Yosheved leaned forward, her eyes flashing like lightning, her mind mapping the Enemy’s moves.
“SynapseWeb Corp,” she said. “Its neurochip labs are spreading: New Canaan, Jerusalem, here, their tendrils choking the world.”
Signe, clutching the prophecy dispatch, added, “And if Mishka’s the Halfling, SynapseWeb’s targeting him to shatter Elyon’s plan, to snuff out his light.”
The mention of SynapseWeb, a technological leviathan linking minds to a matrix through microscopic implants that stripped free will and enforced Satan’s dominion via the Mark of the Beast, cast a chill over the room, the air growing heavy with dread. Emili’s sources, hushed whispers from New Canaan’s underground, delivered a gut-punch: Mishka Benrubi, Michael’s Halfling son, had been sighted near SynapseWeb’s lab, a sterile crypt of glass and steel where souls were bound to circuits. Saffron’s eyes widened, her heart lurching with dread; Emili’s gaze darkened, her breath catching in her throat. Bound to Mishka by a friendship forged in Budapest’s shadowed alleys, they recalled his guilt over the Jordan Valley debacle, his flight from Petra clutching a bloodied sock, a relic of his torment that haunted their memories.
“Is he there willingly?” Saffron murmured, her voice quaking with fear, her hands trembling as she clutched a photograph.
Emili’s jaw tightened, her reporter’s instinct flaring, her heart refusing to accept betrayal.
“Not our Mishka,” she said, her voice fierce with conviction. “Not after what he’s endured, the scars he carries.”
Suspicion ignited, a shared resolve blazing to life, their bond with Mishka a fire that refused to be quenched.
“We stake out the lab tonight,” Emili vowed, her eyes burning with determination, “under cover of darkness, where their drones can’t see.”
Saffron nodded, slinging her camera over her shoulder, its weight a steady anchor in the storm, as the spiritual realm quaked with their resolve, angelic voices rising to counter the demonic whispers that sought to unravel their mission.
As night draped Yusl Vale in an ash-laden veil, Saffron and Emili slipped through the stronghold’s labyrinthine paths, their dark jackets melding with the shadows, their breaths misting in the sulfurous chill that clung to the cliffs. Beyond, SynapseWeb’s New Canaan lab loomed, a neon-lit fortress of glass and steel, its rune-carved walls pulsing with malevolent intent, as if the building itself exhaled the Enemy’s will, its architecture a blasphemy against Yah’s creation. Drones hummed like locusts, their red eyes slicing through the haze, guarding a perimeter fortified by AI sentinels whose cold precision mocked the warmth of human souls. Crouched behind a jagged outcrop, their hearts pounding in rhythm with Yusl Vale’s distant hammers, the women scanned the lab’s façade, its glassy surface reflecting the Tribulation’s fiery scars. Emili’s eyes spotted a warped window, its frame buckled by the searing heat of divine judgment, a flaw in the Enemy’s design.
“Our way in,” Emili whispered, her voice a thread of defiance, her resolve a shield against fear.
