The corridor outside the servants' wing had long been forgotten by the estate's upper-floor dwellers. Dust clung to the molding. The bulbs above buzzed with insect-wing static. Yellowed wallpaper peeled like dead skin.
Somewhere beyond the walls, an old pipe let out a single groan, metal bending from the cold.
Igor's footsteps echoed softly, unevenly. As if some part of him, some mechanical, broken clockwork, was out of sync. His bare feet made faint smacks against the tile. No shoes tonight.
No pretense of dignity. Just the slow, uncanny shuffle of something barely containing itself.
Silas Marlow, born Silas Marrow, cousin to the woman who had rewritten the definition of inhuman, stood perfectly still at the corridor's end, dressed in the simple gray uniform of a house servant.
A role he'd worn for decades, longer than any living man should have.
But tonight, the mask pressed against his skin too tightly.
In one hand, he held a polishing cloth. In the other, a barely folded scrap of paper, nothing. It looked like a supply manifest, but the words written on it weren't instructions.
They were a key.
Igor neared, pupils wide, brow faintly furrowed, as if he could already feel it coming. That tug. That buzz in the base of his skull.
His breathing had grown uneven, chest heaving ever so slightly. He didn't blink.
Silas took a step forward, speaking in that calm, affected warmth he'd practiced for years. "Routine maintenance shift. East corridor. Confirm and proceed."
The words fell into the hallway like drops of mercury, gleaming, venomous, precise.
A moment of stillness passed. A blink. The command slipped down through Igor's ears, threading its way into marrow and nerve, coiling around whatever fragile autonomy he had left.
His head jerked slightly. Muscles twitched in his jaw. His shoulders lifted, dropped.
And then, his breath hitched.
Eyes flared wide. Not with compliance, but with something ancient. Primal. Dangerous.
A flicker of fire danced behind the black of his pupils, flickering like something had struck flint inside his skull.
Silas felt it before he understood it: the command hadn't taken hold. Not fully.
A sharp crack rang out as Igor's knuckles curled and popped, the sound echoing louder than it should have. His chest heaved. His spine arched back, like something inside him was clawing to get out.
Flash...
A memory.
Chains rattling in the dark. Heat pressing in from every angle. Coal dust in his mouth. Men screaming. His voice, begging? No. Roaring.
Flash.
Maisie's hand touched his arm. "We will find a way through this. Together," she had said. Her voice, a rope in the dark.
Flash.
A needle. A white room. Her voice. Selene's voice.
"Igor. Obey."
His scream caught in his throat. It didn't come out.
But his body shuddered violently, fighting itself.
Silas stood frozen, staring at what should have been a successful activation, except now, the boy's chest was rising like a bellows. His eyes blazed with something awful and human.
And then, Igor looked at him.
No blankness. No recognition. Just… hatred.
It struck Silas like a slap to the face.
This wasn't a glitch. It was a rebellion.
He stepped back instinctively, breath shallow. The corridor's stale air pressed against his throat like fingers.
How had it come to this?
He thought of Selene then, his cousin, the first to be made "immortal." He could still hear her voice, decades ago, as she adjusted her lab coat in front of a mirror smeared with steam:
"We have to outlive them, Silas. The world isn't built for weakness."
She'd smiled like a woman who thought herself a god.
But gods didn't make monsters by accident.
Silas looked at Igor now, half-human, half-beast, body taut as if every bone was ready to snap.
A monster, yes. But not hers anymore.
And in that moment, Silas felt it: a fracture in the chain of control. A hairline crack in the centuries-old lie they'd wrapped the world in.
"You're not... responding," Silas murmured, more to himself than the boy.
Igor didn't move.
But his lips parted, just enough for a low growl to begin, deep in his chest. Like a storm cloud gathering breath. His fingers splayed against the wall, gouging shallow scratches in the plaster. Not in rage. In restraint.
Because he was still holding himself back.
Still deciding whether to obey… or kill.
Silas had never felt so old in all his long, endless years.
The growl never reached a roar.
It folded into silence, low and coiled in his chest like a creature breathing beneath skin. Igor stood motionless, staring at the man before him, not a man, not really.
He could smell it now. The rot beneath the cologne. The false calm.
His fingernails scraped deeper into the wall, plaster flaking down in pale crumbs.
Silas didn't breathe.
And neither did Igor.
Something inside him, something conditioned, something implanted, screamed to obey. But that voice was faint now. It no longer felt like the truth. It felt like static. Like a parasite losing its grip.
And something older had begun to stir.
Images flickered across the inside of his skull, too fast, too brutal.
A burning hallway. Teeth. The sharp, copper tang of blood. A voice like ash: "This body is yours. Until they take it."
Another tremor rippled through him. He straightened slowly. His gaze never left Silas, and in the span of a single heartbeat, something changed behind his eyes.
Not just resistance.
Understanding.
He took a step forward.
Silas flinched.
Not visibly. But enough. Enough for Igor to see it.
And he smiled.
Not wide. Not cruel. But human. And that made it worse.
"You shouldn't be here," Igor said, voice gravel-smooth, unused for hours. Or years. He wasn't sure anymore.
Silas opened his mouth to respond. A warning, maybe. A plea. But Igor cut him off with a whisper so soft it was nearly lost in the hum of overhead light.
"You're the one who gave them the key."
A pause. A shiver in the air.
"Now you're standing in the cage."
Silas took a step back.
Igor followed.
His breath fogged slightly in the cold corridor. The air felt different now, electrified. Like a storm cell had gathered inside him and was just now releasing pressure.
"You think you understand monsters," Igor said, advancing slowly. "But you never met one who remembered who he was."
His voice cracked on the last word.
Because he did remember now.
The mines. The cell. The pain. The white ceiling above him. The experiments. The voice that wasn't his, speaking through his mouth.
The metal taste of the collar. Maisie's laughter came through a crack in a half-open door.
The collar.
The collar.
He reached up and gripped it.
Silas's eyes widened.
And Igor tore it off.
The metal snapped free with a screech of sparks and broken circuits, the flash of a small blue light fading into darkness. Blood welled along his throat where the skin had fused against the implant ports, but he didn't stop.
He held the broken collar out to Silas like an offering. Or a threat.
Silas didn't take it.
Igor let it fall.
Clatter.
Silence.
And then he turned his back on the man who'd once owned him.
Walked away. Step by step. Not fast. Not fearful.
Just done.
Silas stood alone, staring at the broken tech. His hands were shaking now, barely perceptible, but undeniable.
He didn't follow.
He didn't speak.
He just listened as Igor's footsteps vanished into the dark beyond the corridor.
For the first time in a century, Silas Marrow felt afraid.