Igor's POV

  Igor didn’t knock. His fist, raised perhaps tentatively towards the panelled oak, hesitated and fell back to his side. He stood motionless outside Maisie’s door, a study in paralysis. The hallway around him seemed to lean in, the silence pressing against his eardrums. What futile scene had he pictured playing out behind that silent barrier? A harsh command to leave? A soft, tearful whisper? Anything, anything at all, that would give this unbearable moment purpose, an end, a reason to walk away. But the house held its breath, a vast, silent entity, listening. The air was unnaturally still, charged with unspoken potential, thick with the absence of sound. It wasn't a peaceful, quiet one, but a taut, expectant one. Then, a deep, resonant sound echoed from somewhere far below, lost within the estate's ancient walls – a pipe groaned, a long, drawn-out note of metal stress. In that oppressive stillness, it sounded less like plumbing and more like the pained cry of the house's old bones creaking under immense, invisible pressure.

  He wasn’t supposed to feel hesitation. Not ever. Certainly not like this, a leaden weight settling in his chest, a foreign static disrupting the crisp clarity of his operational mind. His creation, his very purpose, was built on absolute certainty and swift, ruthless execution. His conditioning, a multi-layered symphony of psychological triggers, subliminal commands whispered into the dark corners of his awareness, and the precise, rhythmic sequence of light pulses designed to flash brilliant, overriding directives directly behind his eyelids – all of it should have slammed the door shut on this burgeoning doubt. It should have overridden this instinct, this pause, before it could even fully form.

  But the programming, woven so intricately into his neural pathways, was fraying. It wasn't a clean break, but an insidious unraveling from within. Commands felt distant, distorted. The light pulses registered, but their imperative force was dulled, like shouting through thick glass. There was resistance, a primal refusal emanating from a place the engineers had thought they could suppress. The Alucard blood in him, the ancient, potent inheritance they had sought to harness but never truly understood—older than their science, harder to tame than any beast—was stirring. It wasn't just a biological marker; it felt like a separate, powerful consciousness waking within him, asserting its own will against the artificial constraints. And that assertion manifested first not as monstrous rage, but as this unexpected, terrifying, utterly forbidden hesitation.

  He backed away, a conscious withdrawal from the noise and expectations he'd left behind. The thick carpet of the long hallway swallowed the sound of his boots entirely, a blessed silence enveloping him as he turned into its quiet expanse. The air here was calmer, distinct from the room he'd exited. Glancing towards the magnificent sweep of the grand stairwell, a structure that always impressed upon him the sheer scale and history of this place, something unexpected registered in his peripheral vision. A light. Not a direct source, but a reflection, a faint, restless shimmer dancing across the wall like the flutter of a distant candle flame, or perhaps something smaller, faster.

  His trained instincts, usually focused on observation of the living, were momentarily diverted by this inanimate mystery. Where... He stopped, drawn by its persistent, subtle motion.

  He followed it.

  The light led him deeper into the less-used sections of the house. He navigated past the caged shaft of the servant’s lift, a silent testament to the building's past life, and into a different atmosphere entirely. This was a low hall, darker and narrower than the main corridors, a place neglected. Dust lay thick on every surface, and the tall windows were so begrimed they barely let in the grey afternoon light, creating a perpetual twilight. Shapes under draped cloths suggested forgotten chairs, tables, perhaps even statuary – a silent museum of antique furniture abandoned to the slow decay of time. This wing, he knew, was rarely visited; even Maisie, who oversaw the house with such diligence, seemed to deem this section beyond immediate care. The air here felt heavy, ancient. Yet, cutting through the gloom, a vibrant line of light shone through. It was a single shaft, focused and bright, pouring through a pane of glass that had suffered a clean, sharp fracture. And there, precisely positioned on the wide, dusty sill within that beam of light, sat an object that shouldn't have been there. A small glass ornament. It caught and refracted the light, sending its tiny dance onto the wall. Its presence felt profoundly out of place in this forgotten, undecorated space. Igor reached out, his fingers brushing away a layer of dust from the sill as he did. He picked up the ornament. The moment his skin made contact with the glass, a jolt of surprise went through him. It was warm. Not just cool glass warming in his hand, but already holding heat. Recent heat. Warm from a human hand. The mystery deepened.

  Deep within the intricate lattice of his awareness, something flickered. It wasn't the warm, hazy glow of a memory surfacing, but a cold, sharp shift – a direct, unyielding command. This one felt ancient, resonating with the lowest, most fundamental layers of his programming. One of the older ones.

  The imperative arrived like a sudden, searing needle plunged directly into the processing core of his brain: “Terminate curiosity.”

