“Kate, sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt you.” Falia had approached the head librarian just as she was putting away a few newly arrived books.

  “It’s alright. What can I do for you?”

  “Phea told me about that thing you’re trying to figure out. You know, that human tempte thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “I think I need to show you something.”

  “Okay?”

  “I was out observing the strider migration in the third circle yesterday. I followed them for a while until I had to divert them past the old b that was used by Yaldebaoth and her team. A strider bumped something and that’s when I saw it. I better just take you there.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  The b was a very well-preserved building in the middle of nowhere. Falia led Kate around the back to a spot on the wall that was shimmering slightly.

  “There it is. An illusion hiding a back door. I checked the pns for the building, you have them in the library, and that door isn’t supposed to be there.”

  “Good find. Shall we take a look inside?”

  “Shouldn’t we inform the High Inquisitor?”

  “We’ll do that when we return to the library, but I’ll drop a letter to Polly, so she knows where we are in case something happens.” Kate conjured a piece of paper and quickly sent Apollyon a note.

  Falia dispelled the illusion on the door and carefully opened it. Behind it was a flight of stairs leading to a basement. The two demons hesitated but eventually made their way down.

  Kate looked around. “This isn’t a b, this is more of an office.”

  “And it saw a fight before it was abandoned.” Falia knelt down beside a sptter of blood. Angelic blood.

  “An angel and… not a demon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a faint hint of magic that doesn’t belong here. I don’t think I would be able to pce this if I hadn’t met that fae recently. This gives me the same feeling they do when they cast their magic.”

  “Why would a fae and an angel be fighting in a secret b in Hell?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? There are papers in here, maybe some form of logs if we are lucky.”

  Falia picked up one of the notebooks and started skimming through it. “Phase four, cycle twenty-seven, the general opinion on this project is starting to shift. We are not making the progress we need to keep our deal with the high courts. Yaldebaoth is optimistic and keeps us motivated, but I am not so sure. My contact is unhappy as well.” She flipped a few pages further. “Phase four, cycle thirty-eight, we have made progress. Immune response to the hematophage virus is working as expected. That’s one more item of our list of diseases we want to save humanity from. As much as I am loathed to admit it, I don’t want to see them go extinct already in the next century.” Another page flip. “There is a tear here. This one is cycle thirty-nine, then it skips to forty-three. Look.”

  Kate peered over Falia’s shoulder. “Looks like they were torn out with great care not to damage anything else.”

  “I wonder what was on those pages and if maybe we aren’t supposed to find out.”

  “But we can. This is a non-trivial text, the library will have a copy.”

  “Right!”

  “We need to leave anyway. Someone just teleported to this pce.”

  “Please do not.” A voice echoed down the stairs. Apollyon’s voice.

  Kate turned to look at the approaching devil. Apparently, she had brought Yaldebaoth as well.

  “It’s you. Good. I was worried that we might have triggered some sort of security spell.”

  “I was worried about that as well, but I didn’t detect any coming down here.”

  Yaldebaoth looked around incredulously. “This was hidden under my b the entire time?”

  Falia nodded. “Hidden by an illusion on the door. This entire room is shielded from detection unless you are already beyond the door.”

  “I don’t like what this implies.”

  “Me neither.”

  “What else have you found in here?”

  “Angelic blood, residual fae magic, and a diary of sorts with pages missing. We’ve only been down here for a few minutes before you arrived.”

  “Should we inform the High Inquisitor?”

  Apollyon gnced at Kate. “We should. Let’s finish our first look around this pce and then let Azazel have her fun here. While she does that, I will take some time in the library to see if I can find a copy of those diaries with the missing pages intact. Justiciar Falia, please remain here when Azazel arrives and tell her what we found.”

  Falia nodded. “Understood. One more thing before that though. Is there a way to determine whose blood this is? Or at least narrow it down.”

  “We can determine the type of angel who was wounded here at least.” Apollyon knelt down near the sizable smear of golden blood that covered half of the floor and began casting some rather complex spells. After a few minutes of being watched by the others in silence, she got up again. “It belongs to an archangel.”

