Lyons and his team had been working at full speed all night because a film like this had to be shot and edited, post-produced, and provided with sound effects.

Lyons' exhaustion was visible when he turned up in the BPD conference room late the next afternoon for the big premiere. He had dark circles under his eyes, his skin was pale, and his beard and hair were even shaggier than usual. He was holding an energy drink in his hand. He had kept himself afloat all night and through the morning hours with coffee and energy drinks, and, as you could see from the crumbs from his T-shirt, he had been living exclusively on potato chips.

Lyons presented his work in the BRIC on the large monitor wall. "Do we have any popcorn?" he asked.

Nikki gave him a scathing look.

"Okay. Coffee will do."

Nick started the video.

In rapid succession, they saw the dismembered body parts. They lay on different surfaces, on old, rotten wooden tables, on flake-strewn operating and autopsy tables, and on scratched shelves with old, rusty surgical tools. In between, Melanie could be seen again and again as Lady Báthory, always only in short fractions of a second, similar to what happened at the end of the Saw horror films, until Melanie suddenly stood there in all her gruesome beauty, the chainsaw in one hand, between the two bloodstained columns with chains from which hung a severed hand and forearm.

"My soul is a dark sea," she began, then stepped forward, seemingly towards the viewer. "That's where the term sea comes from. Infinitely black. And infinitely evil. Look around you!" She raised her left arm.

Cut. Ride over shimmering and steaming entrails that looked as if they had just been pulled from a living body. To create this special effect, Lyon's team dipped handkerchiefs in boiling water and placed them under the corpse's colon. Another cut. The severed hand on the chain. The blood on the pillar. The camera shook. Cut. Melanie, again as Lady Báthory is between the columns. "My art of death. If you want to understand the artist, you have to look at his work. And I will show you my work, O great God of Blood!"

Cut. Close-up of Lady Báthory. "I am a woman, not a thing. My father thought I was a thing." Cut. "Abused me like a thing." She closed her eyes. Cut. Body parts, maybe even some intimate parts of death. Cut. Close-up of Báthory. She widened her eyes. "But I am not a thing. I became a woman. A bump when he wasn't paying attention --" Cut. Now, a basement staircase could be seen in the dark; it seemed to be some kind of flashback. The staircase was illuminated only by the darting, wildly twitching light of the camera illumination while the image swayed across the steps. A rumble could be heard from off-screen, a shrill scream. Báthory continued: "... my father fell down the stairs, broke his arm --" Cut. Blood splatters on a moldy wall. "... knocked out two of his front teeth." Cut. Close-up of Báthory with a sad face. The sound of a baby crying. "Poor daddy. This is not how he imagined it with his baby."

Cut. Close-up of Báthory. "I wasn't a thing anymore. Suddenly, I was no longer afraid of him. Suddenly, it was him who was afraid of me." Her mouth, with bright red lips, twisted into a bloody grin. "Fear makes people compliant. Fear makes them his slaves." Cut: The camera moved over ancient surgical tools, over rusty, bloody stains.

Báthory continued to speak. "And then another man came. He tried something similar on me. But I didn't push him down the cellar stairs." Báthory paused for a moment. "I murdered him. He tried to touch me. I saw him naked. A grin on his face. And I saw his thing, his thing with which he wanted to stake me." Cut. Body parts again.

Then Báthory again, standing in front of the room with the flickering light. "His buttocks were like two scouring pads waiting to be used. I cut them off." The screech of a chainsaw sounded. "Now they're scrubbing the floor." Cut. The camera moved across a floor littered with dirt and debris, showing scraps of flesh and bloody marks. "He wasn't the first to try this. But he was the first one I took seriously, so it was the last thing he did in his life." Another long shot of the room with the flickering light of the broken neon tubes. Body parts everywhere. "He didn't penetrate me; my chainsaw penetrated him."

Cut. Báthory in the long shot between the pillars with the body parts. She yanked the bloodstained chainsaw upwards. "The arterial blood that gushed out of him ... It went very differently than he had imagined ... he wanted to cum inside me, but I turned the tables. He did cum. But in a completely different way. Not from his cock, but from his jugular vein. It was a bloody ejaculation, a red orgasm of death." She paused for a moment, checking the blade of the saw. "Crime means superiority, means greater. It lifts a person above the submissive life according to the law. For all moral ideas are false; they stem only from cowardice. " The distorted voice again: "I am ready to kill, just as I am ready to die. My death, when it comes, will and shall be violent." An ancient, rusty refrigerator was opened, a severed foot inside. "And death, my death, will be the culmination of my life."

