4. The Golden Scripture

The ferry back to Shinwa was the same rust-streaked vessel that had carried Hana to Incheon, but the journey felt twice as long. She stood at the stern, watching the coastline of Goryeo recede into a gray smear on the horizon, the encrypted drive heavy in her jacket pocket—now augmented with a copy of the NIS intelligence file that Pastor Moon had surrendered. The file contained five years of surveillance reports, financial analyses, and intercepted communications that mapped the Serpent Brotherhood's evolution from a loose association of corrupt businessmen into a transnational criminal enterprise with tendrils reaching into the cabinets of four governments.

Hana's phone buzzed. Ishida.

"Okamoto moved the press conference up to 9:00 a.m.," he said without preamble. "He's invited every major news outlet in Shinwa. The framing is already circulating—'Rogue Prosecutor Compromises Major Investigation.' Someone leaked your family connection to Kenji to the Shinwa Daily News. They're running a front-page story tomorrow morning."

"Then we need to counter before the press conference begins. Do we have enough to arrest Okamoto?"

"We have the Serpent Brotherhood documents showing his name on the coordinating node list. We have three years of suspicious case dismissals that match the timeline of his involvement. And we have the photograph from the Heavenly Path chapel. But none of that proves he took money or actively obstructed justice. We need testimony—either from Father Ahn, who has disappeared, or from someone else inside the network who can testify to Okamoto's direct involvement."

"What about Sato? The Financial Services Agency director?"

"Also gone. He filed for emergency leave this morning, citing health reasons. His office is empty, his computer has been wiped, and his phone is disconnected. Okamoto is cleaning house before he goes public."

Hana pressed her palm against the cold metal railing of the ferry. The Serpent Brotherhood was executing a classic damage control protocol—sacrifice the exposed nodes, protect the remaining infrastructure, and discredit the investigators before their findings could gain institutional traction. By the time the sun rose over Shinwa, she would be portrayed as a corrupt official who had abused her position to protect her criminal brother, and the evidence she had risked her career to collect would be dismissed as the fabrication of a compromised investigation.

"We need Kenji," she said. "He's the only person who can corroborate the document trail and testify to Okamoto's direct involvement. Any progress on locating him?"

"Maybe. Your brother's former colleague at Heavenly Path—a woman named Yuki Matsuda who worked in the accounting department—contacted us an hour ago. She says Kenji reached out to her last night, asking for help getting out of the country. She convinced him to wait. He's at a love hotel in the Kabukicho district, room 704, registered under a false name."

"Kabukicho. Of course." The red-light district of Shinwa was the last place anyone would look for a disgraced financial analyst on the run, and the first place someone would go if they wanted to disappear among people who asked no questions and remembered no faces.

"There's a complication. Okamoto's people are also looking for him. They raided Kenji's apartment two hours ago with a warrant for evidence tampering. If they find him before we do, he'll be in custody and silenced before you can debrief him."

"Then we need to get there first. Meet me at Shinwa Station in three hours. We'll go to Kabukicho together."

"Three hours might be too late. I'm going now."

The line went dead. Hana stared at the phone, weighing her options. Ishida was right about the urgency, but she was still four hours from shore, trapped on a cargo ferry that could not be persuaded to move faster. By the time she reached Shinwa, the confrontation in Kabukicho would already be over—one way or another.

She called Ishida back. "Be careful. If Okamoto's people are willing to raid an apartment with a falsified warrant, they're willing to do worse in a district without security cameras."

"I've been in worse places than Kabukicho."

"That's not reassuring."

"It wasn't meant to be."

The ferry docked at Kaijin at 5:45 a.m., just as the first gray light of dawn began to seep over the container terminals. Hana took a taxi directly to the train station and caught the first express service to Shinwa, her knee bouncing with nervous energy as the carriage filled with early-morning commuters who had no idea that the city's entire legal establishment was about to implode.

She used the journey to organize the evidence into a coherent narrative. The NIS file was the linchpin—it contained independent verification of everything Minoru Yoshida had recorded in his parallel ledger, plus additional intelligence that even Father Ahn had not possessed. The file identified the Serpent Brotherhood's leadership structure, its funding mechanisms, and its political protection networks across four countries. Crucially, it included transcripts of conversations in which Okamoto was explicitly mentioned as a paid asset, code-named "Gavel," who had been receiving monthly payments through a shell company registered in the Kaijin Free Trade Zone.

