In the blind spot of Manhattan's underground pipeline, the sound of breathing is more dense than the sound of mice gnawing on cables.
Nathaniel's custom suit is strangling him. Nanobots climb along his spine, weaving bulletproof fibers into a noose. He slumped on the titanium floor of the Wall Street vault, watching the wedding dress design in the holographic projection automatically update - every wrinkle was calculating the time for his carotid artery to burst. When the seventh floor tile leaked gasoline, the ventilation duct suddenly fell down with burning wedding dress fragments, spelling out the stock code of Kovac Industries.
"The ratings of the death live broadcast have exceeded 100 million." Isabella's voice came from the lining of the suit, mixed with the spraying sound of the mental hospital's fire protection system, "Guess the audience wants to see the financial tycoon suffocate, or the bride hatching from your eye sockets?"
The vault security door suddenly melted. Lilith's clones rushed in wearing charred wedding dresses, and their eyeballs projected thirteen live execution images. On the central screen, the fire chief was pouring gasoline on the torch of the Statue of Liberty, and the flames formed a countdown for the Nasdaq circuit breaker in the night sky.
At the Chicago sewage treatment plant, wedding dress fabric blocked the radioactive waste pipe.
Wearing a radiation mask, Lilith injected neurotoxin into the giant leech. These mutant creatures gnawed on the flame retardant of the wedding dress, and the flame emblem of the Blackwood Group gradually emerged on their backs. When the Geiger counter suddenly exploded, the clone emerged from the rancid sewage, holding a glass jar soaked in brain tissue - Dr. Kovac's right earlobe was floating in it.
"He left you a birthday present." The clone's vocal cords were corroded by radioactive substances, "In the core area of Reactor No. 13."
The lead door automatically locked behind him. Lilith lifted the radiation blanket and saw a crystal coffin suspended in the center of the particle accelerator - Evelyn's body was absorbing gamma rays, and the tulip burn scar on her chest emitted a faint blue light. The holographic screen on the console suddenly lit up: the black box records of the 1912 shipwreck showed that the Bride of Kovac had used the same device to modify the reactor.
On the Devil's Point cliff in San Francisco, a group of drones are stitching the night sky.
The fire chief is operating the burning wedding dress drones, each carrying a nerve gas capsule. The reef under his feet is full of bullet holes, and the latest one, which is still smoking, is embedded with Isabella's tulip brooch. When the 13th drone crashed into the sea, the oil slick suddenly condensed into a human shape - it was Evelyn's body, who should have died five years ago, and she was holding Lilith's radioactive leeches in her hands.
"Father always said that revenge should be taken with the enemy's weapons." He screamed into the encrypted intercom, and his burned right face fell off in the firelight, "But you didn't say that this weapon is a living bride!"
The waves suddenly exploded a hundred meters high. Evelyn's body opened her eyes, and Nasdaq trading data spun in her pupils. She tore open her chest, took out the artificial heart modified by gamma rays, and threw it to the drone group. All electronic screens on Wall Street went black instantly, and then played the 3D projection of the Kovac family executing the Blackwood ancestors.
In the isolation room of the Manhattan Psychiatric Hospital, Isabella's spine was growing steel bones.
"Surprised?" Dr. Kovac's holographic image floated in front of the electric shock bed, "You have Evelyn's third lumbar vertebra transplanted in your body." He called up the real-time surgical video: five years ago, in the middle of the night when the cliff fell, in the back cabin of the fire truck, his scalpel was extracting bone marrow from Evelyn's body.
Isella suddenly broke the restraints, and her anti-jointed arm smashed the holographic projector. She crashed into the bulletproof glass, and nanorobots crawled out of the cracked wound on her forehead. These mechanical creatures devoured the guards' guns and formed a burning wedding dress pattern in the corridor of the psychiatric hospital. As the fire sprinkler system sprayed gasoline, she bit the micro-detonator hidden in her wisdom tooth - the steel frame structure of the entire building began to resonate, and the frequency was synchronized with the suffocation countdown of the Wall Street vault.
On the third floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange, the suffocation game entered the final level.
Nathaniel's suit and tie suddenly came alive, strangling his neck and dragging him to the ventilation duct. The clones followed with the urn, scattering diamond powder mixed with brain gray matter with every step. At the end of the duct, Evelyn's body was suspended in the electromagnetic field, and each of her hair was connected to the global stock market terminal.
"Death is not the end." Lilith's voice came from all directions, "It's the IPO roadshow of Kovak Industries."
The nanorobot suddenly drilled out of the eyeball and projected the 1912 insurance contract on the retina - the shipping stock that the Blackwood family exchanged for the lives of thirteen brides was now being quantum sold through his synapses. When the suffocation reached the critical point, all clones simultaneously tore open the wedding dress, revealing the frozen memory embedded between the ribs - it was the iris code of the Wall Street vault.
At four o'clock in the morning, in the radioactive waste pool, the wedding dress was undergoing nuclear fission.
Lilith implanted Dr. Kovac's earlobe into the reactor, and the coolant suddenly boiled into blood red. The monitoring screen showed that the cores of thirteen nuclear power plants around the world had wedding dress debris, and Isella's brain waves were transmitting revenge codes to the atmosphere through the steel frame structure of the mental hospital.
"It's time to take a bow." The burned face of the fire chief suddenly appeared on all screens, "Let's upgrade the suffocation game to the stratosphere."
Five Boeing 747s loaded with napalm rushed out of the launch silo, and the tail flames wrote "I do" in the night sky. When the first one crashed into the Devil's Corner Cliff, Evelyn's body broke through the ice, and the hem of her burning wedding dress swept across the sea, turning the radioactive waste into a rain of wedding rings.
When the NASDAQ bell rang again, Isella climbed out of the ruins of Wall Street. She tore off the half-melted tulip tattoo, revealing the real family emblem underneath - the double surnames of Kovac and Blackwood were engraved next to the flame-wrapped wedding dress.