Seven or eight wrecked cars littered the highway. The night wind carried the thick smell of blood.
Bayonetta sat on the hood of one, one hand braced behind her, body tilted back. Her cheek was puffed out slightly as she lazily sucked on a lollipop.
Her long, perfect legs were crossed, one high-heeled foot resting on the unconscious fat man underneath her.
Two people stood in front of her.
Upsher clutched a notebook, face tight with nerves.
Luca straightened his messy collar and tried to look calm.
He still couldn't help himself. His eyes slid up Bayonetta's legs without permission.
They stopped for a second on her impressive chest before he jerked them away and forced a dry cough.
Bayonetta noticed. She smiled. Her long black hair began to grow, a few strands curling like living fingers that snaked around Luca's neck and neatly plucked the camera hanging there.
"Talk, little Cheshire Cat."
She opened the camera's playback, red lips parting just enough to let a sweet breath slip out. "I told you to find Soren. Why the hell did you crawl out by yourself?"
"Ahem—strategic retreat."
Luca rubbed his hands together. "I found this mental hospital earlier, and then—"
He and Upsher had split up after climbing out of the elevator shaft. Before either of them could even start filming, the walls and ceiling had started flipping, shifting, and rearranging like someone was solving a giant Rubik's Cube.
When the dizzying weightlessness finally ended, Luca found himself dumped into a completely unfamiliar corridor.
He had just enough time to feel grateful he hadn't been crushed into a meat pancake when messy footsteps came pounding out of the darkness ahead.
Upsher burst out of nowhere, didn't even bother saying hi, and sprinted past him like the devil himself was on his heels.
Luca barely had time to wonder what the guy was running from when a solid wall of mutants came boiling out of the same direction.
After that it was pure chaos. The two of them ran every which way through the underground base.
The space kept twisting and reforming a few more times while they fled.
When they finally came back to their senses, they had somehow stumbled onto an exit and climbed out without even realizing how.
Luca paused, eyes darting. He snuck another glance at Bayonetta, then puffed his chest out like a martyr.
"Once I got out, I thought about it. Leaving Soren down there alone just felt wrong. Real disloyal, you know?"
"I'm not the kind of guy who abandons his partners. So the second I was free I contacted you and called for backup!"
Bayonetta ignored his paper-thin excuse completely. She just watched the footage with real interest, eyes half-lidded.
Right then the ground shook. Off in the direction of the deep mountains, a plume of dust and smoke rose into the night sky, startling a huge flock of birds into the air.
"Oh? Making that much noise already?"
Bayonetta tossed the camera back to Luca. Surprise and excitement flashed across her face.
"Crunch."
She bit the lollipop in half. Her body dissolved into a swirling flock of black crows that shot straight toward the explosion.
—
"Cough… cough…"
In the ruins, a hand shoved several massive concrete slabs aside.
Soren climbed out looking like he'd been through a meat grinder. He had been forced to demonize just to survive the blast.
Right now every drop of demonic power in his body was gone.
He dusted himself off, looked up at the hole blown clean through the night sky, and dragged in a deep breath.
"What the hell were those lunatics cooking down there? Who puts something that volatile underground and doesn't worry about burying themselves?"
While he was still muttering, an unimaginably vast wave of demonic power rolled up from the rubble under his feet.
It was the kind of power that couldn't be put into words—like standing on the rim of a volcano right before it erupted.
"The bottom floor… there's still another hidden level down there?"
A bad feeling settled in Soren's gut.
He glanced down at Ada, still pinned under him.
The woman was ridiculously lucky. Her vitals were fine. She just wouldn't wake up for some reason.
Feeling the demonic energy saturating the air, Soren willed her into Silent Hill and silently told Alessa to keep an eye on her so she didn't go wandering.
He wasn't about to leave a comatose living person lying around to get corrupted by that kind of power and turn into some new monster.
Once Ada was safe, he picked his way carefully down through the wreckage.
What used to be the decontamination chamber was just empty void now. The sloping path cut off after a few steps into pure nothing.
Soren stood at the edge and looked down.
Below him stretched a darkness that seemed to have no bottom.
He could just make out a maze of complicated lines far below, and enormous stone blocks floating in mid-air like they had forgotten gravity existed.
"What the hell is down there?"
The thick demonic power made him frown hard.
He wanted to jump down and take a look. There might be something useful.
But with his power completely spent, if he went down now he wouldn't be climbing back up anytime soon. He'd have to wait for natural recovery.
While he was still deciding—
"Meow~"
A lazy cat's cry drifted down from above.
A black cat slipped out of the rubble, hopped lightly from slab to slab, and landed on Soren's shoulder.
Light flared. The cat transformed into a tall, slender woman.
Before Soren could even get a clear look, her hair reshaped itself into tight black leather that wrapped every perfect curve of her body.
Bayonetta rested one hand on his shoulder and peered down into the abyss.
"I only told you to smash a few of their outer experiment sites. The balloon clown in Derry, maybe a vampire family hiding somewhere. How the hell did you sneak all the way into their underground nest without a word?"
Her tone was pure teasing. Looking at the dust-covered, half-dead mess that was Soren, she couldn't hold back a laugh.
"Good thing that little Cheshire Cat called me. Otherwise I never would've known you boys were having this much fun down here."
"Luca? He's still alive?"
Soren's head snapped up at the name.
Bayonetta nodded. "That little cat's body is pretty weak, but when it comes to running for his life? Absolute first-class."
Soren listened in silence.
So Bayonetta had never planned for him to come here at all. This whole mess was just that idiot Luca deciding to play tour guide on his own.
Soren's fists clenched. Next time he saw that useless bastard he was going to break a few of his legs first thing.
Bayonetta saw his face turn black as the bottom of a pot and had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
When she finally got it under control she pointed downward, voice serious again.
"Do you know what's hiding under there?"
Soren rubbed his chin, thinking hard. Suddenly it clicked.
"Leviathan?"
He had already suspected it the moment Pinhead showed up.
When the cenobites he killed had regenerated that fast, something had felt off.
But back then he hadn't sensed any power this strong inside the base.
Surprise flickered through Bayonetta's eyes. Then she laughed softly.
"Didn't expect you to know even that. Looks like that white-haired uncle of yours taught you quite a bit."
She swayed closer to the edge, looking down into the dark.
"But this isn't the real Leviathan. Just a projection."
"A projection?"
Soren frowned.
"That's right."
Bayonetta sat on the edge of the void, leaning forward a little so the clean line of her pale back was on full display for him.
"This whole underground base was built by the Heretic Coven using Leviathan's projection as the foundation."
"That's why I never planned to bring you here. If you pissed those lunatics off enough that they actually summoned the real thing… things would get messy real fast."
Even while she talked about being careful, there wasn't a scrap of real fear on her face. She even licked her lips, eyes glittering with excitement.
"They locked the projection's aura down with layers of complicated runes and formations, so you never noticed it."
"Then you went and set off that nice big explosion. Blew a hole in the seals. That's why all this demonic power is leaking out now."
Bayonetta turned her head and smiled at him.
"Gotta say, you're pretty good at making an entrance. One move and you light the whole place up."
Soren ignored the hidden meaning under her words. He just pointed downward.
"So what do we do about this?"
Bayonetta turned back into a black cat, hopped onto his shoulder, and stretched elegantly.
"A lady's beauty sleep is precious. Let those bird-brains clean up the leftovers."