Saffron, her eyes sharpening with a photographer’s clarity, mapped the shadows, plotting their approach with the precision of an artist framing a shot. They darted across the open ground, their footsteps muffled by ash, but a drone’s red eye swiveled, its hum rising like a predator’s growl as it locked onto their movement. Emili yanked Saffron behind a rusted steel crate, their breaths held as the drone hovered, its sensors buzzing, its red gaze sweeping the ash-choked night before veering off, its circuits momentarily deceived. They scaled the lab’s outer wall, fingers digging into rough, heat-scarred stone, their muscles straining until they reached the window’s narrow slit. Emili hoisted Saffron, whose lithe frame slipped through, her camera thudding softly against her chest, then pulled Emili up, their movements a silent choreography of trust forged in Budapest’s shadows. Inside, the lab’s sterile air stung their lungs, its frigid chill biting through their jackets like a living thing. Neon veins threaded the ceiling like corrupted lifelines, their sickly glow illuminating monitors flickering with neural maps that charted the enslavement of human consciousness, each line a soul bound to the matrix. A shadow moved ahead — Quan Adilah, her sleek form pausing at a console, crimson nails tapping as she reviewed neural data, her dark eyes glinting with icy zeal. Her “care” for subjects like Mishka was a clinical façade, a selfish drive to ensure neurochip compatibility, cloaked in the precision of a scientist serving the Beast. Saffron’s heart lurched, her pulse racing; Emili signaled stillness, their breaths shallow until Quan moved on, her footsteps echoing like a death knell, unaware of their presence. Empty rooms, consoles dormant, servers humming with a sinister pulse, yielded no trace of Mishka, despair tightening its grip like a vice, until a faint, anguished groan echoed from beyond a fortified door, its lock aglow with runes that pulsed like a demonic heartbeat, a barrier forged by the Trifecta’s sorcery. Saffron’s eyes met Emili’s, a silent vow forged in the face of peril, the spiritual realm shimmering with angelic urgency as Jeiel, unseen, flared with Zaphrite light, his radiance a flame against the darkness, a divine shield in the Enemy’s lair.
The groan, raw and unmistakably Mishka’s, pierced the silence again, laced with a pain that clawed at their hearts, a sound that carried the weight of his torment. Emili’s hazel eyes blazed with resolve, her journalist’s nerve unyielding; Saffron’s hand tightened on her camera, its lens a witness to their mission, a tool to capture truth in the face of lies. Quan’s earlier presence lingered like a specter, her tray of obsidian neurochips and gleaming syringes a harbinger of Mishka’s fate, each tool a step toward his enslavement. Emili knelt before the door, her reporter’s nerve guiding her fingers as she jimmied the rune-etched lock, her movements steady despite the pounding of her heart. Saffron stood watch, her pulse racing like a war drum, her eyes scanning the shadows for threats. The door yielded with a reluctant creak, revealing a chamber bathed in dim, flickering light, its walls lined with monitors displaying neural patterns that writhed like captive souls, their movements a silent scream against the matrix’s chains. At the center, on a surgical table, lay Mishka Benrubi, clad not in a flimsy medical gown but in a coarse woolen tunic and patched gray pants, rugged garments chosen by SynapseWeb to shield his trembling frame from the lab’s frigid chill. This calculated act stabilized his Halfling physiology for relentless neurochip experiments, ensuring his body endured their matrix trials, a cruel mockery of care serving their selfish ends, a façade to prolong his suffering. Scuffed, oversized boots encased his feet, one bare of a sock, the bloodied relic clutched tightly in his hand, its crusted stains a testament to his guilt-ridden flight from Petra, a symbol of the wounds he could not wash away. His human guise was pallid, eyes half-lidded in a drug-induced stupor, his silver wings hidden but pulsing faintly beneath divine fiat, a flicker of angelic fire that refused to be quenched. Syringes, marked with midazolam and propofol, littered a nearby tray, multiple doses injected to subdue him, yet his Halfling blood — born of angelic fire — resisted, metabolizing the sedatives unevenly, leaving him utterly incapacitated, his limbs leaden, his mind a fog of fragmented defiance. In his haze, Mishka’s thoughts churned, haunted by the words of Surrey, a cryptic mentor from his past whose lies still lingered: Is my agency an illusion, my will bound to Yah’s design? Will the Lost Prophecy of Elyon cast me into oblivion when the Tribulation ends? Lucifer, scheming from unseen depths, sought to forge Mishka into a man-machine abomination, a twisted mockery of Yah’s creation, or, failing that, to snuff out his life entirely, thwarting Elyon’s divine plan, his “care” for Mishka’s stability a cold façade to serve SynapseWeb’s matrix. Saffron’s breath caught, tears stinging her eyes as she took in his broken form, her heart aching for the friend who had saved her from despair.
“They’re trying to break his soul,” Emili whispered, her jaw clenched, her voice a fierce vow against the Enemy’s schemes, her resolve a fire that burned brighter than the lab’s neon glow.