What would these monsters who played at being gods want from them now?

Depths of the Thirteen Families' Alpine Bunker

The elite guards, their black armor on, energy rifles at the ready, stopped outside the cell The Director had indicated on the video call moments before. The elderly mage from the previous cell watched them with a blank stare as they walked away.

"No," The Director's metallic, inflectionless voice echoed again through the guards' internal communicators, the sound amplified in the oppressive corridor. He watched every movement through a myriad of hidden cameras, his presence invisible but total. "Those... are relics, echoes of a past that no longer serves us for this immediate purpose. Their magic is too... dogmatic, too predictable, too tied to grimoires and rituals we can counter. The next cell. The one marked with the gamma-level psionic containment sigil. I want the first pair."

The guards, visibly tense with the memory of the recent Cthulhu-induced pandemonium among the prisoners and with the very nature of the entities they guarded, obeyed with grim efficiency. They moved down the corridor, past cells emanating from guttural growls, hissing whispers, and an unnaturally dense silence. They came to a heavier door, reinforced with unknown alloys and pulsing with a faint blue light from psionic inhibitors.

With a heavy hydraulic hiss, the door slid aside, revealing the interior. There were no decrepit elders or roaring beasts. Instead, four figures sat on the bare floor, in silent meditation or resignation. Two men and two women, their apparent ages ranging between forty and fifty, though their faces bore the indelible mark of prolonged captivity: a cerulean pallor, deep dark circles under their eyes, and an infinite sadness in their gaze. Yet beneath the fatigue and despair, a spark of pent-up power still burned, a vital energy the inhibitors barely managed to suppress.

"Them," confirmed The Director's voice. "Prepare the first pair. Man and woman. The healers of Catemaco."

Two guards cautiously entered the cell. Their weapons were pointed, not directly at the prisoners, but at the space around them, ready for any manifestation of power. They signaled one of the women and one of the men to rise.

The woman, Sofia, sat up with a tired grace. Her long dark hair, once surely a shimmering waterfall, now fell lank and lifeless over her shoulders, framing a face with fine features and a beauty that neither suffering nor captivity had managed to fully erase. Her deep hazel eyes, which must have once shone with compassion and the energy of healing, were now clouded with an unfathomable sadness, though a glimmer of ancient rebellion still flickered in their depths. Her hands, which had once channeled life and soothed pain, were now still, but not inert; there was a tension in them, as if remembering the power that once flowed through them.

The man at her side, Diego, her husband, rose with her, a protective gesture. He was of a robust build, a man who seemed to have been carved from the very earth he had once healed. His face, angular and strong, was marked by worry, but his eyes, dark and observant, still retained a profound calm, that of someone who has seen beyond appearances, who has understood the hidden rhythms of life and illness.

As the guards urged them out, Sofía's mind drifted back to a time before these gray walls, before the constant fear. She saw herself and Diego in Catemaco, Veracruz, the air vibrant with the ancestral magic of the Olmecs and the exuberant energy of the jungle. Their home was a humble hut, but their "clinic" was the world itself: under the shade of a sacred ceiba tree, beside a murmuring waterfall, or in the modest houses of those who came to them with hearts filled with despair and bodies wasted by illness.

She remembered the sensation of K'uh, the life energy, flowing through her hands. These weren't grimoire spells or complex rituals. It was a communion, an attunement to the creative force. He saw again the face of an old woman whose lung cancer, a dark, malignant tumor that the city doctors had declared inoperable, had shrunk and dissolved beneath their combined touches during weeks of patient treatment, until the old woman could breathe the pure mountain air again. He remembered a young man ravaged by AIDS, his body a skeleton, his eyes hopeless, and how, little by little, with sacred herbs, chants that harmonized the spirit, and the laying on of hands that transferred pure life energy, he had seen the color return to his

The warmth in her cheeks, the strength in her limbs, the light in her gaze. Diseases that surface science called "incurable" yielded to her faith and her gift.

And they did so without expecting anything in return. Their "payment" was the smile of a child running again, the tears of gratitude of a mother, a simple plate of beans and tortillas offered from the heart. That was their joy, their mission.

But that purity, that altruistic efficacy, was an intolerable threat to the pharmaceutical conglomerates of the Thirteen Families, to their global healthcare system based on chronic illness and dependence on expensive medications.

The memory of the arrival of the men in black was a scar on her soul. Agents of the "Consortium," polite but predatory-eyed, had arrived at her humble home. "Your... charitable 'work'... has caught the attention of certain... influential interests," the leader had said, his voice smooth as silk but with an undertone of steel. "Interests that value the... stability... and profitability... of the global healthcare system. Your 'miracle cures' are creating... disruptions."

Sofia and Diego had refused to stop. "We cannot deny the gift we have been given to alleviate suffering," Sofia had replied with quiet but unwavering dignity.

The agent had smiled coldly, a gesture that didn't reach his eyes. "A real shame. Admirable, but reckless, nobility." Then another agent had entered, holding their tiny baby, Leo, barely nine months old, who gurgled and reached for his mother with his chubby hands.

Sofia's heart had stopped.

"A beautiful boy," the leader of the agents had continued, his voice still soft, but now laden with the weight of implacable threat. "It would be an unspeakable tragedy if his... potential... his future... were cut short by the... stubbornness of his parents. You are cordially 'invited' to continue your 'research' under our... direct and exclusive supervision. In a specially prepared facility where your unique talents can be... 'appreciated,' 'studied,' and 'directed' properly for the benefit of our sponsors. If you refuse, or if you attempt any... imprudence... we will make sure, with great regret of course, that little Leo never celebrates his first birthday. And then, we will come for you. And I assure you, your end will not be swift or merciful."

The choice had been a non-choice. The memory of Leo's smiling face, of his tiny hands clinging to her finger, was the chain that had dragged them to this high-tech prison in the heart of the Alps.

Back in the present, in the bunker's cold corridor, Sofia felt a chill. The guards pushed them forward, toward an unfamiliar interrogation room. Fear for her son, whose fate she hadn't known since that fateful day, was a constant torment. What did these monsters, playing at being gods, want from them now?