The NIS had been sitting on this intelligence for years, unable to act because the Serpent Brotherhood's protection network extended into Goryeo's own government. Moon's cooperation had unlocked the file, but it would take prosecutors in both countries working in tandem to actually execute the arrests. And that coordination would be impossible if Okamoto succeeded in discrediting Hana before she could present the evidence.

Her phone buzzed with a message from Kang Min-jun in Seoul: "Moon's formal statement is being recorded now. He's naming names. Judge Park Hyun-soo resigned this morning, citing personal reasons. The dominoes are falling on our side. Good luck on yours."

At least one front was advancing. But the Shinwa front was about to become a battlefield.

The train pulled into Shinwa Central Station at 8:10 a.m. Hana pushed through the crowds of commuters and emerged onto the street, where the city was already humming with the manic energy of a weekday morning. She hailed a taxi and gave the driver an address in Kabukicho, three blocks from the love hotel where her brother was hiding.

The Kabukicho district at this hour was a study in contradictions—neon signs still flickering from the night before, delivery trucks unloading supplies for the restaurants that would open at noon, and a handful of exhausted club workers trudging home after twelve-hour shifts. The love hotel was a narrow building squeezed between a karaoke parlor and a convenience store, its facade decorated with faded posters advertising hourly rates and themed rooms.

Ishida was waiting in the lobby, his expression grim. "He's still upstairs. Room 704. I haven't approached yet—I wanted you to make first contact. If he sees me, he might bolt."

"Has anyone else been here?"

"A man in a dark suit asked about a guest matching Kenji's description about twenty minutes ago. The front desk clerk sent him to the wrong floor. He'll be back."

Hana took the elevator to the seventh floor, her heart hammering against her ribs. Room 704 was at the end of a corridor lined with doors painted in shades of mauve and gold. She knocked three times, then identified herself in a voice barely above a whisper.

"Kenji. It's Hana. Open the door."

Silence. Then the click of a lock, and the door swung inward to reveal her brother.

Kenji Takeda looked like a man who had aged a decade in eighteen months. His once-immaculate hair was unwashed and falling into his eyes. His suit—clearly expensive, probably purchased during his brief period of affluence at Okamoto Capital—was rumpled and stained. His eyes carried the hollowed-out expression of someone who had been living on adrenaline and fear for longer than his body could sustain.

"You came," he said. "I wasn't sure you would."

"You've been sending me warnings for weeks. You made sure I had the information I needed. Why wouldn't I come?"

"Because I'm the forger, Hana. The documents that started your investigation—I created them. My fingerprints are on the scanner. My workstation was used to produce seventeen counterfeit certificates. Everything Okamoto is about to tell the media is technically true."

Hana stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. The space was small and anonymous, furnished with a circular bed, a mirrored ceiling, and a minibar stocked with overpriced alcohol. It was the kind of room designed for transactions that left no permanent record—which was exactly why Kenji had chosen it.

"Then tell me the part Okamoto won't mention," she said. "Tell me why you did it."

Kenji sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed his palms against his eyes, a gesture Hana remembered from their childhood—the way he would compose himself before admitting to something he knew would disappoint their father. "When Okamoto Capital collapsed and I was blacklisted, I spent eight months trying to find work. I applied to every bank, every investment firm, every financial consultancy in Shinwa. I even applied to accounting firms that paid a quarter of what I used to earn. Nothing. My name was toxic."

"I know. Yoshida told me a similar story."

"Yoshida was one of the lucky ones. He found Heavenly Path early. I found it after I'd already exhausted every other option." Kenji lowered his hands. His eyes were red-rimmed but dry. "Father Ahn approached me at a seminar—the Prosperity Through Faith Forum. He said he'd read about my case and believed I had been treated unfairly. He offered me a job in the foundation's investment division, managing foreign currency transactions. The salary was modest, but he promised I would be doing meaningful work."

"And the forgery?"

"That came later. About six months after I started, Father Ahn called me into his office and introduced me to a man called the Accountant. The Accountant explained that the foundation's expansion into Goryeo was being blocked by regulatory delays, and that they needed someone with my technical skills to help... expedite the approval process."

"So you scanned the Ministry seal."

