That night, I became a ghost. Dressed in the simple, grey uniform of a night-shift orderly that I had lifted from a locker in the staff wing, I bypassed the main security systems with an almost insulting ease. The clinic's public-facing security was designed to keep the world out, to protect the privacy of its wealthy clientele. Its true security, the layers of steel and silver and sonic emitters, was focused on the levels below, on keeping the clinic's darkest secrets in.
I descended into the sub-levels, my stolen keycard granting me access to a world that was a stark, brutal contrast to the luxury above. The warm cedar was replaced by sterile white corridors. The tranquil gardens were replaced by soundproofed titanium doors. The ever-present hum was not of healing machinery, but of advanced containment equipment. This was no wellness centre. It was a holding facility. A supernatural black site where inconvenient individuals were stored, studied, and processed.
I moved from shadow to shadow, a phantom in the machine. In one ward, marked "Exotics," I saw lesser Fae creatures, their beautiful, iridescent wings clipped and bound, their eyes dull with whatever drugs they were being given. In another, marked "Nocturnes," I saw a young vampire,
his body emaciated, his veins dark with what I recognized as a blood-borne parasite, likely a failed experiment.
In a third, the air thick with a desperate, animal musk, I saw him: a young Lycan, thrashing against silver-laced restraints, his silent howls of agony a testament to his suffering.
This was Ellis's acquisition centre. He wasn't just working with Silas. He was running a full-blown trafficking ring, supplying his master with a steady stream of rare and powerful beings for his monstrous research. And I knew, with a chilling certainty, that I was meant to be his crown jewel, the centrepiece of his collection.