Just after 6:30 AM, Lennox Estate
Gene moved quietly down the dim corridor toward Silas Marlow's quarters. The servants were bustling through the halls, their soft footsteps and murmured orders creating a constant background noise. She had to be careful not to draw attention.
She slipped inside the room without a sound, easing the door open just enough. Finding it empty, she discovered that Marlow's precise tools were gone, along with an open security box on the floor. Its lock was broken, and files were missing.
Her breath caught. Whoever took them had planned this carefully.
Her eyes caught the faint outline of a hidden panel in the floorboards, the maintenance tunnel beneath the east wing. The latch had been recently forced open.
Gene crouched and brushed away dust to confirm.
A cold draft seeped from the opening, carrying a sharp chill that made her skin prickle.
She pulled out her heat scanner, sweeping it slowly over the entrance.
A single spot appeared, too cold, too deliberate, like something was drawing power, or hiding from it.
Her heart pounded, but she stayed still and silent, listening for the servants' footsteps nearby. The longer she stayed, the greater the chance of being caught.
With a last cautious glance down the corridor, she pressed her finger against the panel.
The tunnel yawned open, swallowed in darkness.
Gene swallowed her fear and slipped inside, the quiet creak of the panel closing softly behind her.
The stale, musty air hit her immediately, thick with the scent of damp stone and rusted metal. The faint hum of machinery vibrated through the narrow passage, mingling with the distant clatter of servants beginning their morning rounds above.
Her footsteps were careful, muffled against the cold concrete floor. She held her breath at every creak from the aging estate, each sound threatening to betray her.
The tunnel stretched ahead, twisting like a serpent beneath the east wing. Her comm unit glowed softly in her palm, ready to alert Maisie if anything went wrong, but she hadn't heard from him since they split up.
A faint flicker of light appeared ahead, weak and wavering, as if the tunnel itself was losing power.
She moved closer, the cold spot growing stronger. The heat scanner revealed the impossible: an absence of heat in a place that should have been warm, as if something or someone was actively suppressing energy, cloaked in shadows.
Gene's fingers tightened around the comm unit. Whoever, or whatever, was down here wasn't just hiding. It was waiting.
Then she heard it: low, uneven breathing coming from the darkness ahead.
Her heart slammed.
"Igor?" she whispered, voice barely audible.
No answer. Only the steady, ragged breath.
She took another cautious step forward, the cold biting into her skin, a reminder that some secrets in this house weren't meant to be uncovered.
Gene's fingers trembled slightly as she brought the comm unit to her lips, voice barely more than a whisper.
"Dash… Leo… Maisie," she hissed softly. "I'm near the tunnel beneath the east wing. Something's down here. I can hear breathing. I don't know if it's him or something else. Stay alert."
A faint crackle. Then Dash's voice, clipped but tight with concern: "Did you say breathing?"
Gene paused. "Yes. It's… not normal. He's not moving, but he's there. Close."
Another voice came through, softer, Leo. "Do you see him? Is it Igor?"
"No," Gene replied. "Not yet. I'm at the threshold. The scanner's picking up a cold zone; it's unnatural. Like something's pulling energy from the room."
Maisie's voice cut in next. She sounded breathless, as if she'd started pacing. "Do not go in alone, Gene. Please."
"I'm not rushing in," Gene whispered. "But I have to know what he's doing down here."
There was a long silence over the line. Then Dash spoke again, quieter this time. "We just checked the incinerator. There's… remains. Something burned. We think it's a body. Igor dumped it before sunrise."
Gene shut her eyes for a moment. "I figured. He's faster now. More careful."
Leo's voice was strained. "We're still not sure who it is. But if it's who I think it is..."
Maisie cut him off sharply. "Don't say it yet. Not until we know for sure."
Gene steadied her breathing. "I'll try to talk to him. If it's him. If there's anything left of him to talk to."
Another pause, heavier this time. Dash finally said, "Just… don't get too close."
"I won't," Gene promised. "I'll ping again in two minutes. If you don't hear from me… follow the tunnel."
She clicked off the comm before anyone could argue.
Then, with one last breath, she stepped forward into the dark.
Gene moved in measured steps, her boots barely scuffing the cold concrete. The air thickened with every footfall, wet, metallic, laced with something more primal. Breathing. Still there. Shallow. Uneven. Just ahead.
