Chapter 158: Cartel Wars and Cultist Hunters
The sea off the Mexican Pacific coast was calm, black, and endless.
Far beyond the shipping lanes, a massive fleet drifted silently across the waves, invisible to satellites, radar, and human eyes.
A memetic shroud rippled faintly over the armada, bending light, perception, and even thought itself. To the world, it simply did not exist.
Beneath the surface of that illusion, hundreds of soldiers moved in perfect rhythm across the decks of warships marked with the discreet insignia of the Global Occult Coalition. The air was thick with discipline and tension. No one spoke louder than a whisper.
At the center of the fleet, aboard the flagship GOCV Prometheus, a single corridor led to a reinforced door guarded by over fifty elite operators, each wearing adaptive armor and psychic dampeners.
Beyond that door was a meeting room secured with every countermeasure known to man and several that weren't.
General Roberto Sánchez of CALMECAC, the Mexican anomalous agency, walked down that corridor, flanked by two of his senior officers and a representative from the Office of the Presidency.
Their steps echoed against the steel floor. Their faces were tense, pale under the cold fluorescent lights. None of them spoke.
The entire Mexican delegation looked like men on their way to a funeral.
At the end of the hall stood a young man in a dark navy suit with the silver emblem of the GOC pinned to his chest.
When he saw him, Roberto almost smiled, relief and desperation blending awkwardly together.
He extended a hand.
"Thank you, Undersecretary General, for agreeing to mediate this meeting. Without you, I honestly don't know what I'd have done. The Foundation has gone insane, they massacred an entire military base full of my men."
DC. Al Fine took the offered hand, his expression calm but distant. His voice, when he spoke, carried the practiced neutrality of a man used to balancing apocalypse.
"I'll be honest with you, General," he said. "I'm surprised the Foundation even agreed to let me mediate. They don't need to. They don't owe anyone explanations, not even me. And they have the kind of strength that makes me hesitate."
He smiled faintly, not unkindly.
"But luckily for you, I have a good relationship with the Administrator. I'm confident we can resolve this… incident."
Roberto nodded slowly. "I hope so."
Together, they walked into the meeting room.
The chamber was spacious, circular, its walls lined with kinetic dampeners and psionic wards.
The hum of thaumaturgic machinery filled the silence, a low vibration felt more in the bones than the ears.
As DC entered, his gaze flicked instinctively toward the far end of the room and froze.
Two men in black suits stood motionless on either side of a single empty chair. Their faces were completely obscured by blank tactical masks, their posture inhumanly still.
The GOC aide accompanying DC reacted instantly, drawing his sidearm.
"How the hell did you-"
DC raised a hand without looking. "Easy. They're Foundation agents."
The aide hesitated, then reluctantly holstered his weapon.
He muttered, half to himself, "I'm going to have a very serious conversation with the head of the Physics Division after this…"
DC ignored him and stepped forward.
The group took their seats, Roberto and his officers on one side, the two silent Foundation agents on the other.
Between them sat DC. The table felt like a fault line between two worlds.
He exhaled, adjusting his tie slightly.
"Well," he said, "where is the Administrator?"
For a moment, there was only the faint hum of the ship's engines.
Then, a voice answered.
It came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"I'm here."
The lights dimmed.
A shadow seeped across the floor, spreading like spilled ink, pooling beneath the empty chair between the two agents.
The air pressure dropped, every electronic device in the room flickered.
Slowly, the shadow rose, forming the outline of a man.
Its shape solidified, features taking form, until it became almost human, save for two eyes of pure, blinding white that opened and fixed directly on General Sánchez.
The Mexican general froze. A cold pressure crushed his chest, as if the ocean itself had leaned down to stare at him.
He could barely breathe.
Then, those eyes turned to DC.
The shadow's voice was calm, composed, utterly unhurried.
"I'm not late, am I?"
DC sighed quietly and gave a thin smile.
"Right on time."
The silence in the conference room stretched thin, taut as wire.
Every breath felt amplified beneath the hum of the ship's engines.
The Administrator sat in complete stillness, his white eyes faintly aglow against the dim light.
DC. Al Fine was the first to speak.
"Administrator," he said calmly, hands folded on the table, "thank you for coming."
The shadowed figure inclined his head slightly. "I did not come out of courtesy, Director. I came because delay breeds complication."
Across the table, General Roberto Sánchez shifted in his chair. His uniform was pressed, his medals gleamed faintly, but his composure was cracking.
