Wyn and Ms. Crystobal stood before the Black Building. It was night. They were wearing dark sunglasses, gray clothes, and black overcoats. They looked confident. They looked cool.
The Black Building was Lowen’s. It was 150 floors from ground to top. More floors delved deep underground – like the Mines of Moria. Balrogs were thankfully absent. Lowen the Dark Man had stolen the Black Building through manipulation, trickery, and by twisting almost an entire city into his little army of Sleeper Devils.
His Sleeper Devils were not zombies. And it would not be accurate to say that they were entirely mindless. They had minds. They were simply forbidden to use them often. For some, it was not a big change.
Lowen would let his Sleeper Devils think of him, and not much else. They thought of him and they worshiped him, as if he were King Nebuchadnezzar at the outset of his madness.
Wyn and Ms. Crystobal entered the Black Building. The main lobby was packed with Sleeper Devils. Wyn and Ms. Crystobal had been prepared for a good fight. So they were a little surprised and a lot cautious when none of the Sleeper Devils tried to stop them. The Sleeper Devils watched Wyn and Ms. Crystobal enter. They gathered around the two and moved with them through the main lobby. Playing in the background was an elevator music rendition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller .
Wyn and Ms. Crystobal walked toward a corner of the lobby where there were stairs, elevators, and the security office. Two very large Sleeper Devils blocked the way. Their skin was ashy and they smelled like rot. One was wearing a tattered suit. The other was wearing a grocer’s uniform. They might have been simple and kind people in life, before Lowen turned them into cannon fodder for his personal host of slaves. Now they were decaying versions of the good things they had been. They would not let Wyn and Ms. Crystobal pass because Lowen was screaming inside their heads that he would never let them die if they disobeyed him. Lowen’s power over them was not to threaten them with death. Death would have been the release.
The reflection of the two Sleeper Devils glinted in Wyn’s sunglasses. His expression was unflinching and fearless. Ms. Crystobal smirked. Wyn moved faster than sound. He flung the two Sleeper Devils into a nearby pillar. Their bodies crumpled. Their souls released. Ms. Crystobal held out her hands. Energy in the shape of blue swirling light hovered over one palm. Over the other hovered black droplets of something she called, “The Ink Mass.” She flung the light at a group of Sleeper Devils. It scattered them to atoms. She flung the Ink Mass at another group. Those Sleeper Devils all tumbled backward like ragdolls, spilling into a dimensional portal that opened up into the heart of the Mojave Desert. They blinked in surprise, suddenly surrounded by a pack of hungry coyotes.
All the other Sleeper Devils now swarmed around Wyn and Ms. Crystobal. He fought them fast and mercifully. She decimated the rest with a blast of violet energy. She and he fought with all the graceful movements of ballet dancers in Swan Lake .
More Sleeper Devils poured out of doors along the walls, more came down from hatchways in the ceiling, and more crawled up from trapdoors in the floor. More came in, and more came in after them, and more and more and more came in after them. Wyn thrust his way into the security office. It was full of monitors displaying greenish images of the hallways and rooms and toilets. Each image was filled with Lowen’s Sleeper Devils. Not one floor was free of them – except the 120th, where Lowen was keeping the Red Man. It seemed as open and spacious as the surface of the moon.
Wyn studied the computer layout while Ms. Crystobal remained outside, turning