The surveillance feed blinked once, just a flicker in the southeast quadrant. The greenhouse camera stuttered, then resumed. Harry Lennox leaned forward, fingers tightening around the lip of the desk.
"Play it again," he said.
Silas Marlow didn't respond right away. He stood a little behind Harry, hands folded neatly behind his back, watching the footage with the detached poise of someone used to anomalies, but unbothered by them.
Harry turned. "I said again."
Marlow stepped forward and pressed a sequence on the console. The screen replayed: moonlight, wind, the fractured shimmer of the glass roof.
No movement. No figure. Nothing to hold onto.
"I already scrubbed the timestamp," Marlow said calmly. "Could've been a signal echo from the east quadrant sensors. This part of the estate is old."
Harry's eyes narrowed. "You think I can't tell when someone's lying to me?"
Marlow's lips didn't quite smile. "Of course not, sir."
The honorific sat wrong. Harry felt it, just a hair too measured. He'd known Marlow since he was a boy, though strangely, Marlow hadn't changed much. Not in posture, not in voice. A trick of memory, perhaps.
Or good genes. Still, the man unnerved him sometimes. Too quiet. Too precise. Like he was keeping secrets inside his bones.
"Have the greenhouse swept by morning," Harry said, stepping back from the screen. "And cross-check the perimeter drones. If someone's slipping past us, I want to know who."
"Yes, Director." Marlow bowed his head slightly, but his eyes stayed locked on the static-hiccuped frame as if seeing something Harry could not.
There was a beat of silence between them, longer than comfortable.
Then Harry added, a touch too sharply, "We're close, Marlow. Closer than we've ever been. I won't have this derailed by some trespasser with a vendetta."
"Of course," Marlow murmured, the old, false loyalty wrapping around his voice like velvet. "The legacy must be protected."
Harry gave him a searching look but didn't reply. He left without another word, his polished shoes tapping over the marble until the sound disappeared.
Silas waited until the door shut.
Then his face changed.
Not an expression, just a slight softening, like a mask that had been momentarily unfastened. He turned back to the monitor and watched the glitch again.
The anomaly, a shape in the darkness, framed by moonlight. Not just anyone.
Gene.
She was in.
He didn't alert the guards. Didn't mark the timestamp. Instead, he reached into his coat and withdrew a small encrypted data key. Slipped it into the console. Deleted the frame.
One clean cut from the timeline.
And just before he turned away, a whisper passed through the silence behind him. A presence.
He didn't flinch. He'd already felt it.
Silas turned in a slow circle, his hand still inches from the hidden injector inside his coat. A soft scraping echoed, like boot leather over concrete, barely there. He narrowed his eyes.
"Sensor drift," he muttered to himself. "Humidity warping the vents."
But the air felt wrong. It was heavier now, charged like a coming storm. The lights flickered once. Then settled.
He reached into his pocket and activated the chamber diagnostics with a familiar flick of his fingers. The screen blinked to life with pulse readouts, cryo-stabilization levels, genetic tags...
And one silent alert.
Motion Detected, Vault Perimeter: Sector 3.
He froze.
Sector 3 was right behind him. Near the emergency access corridor, the one that only internal staff or family were supposed to know about. The one sealed for months.
Slowly, Silas lifted his eyes and turned.
A shape moved just past the edge of the containment tubes.
Not a technician. Not a Marrow.
It was tall. Barefoot. Shirt torn. His neck was bleeding from the collar removal. Wings were still bound.
And eyes likea waking grave.
Igor.
But he wasn't snarling. He wasn't even breathing loudly.
He simply watched.
Silas didn't blink. Didn't breathe. Didn't even reach for the comm.
He had seen those eyes once before when Number Eight failed to scream.
When he ripped the collar off, Silas thought. He didn't even flinch.
"Eight…" Silas whispered, almost reverent.
Igor tilted his head slightly, not like an animal, but something worse: curious.
Like he didn't remember if Silas was prey or something already dead.
Why didn't I sound the alarm that alerted headquarters? Silas asked himself. Why didn't I stop him then?
Because part of him, some buried, bitter shard, wanted this to happen.
Because something inside Silas Marrow wanted to watch the legacy rot.
And Igor stepped back into the shadows again, choosing not to kill.
Not yet.
Watching.
Still here. Still awake.
Silas said nothing. Didn't turn. Just let the moment, one living ghost sharing the dark with another.
He whispered only to himself, "It begins."