"With all due respect," he said, voice tight, "what you call 'complication,' we call mass murder. You annihilated one of our bases, two hundred soldiers, gone. Mexicans. My men."
Leonard's gaze drifted toward him, calm, unhurried, but heavy enough that Sánchez instinctively lowered his eyes.
"They were armed," Leonard said. "They kidnapped my agents first."
"They were defending national ground," Sánchez shot back, his voice rising. "They didn't even know who they were fighting."
"They knew enough to open fire on my people," Leonard replied, voice flat as glass. "That's not defense, General. That's poor judgment."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop. Even the two masked Foundation agents behind him stood unnaturally still, like carved statues.
Sánchez leaned forward, anger finally breaking through his restraint. "You talk about judgment, but what gives you the right? You act as if you're above the law, as if no government can hold you accountable!"
Leonard's tone didn't change.
"The Foundation exists because no government can handle what we face. That's the point."
One of the CALMECAC officers slammed his hand on the table. "That doesn't justify slaughter!"
The Administrator finally looked up. His eyes, white, depthless, locked onto the man.
"Do you think I wanted to kill them?" Leonard asked quietly. "If I had wanted that, General, your entire country would already be ash."
Silence. The words hung there, heavy and absolute.
DC finally interjected, his tone carefully measured. "Gentlemen."
He turned toward Leonard. "Administrator, I think we can agree emotions are high. But the Mexican government has the right to demand an explanation for this… incident."
Leonard's gaze shifted toward him, expression unreadable. "Then let me simplify the explanation: they captured a Foundation agent. That was a mistake."
DC met his stare evenly. "A mistake that cost hundreds of lives."
"A mistake," Leonard repeated, "that will never be repeated."
Roberto's hand trembled against the table. "So that's it? You burn a base, and call it 'a mistake corrected'?"
Leonard tilted his head slightly. "General Sánchez, I suggest you interpret it as a warning, not a policy."
DC's assistant shifted uncomfortably beside him, glancing at the motionless Foundation guards. The tension was a living thing, crawling under everyone's skin.
DC sighed softly, leaning back in his chair. "You've made your point clear, Administrator. But what isn't clear, at least to me, is why the Foundation deployed a team of this caliber in Mexico in the first place."
He paused, watching Leonard carefully. "You don't send men like that for minor anomalies or rogue cartels. You send them for something far worse."
The air seemed to still completely.
Even the hum of the engines felt quieter, as though the ship itself was waiting for an answer.
Leonard's white eyes turned toward him, slow, deliberate.
DC continued, voice calm but edged with curiosity.
"So tell me, Administrator… what is the Foundation really doing in Mexico?"
Leonard looked between the two men, DC and Roberto, then exhaled softly, as though tired of pretense.
"SCP-001," he said.
The words hit the room like a detonation.
The temperature, already cold, plunged lower still.
For a moment, no one breathed.
The hum of the ship's systems became the only sound, faint and distant, like something retreating.
General Sánchez went pale, his knuckles white against the table.
Even DC froze mid-thought.
Roberto stammered, voice cracking: "SCP-001… in Mexico…?"
DC turned toward Leonard slowly, every trace of calm professionalism bleeding into disbelief.
"Please," he said quietly, "tell me it's not The Scar-"
Leonard cut him off, tone sharp, final.
"Don't say its name."
The air trembled faintly at his voice, as though something vast had just brushed past the ship.
He continued, slower now. "Even though memory before the System is protected by the System, speaking its name directly is… another matter. And no, it's not that one."
Both DC and Roberto released a tense breath, but it didn't bring relief, only dread.
DC cleared his throat, voice quieter now. "Then… is it the one of the Sun going rogue? Or The Beautiful World?"
Leonard shook his head once. "Neither."
His white eyes dimmed slightly. "It's not one that will destroy humanity or the planet immediately. But make no mistake, it carries the potential to end every living thing in the universe. Eventually."
The words hung in the air, heavy and absolute.
DC's expression hardened, jaw tightening. Roberto looked shattered, his breathing shallow.
Leonard went on. "It first manifested during the Manhattan Crisis, two and a half months ago. I confronted it there during the final battle."
DC stood abruptly, chair scraping against the floor. "Wait, that enormous energy surge that erupted above the Empire State Building, the one that knocked out the entirety of New York-"
Leonard's tone remained calm. "Yes. That was me. Fighting SCP-001."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
DC sat back down slowly, eyes distant, his mind racing through every classified report, every sealed incident log.
