The communication device crackled to life in Nox's hand. The small black box looked ordinary enough, military-grade equipment that Axel had given him before he'd left the facility.

  "Doctor Nox, can you hear me?" Axel's voice came through clearly.

  "I hear you," Nox replied from his main body, still in the clinic. The avatar body, wearing Volker's face, stood ready by the door.

  "We're in position. Five hundred officers deployed across the industrial sector. All disguised as civilians, workers, maintenance crews. Nobody will spot them unless they're looking very carefully."

  "Good."

  "When the cultists arrive to pick you up, we'll follow at a distance. Silent pursuit. No engagement until you give the signal."

  "Understood."

  There was a pause on the other end. Then Ralph's voice came through. "Doctor, about the signal. How exactly will you let us know when you've reached their headquarters? When it's time to strike?"

  "A bang," Nox said simply.

  Another pause. Longer this time.

  "What?" Ralph asked.

  "You'll see."

  "Doctor, we need specifics. A flare? A radio transmission? Some kind of—"

  "A bang," Nox repeated. "Trust me. You'll know it when you see it."

  He could hear muttering on the other end. Multiple voices talking over each other. Then Axel came back on.

  "Alright. We'll trust your judgment. Just... try not to level the entire district, okay?"

  "No promises."

  Nox cut the connection and looked at the avatar body. Through their shared consciousness, both bodies smiled.

  "Ready?" his main body asked.

  "Ready," the avatar confirmed.

  The modifications were complete. Hidden beneath Volker's skin, woven into bone and muscle and nerve, were enhancements that would make the Children of the Mother Goat's ritual very interesting indeed.

  Nox's main body walked to the wardrobe and pulled out a blue coat. Long, reaching past the knees, well-tailored. He draped it over the avatar's shoulders. Then came the blue fedora, which he placed carefully on Volker's head. Finally, he reached for the white porcelain mask and handed it to the avatar.

  The avatar took the mask and placed it over Volker's face, adjusting it until it sat comfortably. The mask was simple, featureless except for two eye holes and a smooth surface that reflected the clinic's lights.

  "I look like I'm going to a funeral," the avatar observed.

  "You might be," Nox's main body replied. "Just not yours."

  A car horn sounded outside. Three short beeps.

  They were here.

  The black sedan sat at the curb, engine idling. Tinted windows prevented anyone from seeing inside. The vehicle looked expensive but not ostentatious, the kind of car that blended into upper-middle-class neighborhoods without drawing attention.

  Nox walked out of the clinic, blue coat swaying with each step. The fedora cast a shadow over the white mask.

  The rear door opened. Wilhelm stepped out, wearing the same dark robes from before. His greying hair was neatly combed, his face calm and pleasant.

  "Dr. Nox," Wilhelm greeted warmly. "You came. I'm pleased."

  "You're here to collect me," Nox replied. "As promised."

  Wilhelm's eyes traveled over the blue coat and fedora. "You're dressed differently today. More formal than usual."

  Nox shrugged. "I'm going to die anyway. Why do I have to dress nice?"

  Wilhelm laughed at that. A genuine sound of amusement. "Your humor is refreshing, Doctor. Most chosen ones take themselves far too seriously."

  He took a step closer, still smiling.

  Then he moved.

  Fast. Faster than an A-rank should be able to move. His hand shot out toward Nox's chest, fingers extended like a blade.

  Nox didn't dodge. Instead, he activated the Law of Fertility.

  The mark that Shub-Niggurath had left inside him flared to life. Power surged through the avatar's body, channeling through Volker's stolen biology and out through his hand.

  Wilhelm's right hand, the one reaching for Nox's chest, began to swell.

  The cultist's eyes went wide. He tried to pull back, but it was too late. His hand ballooned outward, the skin stretching, the flesh expanding in ways that biology screamed were impossible.

  Pregnant. His hand had become pregnant.

  Something moved under the skin. Writhing. Growing. The bones shifted to accommodate whatever was forming inside.

  Wilhelm screamed and pulled a knife from his robes. In one smooth motion, he severed his own hand at the wrist. The hand fell to the ground, still swelling, still growing, blood spraying from the stump of his arm.

  He stumbled backward, clutching the bleeding stump, and started laughing.

  "Hahahahahaha! The Law of the Mother! It's real! Hahahaha!"

  The severed hand on the ground had grown to the size of a basketball now, the fingers distended and twisted. Something inside was trying to push through the skin.

