Chapter Text
Amado stands at the precipice.
Below him is a two hundred-odd foot drop, and below that a turbulent river. Below that, presumably, skeletons.
“Our appointment should have started four minutes ago.” Jigen says, next to him. “How rude.”
“Inexcusably!” Code contributes.
“Maybe Orochimaru finally thought better of it.” Amado says. “A moment of clarity.”
The group has been on this cliff for the past ten minutes, waiting ever so patiently for their host to lower the drawbridge and invite them in. Amado feels an added urgency that his companions don’t. The wind and rain here is merciless. His coat was soaked through the minute he stepped out of the coach.
“Hardly likely.” Jigen says. “Orochimaru will follow wherever his curiosity takes him. For me to request a meeting is extremely out of the ordinary. He can’t help but accept.”
“And yet he still doesn’t understand the privilege of your visit.” Code sniffs. Sycophantically. “To keep you waiting out here is simply-”
“Inexcusable?” Amado guesses.
Code glares at him.
Following some sort of cue, there is a shift across the chasm. Massive chains and gears begin to creak and grind, and the drawbridge finally lowers, stopping halfway through for a good thirty seconds before resuming more painfully than before. The path to Orochimaru’s castle stretches, technologically decrepit. Amado holds his tongue.
-
Orochimaru, as a Konoha alumni known for his mysterious disappearance and earth-shattering contributions to the early medical field before things such as regulations and ethics were truly called into question, is well known to Amado. With such a reputation, how could he not be?
He has pulled a lot from what little of Orochimaru’s research has been made public, and whatever else he has questionably excavated from the university’s reserves. The man is brilliant. In the relentless, soul sucking way that led him to immortality.
Amado is similar. He’s referenced the man’s research, after all. There is a hunger, a desperation Amado has always found vaguely admirable.
Seeing him in person, he is just unnerved.
“Forgive me for keeping you waiting.” Orochimaru says. “I was in the middle of something.” True to form, he is dressed in clean white, with a scalpel protruding from his pocket. The light smell of formaldehyde follows him.
Jigen and Amado shed their coats in the hall. Amado keeps his.
“You’re a busy man.” Jigen says noncommittally. Orochimaru smiles, without his eyes.
“That I am. And I see you’ve brought your new pet?”
“Amado.” Amado says. He holds out his hand. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“Of course.” Orochimaru smiles again, this time inversely, with only his eyes. “Again, forgive me for my manners. It’s just so rare I see a human.” he shakes Amado’s hand. “May I ask what’s keeping you alive?”
“He’s been assisting me in some projects.” Jigen says vaguely. “He’s useful.”
High praise. Amado watches Orochimaru’s attention easily slide over and through him, like he was a mildly interesting painting he is since through examining.
“A human assistant? Novel.”
“Is it?”
“Well, I don’t find them naturally inferior for intelligence or consciousness, it’s just, in the grand scheme of it, they are all…remarkably inconsequential. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just turn him. Or kill him, for lack of enemies. ”
“There will be time for all of that.” Jigen says. His eyes cut to Amado. “I like to let things run their course.”
Amado stares back at him.
After a moment, Orochimaru shrugs minutely.
“Suit yourself, Jigen.” he says. “You always were an odd one. This way, then.”
He leads them through the tunnel-like hall to a grandiose room with a table in the center. Unlike Jigen’s interior decor choices, Orochimaru’s sensibilities skew towards the rough and hewn. Although large and grand, it’s like the castle truly has been excavated from a mass of rock, rather than the other way around.
There are no elaborate, dead light fixtures, just flickering torches and candles. The way the light jumps and dances really others the appearance of the three vampires before Amado.
“Let’s talk business.” Orochimaru says, taking a seat at the head of the table. Amado notices a small movement in the shadows behind him as he sits, and hesitates. Jigen and Code sit down with no qualms.
“I must say, I was thrilled when you reached out to me, Jigen.” Orochimaru continues. “You usually keep to yourself.”
“I’ve hit an impasse.” Jigen says. “Primarily, as I mentioned, I want access to your throwaways. My experiments require more subjects.”
“Yes, yes.” Orochimaru says impatiently. “There’s more, isn’t there? You can find humans anywhere, although mine are particularly special , that’s no reason at all. You mentioned in your letter…” he leans forward, salaciously, “...something very rare, something very clandestine …how do I come into play for you, Jigen?”
“Don’t be too eager.” Jigen says. “I came here to discuss, but this is a delicate opportunity to offer you. I can’t guarantee you have what I need for it.”
“Everyone needs something from me.” Orochimaru waves his hand. “But so rarely do you . Tell me what it is. I’ll make it worth your while.”