"I scanned the seal. I digitized it. I cleaned up the artifacts in the image and created a template that could be applied to any document. I told myself it was temporary—just until the legitimate approval came through. But the legitimate approval never came, and the template became the foundation's standard operating procedure for every cross-border transaction that required government certification."

Hana thought about the seventeen forged documents bearing her brother's fingerprints. Seventeen certificates, seventeen lies, seventeen felonies under Article 155 of the Penal Code. "Why didn't you stop? After the first one, after the fifth one—you could have walked away."

"Because by then, I knew too much." Kenji's voice dropped to a whisper. "The Serpent Brotherhood doesn't let people walk away. Once you're inside, you're inside for life. They have a file on every member—financial records, personal secrets, evidence of crimes. If you try to leave, that file finds its way to the police or the media. You're destroyed, just like you would have been if you'd never joined. The only difference is the timing."

"Then why did you start sending me warnings? Why risk everything to help my investigation?"

Kenji looked up at her, and for a moment, Hana saw the older brother she remembered from her teenage years—the brilliant, protective sibling who had tutored her in mathematics and defended her against bullies and promised that he would always look out for her, no matter what.

"Because Okamoto told Father Ahn that you had been assigned to the forgery case," Kenji said. "He recommended the neutralization protocol—a smear campaign that would destroy your career and discredit anything you found. I couldn't let that happen. So I started feeding you information through the burner phone, hoping you could piece together enough to protect yourself before they destroyed you."

"The third pew is empty," Hana murmured, remembering the message that had accelerated everything.

"I sent that. Father Ahn had already ordered the drive removed, but I wanted you to know that someone inside the network was on your side. I wanted you to know that you weren't alone."

Hana sat down on the bed beside her brother. The mirrored ceiling reflected two exhausted figures hunched together in a room designed for strangers, bound by a family connection that eighteen months of silence had not been able to sever. "Okamoto is holding a press conference in less than an hour. He's going to accuse me of compromising the investigation to protect you. He's going to use your crimes to discredit everything I've uncovered."

"Then you need to arrest me first."

"What?"

"Arrest me. Before Okamoto can use me as a weapon against you. If I'm in custody, cooperating with your investigation, providing testimony against the network—then I'm not a liability. I'm an asset. The same strategy you used with Yoshida."

Hana shook her head. "If you're arrested, Okamoto's people will have access to you. They'll find a way to silence you before you can testify."

"Not if you bypass the Prosecutors Office entirely. Take me to the National Police Agency's independent audit division. Ishida has a contact there, right? She can take my statement before Okamoto even knows I'm in custody."

It was the same parallel path Ishida had proposed for the encrypted drive—using the NPA to circumvent the chain of command that Okamoto had corrupted. But this time, the evidence was not a data drive. It was her brother, and the cost of failure would be measured in years of imprisonment.

"If I do this," Hana said, "you'll go to prison. The seventeen forgeries alone carry a maximum sentence of five years each. Even with cooperation, you're looking at a decade or more."

"I know."

"And you're willing to accept that?"

Kenji was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was steadier than Hana had heard it since she entered the room. "Our father spent his entire life measuring success by external standards—job titles, salary figures, social status. When I lost my career, he stopped speaking to me. When I joined Heavenly Path and started earning again, he still didn't speak to me, because the money wasn't clean enough or the title wasn't prestigious enough. I spent two years trying to earn back something that was never mine to begin with—his approval, his respect, his love."

"And now?"

"Now I understand that the only thing I can control is what I do next. I can't undo the forgeries. I can't un-launder the money. But I can tell the truth, and I can face the consequences, and I can finally stop running from a society that would rather destroy people than forgive them." He met Hana's eyes. "That's more than Father Ahn ever offered me. That's more than the Serpent Brotherhood ever gave anyone. Arrest me, Hana. It's the only way either of us gets out of this with anything intact."

Hana reached into her briefcase and withdrew a pair of handcuffs—the standard-issue restraints that every prosecutor carried but rarely used. They clicked into place around Kenji's wrists with a sound that was simultaneously mechanical and final.

"Kenji Takeda," she said, her voice formal despite the tremor beneath it, "you are under arrest for forgery of official documents and conspiracy to commit money laundering. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

"Understood," Kenji said. "And I waive my right to remain silent. There's something I need to tell you about Okamoto. Something that isn't in any of the files."

