Istanbul's spice market is bathed in the afterglow of morning prayers. Daniel Harper crouches in front of a spice stand, the scent of saffron and cinnamon masking the rust of bronze lines under his skin. He kept his right index finger pressed against the inside of his left wrist, where the nerve blocker he had brought with him from Cyberyuan Ruins was buried, and whenever the countdown number began to mutate, the microelectric current would burn a wave of sober pain.
"The goods you were looking for have arrived." The vendor lifts the saffron sack to reveal a rusted bronze casket beneath. There is a Heian copper coin embedded in the center of the reverse cross on the face of the box, and the money hole oozes Elena's style of mechanical lubricating oil. When Daniel touched the coin, the noise of the spice market was suddenly silenced, and the lips of all the traders repeated in synchro: "Old White says hello."
Inside the bronze case is parchment rolled and soaked in formalin. The moment it unfolded, the countdown on Daniel's retina was suddenly covered with a Heian period sundial projection, with the crest of the Michiko family swimming between the numbers of 62:59:59. The old Latin on the parchment is being reorganized into modern English carved by Lilith's mechanical spider legs:
"Void Delivery Protocol · 7th Revised Edition"
Article 14: When the mother develops resistance, a fourth candidate balance spiral should be introduced.
The spice bag suddenly burst, and saffron powder condensed in the air into the shape of Tokyo Tower. Daniel looked up to see the stall owner's pupils split into triple spirals, the lines of old White's pawnshop ledger raised under his skin. It's time for you to pay the balance." The voice of the stall owner mingled with the bell of the Eternal Night City, "With the memory silver coin of August 15, 2023."
Daniel's back teeth are slightly sore. It's a poison capsule he implanted five times ago, and it contains Professor Black's real autopsy report. When he reached for his pocket, the whole spice market suddenly tilted, the ground oozed bronze amniotic fluid, and the bones of the stall owner were mutating into the form of Cthulhu larvae.
"You're still so impatient."
The woman in the gypsy dress suddenly took Daniel's arm, and the violet perfume neutralized the air of emptiness and corruption. Her silver bracelets are engraved with a triple helix crossed with a samurai sword, and a pocket watch dangling from her earlobes reverses the tidal cycle of Tokyo Bay. Come with me. The mother shouldn't bleed outside the delivery room."
After passing through the seven secret doors, the smell of the underground chamber reminds Daniel of the nerve execution ground in Cyberyuan Ruins. The gypsy woman lights a whale oil lamp, revealing a wall of symbionts - each jar filled with Cthulhu embryos in different stages, labeled in epochal text: "Product of the 19th cycle," "Elena's genetic contamination," "Michiko's knife mark variant."
"My name is Sylar, the Time Poisoner." She lifted her cuffs, and the skin on her forearms was covered with star-shaped scars from the injections, "specifically for defiant bride candidates... Special abortion pills."
Daniel noticed that her bronze stretch marks were more complex than her own, interspersed with cyberinterfaces and peace charms. As Sera mixes the potion, the liquid in the still reflects fragments of her past lives: a Victorian midwife, a late-Heisei pharmacist, a Cyberage genetic pirate.
"It was purified from the stillborn fetus of Lilith's seventh miscarriage." Serra pushes the indigo potion across the table, with tiny robotic spider legs suspended inside." Drinking it will temporarily cut the umbilical cord of the void, and the side effects are..." She suddenly stabbed herself in the abdomen with a scalpel, and the resulting Cthulhu embryo twitched on the table top, "causing a temporal rejection reaction."
The chamber suddenly shook, and the jars on the wall burst. Daniel watched the embryos in the formalian pool come to life en masse, mechanical spider legs and katana tentacles tearing through the glass. Sylar overturned the medicine cabinet, spilling powder that burned in the air into a map of the streets of Eternal Night City: "Take the back door! To the Galata Bridge for the ferryman!"
On the way to escape, Daniel's back neck was torn by the mutant embryo three blood mouths. When blood dripped down the flagstone road, a tsunami warning map for Tokyo Bay was automatically drawn. When he rushed into the dock warehouse, he found that the so-called ferriman was an old man in a waterproof suit - his mechanical prosthetic eye was broadcasting images of Daniel poisoning during the Heian period, and half of Michiko's broken knife was exposed from his left breast pocket.
"The ticket is a memory." The ferryman spread out his palms, inside which lay a rusty Rolex gear. "I want those thirty-seven seconds when you stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 2015."
With the roar of the freighter's engine starting, Daniel hands over the memory. When the gear pierced his temple, he saw himself sneaking into the gallery in a previous life dressed as a janitor and replacing the painting with symbiotic slime. The real Mona Lisa, curled into a shaft and stuffed into a bronze coffin, sits at the bottom of Tokyo Bay, its smile transformed into Cthulhu's.
As the freighter sails into the Bosphorus, storm clouds suddenly open Elena's quantum pupils. Sylar's voice came over the radio, mixed with the cacophony of flesh and blood: "The potion only lasts 48 hours... To the Venetian maskmaker... What he sells..." The signal is cut off by void interference and replaced by Lilith humming the Requiem.
Daniel crouched in the corner of the cargo hold, bronze sweat oozing from his injected veins. His retinal countdown split into a double projection: a positive 62:59:59 below, quietly spawned a new blood number - 48:00:00. As he ran his fingers over the damp bulkhead, the rust arranged itself into Serra's last words:
"All antidotes are more hidden poisons."
At the height of the storm, Daniel found bronze coffins piled on the bottom floor of the cargo hold. Each lid was plastered with a picture of a different bride candidate, the latest one with a Lilith smile from the viewing window, Michiko's samurai sword in her midriff and the Venetian mask bazaar reflected in her pupils.
