The moonlight of Cappadocia is chewed to bits by newly dug soil. Daniel, a rookie intern, kneels on the edge of the X-7 pit, his dust mask unable to filter out the lingering smell of humus - a smell that reminds him of donated bodies soaked in formalin during anatomy class last week. The second-hand Rolex between the wrist suddenly went crazy counterclockwise, and the dial oozed a bituminous substance that crawled down the hair toward the elbow joint.
"Professor Carter?" The Byzantine reliefs were mutating as Daniel shouted at the bottom of the pit and a flashlight swept across the wall. The face of the Virgin Mary melts into lampreys, angel wings proliferate into mechanical bearings, and in the crystal surface of the central groove, the face of Alex Carter looms large.
There was the sound of slime moving in the darkness. As Daniel turned around, the team's tent was being swallowed by black mycelium, with face-like lumps bulging on the canvas surface. His walkie-talkie automatically plays Elena's mechanical laughter, and battery fluid seeps through the interface, mapping the neural map of Cyberdeep Ruins on the ground.
"Don't touch the crystal!"
Alex's voice came from deep in the earth, with the resonance of a bronze coffin. Daniel's flashlight beam pierced the darkness and revealed a crouching humanoid creature at the bottom of the pit-something with Alex's face, but a completely mutated symbiote in its right arm, slime covered with fragments of Lilith's spider leg and Michiko's knife mark.
The intern crushed the handle when he stepped back. Fluorescent blue SAP gushed from the broken wood, and vines wrapped around his ankles. Alex's face on the rock face suddenly opened and a triple tone shook the rubble: "Who is the bride candidate for this cycle?"
The glass of Daniel's Rolex dial explodes and the black material condenses into a miniature bronze coffin. When he tried to tear through the vine, he found that his veins were metalizing, and the webs of memory of the Eternal Night City appeared beneath his skin. The intercom suddenly played a never-heard-of recording, Professor Black's voice mixed with a mechanical murmur: "The 1987 autopsy report... In Tokyo Bay... Find the triple helix..."
A baby was crying from the bottom of the pit. As Daniel crawls toward the sound source, the rock becomes as soft as the lining of a womb, with amniotic fluid oozing through every scrape. Alex's variant is giving birth, and inside the symbiote's lacerations, the robotic spider legs of baby Cthulhu tear open the fetal membrane, and the pupil spins the neon of Cyberyuan and the blood moon of Eternal Night City.
"Catch this." The mutant tossed a roll of papyrus, the edges of which had been bordered by time into lace. As Daniel unfolds, the old manuscript automatically updates its content - the 21st-century printed English fades to reveal Heian Waka, which eventually settles into Lilith's warning woven in memory silk: "Kill the baby or Tokyo will sink in 63 hours."
The baby's cries suddenly turned into ultrasonic attacks. As his eardrums bleed, Daniel sees three women oozing from the rock: Lilith's wire tentacles protruding from under the hem of her Victorian dress, Elena's robotic brain encrusted-in pieces of a samurai sword, and Michiko's kimono open to reveal a bronze womb. Their fingertips stab the baby at the same time, only to be torn apart by space-time turbulence the moment they touch it.
"You are the real matrix." Alex's variant began to carbonize, and ash formed Professor Black's spinal tentacles in the air. "We are nothing but your birth canal."
Daniel's watch completely dissolves, and the black slime forms a triple spiral brand on the palm. When he picked up the Cthulhu baby, the sound of the tsunami in Tokyo Bay suddenly erupted in his cochlea, and the countdown appeared on his retina: 63:00:00. The baby's robotic spider leg piercings into his metallized veins, and in the throes of genetic modifications flash fragments of memories of carving the reverse cross into Michiko's stomach in Heian times, replacing Lilith's wedding ring in industrial Revolution London, and implanting a quantum processor in Elena in the 22nd century.
Footsteps were heard outside the pit. Daniel looked up and saw Michiko standing in the moonlight, her samurai sword rotting in its sheath, the bronze chain between her white hair connecting the clock tower of the Eternal Night City. This time it is my turn to cut off samsara." Tears of blood flowed from the handle of her knife, and the nerve mycelium of the Seboyuan ruins grew on the ground. "Or would you rather be a permanent womb of the void?"
The baby burst into Professor Black's laugh. Daniel felt his womb (even though he didn't physically have it) start to move, and bronze stretch marks spread across his abdomen into old White's pawnshop ledger. Lilith's spider threads shoot out of the ground, tying him up in the pose of the Eternal Night City auction, while Elena's mechanical tentacles dangle down the data interface from the cloud.
"It's time to vote." The voices of the three women overlapped into the chorus of the church organ, "Mother or sacrifice?"
Daniel chewed through the poison capsule in his back tooth - the safety device he hid between his teeth after 73 cycles. The neurotoxin sends the Cthulhu baby screaming into premature labor, and the slimy placenta bursts at the bottom of the pit, releasing a stream of imprisoned time. The reliefs on the rock walls began to rewind history: Michiko's knife marks faded back to raw steel, Elena's mechanical lines decomposed into ore, Lilith's red hair retracted into hair follicles.
As the moonlight resolidified into its normal form, Daniel found himself kneeling in front of the uncontaminated X-7 pit. The Rolex between the wrists moved normally, and the voice of Professor Black reprimanding the team members came from the tent. But when he opened the archaeological journal, the latest page automatically revealed a bronze triple helix symbol and a line of small letters oozing slime:
"The 64th cycle of maternity leave is coming to an end, mother."
