The young Demon Hunter muttered, “We suspected all of this, but we couldn’t find a trace—no evidence whatsoever.”

After instructing Süleyman to review every single internal and external camera recording from the show, Mark turned to the nurse:

“Something puzzles me. How could Madman’s team trust you? You could have exposed their fraud at any time.”

“They kept Simon out of the performance for exactly that reason. His mother was already telling everyone that he had been cursed. What difference would it make if I stood up and said that he simply had alien hand syndrome?

“Madman and his team had no role in causing the syndrome. Even if I claimed I worked with them, I couldn’t prove it conclusively.

“And in the worst-case scenario, Madman would deny knowing me and convince his fanatical followers that I was trying to frame him. If I managed to escape with my life, I’d be lucky…”

A while later, when Süleyman returned to the room, the expression on his face made it clear he had found something. He showed them footage of the five volunteers who had tried to get on stage:

“These men share something in common. They all have unkempt beards mixed with mustaches, and they all wear glasses. More importantly, look at their hair—it’s as if they’re wearing wigs.

“All five of them wearing wigs cannot be a coincidence. Something is going on here.”

Mark tapped the screen with his hand and said:

“You know as well as I do that when video or audio becomes distorted, it means there’s a strong signal causing interference. The only explanation for this frequent distortion in the footage is that something powerful was disrupting it.”

Süleyman tried to follow where Mark was going with this.

“Think back to what we experienced in Italy and Bosnia.”

Süleyman kept watching, then pointed at another detail he had forgotten to mention, showing a frame from the recording.

“Look at that disabled spectator,” he said.

“The guy is literally digging around inside his pocket—his hand is buried deep in his underwear. What on earth could he be doing?”

Had the nurse not been present, Mark would have made a crude joke. Süleyman read the answer in his smirk but kept a straight face.

“And there’s something else: according to the entrance footage, this disabled man never passed through the X-ray scanner.

“He probably told the officer at the entrance that he had a prosthetic leg and that the X-ray would damage it.

“And you know small-town cops—our chubby village officer must not have known that X-rays don’t harm prosthetics, so he believed him.

“Besides, in a place like this, the device might not even be working.”

“So, what do you think this man is carrying?”

Süleyman frowned. “I can’t say for sure. But I’m guessing there’s something he’s hiding. If it’s not a weapon or a bomb, it must be something related to Madman or the volunteers.”

At Mark’s request, Süleyman split the screen: footage of the volunteer on stage on one side, and footage of the strange disabled man on the other.

“Did you notice something?” Mark asked, then began to explain.

“Every time the disabled man’s hand twitches inside his pocket, the volunteer’s arm or leg moves.

“To put it simply: whenever you give a command to the volunteer—who can’t hear a thing through those headphones—the disabled man moves his hand.”

Süleyman shook his head.

“I’d think he was interfering with the music, but that doesn’t make sense. I managed to listen to the music through the security system—there’s nothing unusual. And the system recorded it as well. There is no trick in the audio.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Mark said, grinning faintly.

“Here’s a hint: take your memory back to the dark organization in Pompeii.”

Seeing that Süleyman was still frowning, Mark continued:

“The group we encountered there used prosthetic ears—or small devices hidden beneath the hair, beside the ear—to whisper commands directly to their victims.

“The victim believed they were simply wearing a hearing aid. So when a voice whispered instructions, they thought it was God speaking to them—and obeyed.”

“And if things went wrong, if they had to kill the person they had trapped, they had prepared for that too.”

Süleyman nodded. “Yes, I remember. The device implanted under the scalp had hollow cables running out of it, like veins.”

“Exactly. I believe they applied the same principle to these five volunteers.

“The fact that they’re all wearing wigs, that the disabled guy acts like he’s controlling a remote, and that the volunteer’s limbs move right after the hand inside his pocket twitches… that’s what made me think of it.”

“So when the disabled man presses the remote in his pocket, an electromagnetic signal reaches a receiver hidden beneath the volunteer’s wig.

“From there, a cable—”

Süleyman couldn’t finish the sentence. The thought hit him first.

“What kind of lunatic would agree to have their skull drilled just to insert a cable?”