Across the table, his assistant's pen scratched furiously over paper, his face ghost-pale, hands shaking.
No one dared to speak for several seconds.
Only the soft vibration of the ocean outside filled the room and somewhere deep in the hull, the ship groaned, as if echoing the weight of what had just been said.
Leonard's gaze never left Roberto. The words slid out flat, precise.
"The agents you kidnapped belong to the MTF I specifically created to hunt SCP-001. By taking one of them, you interfered with that task force's operation."
Roberto's face drained of color. He kept his head bowed, mouth moving as if searching for a reply he did not have.
Leonard continued, voice low, every syllable measured. "Do you know Sin Nombre?"
DC's hand tightened on the table. "The anomalous cartel that recently threw the country into open war?"
Leonard nodded once. "Yes. We discovered they are tied to SCP-001."
The table fell into a silence so thick it felt like a physical weight. DC's jaw worked. He turned to his aide without taking his eyes from Leonard.
"Summon my entire office. Two hours," he said in a tone that brooked no argument.
The aide snapped to attention and left the cabin, phone already in hand.
DC turned back to Leonard. "You know what I'm about to propose."
Leonard sighed, a soft, weary sound. "You want a Joint Task Force."
DC's nod was curt. "We'll mediate, we'll provide assets. But the priority is neutralizing Sin Nombre. I can make the fleet and a strike team available to the JTF. You will lead the operation, your people know SCP-001 better than we do."
Leonard's white eyes regarded him, unflinching. "Understood."
They reached the agreement with a few more formalities, channels, jurisdiction, plausible deniability, the mechanics of secrecy being easier for both men than the moral weight of what they were about to sanction. When the signatures were not yet inked but the decision already made, a small, hopeful voice cut the air.
"Sir, may I participate in the JTF as well?"
Roberto's request was fragile, almost a grovel.
Leonard and DC answered in perfect synchrony, two dry, identical refusals that landed like iron.
"No way."
Leonard added, blunt and unembellished, "No offense, but your units are neither equipped nor trained for an operation of this magnitude."
DC's agreement came without hesitation. "I stand by that."
Roberto went still for a moment, frustration sharpening the lines of his face. He swallowed, then bowed his head and forced out, "I will mobilize my forces to support your JTF."
He sounded defeated and determined all at once, a man offering what he could when what he wanted was forbidden.
Across the table, Leonard inclined his head once. The decision was made.
---
The safehouse at Lázaro Cárdenas didn't look like much from the outside, just another forgotten fishing warehouse near the docks, its walls bleached by the sun and salt. Inside, it was a different world. Weapons lined the racks. Tactical gear hung from hooks. Coffee brewed in a dented steel pot that had probably seen more combat than most soldiers.
Ethan woke to the smell of it and to the sound of someone knocking on his skull with a metal cup.
He groaned. "If that's you, Clef, I swear I'll-"
"Wrong psychopath," came an Irish drawl.
Ethan blinked blearily. O'Rourke was standing infront him, grin sharp as ever, mug in hand, sleeves rolled to the elbows. "Morning, sunshine. You look like someone drop-kicked you through a cartel war. Oh wait-"
Ethan squinted. "How do you even know about that?"
O'Rourke took a sip of coffee. "Rookie, please. You think something like that stays quiet in Nu-1? Half the unit's been laughing for three days straight. The other half's trying to figure out how you're still alive."
Ethan sat up slowly on the couch, rubbing his eyes. His whole body felt like it had been assembled wrong. "That's great. I always dreamed of being the team mascot."
"Oh, you are," O'Rourke said with a smirk. " 'The Guy Who Fell Without a Chute and Still Complained About the Landing.' Real inspiring story. Even the vice-commander chuckled."
That got Ethan's attention. "Wait. He laughed?"
O'Rourke leaned closer, mock-serious. "Didn't say he smiled. Just… exhaled through the nose. But for him, that's basically a belly laugh."
Ethan groaned and dragged himself upright. The safehouse wasn't glamorous, bare walls, half-working lights, dust, oil, and gunpowder, but it was alive. It smelled like the field, not like fear. Operators moved through the halls, cleaning weapons, checking comms gear, or eating from ration packs that had probably expired a decade ago.
When Ethan stepped into the common room, conversation rippled briefly, then quieted.
A few heads turned. A couple of smirks. Someone whispered "Airborne" under their breath, and the room snorted.