Baby Cthulhu's umbilical cord is a bronze time borer. When Daniel cut the living pipe connecting the void, the rock at the bottom of the pit suddenly began secreting memory amniotic fluid. Soaking in the sweet-smelling liquid, he watched his metalized blood vessels bulge under his skin, forming the cogwheel pattern of the clock tower of the Eternal Night City. The Rolex, which had stopped spinning in its wrists, suddenly reverted back to April 15, 1987 - the moment Professor Black signed the autopsy report.
"You never learn."
Lilith's voice oozes from the carbonizing remains of Alex. Her Victorian hemline broke ground, with shards of kimono from Michiko's ancestors hanging from the steel bones. When the robotic spider's leg penetrates Daniel's shoulder blade, the symbiote's genetic memory is forcibly awakened: he sees himself delivering Lilith's mechanical stillbirth in the same position in a previous life.
Elena's quantum processor is raining data from the cloud. Every drop of rain is a coded memory: Daniel salvages his mechanical remains in the Bay of Singapore in the 22nd century, engraves a false sacrifice inscription at a Heian Kyoto shrine, and secretly exchanges Lilith's birth report at an industrial Revolution London hospital. The images seep into his bronze stretch marks with the rain, forming the three-dimensional ledger of Old White's pawnshop on his abdomen.
"How does the fetal movement feel?" Michiko's samurai sword suddenly shoots from the rock wall, and the blade picks off Daniel's protective suit. He saw his belly crawling with the neural circuits of Cyberouin, each end of a synapse connected to the robotic spider legs of Baby Cthulhu. Isn't the delivery room designed well this time round?" The bronze chains tangled between her white hair are cutting into the rock, dragging the entire Cappadocia block toward Tokyo Bay.
Daniel's mouth suddenly smelled of rust. He coughed up a piece of flesh with a cog in it and discovered it was his metallized tonsil. The countdown on the retina suddenly split into three sets of numbers: the left eye showed 63:00:00, the right eye beat the Heian period sundial, and the third eye, newly opened on the forehead, was counting down the death of the Cyberyuan Ruins in binary code.
A baby's cry triggers infrasound resonance. The fabric of the team's tent suddenly came alive, with canvas fibers woven into the tentacles of Professor Black's spine. Daniel, swept up in midair by his tentacles, saw new clusters of bronze coffins growing deep in the crevasse - each covered with his face at a different stage of his life cycle, the latest inscriptions oozing from Elena's mechanical oil.
"Childbirth is the most efficient sacrifice." Lilith's spider legs carved the birth canal into Daniel's abdomen, and the ancient triple helix symbol reacted chemically with Michiko's knife mark, "Every time you refuse, the Void Child gets closer to perfection."
Daniel suddenly bit the tip of his tongue. The pain caused his symbiote to temporarily regain control, and his metalized right hand plunged into his abdomen, ripping out an umbilical cord wrapped around a shard of the katana. When the bronze amniotic fluid splashed onto Michiko's face, her left eye suddenly fell off, revealing a bronze Heian mirror encrusted-a reflection of Daniel's past life inserting a Cthulhu embryo into her ancestor's womb.
"This time... It's different..." Daniel strangles Lilith's robotic spider leg with the umbilical cord, and Elena's data deluge reverses at the moment. It was no longer memories that had fallen from the cloud, but the backdoor programs he had hidden in seventy-two incarnations - the falsified birth records, the falsified artifacts, and the virus code implanted into the genetic strands of the three bride candidates.
Baby Cthulhu suddenly let out Professor Black's screams. Its mechanical spider legs start to fall off, and the pupils of its quantum processor shed rusty tears. As Michiko's katana unintentionally piercings the baby's heart, the blade reveals the destructive processes Daniel has laid down in successive incarnations: the false oracles of the Edo period, the misplaced gears of the Industrial Revolution, the logic bombs of the Cyberage.
"How can you... Poison the umbilical cord..." Lilith's spider legs carbonized into ashes, and a fake Assyrian ring fell out of Victoria's skirt. Elena's mechanical brain falls from the cloud, and a "System formatting" warning scrolls across the quantum processor screen. Michiko fell to her knees before the bronze coffin, the hem of her kimono split open to reveal the rotting brand of emptiness inside.
Daniel's stretch marks on his abdomen suddenly collapsed. The metal vessels degenerate into normal texture, and the countdown clock on the retina returns to zero as a Mobius ring symbol. As he picked up the ring Lilith had left behind, the moonlight in Cappadocia suddenly returned to normal, and Professor Black's real roar came from the tent: "Daniel! Who gave you permission to go down the hole alone?"
But when he opened his palm, the papyrus manuscript was still oozing mucus. The latest text to emerge, in Michiko's handwriting, reads in a variant of Heian kanji: "Next time around, I will put poison on the inside of my wedding ring." The corner of the Madonna relief on the rock wall suddenly bled, frozen into a tiny Cthulhu embryo in the moonlight, quietly watching the intern's trembling back.
The vibrometer at the bottom of the hole suddenly sounded an alarm. Daniel looked down, and the X-ray scan showed a bronze coffin rising 30 meters below the ground -- a Rolex dial with his name engraved in the center of the reverse cross of the lid.