Rain slapped against the Brooklyn piers like bullets on sheet metal. Leo crouched behind a stack of radioactive shipping containers, his claws carving grooves into lead-lined steel. Victor's voice buzzed through a jury-rigged earpiece: "Six hostiles. Thermal says they're packing something that glows like grandma's antifreeze..."
The stench hit first – molten silver and burnt circuit boards. Crow-masked figures emerged from fog, their boots crunching broken vials of mercury. Their leader carried a staff crackling with fractal energy, its glowing tip shaped like raven wings frozen mid-flap.
"Remember the plan?" Victor's drone hovered overhead, its rotors spraying oil droplets. "EMP on my signal. Twenty seconds of blackout. Don't–"
Thwip
A barbed net woven with fiber-optic cables ensnared the drone. The crow leader pressed a button, and the net exploded into liquid silver that rained down smoking craters.
Wallet Alert: -5 BTC (Countermeasure Expenditure)
"New plan." Leo lunged from cover.
Round 1
The first crow died mid-transformation – Leo's claws severed the hydraulic lines powering their arm-mounted crossbow. Mercury slugs tore through his left flank, each impact sizzling like bacon on a griddle.
"Fuck me sideways..." He rolled behind a cargo crane, watching his flesh knit blackened scar tissue over glowing wounds. The bracelet vibrated – not healing, but converting damage into blockchain hashes.
Victor's voice cut through static: "Their sonic dampeners are frying my gear! Need to–"
A crow slammed a resonance cannon into the dock. The ultrasonic pulse liquefied seawater into acidic mist. Leo's eardrums burst, reformed, burst again in sync with the bracelet's golden pulses.
Memory Degradation: Mother's Lullaby (87% Corrupted)
Through blood-blurred vision, he saw the crows deploying mercury vapor canisters. Liquid metal pooled like sentient quicksilver, flowing against gravity to trap his boots.
"Got you now, mutt." The leader's voice buzzed through a modulator. "Let's see Fenrir's Chain rebuild from ash."
A silver-coated glaive swung for Leo's neck.
Round 2
The blade stopped mid-air, its edge steaming against Leo's palm.
"Wrong fairytale." He yanked the weapon sideways, dislocating the crow's shoulder with a pop of tearing alloys. "I'm more of a Big Bad Wolf guy."
Mercury tendrils lashed his legs. Leo howled as the metal invaded his pores, burning through bone marrow. His right arm turned gangrenous, black veins spreading like wildfire.
"Vic! Now!"
Across the harbor, twelve bitcoin miners overloaded simultaneously.
The EMP blast tore through dockyards in a sphere of blue lightning. Crow tech short-circuited in showers of cobalt sparks – sonic guns melted into slag, mercury pools crystallized into brittle glass.
"Twenty seconds!" Victor screamed through a Faraday-caged walkie.
Leo bit through his necrotic bicep.
Auditory Cortex Damage Detected – Pain Threshold Overridden
The severed arm hit the docks with a wet thud. Mercury vapor swarmed the stump, expecting a kill – until Leo's bracelet erupted in volcanic heat.
Hssss
Carbonized flesh regrew in obsidian layers, claws reforging themselves from crystallized blood. The crows froze mid-charge, their masks reflecting the nightmare unfolding – a wolf reconstructing itself through hellfire and blockchain validation.
Block Mined: 66.6 BTC (Genetic Overdrive)
"Tick-tock," Leo growled, new claws gleaming with mercury sheen.
Round 3
The remaining crows fell like overclocked servers hitting thermal limits. Leo saved the leader for last, pinning him against a cargo container vibrating with trapped resonance energy.
"Where's the icebreaker?" He pressed a smoldering claw to the crow's neck.
Laughter echoed through the broken mask. "You think we're hunting you? The Chain needs its keybearer..."
The crow's chest cavity exploded in a shower of encrypted data chips. Leo caught one mid-air – its surface etched with Norse runes and Soviet nuclear launch codes.
Victor arrived wheeling a smoking server rack. "Decryption says your bracelet's called Fenrir's Lock. Some Elder Futhark bullshit about binding wolf gods..."
Memory Alert: Mother's Face (62% Degraded)
Leo stared at his regenerated arm. "Where's Irene?"
The answer waited in Red Hook's abandoned pharmaceutical plant.
Scene Break: The Bloodied Lab
Irene's sanctuary looked like a tornado made of scalpels and acid. Smashed cryo-tanks leaked blue fluid, their frozen occupants missing – Leo recognized the Russian brawler's DNA tag floating in slush.
"Found the party favors." Victor held up a syringe filled with swirling auroras. "Crow's Nest brand mercury suppressants. Expensive stuff."
A shattered terminal flickered. Leo traced a claw over its cracked screen, activating a final message:
"Puppy – if you're seeing this, drink the green vial in freezer #7. The coordinates are fake. The glacier isn't a place, it's a state. Burn the–"
The screen died. Behind it, someone had spray-painted a diagram of a thermal drill capable of melting permafrost – and a list of materials including "Ymir's Crystallized Blood (see Project Fenrir archive)."
Victor pried open freezer #7. "Jackpot."
Instead of vials, they found a 19th-century journal bound in werewolf hide. Its pages showed Rothschild family expedition logs overlapped with CRISPR sequences.
Genetic Match: 99.98% (Source: Maternal Lineage)
Leo's claws punctured the journal. "No more games."
"Wait!" Victor projected a hologram of intersecting maps. "The drill plans... they line up with bitcoin mining outposts in Alaska. Your mom's tax firm audited three of them in 1998."
Rain dripped through shattered skylights. Somewhere in the distance, a resonance cannon powered up.
Threat Detected: Crow Reinforcements (87% Biomechanical)
Leo pocketed the data chips. "Weapons hot. Time to go full Big Bad."
Final Sequence
On the plant's roof, they faced an army of crows hybridizing mid-deployment – flesh fusing with drones, mercury pulsing through exposed veins. Their leader carried a staff topped with a wolf skull housing an NVIDIA A100 GPU.
"Last chance, keybearer." The crow's mask retracted to reveal a face cloned from Leo's stolen DNA samples. "Surrender the Lock before Phase IV completes."
Victor primed three more bitcoin miners. "EMP round two?"
"Save it." Leo crushed a mercury vial in his fist. "I'm done running."
He leapt into the horde, claws carving through augmented flesh and machine alike. The bracelet's heat ignited mercury trails into blue fire, creating a hellscape of burning silver and screeching metal.
Blockchain Confirmed: 666 Transactions (Genetic Legacy Secured)
When the last crow fell, Leo stood amidst melting GPU carcasses and bioweapon sludge. Victor tossed him the journal.
"Coordinates update – the drill site's moving. Like... literally shifting across ice sheets."
Leo stared at his reflection in a mercury pool. Gold veins now claimed 66% of his irises. Somewhere in the corrosion, his mother's smile dissolved into static.
"Pack the miners." He crushed the crow leader's GPU skull. "We're going ghost-hunting in Alaska."
Post-Credit Teaser
Deep in the plant's rubble, a surviving cryo-pod hissed open. Irene's severed hand crawled across debris, bioreactor fluids tracing Norse runes as it moved toward an emergency satellite uplink...