A few members were playing foosball on a crooked table patched with duct tape. Two others lounged on an old couch watching a static-filled news feed, the Mexican anchors talking about cartel wars no one in this room had actually started (officially). One tech was asleep with his laptop still open, a half-eaten protein bar stuck to his cheek.
And there, sitting backward on a chair, shirt unbuttoned, shades on, was Clef.
"Morning, rookie," he said without looking up from his glass. "You're famous."
Ethan eyed the drink. "Is that… tequila? It's eight in the morning."
Clef smiled faintly. "It's five somewhere."
O'Rourke dropped into a seat beside another operator, muttering, "See? Role model material."
Ethan just sighed. He'd survived a hijacking, a bull, a cartel, a military base, and somehow this man still annoyed him most.
He was halfway through pouring himself a cup of the sludge they called coffee when the room shifted.
The far door opened.
Boots. Heavy, measured, echoing against concrete. Conversation died like someone had flipped a switch.
The man who stepped in didn't need an introduction. The faint glow from the lines of his half-dismantled exosuit cast long shadows across the room. Even stripped of full armor, he looked more machine than human, reinforced frame, carbon mesh plates, the faint hum of energy cells embedded in the gauntlets. His face was clean, expression unreadable, eyes sharp enough to cut through silence itself.
Commander Pyro.
He walked to the center of the room, the operators of Nu-1 instinctively standing a little straighter.
No one spoke. Even Clef lowered his glass and took off his sunglasses.
Pyro's gaze moved across them one by one, each quiet in their own way. Then his voice broke the silence, calm, low, carrying weight like a drawn blade.
"Everyone," he said. "Briefing room. Now."
No yelling. No threat. Just command.
Chairs scraped back immediately. Cups set down. The laughter and teasing vanished, replaced by the synchronized precision that only came from years under fire.
Ethan followed the others down the narrow hall. Clef stretched once, muttered "Here we go again," and trailed behind, still carrying his drink.
They filed into the briefing room in a loose, quiet line, boots thudding, chairs scraping, the low murmur of men settling in after too many sleepless nights. The place looked like a classroom stolen from some forgotten military academy: rows of metal chairs, a battered whiteboard covered in marker stains, a projector perched on a crate, and a large map spread across a long table like the autopsy of a country.
No logos. No insignias. No bullshit.
Just Nu-1.
Pyro stood at the front with the vice-commander at his shoulder, arms crossed, visor dim, expression hidden but the pressure in the room shifted the moment he was there. Conversations died. Chairs stopped moving. Even the projector's hum sounded quiet around him.
When Pyro spoke, it wasn't loud, but it rolled through the room like a slow detonation.
"Now that you're all here," he began, voice flat, steady, and devoid of any warmth, "we get to business."
A single click.
The projector flickered to life. Harsh white light spilled across the screen.
"Target: Sin Nombre," Pyro continued. "While some of you were… busy igniting a cartel war", his helmet tilted toward Clef's direction without actually turning, "our first infiltration teams slipped in and started digging."
A few snickers broke the silence. Ethan sank a little lower in his seat.
Pyro ignored them.
"What we found is enough to confirm a preliminary picture of their structure. Hierarchy. Capabilities. Recruitment. Funding. And…" He paused, letting the weight of the next words build. "…how deeply the anomalous rot runs."
He clicked again.
Images flashed, ritual circles, modified weapons, bodies twisted in impossible ways.
"We've confirmed it: Sin Nombre worships SCP-001."
No reaction at first. Then the room tensed, muscles tightening, jaws clenching, eyes narrowing.
"They treat it as their god," Pyro continued. "And in exchange for loyalty, they receive power."
He leaned slightly forward, voice dropping into something razor-thin.
"This is not hyperbole. Not symbolism. Not cartel mysticism. It is real."
Even Clef, slouched with one foot on a chair, stopped tapping his fingers.
Pyro changed the slide.
"We've got ten priority targets."
One after another, ten faces appeared, some grainy photos, some sketches, all marked with red indicators and short dossiers.
"These ten individuals are capture-or-kill on sight. Each of them is either empowered by or directly connected to the SCP-001 influence within Sin Nombre."
The next slide came up.
A single silhouette. Human-like..
"At the top sits their leader," Pyro said. "Alias: La Loba. No confirmed ID. No confirmed birthplace. No confirmed anomalous classification. What we do know is that she oversees all rituals connected to SCP-001 and as so, has been temporarily classified as SCP-001-Charlie."