Mark answered as though reading his mind:

“People addicted to drugs or alcohol don’t care about the consequences either. As long as there’s money—money to score more drugs, or to get rich quickly—there will always be maniacs who’ll say yes to something like this.”

“And what about afterward?” Süleyman asked. “What happens to a cable that runs from the skull into the brain?”

“We’ve talked before about certain experiments,” Mark said. “Researchers discovered that different groups of neurons in the brain are responsible for activating different muscles. If you electrically stimulate the neuron group responsible for a specific muscle, that muscle moves.”

As always, Süleyman interrupted before Mark could finish:

“I get it. There are multiple electrodes connected to neural groups that control different muscle clusters in the volunteer’s brain. Depending on which signal the remote and receiver send, a specific electrode receives an electrical current. That electrode fires its neurons, and the associated muscle moves.

“For example, if an electromagnetic signal delivers a command to the neural group that controls the movement of the right leg, an electrical impulse reaches that area—and the volunteer’s leg moves forward.”

“Meanwhile, while the crowd is cheering him like he’s a god,” Mark added with a smirk, brushing his hands as though sweeping away dust, “I can almost hear him laughing inside: ‘It wasn’t me, fools—it was science. Without idiots like you, how would I survive?’”

The Demon Hunters knew they had to examine the head of one of the volunteers who had raised their hands during Madman’s show. They could easily issue an arrest warrant—but that risked evidence being destroyed.

So they resorted to illegal methods: wearing ski masks, they abducted the target.

When they sat him down and reached for his wig, the man raised a hand to stop them and said:

“I don’t know who you are or what you want—but if you touch my wig, I might die.”

Süleyman snapped at him harshly:

“You’ll take it off yourself, or we’ll do it for you.”

“Who are you? Why do you want me to do this?”

Mark deepened his voice, crushing the man under its weight:

“Shut up! Either take off your wig right now or accept your fate.”

The Demon Hunters bluff worked. The man pressed his right thumb and index finger down on a spot at the center of his artificial hair. The grimace on his face showed he felt pain. He then gently shifted the wig from side to side to loosen it, and with a bit of force, lifted it off.

Seeing the Demon Hunters staring at him with strange expressions, the man said, “I’m not a robot or a cyborg or anything like that. Don’t kill me.”

He pointed directly at the top of his head.

“If you look carefully, you can see it. There’s a thin, skin-colored cable running right through the center of my scalp. The skin is holding it tightly in place, so you have to look closely to notice it.”

Süleyman chose not to lower his guard; he kept a safe distance. Leaning in just enough to inspect without getting too close, he zoomed his eyes on the man’s head and spotted an electrode about the size of a small mole.

The man pointed at the exact center of the wig.

“When I pressed my fingers here, I released the snap that connects the wig to the cable.”

When he looked as if to say “That’s all, there’s nothing more to tell,” Mark threatened him again:

“Before I pump electricity through that cable in your skull, you’re going to tell us everything.”

Hearing this, Süleyman tried to hold himself together but burst into laughter.
Once he calmed down, he explained why:

“When you said that, I pictured what would happen to him. If every electrode that connects to different parts of the brain fired at once, the pain would be one thing—but the uncontrolled movement of every limb? The guy would jerk around like someone going wild on a dance floor.”

Süleyman said it deliberately. The message to the prisoner was clear: we know exactly what we’re dealing with—don’t make this harder. The man pointed again to the coin-sized device hidden among the strands of the wig and said:

“This thing is the receiving receptor—the part that responds to the signal sent from the controller. Depending on the frequency it receives, it determines which electrode—those thin, vein-like wires ending in the brain—will be stimulated with an electric current. And yes, it runs on a tiny battery. I change it every two or three months, depending on use.”

Everything was exactly as the Demon Hunters had suspected.

“Who did this to you?”

“You’ve already figured everything out. As you know—‘the Messiah.’”

“What Messiah? He’s a fraud—speak of him that way!” Süleyman snapped.
“That’s not what I asked. Who performed the surgery? Didn’t it hurt? Are you insane? How much money could they possibly give you to make you agree to this?”