  Wilhelm looked up at Nox, his face split in a manic grin despite the blood pouring from his wrist. "You really are the real Doctor! The chosen one! The Mother has truly marked you!"

  Nox stared at him. "What the fuck was that for?"

  "Sorry, sorry!" Wilhelm was still laughing, using his remaining hand to pull bandages from his robe and wrap the stump. "I had to check! Those military bastards have been trying to infiltrate us for years. I needed to make sure they hadn't sent someone instead of you. An impostor. A fake."

  He gestured at the pregnant hand still writhing on the ground. "But that's real Law power. No fake could replicate that. You're the genuine article."

  Nox glanced down at the hand, which had finally stopped growing. The skin had split open, revealing something that might have been fingers or might have been tentacles. It was hard to tell. The thing was dead now, whatever brief life the Law had given it snuffed out when separated from Wilhelm's body.

  "Get in the car," Wilhelm said, still grinning despite his injury. "We have a ritual to prepare."

  Nox climbed into the back seat of the sedan. Wilhelm followed, sliding in beside him, still wrapping bandages around his stump.

  The driver, another cultist in dark robes, pulled away from the curb smoothly.

  Three blocks away, in a modified Humvee with tinted windows, three men watched the sedan pull away.

  "Did you see that?" Ralph asked from the passenger seat.

  "I saw it," Axel confirmed from behind the wheel.

  "The cultist cut off his own hand," Steven said from the back seat. "Just... severed it. And was laughing about it."

  "These people are insane," Ralph muttered.

  Axel started the Humvee's engine and pulled into traffic, keeping several cars between them and the black sedan. "All units, target is mobile. Maintain distance. Repeat, maintain distance. Silent pursuit only."

  All around the industrial district, five hundred military personnel began moving. Some on foot, blending into the sparse crowd of late-shift workers. Others in vehicles that looked like civilian cars, delivery trucks, maintenance vans. All of them following the black sedan at a careful distance.

  The sedan drove for twenty minutes, winding through the city, heading toward the abandoned factory district on the outskirts.

  Inside the Humvee, the three officers sat in silence for a while.

  Then Ralph spoke up. "So. What do you think the signal will be?"

  "He said a bang," Steven replied.

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  "I'm betting on some kind of eldritch horror," Ralph said. "Maybe he summons something. Something big and loud."

  "I'm betting on a flare," Axel said. "Simple. Effective. Visible from miles away."

  "You're both wrong," Steven said confidently. "It'll be something we don't expect. The doctor doesn't do simple."

  "Twenty bucks says it's an eldritch horror."

  "Thirty says it's a flare."

  "Fifty says you're both idiots and it'll be something worse."

  They continued following the sedan through increasingly deserted streets. The buildings grew more run-down, more abandoned. Graffiti covered walls. Windows were broken or boarded up. This part of the city had been dead for years.

  The sedan finally stopped in front of an old factory complex. Rusted metal walls, collapsed sections of roof, machinery left to rot in the elements.

  Through the Humvee's windshield, they watched Nox step out of the sedan, followed by Wilhelm and two other cultists.

  The group walked toward a sewer grate near the factory's loading dock.

  "They're going underground," Axel said into the radio. "All units hold position. Repeat, hold position."

  Wilhelm pulled open the sewer grate. One by one, the cultists climbed down. Nox went last, disappearing into the darkness below.

  The Humvee pulled to a stop half a block away. Around them, other vehicles stopped as well. Five hundred military personnel, all waiting, all watching.

  "Should we send someone to follow them?" Ralph asked.

  "Negative," Axel said. "The doctor said he'd reveal the location and send the signal himself. We wait for the bang."

  "But what if something goes wrong?"

  "Then we'll hear screaming," Steven said. "Trust me, if the doctor's in trouble, we'll know."

  They settled in to wait.

  Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then twenty.

  "How long does it take to reach a ritual site?" Ralph asked.

  "No idea," Axel admitted.

  More vehicles arrived, parking in a loose perimeter around the factory complex. Daniel pulled up in another Humvee with Kai, Ash, and Jack.

  "Any movement?" Daniel asked through the radio.

  "Nothing yet," Axel replied. "It's been almost thirty minutes."

  "That's a long time just to walk somewhere," Kai said nervously.

  "Maybe the sewers are a maze down there," Ash suggested.

  "Or maybe they're taking the scenic route," Jack offered. "You know, really build up the atmosphere before the human sacrifice."