Murmurs rippled through the room. Someone muttered, "Great. After narcoterrorists, we've got narcocultists."
Pyro continued, unbothered.
"The Administrator has dispatched an intelligence support team to assist with identification and tracking. Expect updates daily."
He clicked again.
Next slide: A GOC emblem.
"We will also be coordinating with a GOC Strike Team. For anyone unfamiliar…" His tone flattened even more. "…picture a UN-funded, less-intelligent, more trigger-happy version of us. Extermination specialists. Minimal subtlety. Maximum paperwork."
A low whistle slid from the back row.
"Huh," someone whispered, "Sounds like the commander really doesn't like them."
Pyro didn't deny it.
"We will additionally receive light support from CALMECAC and Valravn Corporation, both under Mexican anomalous jurisdiction. They will not be involved in containment tasks. Their role is external support and defensive only."
His helmet swept the room.
"Any questions?"
The silence that followed felt like the stillness before a storm.
No one raised a hand. No one spoke.
Dozens of operators stared back at Pyro, grim, focused, prepared to kill or die without complaint.
Only the projector hummed, casting shifting shadows across their faces.
Pyro nodded once.
"Good," he said. "Gear up. We start tonight."
---
Three weeks passed like smoke through gunmetal.
The first week burned the fastest.
Sin Nombre was everywhere, on walls, in whispers, in the blood running down gutters. Pyro split Nu-1 into strike cells, each ghosting through Michoacán like shadows with guns. Clef, Dmitri, and Ethan hit stash houses in the dark, the kind of places that smelled of gasoline and old prayers. They burned papers, smashed phones, and vanished before sunrise. When a safehouse exploded outside Zamora, the cartel thought it was a rival hit. It wasn't. It was Nu-1 testing the water.
By mid-week, Valravn contractors had slipped into the picture, their armored trucks rolling under false plates, while the GOC Strike Team ran frontal raids the Foundation didn't want to be seen doing. The joint ops were uneasy, Foundation ghosts and UN muscle never mixed well but they got results. One raid pulled a priest out of a burning chapel. He screamed about "La Loba," about offerings, about a "moon that drinks the soul." When Pyro heard the recording, his jaw tightened.
By the seventh night, cartel radios were choking with panic. Someone was tearing through their lines, cutting off supply routes, killing mid-rank leaders like they were cattle. The only clue left behind were the corpses of their own left behind, something the cartel assumed was an attack from the Mexican special forces.
The second week was quieter, deadlier.
Sin Nombre fought back. Convoys vanished in the hills. Civilians started dying again. The JTF traced the attacks to Tartarean energy laced into cartel drugs, powders that glowed faint red when burned. Ethan learned to spot them by smell alone. Clef led a midnight infiltration into one of the labs. They came out an hour later, faces blackened, the building collapsing behind them.
GOC analysts tried to model Sin Nombre's hierarchy, but every pattern ended in the same blank space, a symbol instead of a name, a circle with a line through it. RAISA cross-referenced it with past 001-related events and found resonance markers identical to those seen over Manhattan two months ago left behind by the Chaos Insurgency.
SCP-001's influence wasn't local. It was global.
By the twelfth day, Pyro had turned the JTF into a machine. Teams rotated through operations like clockwork: hit, vanish, reappear two cities away. Foundation assets pulled satellite feeds, CALMECAC quietly cleaned up civilian messes, and Valravn's gunships patrolled the coast under false IFFs. Mexico's military thought it was a new wave of cartel infighting. The truth was much worse.
The third week felt like a fever dream.
La Loba's people grew desperate. Ritual killings increased. Bodies were found with moon-shaped scars carved into their chests. Pyro ordered simultaneous strikes, six sites across the state, from mountain villas to coastal warehouses. The GOC provided the explosions. Nu-1 provided precision.
One night, O'Rourke's team breached a chapel built under an abandoned sugar mill. Dozens of worshippers in white masks turned to them in eerie synchrony. Ethan's rifle spoke first. When it was over, only one cultist still breathed. O'Rourke knelt beside him, voice calm. "Where's La Loba?"
The man smiled, teeth red. "She's not hiding," he said. "She's waiting for the moon to wake." Then he died.
By the nineteenth day, cartel reprisals hit back hard. Civilians were caught in the crossfire. Pyro didn't sleep that night. The next morning, three of Sin Nombre's lieutenants were found hanging under a bridge, their eyes burned to ash. No one claimed responsibility, but every operative in Nu-1 knew the commander's handwriting when they saw it.
