The Island. Los Iluminados' most secret sanctum laboratory.
Unlike the crumbling, gloomy fortresses on the surface, this place was flooded with the harsh glare of surgical lights and lined with cold metal instruments, the air saturated with the sharp reek of preservatives.
Inside the massive cryogenic chamber at the laboratory's core, a mutant the size of a human head drifted in pale blue nutrient solution, its surface a swirl of dark gold and deep red. Countless delicate neural tendrils extended from its body, writhing slowly through the liquid like living things.
This was Saddler's most prized trump card, the origin of all Las Plagas, the true Dominant Species Plaga mother organism.
Osmund Saddler, supreme leader of Los Iluminados, stood before the chamber with his hands clasped behind his back. He wore that ornate black robe embroidered with golden pagan sigils, his gaunt fingers tracing the cold blast-proof glass, his sunken eye sockets brimming with fanaticism and greed.
"Soon... the entire world will bask in the blessing of sacred blood."
He closed his eyes, his thin, withered lips moving faintly. A suffocating wave of psychic force radiated outward like invisible signal, punching through layers of solid rock and open ocean, crossing dozens of kilometers to lock onto the vessel whose veins carried the "holy blood."
...
At the same time, deep inside Salazar Castle, on a spiral stone staircase.
"Aaagh!"
Ashley, following close behind Leon, froze mid-step and let out an agonized scream. Her knees buckled and she dropped onto the flagstones, both hands clamped against her temples, her face draining to white as violent convulsions wracked her body.
"Ashley! What's wrong?!" Leon spun around and knelt beside her, gripping her shoulders.
Sherry and Becky snapped into position ahead, pressing back-to-back in a defensive circle, electromagnetic rifles sweeping every dark corner.
"No hostiles!" Becky reported in a low voice.
"No... don't... get out of my head..." Ashley shook her head in agony, her eyes unfocused and glassy.
Inside her mind, the cold, damp castle corridor vanished. In its place stretched a suffocating expanse of pure darkness.
In that abyss of consciousness, a towering figure materialized, vast and godlike. Saddler held his twisted bone scepter and gazed down at her from above, his voice rolling through the depths of her soul like muffled thunder.
"Poor little lamb..."
His tone dripped with nauseating tenderness and absolute authority. "Did you think that by following those foolish heretics, fleeing the castle, you could flee from the great Holy Lord?"
Ashley trembled in that mental void, staring in despair at the black-robed nightmare before her. The suppressive force rising from deep in her blood left her unable to even conceive of resistance.
"Your blood, your flesh, your soul... everything you are has long been branded with the mark of Los Iluminados." Saddler spread his arms wide like a false god embracing the world. "Cease your futile struggle. Accept your destiny. Become the vessel for this sacred rite..."
Ashley squeezed her eyes shut in despair.
And then, at the exact moment Saddler's fevered sermon was about to reach its crescendo...
"...become the vessel for this sacred rite... hm?"
Ashley cracked her eyes open, and something utterly wrong barged into her field of vision. Absurd didn't begin to cover it.
There, in that oppressive dark void radiating holy menace, right behind the imposing figure of Lord Saddler, someone strolled out of nowhere.
The man wore a well-cut black coat. He wasn't carrying any high-tech weapon. His stride was as casual as if he were popping into the convenience store downstairs.
And in his right hand, held loosely at his side, was a red, square, slightly chipped, faintly cement-dusted... brick.
The despair in Ashley's eyes short-circuited. Even her trembling stopped.
She stared blankly at the man in black. "Uncle Ryan?"
Ryan ambled up behind Saddler without hurry. He didn't assume any tactical stance, didn't flare with some terrifying aura. He looked at Saddler the way you'd look at a fire hydrant blocking the sidewalk, and with a motion that was supremely casual yet supremely forceful, he wound up and swung the brick.
The brick cut through the silence of the mental space with a blunt whoosh of displaced air.
The impact detonated inside Ashley's mind like a bomb, a dull, meaty, skull-rattling crack that made her scalp tingle just hearing it.
Saddler's magnificent silhouette, dripping with gravitas only a second ago, went rigid the instant brick met the back of his skull.
Then Los Iluminados' all-powerful cult leader, master of countless followers' lives and deaths, didn't even manage a scream before he launched forward like a sack of dirty laundry, face-first, and slapped flat against the "floor" of the void with a wet smack.
The image froze.
Froze on Saddler's twisted expression of utter disbelief as he lay sprawled on the ground, and on the red brick still shedding little flakes of cement dust in Ryan's hand.
Ashley's brain blue-screened.
Lambs. Destiny. Sacred rites. All of it shattered against the most primitive, most unreasonable act of physical exorcism imaginable.
...
"Ah!"
On the castle staircase in the real world, Ashley sucked in a sharp breath and her eyes snapped back into focus.
The psychic projection had been physically interrupted.
"Ashley! Are you okay? Can you hear me?" Leon shook her shoulders.
Ashley gasped for air, looked at Leon's tense face, then at Sherry and Becky standing guard with their rifles. The raw terror in her eyes was gone, replaced by a bewilderment she couldn't put into words.
"I... I'm fine..." She swallowed, her expression beyond strange. "I think I just saw... that cult leader get his skull caved in from behind by Uncle Ryan. With a brick."
"...What?" Leon said.
Sherry and Becky exchanged a look and quietly lowered their electromagnetic rifles.
No need to guess. There was exactly one person who would do something like that, with that particular tool.
...
Back on the Island, in the underground laboratory.
Two halves of a broken red brick clattered onto the spotless alloy floor.
Ryan dusted the cement powder off his hands, then looked down at Saddler, who lay face-down in front of the Dominant Species Plaga's cryogenic chamber, the lump on the back of his skull swelling visibly by the second.
The almighty cult leader was twitching on the ground like an upended toad, his ornate black robe covered in brick dust Ryan had brought as a souvenir.
"Crawling into people's heads to run your mouth every damn day. Annoying."
Ryan snorted in contempt. He didn't bother finishing Saddler off, just stepped over him the way you'd step over a bag of garbage and kept walking.
For a mutant who thought he'd mastered the power of a god, having his spell broken by raw physical violence was more humiliating than death.
Ryan's gaze passed over the "speed bump" at his feet and settled on the cryogenic chamber glowing with blue light. The dark-gold Dominant Species Plaga mother organism slept quietly inside.
He reached out and placed his hand on the chamber's release panel, the corner of his mouth curling upward.
"Now this is the real prize."
Behind him, Saddler's bony fingers clawed desperately at the alloy floor, his throat producing a strangled, humiliated gurgling. The parasites in his body were scrambling to repair his damaged nerves, but that brutally unreasonable blow to the back of his skull made standing up a distant luxury.
The cult leader who'd schemed to rule the world never could have imagined that his path to godhood would be put on pause by a red brick picked up from a construction site on the Island.
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