  Kate grimaced. “That does not bode well. I wonder…” She stepped towards the stack of diaries again.

  “Please continue.”

  “The fae we met cimed that they had tried to save humanity and failed. I wonder if this here is what they were referring to.”

  “You think that whoever used this pce conspired with the angels to interfere with the human tempte project and the fae tried to put an end to that.”

  “That's my theory. We will have to see if the diaries support it.”

  “Then we better get going. The archive is not a small pce.”

  “Indeed. Yaldebaoth?”

  Yaldebaoth shook her head. “I will remain here with Falia until we have further instructions from the High Inquisitor. Maybe there is something I recognize here.”

  “Of course.”

  Kate and Apollyon had been digging through the Hell side of the library for hours. The section containing nearly all of the papers about the human tempte project sadly didn’t contain what the two were looking for. They had now moved on and began digging through the shelves of miscelneous research notes. If the notebooks weren’t here, there was one st pce to check: the locked section of personal diaries.

  Kate sighed. “A hundred and thirty thousand years of written history is so much…”

  “It is. At least keeping everything allows us to even hope to find what we seek.”

  Kate looked up at the massive shelf. “Yea… wait. Look, up there.” She pointed to a collection of books all sharing a simir spine.

  “Those look like the notebooks we found.”

  “Exactly!” She magically pulled them into her hands and opened one of them. “This is it. Time to get to work.”

  Reading through them all took much longer than finding them. Long enough for Azazel to finish securing and scouring the hidden office. She now joined Apollyon and Kate in the library.

  “I see you found the missing notes?”

  Kate nodded. “Not just the few things that were obviously missing, like the ripped-out pages. I don’t think I saw this one in that b at all.” She tapped on the cover of one of the notebooks.

  “There is one more here than we found, yes. Anything interesting in them?”

  “Oh yes. Just Listen to this.” Kate flipped back a few pages in the notebook she was currently reading. “This from the one belled stage two. Phase three, cycle four thousand eighty-seven, the angelic envoy was here again. He did not seem pleased. I didn’t catch the conversation he had with Yaldebaoth, but he departed again quickly.” She grabbed another notebook. “Or this one from stage four. Phase one, cycle three hundred and nine, my contact was here again. They left additional notes on the diseases they found in the border world. Yaldebaoth was receptive to my push to immunize humanity against whatever magical ailments the fae have left behind. I still believe that we should have never gotten involved with these primates, especially after that incident, but it is too te to stop now. The least I can do is make sure this project does not fail.”

  “Incident?”

  “In stage two, here.” Kate grabbed another notebook. “Phase eight, cycle nine thousand two hundred and thirty-two, leaving the test group to their own devices was a mistake. They are still primitives. We administered treatment for minor injuries to the human named Abel. After we returned to the b, his brother Cain killed him. The other researchers, both angels and demons, want to continue but I disagree.”

  Azazel rubbed her face. “At least this gives us enough to identify our anonymous author. The only demon to disagree with the decision to continue after the Cain and Abel incident. Good find. Yaldebaoth is resting, but I will ask her tomorrow. Maybe she has an idea who this contact is the author talks about.”

  “Please keep us in the loop, okay?”

  Azazel chuckled. “You have done more about this entire mystery than I have. Of course I will keep you informed. Officially, this is my thing to deal with but I can’t be everywhere and you are very good at this.”

  “Good at stumbling into things randomly?” Kate grinned.

  “Good at finding the hinks in a strider herd. Remember, it was your attention to detail and inconsistencies that got you here in the first pce. I should leave you two anyway, whatever questions we have can wait for tomorrow.”

  Before Kate could answer, a new voice interrupted. “But they don’t have to. I think I can provide some answers.”

  Azazel raised an eyebrow at the newcomer. “Yushamin? You are our mystery author?”

  “Yes.” Yushamin was a rather androgenous looking Abyssal. The look on her face betrayed that she had avoided this conversation for a very long time.