She tightened her grip on the comm, her other hand hovering near her belt. The stun device nestled there could knock a bull unconscious or stop a raging Alucard for a few seconds at least. She didn't want to use it. Not on him.
Her comm unit's light bled pale blue against the walls. Pipes curved like ribs overhead. Shadows grew longer. The cold deepened.
Her finger hovered over the mic. Then a soft voice cracked through before she could speak.
"Gene?" Maisie. Her voice was tight, fragile, barely holding together. "Are you still there?"
Gene pressed the button, slow and quiet. "I'm here. Just moving forward."
Maisie's next breath was audible. Shaky. "You shouldn't be. Don't go farther, what if he's not... what if he's not him anymore?"
From the background, Dash's voice: "Maisie, breathe. Sit down."
But Maisie didn't respond to him. She stayed on the line, voice rising a pitch. "Gene, please don't talk to him like everything's fine. He killed someone. He's hiding in the walls."
Gene slowed. Her light hit something on the floor, scratches. Not random. Deliberate.
Symbols? No. Just one.
8.
Etched shallowly in the concrete, like someone had scratched it with a fingernail or broken nail.
She lowered her voice. "He left a mark."
Maisie let out a noise, half sob, half breath. "He's leaving messages now?"
Gene leaned down, fingertips ghosting over the engraving. The chill was so deep here it bit through her gloves. "I think it's a trail. Maybe even a warning."
Maisie clutched her comm tighter, eyes burning. Her heart twisted with guilt and dread. Gene had risked everything to warn her. Dash and Leo had stayed behind to protect her. And now all of them were walking straight into something terrible, because of him. Because of Igor.
Her voice broke. "What if he hurts you? What if he hurts Leo? Or Dash?"
She didn't tell me. The fear sat deeper than that, lodged like a stone in her chest.
Because part of her loved Igor, she just didn't come to terms with that until now.
"Two more minutes," Gene whispered. "Then I'll turn around."
And she disappeared into the cold, leaving Maisie clutching the comm unit with white knuckles, sitting against the far wall of Dash's room, shaking, breath coming too fast, heart pounding like a war drum inside her chest.
Leo placed a hand on her shoulder, but it was Dash who crouched in front of her, eyes steady. "If she's not back in two," he said quietly, "we're going in."
Maisie didn't answer. Couldn't.
She just kept staring at the comm, lips trembling.
She didn't want to lose another person she loved.
Not today.
Maisie clutched the comm unit like it was a lifeline, her hands trembling despite the blanket Dash had thrown over her shoulders. The edges of the room blurred, colors too sharp and shadows too deep, like the world had tipped sideways.
The others were moving, Leo checking the door, Dash murmuring into his comm, but all she could hear was the quiet static on Gene's line.
Waiting.
Dreading.
Her thoughts spiraled, crashing into the same question over and over: What if Gene didn't make it back? What if Igor turned on her, too?
She wanted to believe he wouldn't. That there was still something left of the man who had been forced into her home, bound by chains he never chose. The man she had grown to trust, despite how wrong it all was.
The man she cared for, though she barely knew how to hold that feeling in a world that treated him like a weapon. But the message carved into the metal. The blood on his shirt. The silence in the halls. It all painted a different picture.
And beneath that fear, something deeper throbbed.
Her mother.
Mara.
Kidnapped. Ripped from their lives without warning, then buried behind false memories. The truth only came back in pieces, like shattered glass, forcing its way to the surface.
She didn't even know if her mother was still alive.
That uncertainty ate at her.
Maisie curled in on herself, pressing her forehead against her knees. The pain wasn't sharp; it was suffocating. A quiet, constant ache in her chest that felt like drowning.
"You won't lose Gene," Leo had said softly.
But Maisie didn't answer. Because she'd heard that line before.
Before her mother vanished. Before everything was scrubbed clean.
And now, it was all unraveling again.
She felt her heart twist in three directions: grief for her mother, terror that one of her best friends might hurt the other, and something even heavier: the ache of possibly losing Igor, too.
She didn't want to lose him.
Not after all this.
Not when she had just started to believe he might be free.
"I can't do this," she whispered. "Not again. Not without knowing."
Dash turned from the window, his voice low, and said, "We're going to find the truth, Maisie. All of it."
But the truth had teeth. And Maisie was already bleeding.