By the elevator, at the very end of Wrath, there was one hallway I had never been down. Actually, I had never even gotten a proper look down it- it was guarded by a hellhound, largest I'd ever seen, and though she was often dozing off it was utterly impossible to sneak around her.

She took up the entire hallway, a giant off brown wolf with little white dapples that would have been endearing if she wasn't so monstrous. Sydney approached her and she opened one of her grey eyes for a second. Then, she began to stand up, and in another motion she was human shaped again, a short woman who gave a polite little bow to Sydney and exchanged a small talk.

After we had passed, I looked behind us and caught her changing back again and settling onto the floor with a wave of dust.

"So what exactly is down here?" Christina said, "The pit, I'd think, but that's not quite top secret."

"Possibly the only part of Hell kept under heavy guard," Sydney said with a smirk. I think she was just having fun bringing us here, vague threats notwithstanding. There was a good chance she was fucking with the both of us.

There was a heavy slant as we headed down to what I was now sure was the pit- but Christina was right, though the pit was under some guard it wasn't exactly exclusive, you could catch an elevator from Pride straight to it. There was have been some other room attached to this hall that I hadn't seen before.

At the end of the hall was a set of large metal doors, and beyond it was the pit room, as expected. About forty feet up were the windows to Phillip's office, though no one was looking down on us from here.

The pit itself was a nasty sight, like a regulated sinkhole. It was deep as hell, and looked like it may have opened without warning, the blue tiles of the floor jagged around the edges. Sydney took us past it, but I couldn't resist a small peae down to the rift below. Didn't look like anything but darkness, but I had been through enough times to know better.

"Oh," said Christina, suddenly, and I agreed the moment I realized why.

At the other end of the room was a white door against the white wall, with two silver locks. Somehow, I had never really taken note of it before, but its presence wasn't a surprise either. I had merely not bothered to remember it.

Sydney unlocked the door with two keys off a keychain and went inside, motioning for us to follow. "This is the part you might not like," she said, but her maniacal sense of imposition seemed to have died down a little, like she now had to admit we were going to be pretty safe.

The room was bright, white, and contained no obvious threats. A single woman was sitting in one chair out of many, clipboard in hand, as she watched the wall.

Or not wall- one way mirror. On the other side was a bed, a bathroom set, a table with restraints, and a sleeping man.

"General Westman," the sitting woman said, getting to her feet and giving a small bow. "Who are they?"

"Just here for kicks," Sydney said, suddenly pushing me forward like a parent encouraging their child to socialize.

I stepped forward and stiffly gave Marie her letter. "It's from Kell," I said.

She sighed the moment she opened the envelope and read the note. "Again? Really?" She looked to Sydney. "It's what you'd think." She walked over to a small steel table in the corner of the room. Below it was a mini-freezer, and out of that she pulled a ring. She dropped it into my palm, and before I could get a look at it, closed my fingers over it. "For Kell," she said.

"I have a feeling I could use a new one too," Sydney said, grimacing. She took the large ring off her finger and gave it Marie, who returned with a new one from the freezer.

I glanced back at Christina, who looked deeply troubled by all this.

"Come on then, children," Sydney said, leading us outside. "That's all the confidential stuff I can spoil you on today."

"You two seemed pretty focused on jewelry," I remarked.

"That's not supposed to be your main takeaway from that," Sydney said, but she sounded like she didn't care. "Listen, can I leave you little tykes alone down here? I'm sure you know better than to bother Marie again, so please just take the elevator home again. I need to head back to the office, and both of you are slow walkers."

"You don't look like a very fast walker." I said.

"Uncalled for." Syndey responded, and she proceeded to power walk at a remarkable pace away from us.

When she was gone, Christina crept over to the edge of the pit. "Hey, how much did you understand from all that?"

"What, the rings?"

"Yeah. everything. I was nervous as shit since- I guess you could tell? Sydney totally knows that I know- I mean." She laughed. "I just wanted to come here and spy, but man! It's a lot harder than I'd hoped to wing it."

"Who are you spying for?" I asked. My narrative of events and persons in Hell was pretty solid, and she didn't fit in with all that I knew.

"Myself, I guess?" She giggled nervously. "It's nothing huge. Those guys up there- they're having a super secret meeting while Kell is having his own secret meeting. So I thought I'd snoop on his behalf."

"What were you hoping to find out?" I asked, following her line of sight up to the office's bay windows. Someone, silhouetted, was watching us.

"They were probably going to kick us out before the meeting started anyway, so I'm not sure what my plan was. I guess to do something exciting."

"We should head back," I said, thinking of Blake and hoping he hadn't made a mess of my room. "But what I was really asking was what that meeting's about."

"Something dire, with any luck. Kell's hoping to get Phillip for treason. Thinks he's going to try and kill him, can you imagine? And all over a meeting that isn't even set to happen yet." Christina kept pace with me, seemingly engaged in what she had to say.

