Chapter 31 #3
“Don’t touch anything until we’ve verified there’s no asbestos, yeah?” Vae shouts back, snatching the Doctor’s pillows and throwing them on the floor for fuck knows what reason.
There’s a beat of silence from Silas, followed by a far too casual, “Too late.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and blow out an annoyed breath.
Then, Silas adds, “Also, it’s a real murder board with red string and thumbtacks and everything. You’re gonna stroke out, Dax. You love this kind of shit.”
Vae and I share a long look, then stalk into the closet.
“You better not be joking, Silas. If you just drew a bunch of dicks on the wall to piss me off, you’re walking home.”
I follow Vae into the closest and find Silas bent over, nose three inches from the wall, squinting at a journal entry tacked to a corkboard.
”Hollyyyyy fuck,” Vae whistles. “It really is a murder board.”
“Told ya,” Silas replies, looking far too smug.
Stepping up beside them, I scan the wall. It’s packed with photos, journal entries, newspaper clippings, old Vampire House crests crudely sketched on paper, and photocopies ripped from old ledgers and books.
Directly in the center, tacked up and written in thick black marker, is a single sheet of paper with one word:
Elydrien.
All the strings start there and work their way out.
“This is unreal,” I murmur.
“We should take pictures, just in case.” Silas whips out his phone and begins cataloging while Vae and I try to make sense of the chaos.
I’m usually the composed one in these situations. Then again, I usually stay behind at HQ. Sometimes I forget how different things are in the field, how much harder the weight hits when it’s not filtered through a screen, or crackling in your ear over comms.
“Gods, look at this shit,” Vae points at a row of blurry Polaroids of random women, all obviously photographed without their knowledge.
Multiple bright red strings stretch from the center sheet—Elydrien—and fork off toward the photos. I crouch down, noticing a delicate script scrawled along the edges. It looks almost like a label.
“What’s that say?” I tilt my head, squinting to make out the tiny handwriting.
“AIR.” Silas points at two strings that split off from the center.
They were originally twinned together under Elydrien, but veer off in separate directions toward different photos.
He points again. “WATER.” Then gestures to four more threads.
“EARTH and FIRE. And these black ones are labeled “ALL.” He taps them gently, gesturing toward the two photos they’re connected to.
Two more women. Two more of Varenthrall’s victims.
“Holy fuck, is that Daniella?” Vae whispers. I follow his gaze and swear under my breath.
“Yeah, and that’s Calla next to her. They’re both tagged under FIRE.”
I trace the strings to where they disappear beneath the photos. Under them is another sheet. It’s rough and aged, with a sketch that looks like a gnarled tree trunk.
“This is a family tree,” I point at the lines branching from the central trunk. Again, that same word is scrawled across the bottom. ELYDRIEN.
Silas waves a hand toward the sketch with a grimace. “That’s not a family tree. That’s a family autopsy.”
He traces the branches shooting off from the central trunk. “Look. It’s the same as the threads. Fire, Water, Air, Earth, All. Each branch is different. Then each of those split off to different names…” he trails his finger further, until it lands on Calla’s name.
“Holy. Fuck,” he breathes.
”What?” Vae demands.
I’m already reading and putting things together. It isn’t long before my hands start getting clammy. My throat dries out, and goosebumps pop up on my arms despite the warm air. I start to speak, but my voice cracks. Clearing my throat, I read,
“Calla V. Date of Injection: 2/12/25. Serum Batch: 004-F. Memory Wipe Protocol: 3/25/25. Observed mutation: Low-grade heat disruption and electric discharge. Bonded: No. Disposition: Released to the public sector under false Beta classification.”
I can feel the numbness creeping in the more I read. By the time I get to the end, I seriously think I might vomit all over the evidence.
“Failure notes, ” I continue, throat clicking as I swallow.
“Cognitive instability within seventy-two hours. No conscious elemental control. Emotional trauma causes chaotic spiking. Memory suppression mostly complete. Subject may retain flickers, but not enough to matter. FIRE is least compliant, showing the most resistance to synthetic grafting. Subject only viable for long-term monitoring.”
“This one is so much worse,” Vae gestures to one of the notes tacked up under the branch labeled ALL.
There, the photo of the Omega has a large “X” slashed over her face in short, angry strokes of red marker.
Underneath the photo, it reads,
‘Subject A-02; Injected: 1/3/25. Immediate neurological collapse. Subject began screaming in three languages, none previously known or identifiable. Vocal cords ruptured. Eyes turned black, then exploded. Death was… absolute.’
“There’s this line, too.” He nods at the scrawled line of script on the bottom of the paper. It’s a rough slash of letters written so hard the pen nearly tore the paper.
“‘Never again. It does not work. It cannot work.’”
I press my palms into my eyes, trying to calm my racing heart. If I thought I hated that fucking family before, it’s nothing compared to the loathing I feel toward them now.
Varenthrall and his lying daughter.
I swallow, feeling sick. “They’re being experimented on.”
I’d suspected it, but seeing it laid out so clearly in black and white is a totally different monster. This isn’t just disturbing, it’s sick. He’s running an entire fucking operation to kidnap, traffic, and genetically alter helpless Omegas.
It only takes me a few minutes of sorting through what I know for the pieces to click, slotting together to form a bit of the picture.
“The elements in that blood.” I stand and shoulder past my teammates, stalking back into the bedroom where there’s more air. “That’s what he was doing. Taking the elemental DNA in the blood and grafting it into Omegas’ DNA.”
“Wait, you can do that?” Vae asks, confused. “I was just fucking around about the Frankenstein shit earlier. That’s not—that’s not a real thing, right?”
“We aren’t dealing with normal DNA here, Vaelenor,” I explain, pacing. “And Albertson has spent almost a decade researching it. Experimenting with it. He has so much more information that I don’t have access to.”
There’s no way that’s all there is. It seems more like a place for Albertson to spill the chaotic thoughts in his mind. The entire wall is a mess, full of post-its, torn notebook paper, computer printouts, and photos all taped around “branches.”
That’s what those damn “murder boards” are for. They let you step back and see the entire nightmare at once.
Whatever else Albertson is, he’s still a scientist. He wouldn’t just trash years of research.
He probably has hundreds of thousands of hours of data… somewhere.
“Uhm, guys?” Silas walks out of the closet, grimacing, clutching a piece of paper covered in scribbled notes. “You’re going to want to see this one.”
He hands it off to me. Vae leans in, and we read the small handwriting.
“Subject: Omega, 0002-F. Stabilized after initial neural shock. 68% highest recorded for Affinity-W to date. Bonding Event: Successful and Verified 11/03/24. Cycle Outcome: Viability confirmed. Host retention intact. Emergence date projected: 07/18/25.”
My stomach bottoms out as I read the final line. The walls tilt around me. Fuck.
This is… so much worse than I imagined, and I really didn’t think it could get much worse.
My fingers are tingling, halfway to going completely numb. My hand feels clumsy and too big, and before I realize it, the paper is fluttering from my fingers to land on the floor.
“What?” Vae asks. His expression is full of confused concern.
My mouth opens, but I can’t—can’t force words to come out. I notice absently that my hands are shaking, and I fist them by my sides to hide the movement.
My gaze meets Silas’ grim expression, and I know he understands.
That asshole likes to pretend he’s a total idiot when in reality, he’s one of the smartest operatives we have. That’s part of what makes him so deadly. People always underestimate him.
Silas bends down and swipes the paper off the floor where it landed at my boots. He hands it to Vae, his mouth set in a thin line.
“He’s not just trying to splice magical DNA into stolen Omegas,” he explains. “He’s breeding them. Like livestock.”