"What?"

"Okamoto isn't just a paid asset. He's a founding member of the Serpent Brotherhood. He was at the Kaijin Summit in 2019 when the organization was established. He helped write the protocol documents. He's not a mid-level collaborator protecting the network—he's one of the architects."

The revelation hit Hana like a wave of ice water. If Okamoto was a founding member, his involvement predated his promotion to Deputy Chief Prosecutor. His entire career advancement had been built on a foundation of organized crime. And the network of protection he had constructed over the years extended not just horizontally across agencies, but vertically through the ranks of every institution that might investigate him.

"There's more," Kenji continued. "Okamoto has a partner in the Prosecutors Office. Someone above him who facilitated his rise and protected the network from the highest level. I don't know the name—Father Ahn never shared it with anyone below the coordinating council—but I know the code name they used in the Serpent Brotherhood's communications."

"What's the code name?"

"'Basilisk.' In mythology, the basilisk is a serpent whose gaze can kill. Father Ahn told me once that the Basilisk was the reason the Serpent Brotherhood would never fall. No matter how many arrests were made, no matter how much evidence was uncovered, the Basilisk could always look at an investigation and turn it to stone."

Hana pulled out her phone and called Ishida, who was still waiting in the lobby. "I have Kenji. He's cooperating. But we have a new problem—Okamoto is a founding member of the Serpent Brotherhood, and he has a superior in the Prosecutors Office, code-named Basilisk, who's been protecting the network from the top."

"Any idea who?"

"Not yet. But Kenji says the Basilisk has the power to kill any investigation. If we move against Okamoto publicly, the Basilisk will intervene. We need to identify them before we can make our case."

"Then we need to move faster than we planned. The press conference is in forty-five minutes. If Okamoto takes the podium and frames you as corrupt, the Basilisk will have all the justification they need to shut down the investigation permanently."

Hana helped her brother to his feet, his cuffed hands resting awkwardly in front of him. "Kenji, the NIS file contains transcripts of Serpent Brotherhood coordinating council meetings. Do you recognize any of the participants besides Okamoto?"

"The meetings were held under pseudonyms. I only know the names of the people I worked with directly—Father Ahn, the Accountant, Okamoto. But there was always someone referred to as 'the Basilisk' in the meeting minutes. Someone who never attended in person but whose approval was required for any major decision."

"Then the Basilisk's identity is in the files. We just need time to find it."

She led Kenji out of the hotel room and into the elevator. In the lobby, Ishida was waiting with a backup team from the NPA's independent audit division—four officers in plain clothes who had been briefed on the situation and were prepared to transport Kenji to a secure location. The lead officer, a woman named Inspector Sato Mizuki who was no relation to the disgraced Director-General, took custody of Kenji with the efficiency of someone who had handled high-risk detainees before.

"We'll take him to the NPA safehouse in the Chuo ward," she said. "No one outside my unit knows the location. He'll be able to provide his statement without interference."

"Okamoto has sources inside the NPA," Hana warned.

"Not in my unit." Inspector Sato's expression was unreadable, but her voice carried absolute conviction. "We've been investigating Okamoto independently for six months. Your evidence is the breakthrough we needed."

Hana watched as her brother was escorted into an unmarked van and driven away into the Shinwa morning. Then she turned to Ishida. "We have forty minutes. I need to find out who the Basilisk is before Okamoto takes that podium."

"The NIS transcripts are on the drive. If the Basilisk's identity is buried in those communications, we can find it."

They commandeered a booth in the convenience store next to the love hotel, spreading printouts of the NIS transcripts across a plastic table while the store clerk pointedly looked away. Hana searched for every reference to the Basilisk in the coordinating council minutes, cross-referencing the timing of decisions against the career movements of senior Prosecutors Office officials.

The pattern emerged slowly, then all at once. The Basilisk had blocked an investigation into Heavenly Path in 2020, just three weeks after being promoted to the position of Chief Prosecutor of Shinwa District. The Basilisk had personally approved the "neutralization protocol" against Hana, signing off on the smear campaign through an intermediary who was now identified as Okamoto. And the Basilisk had attended a Serpent Brotherhood summit in Macau in 2023, according to a travel record that had been carefully expunged from official files but preserved in the NIS intelligence.