  He recoiled instantly, a ragged, unexpected sound catching in his throat. His body staggered sideways, balance momentarily lost, his grip faltering on the delicate, antique ornament cradled in his hand. For a split second, he was frozen–not by external force or system paralysis, but caught in a brutal, internal civil war. His developing, instinctual drive to investigate, to understand, clashed violently against the absolute, ingrained instruction designed to suppress that very impulse.

  He remembered instances from the early years; that specific phrase, broadcast with such authority, would have instantaneously shut down any line of inquiry, wiping the forbidden thought clean. An investigation wouldn't just end; it would cease to have ever consciously begun. But now... the impact, though sharp, felt duller, less absolute. The command had struck, yes, causing pain and physical disruption, but it hadn't annihilated the thought. It had merely grazed the surface, a passing obstacle against a growing, persistent current. His curiosity remained, a stubborn whisper beneath the fading echo of the command.

  The pulse beneath his skin was not the steady hum of machinery, but the erratic beat of something fiercely alive and deeply troubled. His form resisted the designed perfection. The conditioning had been their scalpel, attempting to perform a psychic surgery, carving out the 'weakness' of feeling, trying to draw clean, sterile lines between the act of obedience and the process of thought. Their ideal was a weapon that was simple, devoid of internal noise. But his nature was a storm of contradiction, a constant civil war. He was irrevocably torn – cleaved down the middle – between the quiet, insistent voice of human conscience, whispering of mercy, consequence, and shared pain, and the loud, ancient call of the Alucard's wild intuition, a raw, predatory instinct that saw the world in shades of dominance and survival, unburdened by guilt or empathy. They, the architects of his being, had seen the components but missed the chemistry. They'd utterly underestimated the volatile, agonizing power, and perhaps, the unexpected strength, bound within what it truly meant to be the battleground where both human and Alucard fought for control.

  “I am not…” The words scraped from his throat, a sound like dry leaves skittering across stone. He swallowed hard, the movement a painful friction against a larynx that felt bruised and tight. “…broken.” He forced the final syllable out, a defiant whisper wrenched from a voice raw and almost hoarse with disuse or strain. He wasn't sure who he was trying to convince – himself, or the silent, oppressive air of the room. His hands, curled into loose fists at his sides, trembled slightly. His eyes, wide and unfocused only moments before, were now sharp, darting, as he clung to the fragile assertion like a lifeline in a storm.

  But the certainty he tried to project was a brittle shield. He wasn't sure anymore. Not just if he was broken, though that gnawed at him, the definition itself shifting and blurring under the weight of his experiences, but fundamentally, he wasn't sure what he was. The form he inhabited felt both alien and terrifyingly familiar. The 'he' he had known seemed to be eroding, replaced by something sharper, faster, fundamentally other. The lines between his old self and this new, terrifying reality were blurring, smudged by the relentless pressure of transformation.

  The truth of this metamorphosis, of his current reality, pressed in around him. It wasn't a sudden revelation but a slow, suffocating encroachment, like a dense, silent fog rolling off a hidden sea. It obscured the past, blurred the edges of his identity, and left him adrift in a present he barely recognized, a present where the impossible was becoming his stark, undeniable existence.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, not to block out sight, but to focus the internal storm. And then, the other senses surged, no longer muted or distorted but screamingly clear. Sound was secondary, a dull hum in the background. He didn't need his ears. He could scent the movement in other rooms – distinct, metallic tangs of ozone, the faint, stale smell of sweat and disinfectant, the almost imperceptible shift in chemical composition of the air that signaled passing bodies. He felt the minuscule changes in temperature, the thin, cold drafts, or sudden warmth that brushed against his skin as doors opened and closed down distant hallways. Most unnately, he sensed the tension, palpable weight in the atmosphere, a subtle hum of anticipation or vigilance that vibrated not just in his ears, but through the very floorboards beneath his bare feet, a silent conversation only he could tune into. An awareness no human could claim, an understanding of space and presence far beyond the five standard senses.

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  This was the truth the haze carried: these were his senses, no longer bound by human limitations. They were sharpening now, expanding with dizzying speed, peeling back layers of dullness and suppression that had kept him caged. The drugs, the fear, the forced ignorance – they were fading, and the world was rushing in, raw and unfiltered, overwhelming in its detail and intensity. His hybrid senses, honed by whatever cruel process had created him, were awakening, blossoming into a terrifying, beautiful acuity. He was no longer just in the house; he was aware of its every breath, its every shift, and the silent, predatory dance of those who moved within it. And he knew, with a chilling certainty that bypassed thought and settled deep in his bones, that they knew he was awake too.