Close-up of Melanie as Báthory with her eyes closed, which she suddenly tore open. "All of you out there, listen to what I tell you." There is a long shot of Melanie between the pillars, the chainsaw at her feet. She threw up both arms and shouted: "I am the servant of the God of Blood, the reincarnation of Lady Báthory." In another close-up of Melanie, the music in the background stopped, and Melanie spoke softly: "Do as I say. Not because you have much to gain --" Again, the ride over the body parts. The camera stopped. Stopped briefly over what had once been the man's head. The face smeared all over with blood so that no one could recognize the man, "... but because you have a lot to lose if you don't."

Close-up of Melanie. "All of you out there are already dead to the world. "Another slow tracking shot over the corpse parts, accompanied by menacing music. "You only breathe for my pleasure." Close-up of Melanie. "Who am I?"

Then Melanie again between the pillars, the chainsaw in her hands, screeching: "I am the servant of evil, who knows no other law than murder, no other reins than these --" She held up the chainsaw, ran the blade around in the air, the screech of the saw could be heard, and she raised her voice: "... and no other god but you, my God of Blood!"

She paused for a few seconds; then the saw approached the monitor. The screeching became louder and louder, and then the sound of saw blades on metal and plastic. Cracking, crunching. And then nothing more. Just a flurry of electronic snow on the monitor, as if the power had gone out, accompanied by an almost unbearably loud electrical noise. But only for a heartbeat; the monitor went dark as if Melanie had sawed the camera in half. And the cameraman, too.

Everyone in the BRIC fell silent. Everyone - except Lyons, who already knew the movie and its ending - had been staring at the monitor wall with wide eyes. At least, that was the case with Nikki.

Not only had the video been horrible and gruesome, but she was even more shocked by how Melanie was portrayed as Lady Báthory.

"So?" Lyons asked eagerly, looking at them in turn.

Maggie pulled the corners of her mouth down. "Well, the body is real."

"It's real," said Lyons in amazement.

"Yes, but I'm sure there are directors who could be given a real corpse, and it would look like a rubber doll in a movie," the redhead replied. "So please take that as a compliment."

Elizabeth turned her gaze to her sister Katherine. She seemed impressed. "What do you think of that? As a profiler? Does the God of Blood bite?"

Katherine nodded with conviction. "It's exactly what we wanted. Just the thing to draw out the God of Blood."

Nick nodded slowly. "Lots of effects. But that's exactly how it has to be. High level, but not too perfect."

"Right," Katherine agreed, "small flaws and mistakes are intentional, and I also had to use some persuasion to make it palatable to Lyons." She glanced at Lyons. "The God of Blood must not understand that this is a professional production. Flawless would be too good, he'd notice."

"Yes," said Mike Fisher, "I think it's great work. We should put it on the dark web immediately."

Elizabeth rose from her chair with a sigh and frowned a little. "We should all take another thirty minutes to discuss every detail. We should change one or two little things. After that --" She looked at Nick and picked up her coffee cup. "After that, it's your job. Please put it on the dark web. So that son of a bitch God of Blood is guaranteed to find it."

Nick nodded slowly and looked at her for a long moment. "I need to get the video to Milton first, though."

Elizabeth's eyebrows drew together. "Why?"

"He and Mayer are measuring the data rate of the video. That way, we can locate the God of Blood when he watches the video, even if he's anonymous on the dark web."

Elizabeth blinked a few times and looked at him open-mouthed. "Yes, I didn't understand how that would work, but not so stupid, our dear Agent Milton."

Katherine grunted in amusement, and Nikki couldn't help but grin widely. Nick just rolled his eyes.

The lieutenant now turned to Lyons. "Mr. Lyons, thank you. You've done a great job in a very short time. Thank you on behalf of the BPD."

Everyone applauded, and even Nikki, who still didn't want to let go of the oppressive feeling - especially not now - clapped. Because she wasn't pleased about the video and how Melanie presented it. But the person it was supposed to represent had staged the video perfectly: Lady Báthory. Beautiful and horrible at the same time.