamed—his cry cut short as Gamma's talons tore through his throat.
The other archers fired wildly, but Gamma vanished into the shadows.
One by one, he hunted them down.
Bodies fell from the towers. Blood painted the stone parapets.
Not a single archer survived.
Gamma made his way back inside. He knelt beside Gia's cold, lifeless body, brushing his fingers against the worn metal of her dog tag.
"I'll take you home, Gia."
He reached to his wrist and activated his flame module. A tool meant for survival—but now, it served a different purpose.
Fire engulfed Gia's body.
He watched as the flames consumed her, turning flesh to ash. When nothing remained but embers, he collected her ashes into a small metal canister. He attached it to his belt.
She would not be left in this godforsaken place.
She was going home.
Burn It Down
Gamma walked down to the castle's lowest floor.
There—barrels upon barrels of alcohol.
Explosives disguised as liquor.
He raised his pistol. Aimed.
Pulled the trigger.
The shot ignited the liquid instantly—fire erupted through the castle corridors.
Walls cracked. Ceilings collapsed.
As he stepped out through the main gate, the entire castle exploded behind him.
Flames reached into the night sky.
The screams of the last surviving soldiers died in the inferno.
Gamma didn't look back.
Only one thing mattered now.
Find Hiro.
Find the traitors.
Burn them all.
The Ashen Fang's Fall
The castle was a graveyard of flames and smoldering ruins. The once-mighty walls now lay in heaps of blackened rubble, smoke curling into the morning sky like the breath of a dying beast.
Rie's heart pounded.
Who… who could have done this?
The answer stood at the castle gates.
A lone figure, clad in midnight-black armor, kneeling among the dead.
A monstrous black sword was planted in the ground beside him, its surface slick with blood. Scattered around him lay the remains of fallen knights, some burned beyond recognition, others torn apart by what could only be described as inhuman force.
The demon captain approached cautiously, resting a gauntleted hand on the hilt of his weapon.
"Are you the one who did this?"
The black knight slowly lifted his head.
When he spoke, his voice was calm.
Cold.
"Get the fuck off if you want to live."
The captain hesitated. That voice…
Rie's breath caught in her throat. Gamma?
The demon captain's grip tightened on his sword. "Are you their ally?"
Gamma snorted, standing to his full height. The black armor glinted menacingly in the dawn light.
"No. But I will tell you this—" He get up and clean his pauldron, he spoke his next words with absolute certainty.
"My name is Gamma. Marshal from Hell's Third Company. I have come to this world to hunt the angels."
The air grew deathly still.
A ripple of shock coursed through the Demon Army.
A marshal. From Hell's Army.
Rie's blood turned to ice.
She had thought Gamma was just some lost warrior from a distant land.
But now…
Now she didn't know what he was.
The captain of the demon knights straightened. "A high-ranking devil…?"
He took a cautious step forward. "Can you prove your claim?"
Gamma clicked open his pistol's magazine, replacing the standard energy cell with an explosive round. He lifted the gun and aimed it at a half-collapsed wall.
The shot rang out.
BOOM.
The wall shattered into a cloud of debris, the sheer force sending chunks of stone hurtling through the air.
Silence.
The demon soldiers stared in awe.
A single being had wiped out an entire castle overnight.
A high devil had descended to help them.
Gamma lowered his pistol. "Do you trust me now?"
One by one, the demons fell to their knees. Some bowed their heads, others looked on in sheer disbelief.
The captain himself placed a fist over his chest. "We will take you to our queen."
Gamma nodded, satisfied.
But before they could move—
"Gamma!!"
A blur of movement.
Rie ran to him, her arms wrapping tightly around his waist.
Her body trembled against his armor, her grip desperate.
"Why did you leave me alone?!"
She was shaking. Her voice cracked as she buried her face against his chest plate.
She had been so scared.
So afraid that he had left her.
Gamma stiffened for a brief second before softly ruffling her hair.
"Sorry, kid. I had a duty to fulfill."
His words were gruff, but his touch was gentle.
The demon captain frowned. "My Lord… who is this oni girl, and why does she embrace you?"
Gamma let out a sigh, placing a firm hand on Rie's back.
"She's my sister."
Rie's breath hitched. She pulled back slightly, looking up at him in shock.
Gamma met her gaze.
"I took her in. I adopted her. That means wherever I go—she goes."
Rie's lips trembled.
She had always been alone. Always.
And yet, Gamma had just given her a place beside him.
The demon captain nodded. "Understood, my Lord. We will escort you both to our queen immediately."
Rie tightened her grip on his cloak.
She didn't understand what was happening.
She didn't know why Gamma had suddenly declared himself a Marshal of Hell.
But one thing was certain—
No matter where he went, she would follow.
Even if it meant stepping into Hell itself.
As the demon army moved, the soldiers whispered amongst themselves.
"A devil from Hell itself…"
"A warrior strong enough to bring ruin to a castle…"
"And now, a war against the angels…"
The world would soon come to know the name Gamma.
For he was no longer just a wandering knight.
He was the Black Marshal.
And his war was only just beginning.