Police station locker room.
Luke pulled on a fresh uniform.
He stared at his own face in the mirror.
A few days ago he'd been a prisoner trading punches with monsters in the rubble. Now he was back in this goddamn badge and blues. For a second the whole world felt unreal—like maybe he'd never crossed over at all and this was just one long, fucked-up dream.
"Hey, rookie. Package for you."
A gravelly voice yanked him back to earth.
A big, barrel-chested cop leaned in the doorway, holding a small box the size of his palm.
Luke's curiosity kicked in. His birth parents were long gone, and in this city he had zero friends worth ntioning. Who the hell would send him anything?
He walked over, took the surprisingly heavy package, and asked offhand, "Delivery guy working the lunch shift?"
The cop grinned. "Wasn't no delivery guy. So gentleman dropped it off himself. Sharp suit, talked real slow and polite. You'd swear he was a college professor or sothing."
Gentleman? Polite?
Luke's mind snapped straight to Hannibal's face and that hungry, knowing smile.
Hannibal was alive.
Not only alive—he knew Luke had survived, knew he was a cop, and had tracked him right here. How the fuck was that possible? The guy was a shrink, not a goddamn wizard.
Luke's thoughts spun fast. Sure, this world had supernatural bullshit floating around, but he wasn't about to bla every weird thing on ghosts and demons. Hannibal was a certified genius, ex-FBI consultant. He probably had his own network. Luke decided to assu the worst: Hannibal had a crew, and one of them was damn good at digging up information.
In the old movies Hannibal worked alone, but this wasn't the movies. Maybe he'd changed his style.
Luke set the box on the bench in front of his locker. Under the curious stares of the other cops he gave it a careful once-over—squeezed the corners, held it to his ear and shook it, listening for any telltale clicks or rattles.
"Jesus, Luke, relax. It's not a bomb, is it?"
The guy next to him couldn't help cracking wise.
Luke ignored him, peeled the seal open slow and steady.
Inside sat a beautifully bound Bible.
"Whoa. Luke, you got friends in the church? These things ain't cheap."
A colleague leaned in and whistled.
Luke flipped the cover. A neatly folded letter lay on the title page, written in elegant script: To Officer Luke.
He kept his face blank, slipped the letter into his pocket, shoved the Bible into his locker, and muttered so excuse before heading for the empty restroom.
He locked the stall door, unfolded the page, and read.
"Officer Luke—if I may address you that way. Your escape from such peril is truly remarkable.
"Perhaps you harbor doubts. To spare us both valuable ti, I will be frank: the prison incident was not my doing.
"It was the work of a mysterious church. The clues, I suspect, lie among the serious offenders. I look forward to the opportunity to cooperate with you in the future."
The signature at the bottom was unmistakable: Hannibal.
Luke stared at the letter, brow tight. Things were getting ssier by the second. One Hannibal was already enough trouble—now there was so shadowy church organization on top of it. He didn't even know what the hell they wanted.
Still, real lead or not, at least he had a direction.
He went back to the locker room, pulled the Bible out again, and flipped through it page by page just to be sure nothing else was hidden inside.
When he reached the final page the panel lit up.
[Detected: Blessed Bible]
[Specialty: Holy Recitation Activated]
[Holy Recitation LV1 (0/1000): Psionic Bonus 0.1]
[Psionic Effect Activated]
[Holy Recitation: Reciting passages from the Bible deals continuous damage to unclean entities.]
A cool wave rolled through Luke's skull, wiping away days of bone-deep fatigue in one go. He felt sharper, lighter, better than he had since the whole nightmare started.
He couldn't stop the grin that spread across his face.
He'd been worried sick about running into more unkillable freaks like Gein or so worse nightmare. Now he finally had a weapon that could actually hurt the things that went bump in the dark.
...
By the ti Luke made it back to the prison ruins, the place was still ringed with rubberneckers.
Police tape and patrol cars blocked the inner periter. One of his colleagues stood there with a gaphone, sounding bored out of his skull.
"Listen up, taxpayers—this is prison wreckage. Those convicts didn't have two dis to rub together. Nothing worth stealing. Go ho."
Even that wasn't enough to scatter the crowd that loved a good disaster.
Luke scanned the scene and spotted Clarice already waiting inside the tape.
"Sorry I'm late."
Clarice shook her head, eyes sharp and focused as ever.
"Don't worry about it. FBI training taught to always show up early."
Luke gave a quiet nod. She was exactly like the movie version—serious as a heart attack about the job.
He just hoped none of these people started deviating from the script. If this world turned into so full-blown gods-and-monsters war, he wasn't nearly ready.
He led Clarice toward the center of the pit.
A construction crew had already started digging through the rubble. Every few minutes they hauled out another body bag—another inmate who hadn't made it out in ti.
Clarice's face tightened at the sight. Luke caught the flash of sympathy and felt a small pang of pity. She really was still green.
"Who's running this site? Miami PD."
The workers radioed their supervisor. A mont later a sharp-eyed guy in a hard hat walked over.
Luke flashed his new badge.
"What's your take on the collapse?"
He was genuinely curious. No earthquake on record, so how the hell had a whole prison just dropped into the ground?
The supervisor looked just as confused.
"Officer, you picked a good ti to show up. We found sothing weird while we were digging."
"I pulled the old geological surveys. When they built this place the bedrock was solid—no voids, nothing."
He led them to the edge of the crater and pointed at the exposed wall.
"Look right here."
Luke followed the man's finger and imdiately saw a clean horizontal line cutting through the soil.
"Why's the dirt split into two separate layers like that?"
Clarice noticed it too.
The supervisor nodded.
"Exactly. The lower layer's loose, like sobody turned it over with shovels."
Luke felt his gut sink.
"So you're saying the big hole under the prison was dug out by hand."
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