The Judas Gospel

The team arrives at St. Bernardine's to prepare the ritual site. Thomas confirms the hellmouth is suitable. They spend hours drawing ward patterns, establishing the ritual circle, and placing the four components: manuscript, coins, Lance, and Marcus.

Chen arrives at Holy Redeemer with intelligence on Lux's facility where David is held. Marcus, Chen, and Lily execute an extraction operation. David is alive but deteriorating from nine months of dimensional energy harvesting.

Marcus moves Thomas to a safe house after Sword operatives find the seminary. Thomas shares the Iscariot family history: generations of carriers, his uncle's suicide, his mother Ruth who hid the manuscript and killed herself to give him choice.

Marcus processes Torretti's confession while factions position around the Undoing. Hell requests formal negotiation through Brimstone. Heaven increases angelic surveillance near St. Bernardine's without intervening. The Church distances itself from Torretti through suspension.

Torretti confesses the full truth about Jonathan Kane: 15 years of partnership, Jonathan's marriage to Azazel, Vatican execution order, Jonathan fighting 17 Sword operatives to consecrate St.

Torretti contacts Marcus personally, having broken from the Sword. They meet at a warehouse where Torretti reveals the Lance of Longinus — a weapon that whispers with every death it has caused. He wants to surrender it before it destroys him.

Marcus discovers anomalies in Chen's intelligence reports — nine months of subtly altered data. He confronts Chen, who confesses: Dr. Lux holds David alive in a secret facility, using him as leverage to extract Commission intelligence. Chen chose love over loyalty.

Thomas visits Marcus's basement and sees parallels between their exiled lives. He lays out the four Undoing requirements: the coins, Bridge blood, St. Bernardine's hellmouth, and the Lance of Longinus — currently held by Torretti, the man who killed Marcus's father. The impossible task crystallizes.

Marcus tracks the manuscript to Thomas Iscariot at Chicago Theological Seminary. Thomas is a quiet, haunted seminary student carrying two thousand years of inherited guilt and purpose.