The sky roiled and bucked over the Western Seaboard. Massive waves beating against the equally massive seawalls protecting the coast of the super continent. Brief flashes of lightning illuminate the darkened landscape below. A metropolis sits in the dark waiting for the storm to pass. The grid has been turned off to prevent permanent damage to the system and the city waits. Some buildings still buzz, hospitals, affluent private residences, government buildings; anyone that could justify a generator did justify a generator. Yet in one of those dark apartments, far below there was a woman giving birth, and a malign entity waiting for it’s prize.

  “It’s simple James. You give us the boy and you get everything you ever wanted.” The entity grinned, thick, grey-green coils of smoke spooling out from the sides of his mouth, spinning upward. James held his wife's hand as she sat in the kiddie pool in the center of the apartment. The couch and coffee table had been moved to the sides of the apartment. Water sloshes out of the sides of the pool causing the rug to darken. The woman thrashes her stomach bulging and subsiding in random places at random internals. Her insides glow a pale blue. “Listeeen Jammes, you’re making this to hard on yourselfff.” The entity elongates his words in a seductive way and the room stills. The womans thrashing subsides and the sweat on the wet nurse’s head evaporates. The room grows in temperature yet no one moves. “We’re tired of chasing you James. Now we can take you, or we can take the boy. Or I can kill everyone in this room and go find the next conduit.” The woman shudders and her stomach once again begins to pulse with that strange blue light. “Push.” The wet nurse whispers silently and the woman groans the light moving down her stomach and toward the entrance. “Y-you can’t!” James pleades. “You don’t have enough power here!” He let’s go of his wife’s hand standing up with his hand balled into fits at his sides. “You can’t MAKE us do anything, demon!” The demon laughs. A deep throaty chuckle that cause everyone in the room to shiver. “Jaaaameeess-” The same elongating of the syllables causing James’s back to arch under an unseen pressure. “I don’t know why you insist on fighting me on this. We’re offering to give you everything you want and all we need is oneittybittylittleboy.” The words run together like a river, the demon is getting frustrated. The wife continues to push, her grunts echoing in the nearly silent room. There’s a beat as the demon lifts his top right hand, index finger extended before saying “Sit mortal” and gesturing downward. James crashes to his knees and the floorboards below him creake worryingly. He’s bracing himself on his hands and knees trying to resist the unbearable pressure pushing down on him, when suddenly the extra weight is gone. “Wha-What if, wha if…” James is slurring his words, waving his head from side to side as though he were looking for something on the ground. “Miriam.” He whispers and his wife groans in response. One of a few final pushes sending their new life into the world. “Speak quickly James.” The demon mocks. “What deal do you have for me?” “Wha-What if I gave you something else?”

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