Previously

Tom sat in his office going over the transactions between Bernard and the group he had been making exchanges with. An alarm started blaring, but it wasn’t a fire alarm. It was an active shooter alarm. He began to get confused before hearing the sound of a hard crunch, followed almost immediately by the sound of a machine gun firing a burst. Shooter in the lobby? He grabbed his gun, an M&P40 Pro Series. This pistol had been gunsmithed and given a precision long-barrel, a small red dot optic that was zeroed for 50 yards and given raised tritium sights. He grabbed a pair of extended magazines, loading one into the gun and shoving the other into his pocket. He made a mad dash for the lobby, hoping that the shooters weren’t lucky enough to have found a large crowd to mow down.

Elsewhere

Michael was in a tunnel that had been named the Walk of Punishment, swinging his sword into creatures that barely resembled red goblins. With an AKM on his back and a katana in his hands, he carved through swathes of creatures as he pushed forward with burning determination.

Meanwhile

Lani lay in the grass outside the house. Four explosive charges were about to detonate simultaneously on a house filled with cult members. Given directions by what she could best have described as an immortal being shaped like a little girl, she knew only that she had to ‘kill everyone’ and interrupt a ritual. She lay flat so as not to be hit by debris that she knew would likely go flying even though she had set the charges on struts where she hoped to knock the house down completely.

Under the house, three women and two men sat around a pentagram that had been painted on the ground with sacrificial blood. They had poured ground crystal around the circle, had lit candles on the pentagram corners and placed a naginata on one side of the circle with a katana and wakizashi on the other side. They chanted in low tones as they held hands in a circle around the objects.

Additionally

At the entrance of the Walk of Punishment, there stood two women. One was an innocent spirit of someone murdered many years prior. The other was the daughter of a demon who awaited summoning. Herself having been summoned by mistake by someone who had not done research before naming who they intended to summon, this girl had the ability to enter and exit the real world at will. She had a plan to keep her father from escaping their realm, but it involved dragging Michael and Lani into the plot and risking lives in the process.