The sound of mice gnawing at the wedding dress was like a sewing machine running in reverse.
Lilith's steel-toed high heels stepped on the moldy satin, and the humid air in the underground workshop on the West Side of Chicago caused the wedding dress lace to grow bloody mold. Twenty old Singer sewing machines operated automatically, and the needles dipped in fluorescent green liquid in gasoline barrels to embroider burning tulips on the satin. In the holes in the ventilation ducts, the clones hung upside down with their woven veils, and their eyeballs reflected wedding videos from different eras - the cruise ship fire in 1912, the church burning in 1994, and the unfinished wedding on the cliff five years ago.
"You are thirteen minutes late." The man in the chemical protective suit stood up from the pile of body bags, and the mechanical sound of the voice changer came from under the mask. He opened the freezer, and thirteen frozen models were wearing charred wedding dresses, each with a miniature explosive embedded in the waistband. "The Wolf of Wall Street customized the bridal dresses, and asked them to be able to detonate the Nasdaq bell ringing ceremony."
Lilith chuckled with her burned vocal cords, and the sandpaper-like laughter shook the wall. She lifted the model's veil, and the rotten simulated face was oozing oil - it was Isabella's assistant who disappeared in Milan last week. When she inserted the neural sensor chip into the model's spine, the monitoring screen suddenly flashed: Nathaniel's private plane was flying to Iraq, and the cargo hold manifest showed that it was carrying twenty tons of napalm.
In the underground clinic in Manhattan, Isabella's skin was curling and falling off.
"You actually used the flame retardant of the wedding dress as a moisturizer." The plastic surgeon used a laser to peel off the tulip birthmark on her chest. The carbonized skin tissue suddenly spontaneously combusted after falling into the culture dish. "The bride mark of the Blackwood family uses the formula of the incendiary bomb during World War II."
The surgical mirror suddenly reflected a double figure. Isella saw herself five years ago standing in the corner of the clinic, injecting gasoline extract into Evelyn's skin care products. In the flashback, the hem of Dr. Kovac's white coat swept across the medical waste barrel, and the pieces of wedding dress soaked in the barrel were floating with the Russian embroidery of "Kovac".
"It's time to change the skin." The doctor pointed the liquid nitrogen spray gun at her clavicle, "Your tracker is sending positioning to thirteen satellites." In the frozen mist, the screams of the clones came from next door, accompanied by the hum of the sewing machine - that was the same frequency vibration of the slum workshop.
The alarm suddenly exploded.
The fire captain broke in, and the gasoline on his protective suit was dripping. He raised the flamethrower and aimed it at the culture dish, and the flames instantly engulfed the entire operating wall. Isella rolled to the corridor wrapped in bloody gauze and saw frozen models wearing wedding dresses on display in each ward, with a uniform "131313" barcode on their chests.
At the Chicago River sewage outlet, wedding dress fabric clogs the city's veins.
Lilith sneaks in the sewage pipe, with the burning remains of models floating above her head. The waterproof tablet shows Dr. Kovac's real-time location - on the top floor of Manhattan's Flatiron Building, which should be the fire chief's private office. When she hooks the floating refrigerator with a steel-framed skirt, the heart rate monitor beeps from the box.
"A wedding gift for you." The clone suddenly emerges from the sewage, holding up the refrigerator with rotten fingers, "Open it and see, it's Evelyn's new heart."
The surface of the frozen organ in the box is covered with circuit boards, and the aorta is connected to a micro fuel pump. Lilith's scanner shows that this is the latest patent of the Blackwood Group - an artificial heart incendiary bomb, with an explosive equivalent enough to overturn the entire financial district. The clone's eyeball suddenly pops up a holographic projection: at the scene of the cruise ship fire in 1912, the young Kovac bride was sewing a similar device into the petticoat of her wedding dress.
A wave of gasoline suddenly surged into the sewage pipe. Burning wedding models floated down the river, their veils forming Morse code in the flames: The one who killed thirteen brides was the fourteenth.
On the Devil's Point cliff in San Francisco, the moonlight laid out wedding dress patterns on the gasoline sea.
The fire chief was drilling holes in the reef, inserting memory storage chips into each hole. The GoPro camera recorded his distorted reflection - under the burned skin on the right side of his face, the metal skull flashed the laser mark of "Kovac Industries". When he inserted the 13th chip into the crack in the rock, a holographic projection suddenly rose from the sea: On Christmas Eve in 2003, he personally set fire to the Blackwood Mansion, but carried the unconscious Nathaniel out of the fire.
"Father is right, living sacrifices are more interesting." He raised the tulip earrings to the waves, and the earring spikes suddenly ejected a micro-injector, "It's time to upgrade the game."
The roar of the engine came from the bottom of the cliff. Lilith's modified tanker broke through the guardrail, and a giant wedding dress model was welded on the front of the car. As the clones began to sing the Russian Requiem in unison, the veil of the wedding dress model suddenly sprayed fuel, turning the entire sea into a burning church altar.
In the slum workshop at four in the morning, the sewing machine needle was dripping blood.
Lilith connected the artificial heart to the power grid, and the lights of the entire Chicago suddenly flickered. The surveillance screens burst into chaos: the electronic screens on Wall Street played the image of the 1912 fire, the models at the Milan Fashion Week collectively danced the incineration dance, and Nathaniel's plane cargo hold was oozing pink fuel.
"Happy birthday, bride." Dr. Kovac's holographic image suddenly appeared, holding a burning cake in his hands, "When the Kovac family's revenge program was activated 1,313 years ago, your great-grandmother also wore the same bloody veil."
The clones suddenly stopped working and turned to the east to kneel. They tore their wedding dresses, revealing the mechanical hearts in their chests - the countdown was uniformly stopped at 13 minutes. Lilith's tablet received explosion warnings from thirteen bridal shops around the world, and the models in each shop's window wore tulip earrings.
When the first rays of morning light pierced the oily glass, the combination lock of the workshop's secret door opened. Isella was wrapped in bloody bandages and put the fire axe against Lilith's newly transplanted vocal cords: "It's time to change players in the game." She pulled off the bandages, and the tulip birthmark on her chest was squirming - it turned out to be an electronic tattoo embedded with micro explosives.