A 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 part of the servants' 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 labyrinth beneath the estate, the sublevel that the Lennox family avoided naming as if speaking of it might summon something best left buried.
It wasn't just storage or infrastructure down there; it was silence, sealed behind concrete and old lies. Igor needed to see it again.
Not to argue with Maisie, she was sharp, skeptical, but lately her questions had grown teeth. Not to challenge Dash, who still played loyal son to a man he barely trusted, caught in the tug-of-war between admiration and suspicion.
And certainly not for Leo, who had been kept so far on the margins he didn't even realize how much he didn't know.
No, this wasn't for them. This was for him. A reckoning. If he could put eyes on the truth, on whatever they were still hiding down there, maybe he could stop feeling like a weapon waiting for orders.
Maybe he could start becoming someone else.
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, disturbing 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 and 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 chime of the elevator reaching its destination was a sudden, sharp sound in the quiet. The doors sighed open with a hiss, revealing not a lit corridor, but the absolute, swallowing dark of the lower levels.
The air felt different here, 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 a 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: S-08
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 S-08 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 a 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. 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.