A shadow was in Maisie's peripheral vision as she watched Igor. This became an uneasiness she couldn't ignore.
It wasn't intense fear that gripped her. A slow, creeping awareness was from subtle clues she'd been too overwhelmed to see. Grief had dulled her senses, a tide that had submerged the truth just out of reach.
Her mother's disappearance had splintered her faith in everyone, like her father. Drowning in grief, she'd missed the signs in Igor until now.
She'd always viewed Igor with equal parts fear and awe. A calm, strong figure, more mystery than man.
The shadows seemed to writhe, hinting at something ominous lurking.
Now, he moved like a stranger, clumsy, whirling, like something was tugging at him from inside, blurring his vision, a lingering haze from a restless nightmare.
Not broken, but untangling. Not a machine, like a human cracking under pressure.
The silence he wore as a shield was now brittle, almost nonexistent, exposing the emptiness.
Her mind was like a runaway train, each thought a fresh wave of panic crashing against the dam of her fears.
How much of the man she once knew and respected remained buried in the layers of their manipulation?
Igor was never just a servant or a tool; he was a fractured being, a chimera of human and vampire, trapped in a cage of control that she couldn't see but could feel tightening with every passing day.
The terrifying truth was that the bars of that cage were beginning to bend, not in rebellion, but in a slow collapse.
Silence hung in the air until she broke it with a whisper, "Igor." The word trembled, acknowledging rather than disturbing his solitude.
Each step she took was deliberate, careful, like crossing ice. She felt less like a friend and more like a wary observer approaching a wounded animal, ready to retreat at the slightest sign of danger.
Her voice broke the silence, quivering, a plea masked as a simple question. "How… how are you feeling?"
He turned, every movement precise yet stiff, lacking the effortless grace she once knew. It was almost too controlled.
His eyes betrayed him. The composure she remembered had shattered, replaced by a turbulent storm simmering just below. Pain flickered like a dying ember, then dissolved into a swirl of confusion.
Something colder caught her, a flicker of fear glinting in his gaze. His jaw clenched, muscles taut, as if waging war against invisible forces inside his mind.
The silence stretched taut until his voice broke through, raw and strained, each word a painful effort, as if speaking itself tore at him from within.
A low growl rumbled in his chest, each ragged breath a fight against a hidden weight. "I'm... trying," he rasped, his voice cracking like dry wood snapping underfoot.
It was the sound of a man locked in a brutal battle with his body, warring with himself. "They want me... to obey."
He tapped a finger against his temple, the gesture clumsy and uncharacteristic. "The commands… they're here." A pained grimace twisted his features. "It's… harder now. They don't... fit anymore. It feels… wrong."
Maisie's chest tightened, reflecting the strain etched on his face. An involuntary impulse surged through her, a desperate urge to reach out and soothe him. Her hand, trembling, hovered just inches from his arm, but she held herself back.
He wasn't a malfunctioning device that she could tinker with and fix. He was a man, a soul shackled by ghostly chains, locked in a battle that shattered minds, one she could barely begin to grasp.
A soft breath escaped her lips, as if she were afraid to shatter a spell.
Her whisper carried a flicker of hope. "You're resisting," she said, voice shaking. "That means the real you is still in there, trying to come back."
His dark, haunted eyes met hers briefly, flickering with raw vulnerability. "I don't know who I am… not really," he confessed, his voice a desperate plea.
"It's as if... pieces of me are erased, vanished. But I can feel this." He gestured at his chest, his hand hovering over the frantic beat of his heart. "The things they made me do... the commands made to obey... that emptiness, that monster... I don't want to be him anymore."
Maisie swallowed hard as Igor slipped through their grasp, a mix of hope and dread twisting in her chest. Freedom was close, but at what cost? She sank beside him, the cold stone biting against the heat of his silent struggle.
A chill seized him; his fists clenched, nails digging into his palms until faint red crescents appeared.
"Sometimes..." His voice cracked, trembling like a flickering candle. "The memories claw their way back."
A shadow crossed his face, deepening the pain etched around his eyes. "The things they took from me…" He swallowed hard, voice rough. "I dare to forget. God, I try. But the past..." his breath hitched. "It clings. Like… Tak."
Maisie's chest ached, not with pity, but understanding. She steadied him with a quiet hand on his arm. "You're not alone, Igor."
For a heartbeat, his shoulders eased, and a flicker of wavering hope stirred in his eyes.
The shadows in his mind clawed. Tak wasn't just a memory; it was a wound that never closed, ripping at the seams of his sanity.
Fragments of that day bled through: blurred faces, a flash of steel, the unbearable weight of the sword in his hand. No silence could bury it.
"I killed him," Igor whispered, shame thick in his voice. "Not by choice… not from hate. They made me."
