The dimly lit basement study of the Lennox Mansion seemed less a room and more a labyrinth of forgotten memories. The single chandelier above, a wrought-iron fixture almost a century old, hinged just slightly, adding a restless shadow-dance to the wooden shelving and furniture beneath it.
Marlow pressed a trembling matchstick against its wick, letting the flame illuminate the space in a weak, amber glow. His breath faltered in the oppressive silence, a stillness that seemed alive, as if the stones were listening.
Marlow knelt in front of a rusted filing cabinet that hadn't been opened in years, its metal drawers swollen and rigid from moisture and age.
His knuckles whitened as he forced it forward, a piercing screech of metal-on-metal shattering the quiet. Inside existed a succession of leather-bound files tagged in a rickety, nearly illegible writing, "Project Marrow", a name that appeared to tremble under his fingertips, a key to a scheme buried decades deep.
He pressed a small, dimly glowing button concealed within the filing drawer's frame, and a hidden compartment clicked and opened beneath it. Inside were photographs: black-and-white snapshots of a young Selene Marrow alongside a team of White Angels' first doctors, and a stack of documents marked "Classified – Marrow Initiative."
The photos were a timeline of descent: a hopeful young woman slowly hardening, growing distant, obsessed, until the people around her were not colleagues but mere instruments in her grand design.
Marlow turned page after page, allowing his fingertips to pause on the annotations created in her cultivated, penetrating script. The notes indicated that age-suspension hadn't been meant just for soldiers; it was meant for the Marrow family itself.
Selene had struck a deal with the White Angels' previous leadership; in exchange for extending her lifespan and preserving her relatives, she would provide the means to control the Alucards and, through them, a permanent ruling class.
As Marlow read, a peculiar feeling ate at him; not remorse, exactly, but a resonant, soul-weariness. His surname, a small variation from "Marrow" itself, marked him as a distant relative, a legacy keeper: someone meant to oversee this conspiracy across generations.
His service hadn't been devotion; it had been a form of compliance, a role restricted by ancestry, not choice. It made him realize something else in that moment: Igor was not the White Angels' greatest tool; Igor was their greatest risk.
He pressed a knuckle against his forehead, trying to absorb it all. His ancestors hadn't fought against despotism; they'd cultivated it.
His family's legacy was not a story of service or sacrifice; it was a plot, a meticulous orchestration of power that traversed generations.
The documents made it clear: the White Angels' ability to control and manipulate Alucards, to prolong their own lives, all flowed directly from the Marrows' research, a perverted form of immortality derived from ancient vampire DNA.
He turned another page and fell upon a schematic labeled "Initiate Renewal: Subject Preservation Series." There were notes about freezing cells, slowing metabolic decay, and chemically "resurrecting" a body years later.
The White Angels hadn't just experimented on soldiers; they'd tested on their own, preserving key members for future wars. The Marrows were not meant to fade with time; they were meant to become everlasting, ruling from the shadows while generations lived and died above them.
Suddenly, a photo fell from the file, not a family portrait, but a surveillance snapshot. The photo was grainy, taken from a rooftop across the road. It captured Jack Smack as a young pre-teen, just days after his parents were killed under mysterious Alucard-related circumstances.
His face was raw with rage and mistrust, a perfect specimen in Selene Marrow's eyes, a young soul primed for conditioning, a future tool in a conspiracy already decades in the making.
For an instant, he faltered. His hands quivered as he turned the photo over. There was a brief, cryptic note on the back in Selene's hand: "The future belongs to us. Until the last drop." It appeared less a vow and more a curse, a legacy of control and dominance that not even the Marrows' nearest relatives dared to challenge.
As he pressed the photo back into the file, something clicked in him, a resolve, a recognition that this legacy was a hell from which there might be no awakening. His role as keeper made him a silent accomplice…until now.
Whatever the White Angels were planning, whatever horrors Selene Marrow had set in motion, he decided in that poorly lit basement that it was time to break the chain, even if it meant destroying himself in the process.