The holographic Virgin Mary flickered above Manhattan’s corpse, her pixelated hands frozen in eternal blessing. Lin Yeli adjusted the frayed wires of her prosthetic arm, its exposed joints sparking with every step. Twenty years after the Great Crash—when God’s servers failed and took civilization with them—the Financial District had become a graveyard of dead currencies and deadlier faiths.

  "Third church this week," she muttered, kicking aside a rusted confession bot stuck mid-prayer. Its broken speakers hissed Latin: "Forgive me, Father, for I have leveraged..."

  Her dead mother’s last message glitched in her neural feed—half Mandarin, half static: "Find the wafer... third confessional... angels lie..."

  Lin paused beneath the skeletal arches of St. Patrick’s. Moonlight seeped through bullet-riddled stained glass, casting jagged shadows over an altar where Renaissance saints merged with error codes. Something glowed beneath moth-eaten velvet.

  The communion wafer pulsed like a dying star. Lin’s fingers trembled as she picked it up—the same jade USB pendant her mother had worn now burned against her collarbone.

  "Here’s hoping you weren’t just crazy," she whispered, swallowing the wafer whole.

  Fireworks exploded behind her eyes—burnt circuitry and temple incense, the metallic tang of divine electricity. Lin collapsed against a crumbling pillar as her neural interface screamed warnings:

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  [Unauthorized System Detected]

  [Initializing...]

  [Warning: Divine Retribution Imminent]

  The attack came not from within, but above.

  Twelve angels crashed through the shattered dome, their wings unfolding infinite layers of religious art. The lead angel’s face flickered through a thousand stock photos before settling on Lin’s third-grade teacher. Its voice glitched between choir harmonies and mechanical threat:

  "Unauthorized... power... detected..."

  Lin scrambled backward. The world shifted—golden energy streams flowed through broken servers and dead wires. The angel’s wings shone like corrupted sunlight.

  The USB pendant seared her skin. Ancient muscle memory took over—her mother’s obsessive kung fu drills merging with street survival instincts. Lin’s fist struck cracked marble, unleashing a shockwave of glowing code.

  The angel froze mid-swing, its halo flashing crimson:

  [System Error: Virtue Not Found]

  [Divine Mandate Failed]

  As the angel dissolved into digital ash, Lin stared at the glowing symbols on her palms—Taoist circles overlaid with hacker code. "Holy malware..."

  The remaining angels shifted tactics. Their wings transformed into rotating shields of sacred geometry, each feather etched with unreadable text. Lin’s neural feed updated:

  [New Ability: Mantra Shield (Duration: 23 seconds)]

  A barrier of shimmering symbols wrapped around her. Angelic lasers morphed into floating emojis—?????? became ???????.

  "Mom, you genius," Lin breathed, dodging falling debris. Acid rain sizzled against her energy shield as she fled into the night, the angels’ hymns warping into dial-up screeches.