7:03 AM – Lennox Estate Greenhouse
The greenhouse was quiet, humid with dew, and filled with the scent of overripe fruit and damp soil. It had grown wild and unkempt since Mara vanished; what was once her sanctuary now lay in disarray.
Vines spilled like tangled threads from broken pots, and the once-ordered rows of flora had grown unruly. In the corners, dead leaves curled like forgotten letters, and a spider's web gleamed faintly in the crook of a cracked window.
Mildew clung to the greenhouse walls, a cloying reminder of how long it had been since anyone had truly cared for the place. Mold speckled the undersides of wilting leaves, and the glass overhead bore streaks from months of unwashed rain.
Somewhere near the back, a vine had overgrown its pot entirely, curling around a rusted watering can like it was trying to remember how to be tended. Gene moved through it slowly, letting her fingertips brush against the dead fronds as if touching memory itself.
It wasn't just a ruined garden. It was a ruin of a life once lived here, Mara's life. And now, hers is in the margins.
She paused near a sunken shelf of empty seedling trays, crouching beside them as though the cracked plastic might hold answers. The security footage still played in her head. Igor's face, haunted, unfocused, kept intruding every time she blinked.
What frightened her most wasn't that he'd escaped. It was that he looked back. That something inside him still reached for connection, even through the static haze of trauma. She had seen that same expression once in a mirror, not long after her last mission for the White Angels. It was the look of someone who didn't know if they were still human.
A soft creak echoed through the beams above, just the greenhouse settling, or maybe not. Gene's shoulders tensed, but she didn't move. The White Angels had trained her not to flinch. But Gene, the girl beneath the rank, still felt every tremor.
She thought of her mother's quiet kitchen back home, the way her name now hung unspoken in every conversation. There was no going back. Not after what she'd done. Not after who she'd become.
Once, the White Angels had given her purpose. A mission. An identity. But all of that had unraveled when she uncovered the deception beneath their polished mission, lies about who they were protecting, who they were truly serving.
The manipulation of the Alucard population. The dehumanization. The experiments. The silence. It had driven her to leave.
The final crack came when she discovered the truth about Subject Eight. What they had done to Igor. What they had made him into. That was the moment he became more than a number. More than an objective. He became a question she couldn't stop asking.
She had never truly belonged in her own family, always the outlier, the odd one out in a house of careful expectations. But with the Lennox siblings, with their frayed edges and haunted pasts, she had found something closer to home.
And Igor, broken, conditioned, uncertain, looked the way she felt.
Gene sat cross-legged on the cracked tile floor, her back against a planter of ivy, comm unit in hand, the footage paused on one haunting frame.
Igor.
The security camera had caught him just hours ago, stepping briefly into view as he exited the tunnel under the east wing. His eyes were wide, unsteady, and dazed. Human. Not a monster. Not Subject Eight. Not even a weapon.
Just a man.
She'd watched it a dozen times. Rewound, paused, zoomed. He was barefoot. His wings were half-drawn, uneven. One was dragging slightly, still marked where the bone had been wired to his back for too long. He looked lost.
Gene let her head fall forward, resting her forehead on her knees. She hadn't told anyone about the footage. Not Maisie. Not Dash or Leo. Not even the lawyer pacing through the estate with damage control in his briefcase. She didn't know what to say.
She wasn't even sure what she believed.
The greenhouse, once a haven, now felt like a confession box. The broken collar. The blood trail. The security footage. Her fractured loyalty. She'd thought she knew who the monster was, until he looked at the camera like he wanted someone to find him.
Somewhere above her, a bird chirped. Sunlight filtered through the mottled glass, streaking between hanging vines and wilting petals.
But the warmth didn't reach her. The light here felt filtered, secretive. Like the room itself knew it was hiding something.
Gene's hand hovered over the comm unit, thumb poised over the delete key.
But she didn't press it.
She didn't flinch when she heard footsteps outside.
Gene stood slowly, slipping the comm unit into her coat. If anyone asked, she would lie. She would say she was checking the plants.
She'd say that the greenhouse was the only place where she could think. Where she could get some much-needed rest after feeling like she had been running for what felt like years.
She didn't want them to see her guilt.
Or her hope.
7:18 AM – Eastern Perimeter of the Estate
The eastern edge of the estate was still, save for the distant rustle of wind in the cedar trees and the soft clink of a shovel dragging through gravel.
Mist clung low over the field, reluctant to lift, as if the ground itself wanted to keep its secrets buried. The youngest assistant, no older than seventeen, on the grounds crew had drawn the short straw, sent to clear the drainage trench no one liked to speak about.
He didn't like this stretch. The others never did either. It smelled wrong. Like metal and mildew, like something had been cooking too long but never meant to be eaten. The air held the cloying scent of old smoke, sweet, oily, and curdled with something rotting underneath.
He stooped near the runoff pipe, prodding with the shovel, half-hoping to find nothing.
Instead, the earth gave a strange crunch beneath his boot.
He paused.
A shape jutted up from the mud, warped and pale, almost sculptural in its stillness. It looked at first like twisted wood or slagged piping, but the more ash he brushed away, the clearer it became.
A jawbone.
Cleaned by fire. Split at the hinge.
Something inside him shut off. He didn't breathe. Didn't blink. His hands trembled as he reached for the edge of his shirt, using the hem to brush back more of the blackened soil.
There were more bones.
Spines, cracked and curled like shrimp. Finger bones, some fused by heat. One still had something clinging to it, melted cloth, maybe linen, maybe silk. A faint, warped buckle. A single lock of hair, charred to brittle red, caught in a crevice of bone.
Then came the smell.
Not just smoke, but something underneath it. Fat cooked too long.Blood turned to steam.Burned teeth. The boy recoiled, gagging, the shovel falling from numb fingers.
Something in the pile hissed, just steam, he told himself, but it sounded like breath.
His scream didn't come all at once. It started as a gasp, then a dry sob, then a full, splitting cry that sent birds screeching from the trees overhead.
He turned and ran, falling twice in the wet grass, until the mist swallowed him and the estate began to stir.
Behind him, the trench steamed quietly.
And the bones did not move.