The final days blurred into chaos, constant ops, blurred borders between allies and enemies. The JTF captured or killed eight of the ten priority targets. Two vanished, presumed dead or hiding. Every city in Michoacán whispered about La Loba now. Every gunman carried a charm with a black crescent on it.
On the twenty-first day, a joint strike flattened one of Sin Nombre's strongholds near the coast. Pyro led the breach himself. When the smoke cleared, the cult's symbols were painted in blood across the floor, forming a circle around a single inscription:
"When the Black Moon howls, all light dies."
Pyro stared at it for a long time.
By the time the fires died and the smoke rolled out to sea, three weeks of shadow war had left Mexico scarred. Sin Nombre wasn't dead, but it was bleeding, hit hard.
---
Somewhere in Michoacan, in an underground chamber, the room trembled with every crash.
Wood shattered. Bottles burst. The air smelled of gunpowder, sweat, and blood.
La Loba was a storm in human form or something close to it.
Her boots crushed splinters and shards of glass as she slammed another crate against the wall, the echo rattling through the dimly lit cavern. A dozen men stood near the entrance, heads bowed, too afraid to move. None dared speak.
The firelight cast her shadow long against the stone, a woman's silhouette, but wrong around the edges, the faint outline of fur rippling under her skin when she breathed. Her amber eyes burned like twin suns.
She kicked a steel drum so hard it rolled across the cave, denting the far wall.
"¡Malditos inútiles!" she roared. "Months of hard work! and for what? A massacre! A massacre! My people dead, my shipments gone, my allies scattered and my cartel heavily damaged!"
She spun toward them, teeth bared, hair falling wildly across her face.
"-and you stand there doing nothing!"
One of her lieutenants, trembling, finally broke.
"Señora… maybe… maybe we should withdraw. Leave Michoacán for now. Regroup in-"
His words never finished.
La Loba blurred.
Her right hand twisted mid-air, bones cracking, flesh stretching into a massive, furred claw that flashed once under the lantern light.
A wet sound followed.
The man's throat opened in a single, clean slash.
He fell to his knees, eyes wide, choking on his own blood.
La Loba didn't even glance down.
She exhaled, slow and furious, flexing her clawed fingers before they folded back into a human hand.
"Anyone else feel like suggesting cowardice?" she asked softly.
No one answered. No one even breathed.
Minutes passed. Only the crackling of oil lamps filled the silence.
Finally, she sat down at a heavy wooden table covered in maps, cigars, and half-burnt documents. Her fingers drummed against the surface, slow and rhythmic.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Her mind raced behind her cold, predatory stare.
Then she reached into her coat, pulled out a sleek black phone, and scrolled through a contact list filled with encrypted numbers.
She stopped at one, no name, just an icon: a red triangle with a vertical line through it.
She hesitated for a moment, lips curling into a smile.
Then she pressed Call.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
Then a distorted voice answered.
"…You have five seconds to explain why you're using this channel instead of the System."
La Loba's smile widened, all teeth.
"Because, mi amigo… I have something you want."
"Oh?" the voice drawled, deep and distorted, somewhere between a whisper and static. "Go on."
La Loba leaned back in her chair, one leg crossed over the other, eyes gleaming like a predator in the dark.
"I possess an anomaly with an official SCP designation," she said slowly, savoring each word. "A weapon of mass destruction… if trained properly. I want to exchange it for Chaos Insurgency support."
Silence. The kind that stretched too long, heavy, dangerous. The voice on the other end finally spoke again, cautious but intrigued.
"What kind of weapon are we talking about?"
La Loba's smile widened, feral and cruel.
"The kind with antlers," she purred. "A being who can bring mankind back to the Stone Age with a heartbeat."
Another long pause. This time, the silence felt almost alive, the sound of someone calculating, breathing slowly through a mask, already thinking in logistics and blood.
"When and where will the transaction take place?" the voice asked at last.
"Two nights from now," La Loba said. "A fishing village on the western coast. You'll recognize it, it'll be the only place still standing when I'm done cleaning it."
A soft chuckle crackled through the receiver, cold and mechanical.
"…Deal," the voice replied.
Then the line went dead.
La Loba lowered the phone slowly, her reflection flickering in the cracked screen.
Her grin returned, sharper this time, full of malice and satisfaction.
"Good," she whispered. "Let's see how these fuckers like playing against real monsters."