His hands clenched tighter, the sting grounding him amid the chaos inside. The memory wasn't just past, it was a mark seared into his soul, a cruel reminder of what he had been forced to become.
Maisie's touch was steady, an anchor. "That wasn't you, Igor. That was them, using your body, not your will."
He trembled, voice full with despair. "It was me... My hands… my strength. I remember his face, controlled, and in a trance. It haunts me. Every time I close my eyes… every still moment… I see him."
He looked away, unable to meet her gaze, consumed by a crushing wave of shame, struggling to keep the rising tide of guilt from crushing him. "I don't want to be the weapon they changed me into. I want… I want to be free of it."
Maisie squeezed his arm, her touch firm and anchoring. Her voice was soft, absolute. "You will be, Igor. We will find a way. I promise you, you will be."
Maisie's voice was a tether, a quiet insistence on the present; Igor's mind remained snagged, tangled deep in the brutal, indelible memory of Tak, not just a victim, but a rival, and another soul trapped in the same brutal cage.
He remembered the cold, sterile room where they were stripped bare of everything but their shared, terrifying predicament. He saw Tak's eyes, wild, confused, mirroring his fear. Two puppets, strung by some distant, merciless hand.
Tak wasn't just any opponent they had set against him. He was a mirror, another broken self struggling to return from the edge, resisting the same invisible enemy that held Igor captive.
The fight was not a battle of wills or strength; it unfolded like a nightmare in slow motion, a grotesque dance dictated by external commands.
Under the forced aggression, both combatants sensed the other's hesitation, a desperate struggle to recall their true selves hidden within the layers of programming and conditioning driving them to violence.
They fought with a cold, mechanical intensity, yet there was an underlying reluctance that only they might understand in one another. A terrible convergence of command and action unfolded as Igor's blade met flesh.
He remembered the sickening give, the sudden warmth. Tak's eyes widened in that instant, shock and deep hurt flooding his expression, not just from the pain, but from seeing a brother in chains compelled to turn against a fellow prisoner.
"I didn't want to do it," Igor whispered again, the confession rasping in his throat, voice cracking under its weight. His gaze was distant, lost in the past. "He wasn't an enemy. He was fighting too. Against them. Against us, being used like this."
The memory crushed him, a relentless weight, seeing Tak collapsing, his breath shallow, ragged, the futile, understanding regard of a man dying without ever regaining his freedom, trapped to the end.
Maisie's hand remained on Igor's arm, a warm, steady presence pulling him back from the abyss of the memory. "You're not that man who held the knife that day, Igor," she insisted, her voice filled with conviction. "You didn't choose this. You didn't choose any of it."
He closed his eyes, unable to bear the image anymore, haunted by Tak's final glance, a silent plea for release, a desperate understanding shared between two victims of the same tormentors.
"They made us enemies," Igor said, his voice hollow, devoid of hope for a moment. "We weren't. We were prisoners. Both of us."
Maisie met his gaze, her eyes reflecting a fierce, unwavering determination. "We should fight together now. Not against each other, but against them. For freedom. For truth."
The ghost of Tak lingered in Igor's mind, his final expression etched in despair and terrible understanding. They'd been forced to fight, two brothers turned pawns in a cruel, invisible game. Tak wasn't just a memory; he was a haunting reminder of all Igor had survived, and all he still had to face.
The final moments with Tak replayed in Igor's mind, the sickening impact, the brief flash of defiance in Tak's eyes before darkness claimed him.
Igor didn't hate himself for striking the blow; that command had been absolute, but for the hollow aftermath, the realization that it hadn't been him. Someone else had pulled the strings, made him a weapon against a fellow victim.
The mind control lingered like a sickness in his muscles and thoughts, a foreign presence always pressing inward. Shame consumed him, but beneath it smoldered a stubborn ember of defiance.
That fight hadn't just been violence; it revealed something vital. In his final moment, Tak resisted. And so had Igor.
There was a crack in the system, a fracture in the cage. Small, but real. Enough to spark a desperate hope: he could still claw his mind back, piece by piece. Each glitch, each falter in speech, each forced movement wasn't failure. It was proof that the war inside him hadn't been lost.
The fear of losing himself to their control tore at him like teeth in his mind. Burning just as fiercely was the need to survive, not as their tool, not as their weapon, but as an Alucard on his terms.
Igor didn't know how much he could be faithful, how much more his mind and body could endure this constant battle.
He knew one thing with chilling certainty: if he ever stopped fighting, if he ever lost himself to them, the unseen architects of his torment, the ones who had driven the knife into Tak's heart using Igor's hands, would win twice over.
They would claim not only Tak's life but also Igor's spirit. He would not let that happen. Not while a single spark of himself remained.