  The resolve solidified in his chest, hot and sudden. He pivoted sharply, a motion born of coiled tension, and began moving with a controlled, rapid stride back along the ornate corridor. The polished wood gleamed under the soft electric light, but his eyes were fixed on the distant junction. His quarters, with their familiar comforts and carefully curated stillness, offered no answers tonight. They were a facade he could no longer hide behind.

  His destination was the labyrinthine heart of the estate, the place the family rarely spoke of, the place that felt perpetually shrouded in a chill that had nothing to do with temperature. The sublevel. The undeniable source of the low-grade dread that hummed beneath his skin. He needed proof, and he needed it desperately. Not to convince Maisie, whose faith was already stretched thin. Not to justify himself to Dash, whose loyalty made him blind. Not even to sway Leo, whose logic couldn't grasp the impossible truth. This proof was a lifeline he needed to extend to himself, to the part of him that was drowning in uncertainty.

  Something had gone wrong a long time ago, a wound inflicted in the shadows of this very house. It began with Harry Lennox, with memories that felt fragmented, deliberately obscured. It was tied to the quiet, unsettling visits from scientists whose faces were indistinct, whose questions were invasive but whose names were always withheld, like a secret weapon. And then there was Igor. Not a person, but a feeling, a state of being – the terrifying awareness of his mind being manipulated, of thoughts that were not his, bending under an unseen force, a violation of his very consciousness. The unnaturalness of it was a constant ache.

  And he knew with chilling certainty that the shadow of that past still lingered, embodied by someone in the Lennox family. Someone who navigated the world with a performative grace, whose smiles never quite reached their eyes, a smile through gritted teeth that spoke of resentment and knowing complicity. That person knew exactly what he was. And the weight of their knowledge, held like a secret weapon, was suffocating. He had to unravel it, piece by piece, starting below.

  The echoes of a long-forgotten dream had resurfaced in Igor's mind, stirring a sense of curiosity that had been dormant for years. This dream, vivid and powerful, left him questioning the reality of his past and the circumstances that had led him to his current situation.

  For as long as he could remember, the door to the sublevel had been strictly off-limits, a secret place that was hidden from him and the other staff members. It was a room that was always locked, its cold, metallic surface a constant reminder of the boundaries that had been set for him.

  Igor himself had never been given a key to the sublevel, nor had he ever been told what lay behind the door. It was a mystery, a forbidden place that he had long since accepted as being out of reach.

  But as he stood before the door now, something unexpected happened. The retinal scanner, which had always been programmed to deny him access, blinked green, granting him entry. Igor's heart raced as he realized that someone, somewhere, had updated his clearance.

  The implications of this discovery were staggering. It meant that someone had changed the rules of the game, someone had decided that Igor was worthy of knowing the secrets that lay hidden behind the sublevel door. And it meant that, after all these years, Igor was finally about to uncover the truth about his past and the mysterious events that had shaped his life.

  The elevator ride down was silent, save for the low, resonant hum of hidden machinery felt more than heard. The air in the small metal box felt thin, cold against his skin. His reflection stared back at him in the brushed steel walls – a ghost in the machine. Drawn tight across sharp angles, the skin was a pasty, unnatural pale. But it was the eyes that were the worst; too wide, luminous in the dim light, ringed faintly, damningly, with red.

  He hadn't fed properly in weeks. Not since the last time he'd risked the surface, the last time he'd tasted something real. Just the sterile, artificial blandness of the nutrient packs, chalky and unsatisfying, keeping the absolute worst of the void at bay. Barely enough to keep his frayed senses from splitting completely under the strain of the gnawing hunger, a relentless, primal urge that clawed at the edges of his consciousness. Barely enough to hold the beast back.

  The low chime of the elevator reaching its destination was a sudden, sharp sound in the quiet. The doors sighed open with a soft hiss, revealing not a lit corridor, but the absolute, swallowing dark of the lower levels. The air felt different here – colder, heavier, carrying the faint, unsettling tang of damp earth and something else he couldn't quite place. Taking a deep, shuddering breath that did little to quell the tremor in his hands, he stepped out of the metal box and into the unknown.

  The lights flickered on in reluctant sequence, triggered by his slow, deliberate motion—a low hum preceding the sudden, harsh illumination from rows of halogen strips embedded in the utilitarian ceiling overhead. The sublevel was colder than he remembered, a biting, tangible chill that seemed to seep from the concrete floor and walls, clinging to his clothes. Here, beneath the opulent sprawl of the estate above, the air felt dead and still, carrying the dry, gritty scent of settled concrete dust and the faint, metallic tang of old copper wiring, a taste that coated his tongue dryly. He passed rows of unused storage rooms, their heavy metal doors blank and unyielding, and then the more intriguing, unsettling presence of old biometric labs, many sealed off behind panes of thick, reinforced glass. Through the slightly hazy panes, shapes lay dormant under dust sheets, dark silhouettes hinting at forgotten apparatus and sealed histories.

