The Mourning Behemoth moved.

  Not with the slow, shambling gait of the undead they'd faced before. This was different. This was purpose. This was rage.

  **BOOM.**

  Its massive fist slammed into the ground, sending cracks spiderwebbing through the concrete. The tunnel walls trembled. Dust rained from the ceiling in thick clouds that choked the air.

  Hikari's breath caught in her throat.

  The creature's half-formed faces twisted in unison, mouths opening in that terrible wail that wasn't quite sound, wasn't quite emotion. Pure grief made manifest, pressing down on her chest like a physical weight.

  It charged.

  The ground shook with each thunderous step. The Behemoth didn't care about the abandoned cars in its path. Didn't care about the walls that crumbled beneath its fists. Didn't care about anything except reaching them.

  **CRASH.**

  A support beam buckled, metal shrieking as it tore free. The Behemoth barreled through it like tissue paper.

  "Hikari, move!" Lila's voice cut through the chaos.

  But Hikari couldn't move. Her legs had locked, her body frozen as the massive creature bore down on them. She could see the faces now. Dozens of them. Hundreds. All screaming silently, all twisted in agony, all reaching toward her with spectral hands that phased through the Behemoth's dark flesh.

  Ten feet away.

  Five.

  Her heart hammered against her ribs. Her vision narrowed to a single point. The creature. The threat. The end.

  And then something inside her snapped.

  No.

  Not snapped.

  **Ignited.**

  It started in her chest, a spark of pure survival instinct that exploded outward like a star going supernova. Heat flooded her veins, but not the comfortable warmth of her usual aura. This was different. This was raw. This was primal.

  Her suppressor flickered behind her ear, the device struggling to contain the sudden surge.

  Adrenaline.

  Pure, undiluted, desperate adrenaline flooding every cell in her body. Her pupils dilated. Her muscles tensed. Time seemed to slow, each second stretching into subjective eternities as her brain went into overdrive.

  The Behemoth's fist came down.

  Hikari moved.

  Her hand shot up, cyan energy exploding from her palm in a wave of psychic force that hit the creature like a freight train. But it wasn't just telekinesis. It was more. It was everything she had, amplified by the adrenaline coursing through her system, pushing her abilities far beyond their normal limits.

  The Behemoth's momentum reversed.

  The massive creature flew backward, its body rotating through the air as Hikari's power caught it mid-strike and redirected every ounce of kinetic energy in the opposite direction. The force was devastating. Absolute.

  **BOOM. CRASH. BOOM.**

  The Behemoth tore through the tunnel wall, concrete and steel exploding outward as its body carved a path of destruction through the underground network. It smashed through one tunnel. Then another. Then another, each impact sending shockwaves rippling through the earth.

  Hikari stood there, hand still raised, her entire body trembling. Cyan light poured off her in waves, her aura visible even through the suppressor's dampening field. Her breath came in ragged gasps. Her heart felt like it would burst from her chest.

  What the hell was that?

  [CUT TO:]

  Jecka's fingers froze over her keyboard.

  The monitors around her desk exploded with warnings, red alerts cascading across every screen in a waterfall of panicked data. The readings were impossible. Completely, utterly impossible.

  "What the..." She leaned forward, eyes scanning the numbers. "No way."

  The supernatural pressure spike was off the charts. Not just high. Not just concerning. It was a goddamn tidal wave of raw psychic energy that had just erupted in the middle of Long Island City, blowing past every threshold her systems were designed to detect.

  Her encrypted phone buzzed. She grabbed it, already knowing what she'd see.

  **ALERT: MASSIVE AURA SURGE DETECTED**

  **LOCATION: QUEENS PLAZA UNDERGROUND**

  **MAGNITUDE: CATASTROPHIC**

  **SOURCE: UNIDENTIFIED**

  "Hikari," Jecka breathed. "What the fuck did you just do?"

  Another alert. This one from the VPD network she'd hacked into months ago.