Jigen regards him, long enough for Code to become antsy and shift in his chair. Jigen and Orochimaru don’t change, staring each other down with the patience and calculation of decades of immortality.
Finally, Jigen leans forward and quietly whispers something to Orochimaru. Whatever it is, Orochimaru goes completely still. His hands lower and lay flat on the table, and he turns to Jigen.
“The book…” he says softly. He leans forward, eyes wide and bulging. Beyond madness, it is awe. “You have…information?”
Jigen nods.
Without moving his head or face, Orochimaru raises a hand and snaps.
“Kabuto,” he says. “Entertain our esteemed guest’s entourage. This requires privacy.”
Another vampire appears behind Orochimaru. Amado starts a little, having not seen him enter at any point. He’s just suddenly there.
Code and Amado follow him out of the room.
“Well,” Code sniffs as soon as the door shuts behind them. “How dull is this? I thought I traveled all this way for something interesting . Not to be babysat.”
“Lord Orochimaru is simply distrustful of strangers for such clandestine meetings.” the other vampire, Kabuto says. “I’m sure you understand.” He adjusts his glasses, which reflect the light conspicuously, adding another element to his concealment earlier.
“Hm.” Amado says. “Perhaps we could be provided a tour of your facilities while we wait. As one of the lead intellects on Jigen’s-”
“ Lord Jigen.” Code interrupts.
“-as one of the lead intellects on the project.” Amado continues, unruffled. “I’d like to get an idea of what we might be working with.”
Kabuto looks at him, as if repulsed he has the capacity for speech.
“Lord Jigen values my opinion highly.” Code says, shooting a glare at Amado as well. “It’d be well worth your while.”
Kabuto shifts his attention to Code, back to Amado, and back to Code again. “...Of course.” he smiles. Similar to Orochimaru, it involves both the mouth and the eyes, but lacks emotion. “We mean business, after all.”
As Kabuto turns and begins walking, Code grabs Amado’s arm harshly to stop him. After letting Kabuto get a fair distance away, he whirls and hisses at him.
“What did you open your mouth for, idiot?”
“Just trying to move things along.” Amado shrugs.
“Well I have everything handled, thank you.” Code says. His luminescent black eyes tint red with anger. “So speak when you’re spoken to.”
Kabuto clears his throat from down the hall.
“Are you coming?” he calls.
Code shoves Amado away and storms off.
-
As they descend deeper and deeper into Orochimaru’s castle, towards his laboratories, the hairs on the back of Amado’s back prickle more and more. He’s worked with Jigen for only two months now, but he likes to think he’s adjusted quickly to the sensation of being unnerved and unsafe. But this is different.
The walls seem to close in more with each step, and it becomes darker and colder. The carefully curated smell of rock gives way to dirt gives way to grittier, filthier sensations.
They go down a staircase, then into a tremendous pit. On either side, the walls give way to cell bars, behind which nothing is visible at first. As they walk past, the light from Kabuto’s lantern reveals what can only be described as things, piled in the cells, writhing and crawling over each other.
Arms and hands reach out of the bars towards the light. The cells move around their path in a rough circle, so as they near the exit, the creatures near them.
“This is where we keep anything still viable.” Kabuto says casually. His voice disrupts the eerie sound of scrabbling and whimpering from the creatures. “The rejects are a level below, the successes a level up. We try to categorize those a little more neatly.”
At the exit, one of the things slams into the cell bars with its full body, which echoes through the whole room. It splatters something across the floor with the force of it. As it falls to the ground, Amado sees its two red rimmed eyes staring right at him, reaching for him. He subconsciously takes a step back.
Code laughs at him.
“They smell your blood.” Kabuto explains. “It’s amazing there’s any fight left in them. The lengths life endures for sustenance.”
“Is this life?” Amado looks at the creature. Kabuto chuckles wanly.
“Somewhat.” he says. “Keep moving. The laboratory is just ahead.”
Behind two neat, uncharacteristic steel doors is Orochimaru’s workplace. The room is far more chemical than the rest of the castle so far. The breathes and cries of the tortured, damned souls give way to clinical silence. Amado feels his discontent grow stronger, despite this. The facility is sprawling, with shelves and desks of papers and books. There are machines and tools even Amado has to guess at the purpose of.
Code sniffs. “Not much, is it? I was expecting at least electric lights.”
“Ah, we’re still trying to modernize.” Kabuto says self-effacingly. “ We have some lights. We typically keep them off. Let me.”
He turns his back to them to address a series of levers. Code uses this distraction unhesitatingly.
He lunges, sinks his claws into Kabuto’s neck, and slashes at the wall next to him.