The name attached to that travel record was Chief Prosecutor Hayashi Masato—the highest-ranking law enforcement official in Shinwa District, the man who had personally congratulated Hana on her appointment five years earlier, and the man who would be sitting in the front row of Okamoto's press conference when the accusations against her were announced.

"The Basilisk is the Chief Prosecutor," Hana said, her voice hollow. "He's been running the Serpent Brotherhood's protection network from the top of the entire Shinwa legal establishment."

Ishida stared at the travel record. "If we accuse the Chief Prosecutor, we need absolute proof. A single travel record isn't enough."

"Then we need more. And we need it now."

Hana's phone buzzed with a message from Inspector Sato: Kenji had arrived at the safehouse and was providing his statement. He had mentioned that Father Ahn kept a personal archive of all Serpent Brotherhood communications in a secure server located not at the Heavenly Path compound, but at a commercial data center in the Shinwa financial district. The server was registered under the name of a shell company, but Kenji remembered the registration number.

"The server," Hana said. "If it still exists, it might contain the communications that link Hayashi directly to the Basilisk code name."

"Okamoto will have already ordered it wiped."

"Not necessarily. Father Ahn told me he kept those records as insurance. If he's on the run, he might have preserved the data specifically to use as leverage if he's captured. A dead Father Ahn is no threat to the Serpent Brotherhood. An arrested Father Ahn with access to incriminating files is a problem they need to manage."

Ishida was already on his phone, coordinating with the cybercrime unit that had been monitoring the Heavenly Path investigation. "The data center is operated by Shinwa Financial Data Services. We'll need a warrant."

"By the time we get a warrant, the server will be wiped. We need to act now."

"That's illegal."

"So is running a transnational money-laundering network from the Chief Prosecutor's office." Hana stood up from the plastic table, her coffee untouched and cold. "I'm not asking you to break the law, Ishida. I'm asking you to look the other way while I break it."

Ishida studied her face for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly. "I'll call my contact at the data center. She owes me a favor from an insider trading case three years ago. She might be able to give us access without a warrant—off the books."

"Do it. And Ishida?" Hana paused at the door of the convenience store. "If this goes wrong, I want you to testify that you tried to stop me. I want your career to survive whatever happens next."

"My career," Ishida said, "was never the point."

The press conference was being held in the Shinwa Prosecutors Office media briefing room, a wood-paneled chamber that had hosted announcements ranging from corporate fraud convictions to the exoneration of wrongfully accused defendants. Hana had attended briefings in this room a dozen times, always sitting in the back, watching her superiors deliver carefully crafted statements to rows of journalists who would reduce complex legal arguments to headlines and sound bites.

Today, the room was packed. Every major news outlet in Shinwa had sent a crew, and the front row was occupied by senior officials from the Ministry of Justice, the National Police Agency, and the Financial Services Agency. Chief Prosecutor Hayashi Masato sat at the center of the front row, his silver hair immaculately combed, his expression one of grave concern—the face of a man about to announce an unpleasant but necessary truth.

Deputy Chief Prosecutor Okamoto stood at the podium, adjusting the microphone with the practiced ease of a career bureaucrat who had spent decades performing for audiences of journalists and judges. His opening remarks were measured, regretful, laced with the institutional sorrow of an organization forced to discipline one of its own.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the press," Okamoto began, "it is with profound disappointment that I must announce an internal investigation into allegations of prosecutorial misconduct within this office. The investigation concerns Prosecutor Hana Takeda, who has been assigned to the Heavenly Path Foundation forgery case. We have uncovered evidence that Prosecutor Takeda has a personal conflict of interest in this matter—specifically, her brother, Kenji Takeda, is a central figure in the forgery scheme that she has been ostensibly investigating."

A murmur rippled through the room. Cameras clicked. Hana, standing at the back near the emergency exit, felt the eyes of the room turn toward her.

"Furthermore," Okamoto continued, "we have reason to believe that Prosecutor Takeda has been conducting an unauthorized off-the-books investigation, deliberately circumventing departmental oversight and possibly tampering with evidence. These actions compromise not only the Heavenly Path investigation but the integrity of this office as a whole. Effective immediately, Prosecutor Takeda is suspended pending a full disciplinary review. All evidence she has collected will be examined for contamination, and any cases dependent on her testimony will be reviewed for potential wrongful prosecution."

