RITUAL MISERY ↝ Ella Lopez

↳ PROLOGUE

MARIAH HATED CHANGE. To the Rose, there was nothing more heinous than plucking someone out of their comfort-zone and pushing them miles past the boundaries with a simple wave as a cold send-off. 766 days ago, that had become her reality, as her old Lieutenant at the NYPD had come to the conclusion that the drug ring she had been investigating had too many ties to human trafficking to cut the operation short.

After being told she was being moved to Los Angeles, though, the details had went in one ear and out the other. She had an entire life in New York, from her adoptive fathers who relied on her as much as she relied on them, to her absolute best friend and partner of several years. She had put down roots and made herself a home, and within the span of two days, all that was unraveled and her former life was only cloudy memory through the window of an airplane. Like a page out of a book, she had been torn out and glued onto another project that she didn't know how to blend into.

But she did. With no way out, she did just that. Rented a tiny apartment that had no spare room for coziness, limited her connections to the new foes painted as friends and went to work undercover — it was her sense of duty and yearning for justice that overcame the paralyzing hatred for a change of scenery and wholehearted distance from her loved ones.

At the very least, her cousin lived in L.A, but it wasn't like she could parade around the City of Angels as Detective Rose, reuniting with family and making a dent in the new state as an esteemed crime-solver.

766 days she spent building a respectable image for herself amidst the criminals she was secretly plotting to take down the entire time, every now and then reporting to the LAPD and her new superiors there. It was in that time that the thrilled whispers about her spun to life — intrigued officers curiously wondering about the woman who had joined them only to never show her face; gossiping about the smileless detective who had abandoned everything only to go deep undercover.

And against all her wishes, she became something of a secret legend among the precinct, the rumors never making it out to the criminal world enough to raise suspicion but growing enough to scare new officers on the force about the lady who had allegedly lost a finger, an eye or a kidney for the case.

Then, one day, the new world she had begrudgingly accepted, changed entirely. The plan reached its peak, the woman in charge of the whole criminal operation slipped up, and just like that Mariah and her team were barging into the stereotypically shady warehouse with loud recitals of the same old clichés — put your hands up, get down on the ground, lower your weapon.

For Mariah, though, there was only one thing to say as she grimly smiled at the woman on her knees. "I got you", she declared victoriously, her level voice barely rising or breaking under the weight of her words, but the sparkle in her eye said everything. She had been waiting for this day so long, witnessed so many horrors and heard so many awful things, she had been counting down the seconds until she could remove these terrible people from her life. She had never been the type to believe someone was inherently evil, but after over two years of gaining new scars and learning just how widespread their system was... she spared no sympathy for the people being walked out in handcuffs.

But then, as the warehouse was being emptied, a dark thought crossed her mind. What now?

"Hey, good for you, Rose", one of her fellow detectives was patting her shoulder while passing by, a kind smile on his lips, "you get to go back to your life, now."

Technically, he was right. The thing about change, though, was that you got accustomed to it, and whether Mariah suspected it yet or not, the life that had seemed so impossible to grow into, would prove much harder to disconnect from.

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Author's note

Ahhhhh here we goooo (':

This is about as introductory as can be, but we're getting into the good stuff right away from chapter one! The repercussions of Mariah's life undercover will definitely follow her but I won't be showing much of the actual time spent there — it's over now, she's out and she's going to try and get acquainted with the LAPD for real this time.

This also feels like a good time to point out that I'm not an actual detective, and while I've done a lot of research, I have no actual experience of being undercover. I'm trying to paint a realistic picture, but remember that this is still a work of fiction! 100% the things that happen on Lucifer wouldn't happen in a real police precinct, either (:

Thank you so much for reading! I'm really excited to get to writing this story more ❤️

(Absolutely stunning header made by the angel that is sunfliers !! Thank you so much.)