  "That's not funny," Kai said.

  "I wasn't joking."

  Another five minutes crawled by. The sun was starting to set, painting the abandoned factories in shades of orange and red.

  "This is taking too long," Steven said, checking his watch. "It's been thirty-five minutes since they went down."

  "The doctor said to wait for the signal," Axel reminded him. "We trust the plan."

  "I'm just saying, thirty-five minutes is a long time to—"

  Down in the sewers, Nox followed the cultists through winding tunnels that smelled like decay and old water. The walls were slick with algae and something else that looked organic but probably wasn't. Wilhelm led the way, his bandaged stump held close to his chest, occasionally leaving smears of blood on the tunnel walls when he used it for balance.

  "Not much further now," Wilhelm said over his shoulder. "The ritual chamber is just ahead."

  They'd been walking for thirty minutes, descending deeper and deeper into the city's underground infrastructure. The tunnels had started out as normal sewers, but as they went deeper, the construction changed. The walls became older, made of stone instead of concrete. Symbols were carved into the rock, the same kinds of runes Nox had seen in the summoning circle back at the clinic.

  Finally, they reached a large iron door set into the stone wall. Wilhelm pulled out a key and unlocked it, the mechanism grinding with the sound of metal that hadn't moved in years.

  The door swung open, revealing a chamber beyond.

  It was massive. Easily fifty meters across, with a vaulted ceiling that disappeared into darkness above. Stone pillars lined the perimeter, each one carved with more of those impossible symbols. Torches burned in brackets on the walls, casting flickering light across the space.

  And in the center of the chamber was the summoning circle.

  It made the one in Nox's grafting room look like a child's drawing. This circle was enormous, carved directly into the stone floor, filled with what looked like dried blood that had been there for decades. The outer ring was thick enough for a person to walk on. Inside were seven nested rings, each one containing hundreds of runes and symbols that seemed to pulse with their own light.

  At the cardinal points stood seven stone altars. North, south, east, west, and three more positioned at precise angles between them.

  Wilhelm stepped into the chamber, spreading his arms wide. "Welcome, Doctor, to the Sanctum of the Mother. This is where we will complete the ritual. Where you will become the bridge that allows Her to enter our world."

  Nox walked into the chamber slowly, his eyes scanning everything. The exits. The ceiling height. The positions of the other cultists. Through his shared consciousness, his main body back at the clinic was taking notes, memorizing the layout.

  "When does the ritual begin?" Nox asked.

  "Soon," Wilhelm replied. "We're waiting for the others. The seven Dark Young must all be present to perform the Rite of the Opened Way. Six are on their way. They should arrive within the hour."

  An hour. That gave Nox time.

  "Where should I stand?" Nox asked.

  Wilhelm smiled and gestured to the center of the summoning circle. "Right there, Doctor. At the heart of it all. When the ritual begins, you'll feel the Mother's power flowing through you. It will be glorious."

  Nox walked to the center of the circle and stood there, looking around. The modifications in his body were ready. The special project was primed. All he needed to do was wait for the right moment.

  When all the cultists were gathered. When they were all in this chamber. When there was no escape for any of them.

  Then he would send the signal.

  "This is taking too long," Steven said for the third time, checking his watch. "It's been almost forty minutes."

  "The doctor said to wait," Axel repeated, but even he was starting to sound uncertain.

  "Maybe we should—"

  BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

  The explosion started underground and erupted upward like a volcanic detonation.

  A column of flame shot into the sky, climbing higher and higher, three hundred feet up before expanding outward in a perfect mushroom shape. The fireball looked exactly like a nuclear explosion, just scaled down slightly and fueled entirely by Nox's questionable decision-making.

  The shockwave radiated outward in a perfect circle.

  In the Humvee, Ralph's eyes went wide. "Is that—"

  The shockwave hit.

  The vehicle rocked violently, lifted off its front wheels for a moment, then slammed back down. The windows rattled but held. The three officers were thrown against their seats, Ralph's head bouncing off the dashboard, Axel's hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel, Steven just screaming in the back seat.

  All around them, chaos erupted.

  Lower-rank hunters who'd been positioned on foot were blown off their feet like leaves in a hurricane. Some flew backward twenty feet before hitting the ground and tumbling another ten. Others were knocked flat, sprawling across pavement, struggling to breathe.

  One hunter had been leaning against a lamppost. The shockwave hit him square in the chest and sent him spinning around the pole three complete rotations before he fell off, dizzy and confused.

