The mansion was cloaked in darkness beneath the new moon, nearly pitch-black. Gene slipped out of her guest room, the soft slap of her slippers barely audible on the polished wooden floor. Every creak, every breath seemed louder in the silence, magnified by the stillness around her.
She moved swiftly through the halls, hugging the shadows and slipping through the security cameras' blind spots. The old White Angels systems were still active, just in case. She couldn't risk Jack or his lackeys spotting her. But she had to risk everything if she wanted the truth.
The overhead lights flickered. Her heart pounded like it was trying to break free from her chest. For a moment, she froze, every nerve taut, alert. The glitches had been happening all night, subtle at first, then undeniable. Something was wrong. But what?
Gene steadied herself and pushed onward. Technically, she had every right to be here; she was a guest, a friend of the Lennox family. But the mansion didn't feel like a home. It felt like a prison, and the White Angels were the wardens. She crept through the halls like a thief, because despite everything, it felt like she didn't belong.
Behind a false wall near the servants' quarters sat an outdated monitoring room, long forgotten by most. The equipment ran on aging software that the White Angels had installed over two decades ago.
Gene eased into the chair before the main monitors, their cold glow flooding her face and forcing her to squint in the surrounding dark. She had used this room once before, back when she was one of them. Now, she was here to protect the people she once spied on.
Gene scoured through the archived footage, fast-forwarding through hours of empty hallways, servants going about their routines, and the dull redundancy of mansion life. But something was wrong. In the most recent files, the time stamps glitched, flickered, vanished, or froze at strange moments.
Footage skipped unpredictably, like somebody, or something, had meddled with the feed. The abnormalities all started around the time they entered the tunnels searching for Igor. It wasn't just a glitch. It felt like a virus.
One of the monitors rippled with static, glitching out without warning. Gene froze, her breath caught in her throat. It was the feed from the west corridor, just outside the greenhouse.
A second later, the screen flickered back to life, as if nothing had happened. But then she saw it, an odd flicker of movement. The footage didn't just skip. It corrected itself, smoothing over a two-minute gap with a false transition. Something had been erased.
Her mouth tightened. Not even Jack had access to this level of control, and he hadn't been at the mansion for weeks, not since the day he met with Harry Lennox. Whatever was watching wasn't a person.
It was a virus, an automated failsafe buried deep in the system. The White Angels must have discovered that Harry was dead and that Number Eight hadn't been recalled. Maybe they knew about her, too. The mansion was no longer safe.
Gene scoured the footage, eyes flicking across every frame to confirm Igor wasn't caught. Just as she expected, he was nowhere to be seen.
They had smuggled him through the tunnels into an old bomb shelter hidden beneath Maisie's room, a trapdoor concealed by a step ladder. Every Master's quarters had one. That wasn't the problem. The real threat was the virus, wiping any trace of an intruder from the system. They had to move fast. But where could they go?
The narrow, hardly used corridor leading to the servants' quarters was chillier than the rest of the mansion, and dust had flown up into her nostrils, making her almost sneeze, but she stopped herself. Her footsteps softened, careful not to disturb the silence that wrapped the hallway like a shroud. She moved toward the familiar trapdoor concealed behind the worn step ladder, Maisie's secret passage into the old bomb shelter below.
Gene's breath caught as she neared the hatch. She crouched, pressing her ear to the cold wood, straining to catch even the faintest sound. Nothing. No footsteps, no whispered voices, not even the faint hum of surveillance drones. Just silence. But she knew better than to trust silence in a place like this.
Her fingers trembled as she lifted the trapdoor, unveiling a narrow stairwell spiraling down into darkness. A cold breath rose, tangled with the scent of rotting wood and stale air.
Gene's heart hammered in her chest, each beat a sharp reminder of the dangers lurking, not just outside, but within the very walls of the mansion.
She paused at the top step, casting a glance back down the main corridor before bracing herself for the darkness below. The tunnels had been Igor's refuge, a sanctuary, but also his prison. And now, the shadows above were closing in faster than ever.
With one last deep breath, Gene slipped down the stairs, the creak of wood muffled by the silence. Every step took her closer to the truth, and deeper into the patchwork lies woven through the mansion's veins.
Gene's footsteps echoed softly against the cold stone walls of the narrow tunnel, the faint drip of water somewhere ahead blending with the quiet hum of old wiring.
The stale, damp air filled her lungs as she moved carefully toward the hidden bomb shelter beneath Maisie's quarters, Igor's refuge, and their secret stronghold.
The dim glow of a flickering terminal caught her eye, barely lighting the cramped room. She moved over and pulled out her portable device, fingers trembling slightly as she scanned the corrupted network nearby.
A weak, irregular signal blinked insistently on her comm unit's screen, a fractured pulse breaking through the digital fog.
The source was close, nestled within the mansion's fractured system, as if Igor's unconscious mind was sending out a faint cry for help through the corrupted web of cameras and sensors.
Gene's heart tightened. Even here, hidden beneath layers of stone and shadow, the mansion's ghosts were reaching for them. She tried to steady the signal, to listen through the static, but it flickered and died, swallowed once more by the creeping silence.
A sudden shiver ran down her spine. Igor's fight was far from over. And somewhere above, the mansion's eyes had not stopped watching.
The cold tunnel narrowed ahead, walls pressing close and shadows swallowing the edges. Gene's footsteps echoed faintly, swallowed quickly by the suffocating silence. Each sharp breath felt trapped in her chest, the air thick and choking.
She pressed forward, driven by memory and urgency toward the hidden bomb shelter beneath Maisie's quarters.