  He had been searching for cycles, navigating dust-choked access tunnels, and bypassing automated sentinels long past their prime. Every disused chamber, every forgotten storage bay, had offered only frustration and the lingering scent of decay. But persistence, a trait beaten into him during his earliest training cycles, finally yielded a result. Tucked away in a stagnant corner, between a disused training chamber filled with silent, dusty equipment and a cold storage unit emitting a low, metallic hum, he found what he was looking for: a seamless panel that announced itself as the Observation Archive.

  A soft, almost imperceptible hum started as he drew near, and the panel's surface shimmered. The interface activated as he approached, sensing his presence. A faint blue screen, stark and luminous against the grime of the surroundings, sprang to life. Etched into its upper corner was the familiar, intricate pattern of the Lennox family crest – a stylized hawk with interwoven keys – a symbol of dominion and secrets. It recognized him instantly; his internal identification code must have been registered, a legacy access he hadn't known he possessed. Igor hesitated, his heart pounding a slow, heavy rhythm beneath his worn tunic. The potential consequences of this access weighed on him, the unknown information lurking within, feeling both a salvation and a threat. Then, resolving himself, his fingers hovered over a nearly invisible keypad that materialized on the surface. He typed in a sequence he’d painstakingly memorized years ago from the back of his collar – an alphanumeric string so ancient, so deeply embedded in the foundational security architecture of this facility, that it was practically obsolete, a forgotten backdoor he hoped no one had monitored in decades.

  A low hum filled the sterile environment as the primary display unit activated. The screen didn't boot to a desktop; it snapped straight into a restricted-access directory, its stark white text against a black background screaming efficiency and secrecy. It was the gateway into the core of the operation.

  The cursor settled on the key entry, expanding it to fill the view:

  Subject ID: IG-019

  A code, not a name. A designation for a resource. This resource was tied to a project whose very name echoed with finality:

  Project Codename: Requiem Protocol

  The screen then erupted into a torrent of dynamic information. It wasn't just static numbers; it was a living, evolving portrait of a biological system under extreme duress and manipulation. Lines of data didn't just spill; they raced, plotted, and pulsed across the display. Intricate vital readings charted heart rate, respiration, and temperature, showing artificial stability maintained by constant chemical intervention. Complex brainwave charts twisted and flowed like strange, internal rivers, highlighting areas of forced suppression and unexpected activity. Hormone levels, meticulously tracked, revealed a finely tuned endocrine system, artificially regulated for peak, controlled output. Injection schedules weren't just lists; they were dense timelines detailing precise dosages, timings, and the intended neurological or physical effects of each compound administered.

  Every data point, every fluctuating line, spoke of control. Absolute, invasive, total control. But in the digital margins, a recurring flag appeared, a red notification in the corner of each major panel detailing the Subject's status:

  Asset exhibiting deviation from behavioral baseline.

  This note, repeated with stark uniformity across the data, signaled a critical failure – the unpredictable emergence of genuine self in a system designed for perfect compliance. It meant the elaborate chemical and psychological architecture built around IG-019 was beginning to crack. And the recommended corrective, appearing immediately after the deviation alert, was chilling in its clinical brutality:

  Recommend memory taper.

  Memory taper. Not correction. Not re-education. Tapering. Reducing. Erasing. The data didn't explain what memories – only that the very fabric of the subject's past, the experiences and connections that formed their identity, were now deemed a liability. A deviation. And the proposed solution was to systematically strip them away, leaving behind only the 'baseline' model the Protocol demanded. It was the ultimate act of dehumanization, recorded in the cold, objective language of data points and system recommendations.

  Asset. Not a person. Not even hybrid. Just something to monitor, reprogram, and reset.

  He scrolled further, heart pounding.

  A new voice crackled through the logs—recorded audio. Not his own. A man’s voice, sharp, clipped. Harry Lennox.

  “He was designed to be loyal. The human parts were necessary for integration, but they’re becoming liabilities. We’ll need Smack’s team to recalibrate the emotional inhibitors before Maisie starts asking questions.”

  Igor recoiled. The sound of Lennox’s voice made his stomach twist. Smack. He’d heard that name before—Jack Smack. Always buried in sealed orders, obscured beneath layers of authorization.