  Another hunter had been crouching behind a dumpster. The dumpster launched backward like a missile, hunter still clinging to it, both of them sliding across the street in a shower of sparks until they crashed into a parked car.

  A third hunter had been taking a drink from his water bottle. The explosion hit, the water bottle exploded in his hands, and he was left standing there soaked and sputtering, looking like someone had thrown a bucket of water in his face.

  Half of the abandoned factory complex collapsed in on itself. Metal walls buckled and folded like paper. Concrete foundations cracked and crumbled. The entire structure caved inward toward the epicenter of the blast, disappearing into a crater that was now roughly the size of a small shopping mall.

  Dust and debris filled the air. Flames roared from the hole in the ground, painting everything orange and red. Smoke billowed upward in a thick black column.

  Somewhere in the distance, car alarms started going off. Then more car alarms. Then every car alarm in a three-block radius, all screaming at once.

  For a moment, everyone just stared.

  Ralph's hands were still braced against the dashboard. His face was pale. His mouth hung open.

  Axel's knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel. His eyes were wide enough to show white all around the irises.

  Steven was pressed flat against the back seat, one hand clutching his eyepatch, the other gripping the door handle. His mouth formed words but no sound came out.

  In the other Humvee, Daniel's laptop had fallen off his lap and was now somewhere on the floor. His hands were raised in front of his face like he'd been trying to shield himself from the blast. His glasses sat crooked on his nose.

  Kai, Ash, and Jack were all pressed against the windows, staring at the mushroom cloud rising into the evening sky.

  "Holy shit," Kai whispered.

  "Holy shit," Ash agreed.

  "That's a war crime," Jack said. "That has to be a war crime. Did we just commit a war crime?"

  Ralph slowly lowered his hands from the dashboard. He turned his head to look at Axel, moving like someone who'd just survived a car accident.

  "Is this..." Ralph's voice came out strangled. "Is this the signal?"

  "I think so," Axel managed.

  They both turned to look at Steven.

  Steven's eye had stopped twitching. His mouth was still open. Very slowly, he raised one shaking hand and pointed at the mushroom cloud.

  "He blew himself up," Steven said. His voice was completely flat. "The doctor blew himself up."

  "That was the signal," Ralph said, his brain still trying to process what he'd just witnessed.

  "That was the signal," Axel confirmed.

  "He turned himself into a bomb."

  "Apparently."

  "And detonated himself in the ritual chamber."

  "Yes."

  "To signal us."

  "That appears to be what happened, yes."

  They sat in silence for another three seconds, just staring at the crater where half a factory district used to be.

  Then Axel grabbed the radio, his hand still shaking. "ALL UNITS! MOVE IN! ASSAULT FORMATION! GO GO GO!"

  Nothing happened.

  He tried again. "I SAID MOVE IN! NOW!"

  Slowly, very slowly, military personnel began picking themselves up off the ground. Some were still coughing from the dust. Others were checking their limbs to make sure everything was still attached. A few were just sitting on the pavement, staring at the mushroom cloud with expressions of profound existential confusion.

  "COME ON!" Axel screamed into the radio. "THE DOCTOR JUST BLEW UP AN ENTIRE FACTORY DISTRICT TO SHOW US WHERE THE CULT IS! THE LEAST WE CAN DO IS SHOW UP!"

  That seemed to snap people out of it.

  Hunters started running toward the crater. Weapons drawn. Some were limping. One was hopping on one foot because he'd lost a shoe in the blast. Another was carrying his helmet because the chin strap had broken and he looked ridiculous trying to keep it on his head.

  Vehicles lurched into motion, engines revving, tires squealing.

  The Humvee Axel was driving shot forward, racing toward the burning crater.

  Inside, Ralph was laughing. Actual hysterical laughter, the kind that came from your brain completely giving up on making sense of anything.

  "He blew himself up!" Ralph wheezed between laughs. "As a signal! Who DOES that?!"

  "The doctor apparently," Axel said, his own voice edged with the kind of hysteria that came from watching someone detonate themselves for communication purposes.

  Steven had his face in his hands. "I'm going to need so much therapy after this. So much therapy."

  The industrial district erupted into action. Five hundred military personnel, many of them still dusting themselves off and checking for injuries, surged toward the burning crater where the Children of the Mother Goat's secret headquarters used to be.

  The operation had begun.

  In the most ridiculous way possible.