"God, they're obsessed with meetings down here."

"Meetings, suits, offices, and paperwork. And yet Hell barely functions. Have you ever been on trial here?"

"Is that a common problem?"

"No." Christina rolled her eyes. "But like, Glenn? The head of the justice department? She breaks every known law whenever she pretends to be a lawyer. It's seriously atrocious."

"You're friends with The Few though." I pointed out. Most of the time the various members would gather up in Pride, but every now and again a group of them would sit at a table in Gluttony, like the popular kids in high school. Christina was always with them when they did this, sitting next to Kell and amicably conversing.

"Oh sure, but they're all bastards, aren't they?" Christina waved off my remark. "Except Lane. She's too grandmotherly for me to feel comfortable insulting."

"Right bastards, they are," I said, though I had to admit I had spent a lot of hours paying attention to them. They were always on the news, the highlight of the week's gossip. Seeing any of them in person, witnessing them eating lunch among the public... it was a lot more exciting than spotting a government official had any right to be.

But Hell wasn't a place too great at fostering a celebrity culture, so the thirteen people who ruled over us all with absolute power were the only icons we could all agree on. Even if they were all bloodthirsty killers. Even if their whole zodiac theme was pretty silly.

"So there's a mutiny."

"Not quite. More like a backstabbing. Or honestly, an overreaction. The ring thing is new though. Can I look at the one she gave you?"

"It's for Kell," I said, though I took it out and let her huddle close to me as we examined it. The ring was heavy-set with an opal gem and ornate designs around the rim. It was wide and square, and in the concave of the interior was a thin soft lining, tied there by string.

"I don't like this," she said, "The man in that room... this... maybe I actually found something important."

"Sydney probably wouldn't have taken us there if it really was so top secret."

"Maybe she's just an idiot. Some people are." Christina tried to take the ring, but I shoved it back into my pocket. "I think it's an angel's sword."

"It's nice they got it in teal. I'm sure Kell will appreciate it." Kell had these shiny teal scales on his neck and wrists. Sometimes they'd fall off. I had once taken up the habit of keeping them, just because they were pretty, but then realized it was very creepy and roughly the equivalent of owning a lock of his hair.

"It looks like one. I've noticed some of the others wearing rings like that too, and I don't like the idea of it." Christina looked lost in thought. "Hey, can I try it on?"

"If it is an angelsword, it's not going to work for you," I said. We were now taking the elevator back up to Greed. "Of course, it absolutely is one, but who cares?"

"Ugh. Mannie, you're not much fun, you know that?"

"That's a really steep insult from the likes of you."

"Sorry!" She said, suddenly looking like she really meant it. "Can I try the ring?"

Feeling a little more emotionally impacted than I had planned, I gave in and handed her the ring. Withholding it had been pointless, but I enjoyed having an ounce of power over someone. Now she knew what I knew.

With a flick of her hand that suggested she had somehow done this before, Christina pulled a blade of light out of thin air a few seconds after slipping the ring on. With another couple of cautious jerks, she had split it in two, and held her twin white blades up in the narrow space of the elevator.

"Hm. Guess they've finally reverse engineered them."

"They're just rings."

"They're magic!"

"Magic isn't real."

Christina dropped the blades out of existence and gave me the ring back. "This is what I was talking about. You're dedicated to being boring, aren't you? Not the least bit surprised."

"Yeah."

"Well, I'm bothered. If they start mass producing these, the angels are fucked."

"That's a good thing."

Christina didn't reply, and not much later the elevator arrived at Greed. I got out, and Christina continued to walk with me, though now in uncomfortable silence. I purposefully took a detour past the office, peering in to look for Kell before I rerouted back towards my dorm. She was still with me.

I stopped at the immaculate blue metal door to the dormitory, pausing and giving her an inquisitive look. She just slightly twitched and stared at me with heavy eyeliner bordered blue eyes.

"Uh," I tried saying.

"Oh. I guess I don't really need... to come this far. Sorry, I was thinking."

"Okay," I said, and just to be certain I waited outside the door, making sure she left my sight.

I went into the dark and delightfully green tiled hall of my dormitory until I came to my room. I opened the door and was greeted with the displeasuring sight of Blake asleep on my bed, one leg off the side and with a book by his head.

After shoving him onto the floor, I fixed my blankets and put the book back in its proper place atop the TV. Then I settled onto the bed and curled up, facing the wall.

"That really hurt," Blake complained. I heard him get up off the floor. "Hey, are you trying to sleep now? What time is it?"

"Around one," said a voice that was entirely not Blake, and I scoured my mind until I realized there had been something off about the room when I had first entered.

There was a shape in front of the TV, one I had fully seen and stepped by to put the book back, but then had proceeded to forget about entirely in my slight exhaustion. Stepping in my room, as it was the place where I normally when to sleep, always filled me with a sleepy sense. That was my excuse.

