The line moved like water over stone – slow, tired, already eroded.

Ying stood beneath the eastern lion, visor down, arms folded across her chest. The morning shift had dragged into noon with barely a sound. No protests. No incidents. Just that quiet shuffle of shoes on old cobblestone and the occasional cough swallowed before it could be noticed.

More families today. Refugees, mostly – the kind that carried their whole lives in one plastic bag and a name that didn't work in this language. A woman in a torn scarf smiled at her as she passed. Not warm. Not pleading. Just... expected. A smile like tax.

Behind Ying, the banners fluttered from their poles – the same two slogans in alternating order:

JOY IS OBEDIENCE OBEDIENCE IS SALVATION

She didn't look at them anymore. But she could still hear them flapping – like the twitch of something skinned alive.

She scanned the crowd without moving. No red flags. No sudden spikes in pupil dilation or heart rate. Most of these people had already surrendered. In body, if not belief.

The only thing strange was the silence.

Varek hadn't said a word all morning. Neither had the others. Extraction marks were rare today. Even the vans hadn't come.

That was what made her nervous.

She tapped twice against her wrist console, logging a system check. Then again, with a slight delay, to flag herself for biometric recalibration – a false routine that bought her fifteen minutes unaccounted.

She walked.

The annex was attached to the south wing of the checkpoint towers – a squat, concrete structure with no signage and a biometric lock. She pressed her wrist to the reader. It blinked green. Inside, the lights buzzed faintly. Dust hung in the corners. The room was barely used – a backup comms hub, mostly ignored since the palace installed the newer uplinks.

But it still worked.

Ying moved to the console and keyed in her credentials. Enforcer-12. Clearance: patrol routing, facial ID crosscheck, tribute review access. Nothing too high. Just enough to watch.

The feeds loaded in quadrant view – eight angles at once. Plaza. South tower. Tramline depot. Refugee checkpoint near the old university. All normal.

She toggled audio. Ambient crowd noise, static, radio chatter. Then:

"Citizens of Prague," a voice declared – warm, polished, theatrical. "It is my joy to welcome you. Your courage is noted. Your sacrifice, remembered."

Ying frowned.

She isolated the audio. Feed 4 – the cathedral.

King Tomas stood atop the old marble steps, arms wide, robes flowing like a theatre curtain. Behind him, tribute candidates knelt in clean formation, heads bowed. He smiled as he spoke, his halo glitching slightly at the edges – a shimmer of gold static, pulsing in rhythm with his words.

She muted it.

Checked Feed 6 – the hospital district.

Same voice. Same words. Same man.

But he was in a different place. Inside a glass atrium, shaking hands with masked nurses and patting the heads of thin children.

Ying's breath caught.

She scrubbed the timestamps.

Same time. Same second.

She checked Feed 8.

The palace balcony.

There he was again – back straight, waving to a plaza below. Sunlight glinted off his hair. The crowd cheered with precision, like someone had rehearsed their joy.

Three places. Three Tomas's.

She leaned closer to the screen, heart slow, eyes narrowing. The faces were identical. So were the gestures. But the details were wrong – the way one Tomas's fingers curled slightly at rest, the way another's smile didn't reach the eyes. And the halo. It glitched behind each head – same pattern, same loop. Like copied code struggling to mask its repetition.

Ying stared for a long moment. Then whispered – not in disbelief, but quiet confirmation:

"How can he be in three places at once?"

…………………

The lock hissed open with a sigh like breath behind teeth.

Ying slipped into the server chamber, letting the reinforced door seal shut behind her. No alarms. No eyes. Just the cold hum of machines spinning in perfect rhythm.

The room was narrow and deep – walls lined with vertical racks pulsing faint blue, their data threads bundled like veins, blinking behind layers of reinforced glass. It smelled of coolant and sterilised dust. Lifeless.

She crossed to the main console at the far end, fingers steady, footsteps silent. This wasn't just another control station. It was deeper than that. Off-network.

A shell node—used in the early days to merge different surveillance systems, before the newer Cathedral-tier AIs came online. Old. Forgotten. Still breathing.

Ying sat. Logged in. Her gauntlet hissed slightly as she flexed her hand over the touchpad. The console flickered to life, sluggish but functional. She bypassed the surface layer and accessed raw input logs.

Feed integrity… degraded. Metadata flagged. Soulfield sync: NULL. Subject: KING TOMAS. Designation error. Contract signature not found.

She narrowed her eyes.

No Contractor ID. No signature of demonic possession. No halo signature at all.

As if Tomas didn't exist in the system that worshipped him.

She dug deeper. Cross-referenced timestamps from the three surveillance feeds she'd flagged upstairs. Each Tomas instance was registered independently – as if they were three different beings. Same ID. Same appearance. No soultrace.

The console began to hum louder.