  **VPD CENTRAL: ALL UNITS**

  **SUPERNATURAL ANOMALY DETECTED**

  **DISTRICT 32, SECTOR 6**

  **DISPATCHING INVESTIGATIVE TEAMS**

  Her stomach dropped. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit."

  The suppressors were supposed to keep them hidden. Were supposed to mask their signatures from detection. But whatever Hikari had just unleashed had blown through those protections like they were tissue paper.

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  The entire district's sensor network had lit up like a Christmas tree.

  Jecka's hands flew across the keyboard, routing false signals, corrupting data packets, doing everything she could to muddy the waters. But it was like trying to hide a nuclear explosion with a blanket.

  Someone had noticed.

  Someone powerful.

  [CUT TO:]

  Deep in the heart of the Forsaken Academy, in the gymnasium where reality bent to accommodate Amanda's grief, Lirael's head snapped up.

  Her dull silver eyes blazed with sudden intensity.

  "Oh?" A slow smile spread across her face. "How interesting."

  The shadows around her rippled, responding to her amusement. The air grew colder, heavy with the weight of her attention shifting focus.

  She had felt it. That surge. That beautiful, terrifying burst of power that had just ripped through the supernatural fabric of the city like a blade through silk.

  Not just any power.

  Psychic energy. Raw and unrefined, but potent. So potent.

  And it had come from one of the exorcists.

  Lirael's smile widened, her form flickering as the shadows coiled around her more tightly. "Well, well. It seems our guests are more interesting than I initially thought."

  Behind her, Amanda sat motionless on the rusted swing, her silver eyes staring at nothing. She had felt it too. The surge. The power. But where Lirael saw opportunity, Amanda felt only the echo of her own pain reflected back.

  "Don't worry, dear child," Lirael purred, her hand resting on Amanda's shoulder. The touch was cold, possessive. "Let them come. Let them think they can save you. It will make their despair all the sweeter when they realize the truth."

  The shadows in the gymnasium deepened, spreading like ink across water.

  [CUT TO:]

  In VoxTech Tower, high above the smog-choked streets of Night City, the massive fortified tank that dominated Vox's private office began to hum.

  The obsidian-scaled leviathan within stirred, thick cables and wires pulsing with electricity as data flooded through its cybernetic nervous system. Six red eyes opened behind the imposing metal helmet, scanning, analyzing, processing the surge that had just rippled across his surveillance network.

  Vox's true form shifted in the water, massive body undulating with predatory grace despite the cables tethering him to the server cores. The plasma veins embedded in his skin glowed brighter, pulsing in rhythm with the data streams flowing through his consciousness.

  His decoy body stood motionless in front of the tank, electric blue and crimson red eyes reflecting the glow of the screens around him. Through the neural link, he experienced both forms simultaneously, the shark's processing power feeding directly into the human avatar's tactical mind.

  Fascinating.

  He'd been monitoring District 32's routine operations when the spike hit. A surge of psychic energy so massive it had overloaded three of his secondary sensors and triggered emergency protocols across the entire VPD network.

  The human decoy's lips curved into a slow smile.

  His encrypted comm system crackled to life. "Sir, VPD Central requesting permission to deploy investigative units to the source of the anomaly. Supernatural signature is off the charts. Should we proceed with standard containment protocols?"

  Vox didn't answer immediately. His consciousness split between forms, the shark's data processing running probability matrices while the human body analyzed tactical implications.

  Two young women had entered District 32 earlier that day. Exchange students, according to their documentation. Perfectly ordinary on the surface. But his systems had flagged something about them. Something subtle. A faint irregularity in their Aura suppressors that his sensors had barely detected.

  He'd dismissed it as a glitch.

  Apparently, he'd been wrong.

  "Sir?" The VPD officer's voice held a note of urgency. "Orders?"

  "No," Vox said, his voice carrying that characteristic blend of charisma and menace. The words came from speakers mounted around the tank, projected from the decoy's throat with perfect synchronization. "Pull back all investigative teams. I want a full sensor lockdown on Queens Plaza, but no physical presence. Observe and record only."

