Chapter Fifty-Two: The War Room:

“What is this about?” I asked. My subject didn’t answer.

“What is going on?” I asked. He wouldn’t even look up at me. I clicked my tongue. This better not be what I thought it was.

“Look!” I shouted. “Tell me what’s going on or I will go back to bed!” The subject froze in place. I stared at his back.

“Well?” I asked. He clenched his fists at his side.

“It’s gotten worse,” he admitted.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You can’t see it, can you?” my subject asked. I had a confused look on my face.

“See what? What’s going on? What are you not telling?” I asked. He turned to me with a desperate look in his eyes.

“You have to come with me to the War Room,” he said. Now, I was even more confused. Since when do we have a War Room?

“War Room? What is this? What’s going on?” I asked. The subject grabbed me on the wrist and pulled me along.

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We ended up going to down some rust-colored stairs. I could smell sulfur as we kept going down. I almost forget this place existed. I built it a while back, but I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I shielded my eyes as they started to water. The smell made my nose hairs curl. The subject walked up to a large steel door. He walked up and pulled back the latch.

“Can you help me with this?” he asked. I walked over and pushed open the door. Steam hit me in the face. The smell of sulfur grew worse. My subject walked forward.

“I’ve got him here,” he said. I saw a see of red eyes stared at me.

“Okay,” I said. “What is going on here? Why I am here?” Another one of my subjects stood up.

“Look at this,” he said. He held out a white globe glowing in his hand. I walked over and took a look. I wrinkled my nose.

“What is this?” I asked. The whole room was silent.

“What?” I asked. A third subject stood up.

“It’s a message from Heaven,” he said. “They want Madonna back.” The color drained from my face. This couldn’t be.

“How many days?” I asked as I tried to regain my composure.

“Thirty days,” the second subject said. “And that’s not all.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Everyone sat quiet. It was as if they were waiting for someone to speak up. I gritted my teeth.

“Spit it out!” I said. “I don’t have time!”

“The system is broken!” another subject yelled. I raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re in the middle of a nasty war. We are bound to be overbooked.” Nervous titters filled the room.

“Well, you see…” the third subject said.

“We might have lost some souls,” a fourth one said. My mouth moved up and down as I processed what was being said. They… lost… some souls?

“What?!” I shouted. “How the fuck did this even happen?!” My face flushed red.

“How many did we lose?!” I asked.

“We don’t know,” the first subject said. “A few hundred or soul?”

“A few hundred?! A few hundred?!” I asked. “Where are they now?!”

“We… We don’t know!” another subject said. I could feel the ground shaking at my feet.

“You don’t know?! You don’t know?!” I asked. The shaking spread through the floor and reach up to the walls. I let out a loud scream. My subjects all but ran out of the room. Just great. God wants my wife back. This war keeps dragging on. And now my subjects are so incompetent that they lost a good number of souls?!

Could things get any worse?

I took in a deep breath as I cooled myself down. Time to get back to work again. Only, there’s more work on our laps. I can manage that. It shouldn’t be too hard, right?

“Right,” I said. “Have any of you been tracking any of them?” Another subject raised his hand.

“There’s one that I have been tracking,” he said. I clapped my hands together.

“Good!” I shouted. “Let’s start there!” I walked over and sat down at the head of the table. Just to be clear, I was not happy about any of this. I was going to have to fix this mess. Fuck my life.