Ying's fingers danced faster. Rerouting data. Decrypting buried logs. Something was nested deep in the stream – a repeating pulse, recursive, a kind of psychic watermark burned into each Tomas broadcast. Not metadata. Not AI-written. Organic.

She was just beginning to peel it open when a cold shadow spilled across her shoulder.

The door hadn't made a sound.

Ying didn't flinch. But her hand stopped moving.

"Not bad," said a voice behind her. Gravel-low, dry, and slightly amused. "I would ask if you're working for the Chinese... but China is dead."

Ying turned slowly.

Captain Mirka stood in the doorway, arms crossed. No helmet. No weapons drawn. Just that crooked scar dragging from the corner of her mouth to her throat like a cracked wire.

Mirka stepped inside, letting the door seal behind her. Her boots didn't echo.

"All that's left there," she continued, "is the Church of Moloch."

Ying froze. Her pulse didn't spike – she'd trained past that. But something sank inside her, cold and furious.

Moloch. Even the name burned.

She remembered what was left of Chengdu. The banners strung from scorched buildings. The children in cages made of spine. The silence of the survivors who had survived too long.

She didn't speak, but her knuckles whitened on the edge of the console. If Mirka noticed, she didn't show it.

She just looked. Waiting.

Ying stared back. Her voice didn't tremble. "So. Are you going to report me?"

Mirka raised one shoulder. Let it fall. "I'm tired of reporting people."

A beat passed between them. Then Mirka asked, plain and cold: "So. Are you here to kill Tomas?"

Ying didn't look away.

"Yes," she said. "And I'm here to find a friend."

A low exhale. Almost a sigh. Then a quiet, hollow laugh – like something being let go of, not found funny.

Mirka's eyes darkened. Not with threat. With memory.

"Good luck," she said. "Do you even know which one you're supposed to kill?"

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…………………

The concrete steps were slick with condensation. No ventilation. Just rusted pipes hissing faintly behind the walls, like something breathing through the metal. Ying sat on the third step from the bottom. Mirka was beside her – spine pressed flat to the wall, legs stretched out, one boot resting on a lower rung like she didn't plan to move for a while.

She wasn't looking at Ying. Her eyes stayed fixed on a spot in the dark.

"This city used to be loud," Mirka said.

Her voice didn't match the silence. It came slow, like something pulled out from under a scar.

"You couldn't sleep for the trams, the bars, the drunks singing football songs in six different accents. Prague was a bastard of a place. Proud. Stupid. But alive."

She tilted her head back, resting it against the cool concrete.

"I was a bike courier. Can you believe that? Zipping through cobblestone alleys with parcels strapped to my chest like a bomb vest. Thought I was invincible."

A faint grin. Gone fast.

"Then the world ended."

Ying didn't speak. She didn't have to. The silence stretched open just enough for Mirka to keep going.

"Lilith's filth came from the west first. Out of Africa, all teeth and claws. They hit Italy hard. Spain disappeared in a week. Then the stingers spread – riding host bodies like horses. You'd see someone walking toward you with nothing wrong on the outside… and then they'd burst open. New things crawling out."

She flexed her fingers, slow.

"I remember the first time I saw one hatch in Wenceslas Square. The thing tore out of a teenager's chest. Had wings made of cartilage and bone. Sounded like a baby crying when it flew."

She paused.

"Two days later, the blood-drinkers came from the north. Russia was already a radioactive graveyard, but something crawled out of it anyway. Contractors who'd turned feral. Eating their own pact-mates. Drinking blood like it was sacrament."

Mirka shook her head.

"By the time the South fell – Austria, the Balkans, all of it – the city was choking on refugees. We blocked the roads, barricaded the tunnels, but it didn't matter. They just kept coming. Not demons. People. Starving. Desperate. Everyone whispering about salvation."

Her voice went quiet.

"I was one of the first to volunteer for patrol. Not because I believed we'd win. Just because staying in the shelters meant listening to mothers cry behind their coats while their kids begged for bread."

She exhaled.

"And then… he showed up."

Ying looked sideways. Mirka wasn't dramatic about it. No reverence. No dread. Just tired truth.

"At first, we thought he was possessed. Some rogue Contractor with a demon riding him. Silver hair, dead eyes, walked like he didn't feel gravity. People like that didn't survive long in Prague – we either shot them on sight or dragged them to the purge pits. But Tomas… he didn't move like a slave. No whispers. No halo. Just fists. And he used them. I saw him rip the jaw off a horned walker with one hand and crush a crawler's ribcage like it was made of pastry."

"Did you see it yourself?" Ying asked quietly.

Mirka nodded.

"Up close. He didn't speak to us. Didn't smile. Just moved from street to street, leaving piles of limbs and ash in his wake. I watched a grown man drop to his knees and beg to follow him like he was Christ."