  "But sir, the energy signature indicates—"

  "I'm aware of what it indicates." His heterochromic eyes gleamed with interest. "Which is precisely why I want them left alone. For now."

  A pause. "Understood, sir."

  The comm line went dead.

  Vox's shark form circled slowly in the tank, cables trailing behind like electronic tentacles. His six red eyes fixed on the holographic display floating in the water before him, showing real-time data from the district.

  Two girls. Young. Powerful. And trying very hard to hide what they were.

  His processors ran through the variables. The timing of their arrival. The location of the surge. The pattern of supernatural activity in Long Island City over the past two weeks.

  A connection formed.

  "Amanda Fujimoto," he murmured, the decoy body's voice barely above a whisper. "They're here for the child."

  The pieces clicked together with satisfying precision. The Church of Sanctum Maledictum had sent operatives. Not their usual heavy-handed exorcists, but something more subtle. More interesting.

  And one of them had just revealed power that registered on a scale he'd rarely seen outside of the Primordial Spirits themselves.

  The shark's plasma veins pulsed brighter, excitement flooding through both forms. This changed things. This changed everything.

  His human decoy turned away from the tank, walking toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Night City's neon-soaked sprawl. Behind him, the shark continued its slow, predatory circles, cables humming with activity as they processed terabytes of data per second.

  "Well then," Vox said, his smile widening to show too many teeth. "Let's see what happens when Apostles walk into my territory."

  Apostles.

  The word hung in the air like a death sentence. Because that's what they had to be. That surge of power, that raw psychic force that had blown through every suppression system like they were children's toys, there was no other explanation.

  The Church had sent Apostles.

  Living vessels for Primordial Spirits. Beings whose power could reshape reality itself if properly awakened.

  In his city.

  In his domain.

  Hunting a child who was herself a half horsemen of the highest order.

  The implications were staggering. The possibilities endless.

  Vox's consciousness expanded across his network, servers in fifty districts processing the ramifications simultaneously. This wasn't just interesting. This was a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Apostles were beyond rare. Most people lived entire lifetimes without ever encountering one.

  And now he had two of them, gift-wrapped and delivered to his doorstep.

  His tank's water churned as the shark's excitement manifested in increased movement. The cables strained but held, designed to withstand far more than simple agitation.

  "Continue monitoring," Vox commanded, his voice projecting to every VPD station in the district simultaneously. "Full data collection on all supernatural activity in Queens Plaza. I want to know everything about our visitors. Everything."

  He turned back to face the tank, his decoy body's eyes meeting the shark's six red orbs. Both forms smiled in perfect synchronization.

  "Let's see if they can survive what's waiting for them down there. And if they do..."

  His processors spun up predictive models, running thousands of scenarios per second. Capture. Recruitment. Dissection. Study. The possibilities branched into infinite variations.

  "If they do, then we'll have a conversation. One way or another."

  The plasma veins in the shark's body pulsed in rhythm with the words, electricity arcing between cables as Vox's excitement manifested as physical energy.

  Apostles.

  In his city.

  This was going to be very, very interesting.

  In the tunnel, Hikari collapsed to her knees, the surge finally fading as her adrenaline crashed. Her entire body shook, muscles screaming in protest. The cyan glow around her flickered once, twice, then died completely.

  "Hikari!" Lila was at her side in an instant, hands on her shoulders. "Are you okay? What the hell was that?"

  "I... I don't know." Hikari's voice was hoarse, raw. "I just... I couldn't let it hit us. And then something just... happened."

  Lila's azure eyes scanned her face, concern evident despite her tactical mask. "Your suppressor is fried. You lit up every sensor in the district. We need to move. Now."

  But Hikari barely heard her. She was staring at her hands, watching the faint tremors running through her fingers.

  What the hell was that?

  That power. That surge. It had felt like drowning and flying at the same time. Like every cell in her body had been set on fire and remade in an instant.

  And for just a moment, just a brief, terrifying moment, she had felt unstoppable.

  The thought scared her more than the Behemoth ever could.

  To be continued...