She was a bright eyesore of neon green hair and excessive black makeup. Right off the bat she reminded me of Christina- young and badly dressed- but they couldn't look more different facially. Christina was thin and curvy, with a generic face like a B movie actress. This girl was weird looking, with eyes like apostrophes and a small mouth that felt like it deserved pointed teeth.

She grinned at me. "Hi."

"Please don't invite people into my room." I blinked. Her hair really did burn something at the base of my eyes.

"This is Pepper," Blake said, "Did you really expect me to sit on the floor the entire time?"

"I was only gone for a little over an hour," I said. Something about Pepper bothered me, besides the glaringly obvious, but I couldn't quite place what.

"That's still quite a bit. I went for a short walk around the... circle, and then people watched. Bumped into her doing the same thing."

"You're not a demon," I said.

"Fallen." She nodded enthusiastically.

"What are you doing here?" I crossed my arms in an attempt to intimidate.

"Only here for the day!" She exclaimed. "It's been a lot of fun though. So glamorous and shiny. I have a demon friend who needs me for the night, okay?"

The more she talked the more I could hear the slight nuance of an angelic accent on her. Fallen angels weren't banned from Hell, but I didn't know of any that were public about it.

"Please leave my room."

"Mannie, are you planning to sleep at one in the afternoon?" Blake asked, his hands on his hips.

"...Maybe."

I was. Chronic exhaustion is a bitch.

"That's going to mess up your sleep cycle," Blake said, "Look, you quit your job, right? Let's just take that express elevator up to Earth and get going."

"It's not that simple. And I didn't actually quit. Kell was out, so I ran a few errands with Christina."

Right as Blake was saying 'who', Pepper bounced with excitement. "Oh, so you know Christina already?"

"Considering I didn't say her last name, dubiously."

"McKean?"

"Yeah, that's the one. She the friend you kept mentioning?" I said, trying to sound bored. A lot of what I wanted to be perceived as included hiding as many of my emotions as I could. Unfortunately, this tended to make me both sound boring and be so.

"We live on Earth together, with my old friend Percy." Pepper looked between me and Blake, nodding assuringly. She seemed to do that a lot, reminding me of an endearing alien. God, she was endearing- I wasn't necessarily blind to how overpoweringly cute she was. Blake statistically was bound to have found her more so, he certainly seemed to have warmed up to her quick.

"So you already know this Christina?" Blake said politely to me."I've heard a lot about her.

"She's fine. But when you say old friend, you don't happen to mean..."

"Non-fallen angel," Pepper said, nodding some more, "Percy's good though. Real nice. We were great friends before I fell, and he stops into our house to check up on me. At first, he was worried Christina was going to attack me! But now I think he is okay. He watches cooking shows with her."

"Heaven sounds so lovely," Blake said dreamily, "Pepper was telling me about how-"

"Please." I waved off his words. "How is Percy being allowed to visit you? Shouldn't he be felled for spending so much time unsupervised?"

"He's an archangel!" Pepper said with glee, as if she had been waiting all this time to say this. "Right under the Brothers."

"Of course." I laid down on my back. "What are you doing with Christina in Hell later today?"

"Having dinner at the Blues and doing some karaoke." Pepper didn't sound the least bit self aware that that wasn't what I had been asking for. "She'll be here soon."

"Here?" I sat up. "When?"

"Weren't you just with her?" Blake said.

"Yeah, just-" Suddenly I felt very aware of my cramped space. Christina was many tiers above me in a wondrous multitude of ways, and I was going to be damned if I let her see how dusty my book collection was. I picked up the top book, A complete biography of Alexander Phineus Scott the first, and began cleaning it by rubbing it on my shirt. This mostly ensured my shirt had dirt on it.

"Uhm. Few minutes." Pepper held up her cell phone as proof of such. I cleaned the next book, An Examination of the Post-Sato economy.

"It's rude to invite guests into someone else's home." I chided, moving onto flipping the dust out of the TV's paper instruction manual.

"She's very nice," Pepper said, reassuringly, "Though I am doubtful she will fit."

"Hey Mannie, do you have a phone?" Blake asked. "I want to add Pepper's number so we can keep in touch."

"No." I rubbed clean the top of my final book, Welcome to Hell. Truly a classic. It was given to every new arrival. "My shirt is ruined."

"You did just put an awful lot of dirt on it."

At that moment, there was a knock at the door. Pepper leapt up and swung it open, revealing Christina.

"Oh. Hey," she said.

"Hi."

"Uh, let's go." She turned right around, shutting the door behind her once Pepper had stepped outside, eyeing me with some mild, unidentifiable emotion.

"Pepper gave me her home address, so when we get to Earth, we should make sure to visit." Blake said.

"We?" I curled back up on the bed, ready to crash into unconsciousness.

"...Or not."

I fell asleep soon after, to the sounds of Blake breathing, and later, riffling through the pages of a book.