She rubbed her thumb against the scar on her jaw.

"It got worse. People started organising around him. Not orders – just belief. They said he couldn't be killed. That he didn't sleep. That he drank demon blood and never bled. That when he touched you, you'd forget pain."

Ying's stomach tightened. "And then he called himself King."

Mirka let out a low laugh. Dry. Bitter.

"Not at first. For weeks he was just the saviour. That's what they called him. Náš spasitel. Our saviour."

She looked up at the flickering light.

"One morning he climbed the steps of the Old City Hall. I was there. Front line. He lifted a crippled girl above his head. Said, 'This city has a king now.' That's it. No ceremony. No vote. No Contract with the people."

Mirka's hands closed slowly into fists.

"And the worst part?"

Ying met her eyes.

Mirka's voice dropped to a whisper.

"No one argued. Not one person. Because for the first time in years… the screaming had stopped."

…………………

They walked in silence.

The halls were dark at this hour, emptied of patrol units and stripped of routine. Pipes lined the ceilings like veins – sweating, humming softly. Occasionally, an overhead speaker whispered a joy-script from the central node, voice crackling through dust-choked wiring.

Mirka led without speaking. Her boots knew the path. Left through a service corridor. Down two rusted stairwells. Past an old barracks hall where empty bunks stood like graves.

Then: a dented double door. Mirka pushed it open.

The gym beyond hadn't been used in months.

The overhead lights flickered once, then caught. Pale fluorescence spilled across torn mats, rusted weight racks, and heavy punching bags that hung like dead things, their vinyl skins torn and leaking sand.

"It used to be loud here," Mirka said, voice low. "Sparring. Curses. Music, even. Before the new blood. Before obedience meant silence."

She crossed the floor, trailing fingers over a cracked bench press bar, and stopped in the centre of the room. She didn't look at Ying – just stared at her own hand for a moment, as if debating something.

Mirka stood in the centre of the room. Her boots scuffed the concrete as she moved. Not pacing – just remembering.

Ying watched from the wall, silent.

"He didn't start with power," Mirka said. "Tomas, I mean. At first, he fought with his body. Then with presence. Then… he offered us something."

She raised her right hand.

The air around it shimmered. A low crackle snapped between her fingers like the first warning of a storm. Lightning coiled down her knuckles in erratic pulses – controlled, precise, beautiful in a way that didn't feel earned.

Then Ying saw it.

A faint corona flared to life behind Mirka's head – pale blue, almost white. Not a light, not fire… something colder. Thinner. It hovered like a halo but moved like mist, flickering with lines of encoded command. Not divine. Designed.

"This," Mirka said, holding the glow between them, "was a gift."

Ying didn't move.

"It came with a Contract," Mirka said, voice flat. "A real one. Blood-written. Just like the old stories."

She flexed her fingers once, lightning sparking faintly in the gaps.

"They gave me a page. Told me to write what I wanted in my own blood. Just a sentence. One sentence. I wrote: I want power. Enough to protect what's left."

She didn't look at Ying when she said it. Just stared at her palm, like it still remembered the pen.

"Then I burned the page in a brass bowl. Standard ritual kit. No demon appeared. No flames. Just him."

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Tomas walked in. Smiling."

She held her hand out again, watching it glow.

"He laid a hand on my shoulder. That's all. No words. No ceremony. But I felt it. Something – something – moved between us. Soul to soul. No barrier. No distance. Just... contact."

A flicker of nausea crossed her face.

"It was alien. Cold. Like swallowing something alive that wasn't meant to be inside you. I felt him press in. Not just watching. Wearing me."

She let her hand fall.

"And then it was done. The power came next. So did the obedience."

She clenched her fist. The arcs intensified – sharp, angry, sparking at the wrist.

"I said yes. Because I had nothing left. I'd watched my sister get pulled apart by a three-mouthed thing in the streets. My squad was gone. My leg had been shattered two weeks earlier. I couldn't run. Couldn't fight. So, I said yes."

The lightning vanished.

Mirka dropped her hand to her side, flexing the fingers like they ached.

"But that Contract wasn't a pact. It was a rewiring. The day after I took it, I followed a man into a storm drain because someone told me he might be hoarding food. I brought him back in a bag. I don't remember deciding to do it."

Ying's stomach turned. She didn't interrupt.

"I can't disobey a direct order now," Mirka said, looking her dead in the eye. "Not even if I want to. Not even if I scream in my head."

She tapped her temple. "I've tried. All of us have."

Ying stepped forward. Her voice was low. "What happened to the ones who resisted?"

Mirka gave her a look that wasn't quite pity. Wasn't quite anger.

"They disappeared. No executions. No trials. Just… gone. One day you're drinking with them, the next day their bunk is empty and the mattress is burned."

She sat down on the old weight bench. It creaked under her.

