Lennox Estate — 2:12 AM, Hours Before
The glow of the study's old monitor flickered in Igor's mind as if burned into his vision. The grainy footage replayed relentlessly behind his eyes, dusty, broken, but devastatingly clear.
It was security footage, buried in the corner office of the east corridor. Igor found it by chance, discovering an access code crudely scrawled on a scrap of paper hidden in Harry's desk, a careless mistake Harry had made.
Harry Lennox sat at a polished desk, his posture rigid, his smile strained. He was the puppet master, though he was trapped by forces beyond his control. The video revealed how willingly he embraced his role, making shadowy bargains and sacrificing those closest to him to climb a ladder built on pain.
The footage never showed Mara's kidnapping directly. Instead, it showed Harry receiving cold, clinical reports confirming the operation's success. His face remained impassive, but in the video logs, he spoke quietly, almost to himself.
Then came a crucial moment on screen: a status update flashed on one monitor, "Subject Number 8 has been fixed." Harry's expression barely shifted as he nodded, his fingers tapping a confirmation on the keyboard.
Igor felt the words stab at his chest. Number 8. The last time he'd heard that name was from Marlow, cruel and detached, a label meant to erase who he was. His Alucard number. Since then, Maisie had given him a name again. A real one.
But to Igor, it was a betrayal far worse than any physical wound.
Harry chose to turn away, accepting the cost of power, burying his family's suffering beneath layers of silence.
Then came the scenes of Harry alone, surrounded by flickering screens displaying fractured memories and sensitive data. His fingers danced over the keyboard, activating commands that wiped clean critical memories, erasing evidence, and controlling the narrative.
He mumbled to himself the whole time about how he was helping them, a chilling rationalization that erasing memories was necessary to protect his family from unbearable truths. To shield them from pain. To keep them safe in a fragile, controlled world.
Harry confirmed the memory erasures were complete with a cold, calculated command. He sent the encrypted file to Selene Marrow, the enigmatic force pulling strings behind the White Angels.
That video hit Igor like a thunderbolt.
Harry wasn't just a victim.
He was an architect of betrayal, cloaked in misguided protection, deliberately burying the truth to hold onto his fragile power.
Every pixel carved a wound deeper than chains ever could.
Rage ignited within Igor, fierce, merciless, and unstoppable.
He slammed his fist against the console, the echo ringing through the empty chamber like a storm breaking free.
In that echo, Igor felt the weight of his stolen identity, the cruel irony of a name stripped away and given back only to be overshadowed by a number. Maisie's voice, calling him by his gifted name, was a lifeline in the dark sea of his existence. But the shadow of 'Number 8' clung stubbornly, a reminder of control, pain, and the lies he was bred to obey.
He fought a war within himself, a struggle to be the man he was meant to be, rather than the weapon they made him. Fury blazed the path forward in that battle.
The storm of rage inside Igor roared, but beneath it, a quieter, more fragile battle raged. Who am I? The question clawed at him, not a boy with a past full of memories and warmth, but a shadow forged in hardship and survival. His life had been nothing but struggle, cold, brutal, and empty.
He had no fond memories to cling to, no comforting faces or laughter to soften the edges of his existence. The name "Number 8" was a brutal reminder of the life carved out for him, a life stripped of choice and identity.
Maisie's voice echoed in his mind, a rare beacon of kindness in a world that had treated him like property. She gave him a name, and with it, a fragile hope that maybe, just maybe, he could be more than the sum of his scars and programming.
Doubt still weighed on him. Could he reclaim a self that was never truly his? Or was he doomed to remain a weapon shaped by others' hands, his humanity nothing more than a fleeting illusion?
The footage of Harry, who had tried to protect his family by erasing memories, burned in Igor's mind. A protection that was nothing but a cage, a betrayal disguised as mercy. Igor refused to be caged any longer.
He clenched his fists, feeling the weight pressing down on him.
Igor found defiance within the fire of his fury, a fierce, merciless refusal to let a number define him.
He decided to forge a future on his terms; he wasn't going to claim his past.
Igor's anger simmered as he stared into the darkness, the words echoing quietly in his mind: "I'm not the only monster in this house."