Okamoto paused, allowing the gravity of the announcement to settle over the room. Then he added, in a tone of manufactured compassion: "We regret that a promising prosecutor has allowed personal loyalties to override professional judgment. But the integrity of our legal system depends on accountability at every level. No one is above the law—not the criminals we prosecute, and not the prosecutors who pursue them."

The room erupted in shouted questions. Okamoto raised his hands, gesturing for calm. "I will take a limited number of questions now. Please identify your outlet before speaking."

Hana chose that moment to step forward. She walked down the center aisle of the briefing room, past the rows of journalists who turned to stare, past the front row where Chief Prosecutor Hayashi watched her approach with an expression that shifted from satisfaction to confusion to something that might have been the first flicker of alarm.

"I have a question," Hana said, her voice cutting through the noise. "But I'm not a journalist. I'm the prosecutor you're accusing. And I have evidence that the charges against me are part of an organized effort to obstruct a legitimate investigation into money laundering, forgery, and corruption at the highest levels of this office."

Okamoto's face went rigid. "This is not the appropriate forum for—"

"This is the only forum I have left." Hana held up the encrypted drive. "This device contains three years of financial records, internal communications, and surveillance reports documenting a criminal conspiracy called the Serpent Brotherhood. The conspiracy involves officials in four countries, including Shinwa and Goryeo. And among its founding members is a man standing in this room right now."

She turned to face the front row. "Chief Prosecutor Hayashi Masato. Code name Basilisk. Founding member of the Serpent Brotherhood's coordinating council. Present at the Macau summit in 2023. Personally responsible for blocking multiple investigations into the Heavenly Path Foundation and its partner organizations. The evidence is on this drive, and copies have been distributed to the National Police Agency, the Goryeo Prosecution Service, and every major media outlet that maintains editorial independence."

The room went silent. Every camera was now trained on the front row, where Chief Prosecutor Hayashi had gone pale. Beside him, officials from the Ministry of Justice were already edging away, their expressions shifting from loyalty to self-preservation in the space of a single breath.

"This is absurd," Hayashi said, but his voice cracked on the second word. "A transparent attempt to deflect blame onto—"

"There are transcripts," Hana said. "Communications in which you personally authorized the 'neutralization protocol' against me. Travel records showing your attendance at a Serpent Brotherhood summit in Macau. Financial records showing payments to a shell company that you control. And testimony from multiple cooperating witnesses, including my brother, who will testify under oath that you are the Basilisk."

Hayashi stood up, his chair scraping against the floor with a sound like a scream cut short. "This press conference is over. Security, remove Prosecutor Takeda from the—"

"Security has been briefed," Ishida said, stepping forward from where he had been standing near the side entrance, flanked by two officers from the NPA's independent audit division. "They're not taking orders from you anymore, Chief Prosecutor. Effective immediately, you and Deputy Chief Prosecutor Okamoto are both under investigation for conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and money laundering. You have the right to remain silent. I strongly suggest you exercise it."

The cameras captured everything—Hayashi's face contorting from authority to rage to terror, Okamoto's frozen expression as he realized that the podium he had used to accuse Hana had become the stage for his own destruction, and the moment when two officers stepped forward to escort the highest-ranking prosecutor in Shinwa District out of the room in handcuffs.

Hana watched them go, the encrypted drive still clutched in her hand like a talisman against everything she had feared and everything she had discovered. The room was chaos—journalists shouting into phones, officials scrambling to distance themselves from the men who had just been arrested, and the relentless clicking of camera shutters documenting every instant of the collapse.

But through the chaos, Hana saw one thing clearly: the face of her brother, as she had last seen him in the hotel room in Kabukicho, telling her that he was ready to face the consequences. He had made his choices, and now he was making new ones. So was she. And somewhere in the wreckage of the Serpent Brotherhood, buried beneath years of corruption and rationalization and the twisted belief that wealth was the only measure of worth, there might still be something worth saving.

Her phone buzzed with a message from Inspector Sato: "Kenji's statement is complete. He's asking for you."

She typed a reply with shaking fingers: "Tell him I'm coming. Tell him it's over."

Then she added, after a pause: "Tell him the serpent lost its head."