"That's when we started learning the truth. Demonic Contracts bind your body. Limit your choices. But whatever he does – Tomas – it doesn't bind muscle. It binds will. It stretches your soul until it can only point in one direction."

She opened her hand again. The lightning didn't return.

"Obedience."

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Ying asked, barely above a whisper, "What is he?"

Mirka looked up. And this time, she didn't hesitate.

"There isn't just one of him. At first we thought there were actors. Decoys. People pretending to be Tomas. But it's not that."

Her voice dropped lower.

"It's the same man. Same face. Same smile. In different places. I saw him speak to a crowd in the north quarter while he was also ordering an execution at the prison tower. I thought I was losing my mind."

Ying's eyes narrowed. "Clones?"

Mirka shook her head.

"Not copies. Not masks. Same presence. Like you feel it, in your ribs. Same pressure behind the eyes. Even the way they glitch when they turn too fast – like their skin doesn't quite fit."

She raised her hand one more time. This time, the sparks returned. Angry. Unstable.

"The one who gave me this?" she said. "He wasn't human. Not underneath."

Then she lowered her hand. Let the glow die. And in that silence, her face looked older than before.

Worn. Not just by age – but by knowing something no one else could say aloud.

…………………

Ying walked the halls in silence.

After the gym, after Mirka's confession, she didn't speak. Didn't stop. Just moved – back through the darkened corridors of the barracks, past flickering monitors and shuttered blast doors, until the pressure of the city overhead pressed down again.

Her bunk was in the lower wing. Standard Enforcer issue: narrow mattress, steel frame, no windows. One of thirty in a barracks built for discipline, not comfort. She slipped inside without drawing attention, locked the door behind her, and sat.

Then lay down.

The ceiling above her bunk was cracked concrete, webbed with old leaks that hadn't been patched in years.

Ying lay still beneath it, arms crossed behind her head, boots still on. Her breath slowed. Not from sleep. From restraint.

She hadn't moved in hours.

The room was silent except for the distant hum of the facility's power core – that low mechanical lull that crawled into your bones if you stayed still long enough. The others had gone to sleep, or pretended to. She didn't care. She wasn't listening for them.

She was listening to memory.

Three Tomases. Same face. Same voice. Same glitching halo behind their heads.

One handing out medallions at a hospital's grand reopening. One addressing pilgrims outside the Cathedral of Flame. One patrolling the royal balconies, smiling and waving like a benevolent god.

All of them smiling. All of them wrong.

She saw them again behind her eyelids – like echoes superimposed, skin peeling slightly when they moved too fast, like a mask trying to stay on.

Her knuckles tightened against the thin mattress.

It wasn't just duplication. It was strategy.

Every Tomas was where he needed to be. Touching every part of the system. Palace. Church. Street.

Puppet, she thought.

Then corrected herself.

Puppets.

She sat up.

The walls of the barracks felt tighter than before. Not confinement. Containment. Everything down here was boxed and tagged. Bunks in rows. Doors that locked from the outside. Even thoughts, sometimes, seemed to echo wrong. Like the building was listening.

She stood quietly, pulled her coat on, and slid the badge onto her collar.

Out. Through the side corridor. Up the access ladder.

No alarms. No lockdown. Not yet.

The roof was slick with frost and reinforced with metal mesh – Enforcer-grade, engineered to withstand blasts or sniper perch. Ying crouched low as she reached the top, then straightened slowly. Her breath fogged in the cold.

And Prague spread out before her like a prayer gone sour.

She could see the spires from here. Towers, churches, courtyards – all perfectly lit, clean, framed in soft blue uplighting like it was still a city meant to be seen. The illusion was flawless from a distance.

But now she knew better.

Each plaza had its Tomas. Each tower, its speech. Each crowd, its shepherd.

She began mapping them in her mind. Visualising the flow. Public appearances. Van routes. Suppression sites. All the places he – they – had been seen.

None of them overlapped.

And none of them ever showed fatigue. Or age. Or weakness.

Not human.

Not anymore.

She thought of Chloe and Alyssa. Taken as tribute. Beautiful. Rare. Selected.

She thought of Liz and Dan. Entered through the Cathedral gates, waving holy writ. Walking into the lion's mouth. And Victor – baiting guards on purpose, courting imprisonment.

All of them inside the city now.

All of them surrounded.

She swallowed. Wind scraped at her cheeks, sharp and dry. The frost beneath her boots cracked gently as she turned her gaze to the tallest tower – the Palace proper. Its spires glinted in the moonlight like polished bone.

Somewhere in there was the answer.

Somewhere behind the curtain of perfect teeth and choreographed appearances, something watched. Fed. Ruled.

She clenched her jaw.

"If he's just a puppet…" she whispered, eyes narrowing on the highest window, "then who's wearing the crown?"

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