The albino’s continuing narration did not amuse him. Franks was a prince. He deserved a prince’s death. He would not be killed by some machine controlled by a human far from danger. He should die locked in combat with another warrior. Yet he could not correct his human overseer. Kurst knew that Stricken was incredibly dangerous. He had still not figured out all his dark secrets, for the albino had many, but he would know them eventually, and when he did, they would strike.

“And Franks just blew the hell out of Paranormal Tactical. Boom. Got some secondary explosions. Nice. They should have seen that coming.”

Kurst looked across the helicopter’s compartment at the twelfth and thirteenth prototypes.

Have you made progress on deciphering the code?

They were the most recently decanted. The male body was enormous, even more unwieldy with muscle than Franks, grown from the genetic material of humans who routinely won “strong man” competitions, but the spirit that had inhabited it was the least intelligent of them all. It had claimed its place in this body through brute force and the help of its self-proclaimed sister. That particular female form had been created from North African DNA, was of average size but great physical strength, and Kurst found her body strangely appealing.

There has not been much progress yet, the female thought back at him. Stricken’s fail-safes are complex.

These two had possessed physical bodies in the mortal world before, and had done so successfully for over two thousand years, surviving because of the female’s cunning and the male’s great strength. Her previous earthly experience was why Kurst had tasked her with finding a way to defeat Stricken’s kill switch.

Do not fail me, Bia.

I will not, General. I have made progress. I have been experimenting. There are ways to improve these new bodies. With sufficient willpower, this flesh is far more malleable than the human doctors expect. I can make us even stronger.

She had once honed an inferior vessel made of clay into a weapon superb enough to elude Hunters for centuries. The humans had known the two of them as Force and Violence, though Cratos and Bia could not use their real names any longer, since the MCB had cataloged them, and their picking such names would be far too suspicious a coincidence. It was not time for Stricken to know who he had let back into the world yet.

When that time came, Kurst was eager to see what manner of chaos Bia could wring from these superior bodies. Excellent.

“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Stricken said. “Check your kit. Franks is going down.”

Bia was careful to not let the albino see her snarl of disgust. Franks had been among those who had destroyed their last bodies, though it had been a human Hunter who had put a bullet through Bia’s ear and placed her in the path of a speeding truck. Kurst almost pitied that human, because when Bia found the one called Grant Jefferson, the demoness would make his suffering immeasurable.