The man drew a long breath.

“I was drowning in debt. I was going to sell my kidney, actually. The mafia types I contacted ended up introducing me to Madman’s people. They said they would just drill into my skull. Through that hole, they’d use a tiny camera to guide barely visible, biocompatible electrodes into specific areas of the brain. They told me not to be afraid, explaining how modern medicine already places titanium implants in the body all the time—angiograms, shunts, dental implants, prosthetic legs… dozens of procedures.

They said that after the operation, I’d be put on immunosuppressants and anticonvulsants for a while, and then everything would go back to normal. Even with all that reassurance, I was terrified. The brain is the most delicate place in the body. But… at least I wouldn’t be losing a kidney—and I’d earn far more money. So I agreed.”

“Did they keep their promise?”

“Of course. A few weeks after the surgery, the pain was gone, and I had already gotten used to my new life with a wig. I’ve been in four or five shows so far. They disguise me every time so I won’t be recognized. Each identity lasts about five or six months.

With new makeup, hair, a grown beard, and some work done on my cheekbones, I would emerge with a new face. We did everything with both a fabricated look and a fake identity.”

The man had confessed to everything. Bank accounts, receipts, phone calls made through numbers registered under other people’s names—there was more than enough evidence in the Demon Hunters’ hands. Madman would not be able to deny it all. What he didn’t know was that Süleyman had secretly recorded the entire confession, just to be safe.

After checking the GPS device, Süleyman called out to Mark.

“We may have secured another piece of evidence. We could even get a warrant and catch them in the act.”

“Catch who, exactly?” Mark asked.

Süleyman smirked. “You’re getting old, my friend. How quickly you forget.”
He leaned back and began explaining:

“Remember the first show we attended? There was a volunteer on stage who didn’t look suspicious—just a guy wearing a wig. When I rushed out of there, I wasn’t panicking; I was planting a GPS unit under the hood of his car. It’s been tracking his movements ever since. I was waiting for him to meet someone tied to Madman —to slip up—and he finally did. According to the device, Madman and that bald guy who handles his dirty work met with the volunteer. The rendezvous point is a remote area at the edge of the forest.”

Wasting no time, the Demon Hunters obtained the necessary warrants and moved in with the police. Madman tried claiming it was a coincidence, that he didn’t know the man, that they hadn’t arranged a meeting—but no one was buying it. The town had already reached its verdict, passed from mouth to mouth:

“What coincidence? It’s a forest, not a shopping mall.”

And if that wasn’t enough, the massive crucifix found in his men’s vehicle made things worse. Unable to explain it away, one of the men broke down and revealed their plan:

“Jesus was crucified—sacrificed so humanity could be forgiven. We were going to crucify our boss on top of the mountain, the one visible from the town. We wanted to recreate that moment—to remind people of the ascension. But our real goal was to make them believe that Christ had returned to earth from the very place he ascended.”

He pointed at the materials in the car and continued:

“They had designed a whole spectacle to make themselves believable—something sensational, something that would glue every terrified pair of eyes onto them. The story was simple: godless heathens had abducted our lord, and now they were whipping him on a mountaintop.

And high above the town, a man crucified against the skyline, his body striped with lashes—people would swallow every word. Misery sells. And nothing sells faith better than the illusion of suffering, especially when it belongs to a figure whose legacy rests on mercy and forgiveness. The plan banked on that: the image of a tormented savior returning to the world, just as broken as the people praying beneath him.

The nurse had already told Simon the truth—every sordid detail. His condition wasn’t divine punishment; it was nothing more than a surgical complication. But when his mother—an infamous gossip with lungs built for sermons—heard it, she didn’t hesitate to retell the story with venom and gasoline.

“They deceived us. My son isn’t cursed. Everything was a fraud, staged by that man who calls himself the Messiah. He bribed doctors so they would butcher my son.”

By the time Madman was dragged toward prison, the town had already begun to rot from the inside—faith curdled into rage, rage into doubt.

His final words to the Demon Hunters were not shouted, but breathed like a threat meant to survive the bars they locked him behind:

“You will answer for this. The real game is only beginning.”