The bronze coffins on the bottom floor of the freighter move in unison during the storm. Daniel Harper's retinal countdown has been eroded by sea salt, and the edge of the blood number 48:00 has grown into capillaries in the Venetian waterway. When he touched the viewing window of Serra's coffin, the glass suddenly softened and oosed violet-scented cerebrospinal fluid - a neurotoxin Serra had made as a poisoner.
"You always need a souvenir."
Serra's body suddenly opened its eyes, the pupils of the family emblem on the handle of the samurai sword on its abdomen spinning into a Venetian carnival mask. Her fingers pierced the glass and pressed the half-melted bronze coat to Daniel's chest. A new memory flashes through the pain: nineteenth century Serra in a Venetian workshop, making plague doctor masks out of the slime of Cthulhu embryos.
From the deck came the sound of Professor Black's footsteps, mixed with the greasy sound of dragging mechanical tentacles. Daniel prys open the nearest porthole and leaps into the storm, where the salty water shorts out the bronze circuits of stretch marks. As he surfaced, storm clouds split the Venetian mask bazaar reflections, and the ripples of the canal were translating his countdown into Gothic numbers.
The high tide in Piazza SAN Marco soaked the heels of Daniel's boots. The masker's workshop is hidden behind the third arch stone of the Bridge of Sighs, and the door ring is a patina covered symbiont specimen. When Daniel knocks on the door ring, the mask suddenly activates, and mechanical spider legs rip open his protective suit, revealing the gradually bronzing skin on his abdomen.
"A new client recommended by the poisoner?" A withered hand wrapped in memory film stuck out of the door. "The deposit I want is your breathing rate at the British Museum in 2018."
The walls of the workshop are full of mutated masks: the plague doctor's beak protrudes a quantum processor, the Venetian maiden's face is encrusted with fragments of a samurai sword, and the blood moon of the Eternal Night City flows beneath the golden mask. The maskmaker's stooped back is polishing a new work - the mask is clearly made of artificial uterine membranes, with the inverse cross that Daniel carved during the Heian period.
"I want something that can cut the umbilical cord." Daniel's voice was buzzing with bronze resonance. His stretch marks suddenly twitched, spelling Serra's last words onto his skin.
The masker lights the whale oil lamp, revealing evidence of Daniel's guilt in his past life: his Edo self, wearing a Noh mask, stuffing a Cthulhu embryo into a geisha's folding fan; Dressed as a plague doctor during the Industrial Revolution, replacing Lilith's amniotic fluid with a syringe; Cyberera wore a golden mask to Elena's brain-computer interface conference.
"Here's the cure." The maskmaker tapped on the bronze casket under his work. The keyhole was a cross section of a triple spiral symbiote. "But on your fourth turn, Michiko chopped it up and sank it into the Grand Canal."
The canal outside the workshop suddenly boils. Daniel saw Professor Black's spinal tentacles turning over the gondola, each with a Venetian maiden mask on the end. His symbiotes activate uncontrollably, the slime tentacles entwining the ceiling pendant, dragging the workshop deep into the Grand Canal.
"Catch this!" The maskmaker threw an unfinished artificial womb mask, "Put it on for the lace barmaid, who remembers all the sunken time keys!"
As Daniel jumps into the canal, salt water fills the mask's breathing valve. The artificial uterus suddenly contracted, fusing his facial skin with the bronze foetus. The countdown on the retina is overlaid into a map of Venice's waterways, with each tributary marked with a different time debt. As he swam across the Rijato Bridge, lacy corpses floated in the shadows beneath the hole - the barge-woman's robotic hand holding a half-sword, the blade of which was carved with Serra's Victorian signature.
"You are twenty-three times late." The barmaid's voice mixed with the underwater resonance of the organ. Out of her lace hemline swam a baby Cthulhu, a tortoiseshell box filled with the key to time. When Daniel touches the lid of the box, stretch marks tear, bronze blood stains the canal, and Professor Black's tentacles explode.
The mask suddenly secretes digestive enzymes. The skin of Daniel's face is fused with the artificial uterus, and his pupils split into a Venetian carnival pattern. He snatches half of the barwoman's sword and thrusts it into his abdomen. The moment the bronze birthcoat bursts, the tide of the Grand Canal suddenly reverses, sending Professor Black's tentacles back into the medieval catacombs.
In the sunken cemetery of SAN Michele, Daniel finds the last piece of the key. When the full key is inserted into the bronze case, a miniature model of the city of Eternal Night rises inside the case - the top of the clock tower is the samurai sword inherited by the Michiko family. The model suddenly activated, the cogs snapping and Elena's mechanical sneer: "Congratulations, you just gave birth to a new void child."
The remains of the mask workshop suddenly surfaced. Daniel saw the maskmaker's corpse in a golden mask, clutching a piece of parchment softened by salt water. The faded Venetian language records the oldest of betrayals: the first poisoner was the model for Lilith, who in the 14th century used a mask workshop to cover up the void birthing rooms.
As Daniel puts on the Plague Doctor mask left behind by the maskmaker, the Venetian moon phase suddenly distorts into Serra's face. The architectural glass on both sides of the canal burst simultaneously, each piece of broken glass reflecting its own incarnation in a different cycle, all mirrored with bronze stretch marks on their bellies.
"Time to go back to the delivery room, Mother."
Professor Black's voice came from an undersea cable. Daniel looked down to see the bronze coffins at the bottom of the Grand Canal. From the observation window of the latest one, Serra was waving from a masked, empty baby. His stretch marks burst into a nuclear blue light, and the countdown to 48:00 began to flow faster - the bells of Venice's carnival, now perfectly synchronized with the cries of childbirth in Tokyo Bay.