Marlow moved like a phantom through the service passageways of the Lennox estate, his glossy shoes silent on the worn stone floors. The noontime light slanted through slim windows, streaking the hall with gold and shadow, but Marlow kept to the gloom where the security cameras didn't quite detect the angles of his face.
He'd learned the blind spots well in his months stationed here. It had been monotonous at first, posing as a butler, cleaning up after the Lennox family's carefully curated dysfunction, but now, the assignment was becoming... fascinating.
Igor was slipping. Marlow had watched it unfold with the patient detachment of a hunter tracking wounded prey.
At first, the Alucard had moved like clockwork: precise, obedient, hollow-eyed. But lately? There were moments. Irregularities. The lingering way Igor stared at the family portraits in the hall, his jaw clenched too tightly.
The way his hands trembled just faintly when Harry Lennox's orders cut too sharply. And last night, yes, had been the most telling. Marlow had noticed Igor pause at the garden doors, staring at the moonlight with something comparable to longing. That wasn't in the programming.
He kept his notes as always, concealed in plain sight. The cleaning schedules he submitted to the estate's house manager each week were laced with subtle code, a cipher only Selene's inner circle could interpret. A certain column alignment signaled restlessness in the subject.
A shifted header meant an increased risk of awakening. He'd sent the latest encoded message this morning, his hands steady as he handed over the paper with a bland smile. The White Angels would know exactly what he meant: Igor's conditioning was unraveling.
That afternoon, as Marlow dusted the study's high shelves, his comm device droned softly against his ribs. The message was short, clinical, unmistakable: INITIATE RECALL PROTOCOL.
He froze, letting the cloth in his hand drift gently back to the shelf. So it was time. No more waiting, no more subtlety.
Selene was ready to bring her weapon back into the fold. The decision filled him with a heartless kind of delight; the game was shifting, and Marlow loved nothing better than a game in motion.
A flicker of memory surfaced as he stood there; the meeting months ago, in the cathedral-like quiet of White Angels headquarters.
Selene Marrow's voice had been low, compelling, as she'd briefed him: "He's dangerous, yes. But manageable, if you keep him dormant. Watch for fractures. And when the time comes... you'll know." He'd nodded then, assured, enthusiastic.
This was his family's legacy after all. A Marlow watching over one of the greatest weapons they'd ever crafted.
Shaking off the memory, Marlow made his way down to the servants' wing, his mind already working through the layers of artifice he'd need to perform.
The message to Igor couldn't come as a direct order, that would raise alarms in anyone observing, or worse, trigger some of Igor's arising suspicions.
No, this had to feel natural. Familiar. He'd craft it like a household summons, something wrapped in the daily tedium of the estate. A call to duty, disguised in routine.
He reached his small quarters, closing the door with the softest click. The room was plain, just as he liked it: a narrow bed, a plain desk, a shelf of identical black ledgers.
He powered up his secure terminal, fingers gliding over the keys as he composed the recall message. It bore the hallmarks of an ordinary directive: a request for Igor to report to the east wing cellar for an inventory task.
But threaded into the phrasing was the trigger, an old command phrase buried deep in Igor's conditioning. The words would sink like hooks into Alucard's mind, pulling him toward submission.
Marlow read over the message twice, his face smooth as lustrous stone. Then, with careful timing, he sent it through the estate's inner communication system. It would appear on Igor's device within moments, indiscernible from any number of daily tasks.
Marlow leaned back, exhaling slowly. The first stone had been thrown into the still water. Now he would watch the ripples.
Outside his window, dusk had begun to creep across the estate grounds, the sky bruising from gold to deep indigo. Marlow remained at his desk, fingers steepled, listening as the quiet settled over the house like a waiting breath.
The trap had been set. If Igor was as fractured as Marlow suspected, it wouldn't take much at all to pull him back into the shadows where he belonged.
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The message struck Igor's pager just after sundown. The small, utilitarian device buzzed once against the wooden shelf where it lay, nearly hidden beneath a stack of neatly folded linen napkins.
Igor paused in the dimly lit scullery, wiping his hands on a coarse towel. His knuckles were raw from a day of heavy lifting and cleaning; service seemed an endless, grinding discipline designed to keep him weak, distracted, a tool and not a person.
He pressed a thumb against the phone's surface, unlocking it with a swipe.
The glow from the screen fell across his face, illuminating piercing green eyes that glimmered faintly in the half-light. The message was brief and entirely ordinary on its face: "Report to the east wing cellar immediately. Inventory oversight."
There were a few words there, a particular combination that seemed to cut through his defenses, piercing whatever doubts or questions might have otherwise come.
For a moment, Igor remained perfectly still, device in hand, letting the encoded command sink into him. His pulse sputtered, then fell into a rhythmic calm. His muscles tensed and then drifted effortlessly into a state of readiness.
Whatever restless independence had been chomping at him just a moment before seemed distant now, a dream upon waking. The conditioning was reasserting its hold, clicking back into place with mechanical precision.
He turned without a word, without a backward look, and walked briskly toward the servants' corridor. His surroundings seemed more brilliant, more defined; each corner, each doorway fell into its proper context, a path made for him, a route dictated by something greater.
His senses were alive, a rush of icy clarity, and yet it was an empty feeling, a kind of serenity that came from submission, not freedom.
The wooden floors creaked beneath his feet in a slow, volitional rhythm.
His shoulder brushed against a stack of crates, threatening a cascade, but Igor kept his equilibrium effortlessly. His body seemed to know this route by pure muscle memory, a path it hadn't walked in years, as if an invisible thread tying him back to the White Angels had gone tense once more.
As he crossed into the dimly lit east wing, the rest of the world fell away. The stillness seemed absolute here, stifling, a perfect medium for the signals meant only for him.
His breath fell into a bottomless, deliberate pattern, inhale… exhale… aligning him more and more with whatever mission was soon to come. His doubts, his doubts about himself and his past, were gone. There was only the path in front of him and the order in his phone.
With a slight pressure, Igor pressed his shoulder against a heavy wooden door at the end of the corridor. It opened into a glowing storage chamber, a place filled with forgotten furniture, crates, and the scent of mildew. Inside, a single lightbulb swung from the ceiling, casting a small pool of yellowish light directly in the center of the room.
Igor stepped into it, letting it illuminate him. His silhouette fell across the stacks of forgotten furniture, a dramatic slash of shadow against the dim, a warrior called back into service.
For a moment, everything seemed suspended, the dust motes in the air, the rhythmic beating of his own heart, then Igor whispered under his breath, a voice not entirely his own,
"I am ready." The recall was complete. Whatever suspicions had bitten at him were gone. Whatever path lay in the White Angels' hands now, Igor would follow it… without question.