——David's Apartment.
Three empty red buckets sat on the kitchen tile.
David clicked his pen. He stared at the notepad on the counter.
Feeding complete. Frenzy subsided.
Caloric deficit confirmed as trigger for predatory behavior. Cognitive function restored post-feeding.
Tissue regeneration normal. The clay appears to have reversed most of the physical damage from years of street living and substance abuse.
The woman sat on the edge of the sofa.
Shredded, blood-soaked fabric hung off her shoulders. The skin underneath was unmarked. She looked twenty years younger than she had any right to. She stared at her hands, turning them over slowly, like she didn't recognize them.
"What is your name?" David asked.
She flinched. Her eyes burned an unnatural amber.
"Evelyn," she whispered. Her voice came out soft and clear.
David wrote Evelyn at the top of the page.
Two things left to test.
The apartment deadbolt clicked.
Kai stepped inside, dragging a man by the collar through the doorway. The smell of liquor filled the room. He walked to the center of the living room and dropped his captive onto the plastic drop cloth.
The street drunk groaned and rolled onto his side. He squinted at the overhead lights, muttering something incomprehensible.
David looked at the drunk, then turned his gaze to the woman on the sofa.
"Evelyn," David said.
She looked at him.
David pointed his pen at the man on the floor. "Bite him. Don't kill him."
Evelyn stared at the man, her jaw trembling slightly.
"Go ahead," David said, his tone flat. "Let's see if you can make a friend."
Evelyn slid off the sofa. She knelt beside the man on the plastic tarp.
Her jaw unhinged with a sickening pop. She leaned down and sank her teeth into the thick muscle where his neck met his shoulder.
The man jerked awake, letting out a muffled scream. He thrashed for a few seconds before his eyes rolled back and he went limp. Evelyn pulled away. It wasn't a deep wound, just a puncture, her saliva already in his blood.
David watched the clock on the wall.
It took less than two minutes. The man's body went completely rigid. The bloated, jaundiced skin of his face began to pull taut. The burst capillaries across his cheeks vanished. His thinning, graying hair seemed to darken at the roots. The parasitic strain was rewriting his cellular structure in real-time, burning out the alcohol and the decay.
When the seizing stopped, the frail, sixty-year-old drunk was gone. The man lying on the tarp looked thirty-five, his muscles dense and tightly coiled.
His eyes snapped open.
They weren't the burning amber of Evelyn's. They were a murky yellow, the whites threaded with thick, pulsing black veins. A lesser copy. A beta.
He scrambled backward, his boots sliding on the bloody plastic until his back hit the wall. He looked at his hands, his chest heaving, feeling something wrong moving through his body.
David reached into his coat, pulled out a heavy hunting knife, and tossed it onto the tarp. It clattered to a stop near the man's boots.
"Pick it up," David said.
The drunk stared at David, breathing hard. He reached out and grabbed the handle.
"Kill her," David instructed, pointing at Evelyn. "And you can walk out that door."
He swallowed. His eyes swept the room. Kai stood by the door like a wall. Another large figure near the window. He did the math quickly and didn't like the answer.
He looked at Evelyn. She was just sitting on her heels, wiping a smear of blood from her chin, her glowing amber eyes locked on him
The drunk tightened his grip on the knife. He bared his teeth and raised his arm to lunge.
He froze.
His arm locked mid-air. His hand began to shake violently. He gritted his teeth, the veins in his neck bulging as he tried to force his weight forward. He couldn't. It was like his muscles had been disconnected from his brain. Sweat poured down his forehead. His conscious mind wanted to strike, but his body flatly refused to move against her.
Evelyn stood up. She looked down at him with a cold, natural authority.
"Put the knife in your thigh," Evelyn said quietly.
The drunk's pale yellow eyes went wide with pure terror. "No— wait, fuck, please—"
His right arm moved on its own. With brutal force, he drove the heavy blade deep into his own leg.
He screamed, collapsing sideways onto the plastic. He instinctively reached down to pull the knife out, but his hands stopped an inch from the handle. His fingers just hovered there, paralyzed. He was sobbing, trapped inside a body that was waiting for its next order.
David watched the blood pooling around the man's leg. He clicked his pen.
Hierarchy confirmed.
He slipped the notepad into his pocket. "He requires blood for survival," David said, stepping over the thrall. "Feed him or let him bleed out. He belongs entirely to you now."
Evelyn looked up. "What do you want me to do?"
David walked to the kitchen sink and turned on the tap. He washed the blood off his hands.
"Find someone with real money. A name people recognize. Isolate them. Bite them. Then have them buy property outside the city—something private, something with space. I need a real lab."
"And after?"
"Once the deed transfers and the accounts clear," David said, drying his hands, "their fate rests entirely in your hands. Do whatever you please with them. Come back when it's finished. I'll have something waiting for you."
He looked back at Evelyn, her glowing amber eyes fixed on him.
"Take your new pet with you. Clean up before you leave. And Evelyn," David said, his voice clinical. "From today on, your official designation is K-02. The Progenitor."