Three gaping wounds appear in the surface of the rock, a supernatural inky black. Cold wind and snow billow out of it, and Kabuto’s eyes widen in shock. He only has a moment to be shocked, however, as Code throws him headfirst into the portal and he disappears with it.
“What are you standing around gawking for?” Code whirls on Amado. “Get busy!”
“Have a little patience, would you?” Amado grumbles. “This is a lot of information. It’s going to take a while to find what I need.”
“Well it’s going to take ten minutes for my portal to reappear, and Orochimaru’s pencil-pusher with it.” Code says. “So let that motivate you.”
Amado turns to the first bookshelf. The premise of this whole scenario, Jigen’s proposition to Orochimaru, their guided tour, was just for this moment, seizing access to Orochimaru’s life’s work. Or, whatever most recent volumes of his life’s work he’s going to have on hand in his laboratory.
Specifically, Amado needs to find the full experiment Orochimaru had vaguely referenced in one of his published works about cell growth and regeneration. He’s pored over that book for ages, but the details and data he needs to extrapolate a breakthrough on this subject can only be found here.
As he begins to search, Amado, even as the person he is, feels sickened at Orochimaru’s lengths. He’s not known to shrink at defiling the human mind, body, or soul, but he does it for a reason. He’s not senseless. Jigen too, however selfish, moves with purpose. The tremendous scale of Orochimaru’s experiments, their disgusting brutality, is terrifying.
Though he’s not in any position to morally condemn the man one way or another, Amado reserves his private judgment, certainly.
The quiet ticking of the clock on the desk matches Code’s impatience perfectly. He keeps looking over his shoulder at the door, arms crossed tightly.
“Hurry up .” he says, after an allotted five minutes. Amado, who is on the brink, ignores him.
After another four minutes, Code strides over and grabs him by the shoulder.
“Alright.” he says. “We’re leaving.”
Amado tries to pull away, predictably with no effect.
“One second,” he mutters. Filed under Respiration, subsection E… he pulls out a clean file and opens it.
“Well?”
Amado scans the contents for a second longer.
“This should be it.” he says at last.
“Good.” Code says. “Get up.”
He flings his hand into a bookshelf and tears it asunder. Amado watches aghast as torn papers flutter away from the portal.
“Was that necessary?” he says. “There’s a fortune of knowledge-”
“Are you serious right now?!”
As Code explodes, so does the wall behind them. Kabuto comes stumbling out of the wall, covered in snow and glasses askew. He looks more furious than Code, who throws his hands up in the air.
“Fantastic!” he says, with a sarcastic air.
Kabuto lunges at them wordlessly, and Code shoves Amado away, towards the portal. He overestimates and shoves him flat on his face instead.
Kabuto’s attack keeps Code locked in the middle of the room. Although the younger vampire has more raw power than most, according to Jigen’s glowing reviews, at any rate, he can’t land a blow on Kabuto.
Amado peels himself up and picks his glasses up off of the floor. He has one second to blink the world back into focus, and in that second, he sees a book lying before him.
REPLICATION , the cover says. Amado pales. If that’s what he thinks it is, it will justify this heist a thousand times over.
He scrambles towards it, just as Code goes flying over his head and crashes into the bookshelves, demolishing the portal.
“What are you doing, you idiot?!” he roars, sliding under Kabuto’s arcing leg. He bunches himself up like a cat and then releases, low to the ground. He grabs Amado by the collar and pulls him frantically out of the laboratory and back into Orochimaru’s maze.
“I can’t reach back to Jigen’s castle for another hour now!” Code says as they run. Amado hears Kabuto turn the corner behind them, well within reach. “You’re wasting-” he ducks to dodge a blow, “-my time-” a counter, “-my energy-” a kick, “over a stupid book?!”
He throws Kabuto far enough away to gesture at the book Amado has managed to retain with both hands.
“This will be important.” Amado says doggedly.
Code rolls his eyes. “Tell it to Jigen.”
With that, he slashes the floor and drops down. Amado has no choice but to follow.
They land back on the drawbridge outside. The elements slam into Amado immediately, almost ripping the file and book from his hands. Code has no such trouble.
“Give me that.” he grabs the file. “I can’t trust your pathetic, frail body to keep it.”
Amado exhales.
“Let’s just get to the carriage.” he says. “Before the-”
Behind them, the portcullis creaks upward. Code and Amado both turn slowly.
Across the bridge, a mere ten feet away, stands a herd of creatures. Unlike the ones in the dungeon, these are decidedly canine and stand firmly on four feet. Little bits glint in the light; whites of rolling eyes, teeth, claws, exposed bone.
Amado looks at them as long as he would like, which is three seconds. He starts running before Code is even finished turning around, much to the vampire’s displeasure.
“You-!” he hears behind him, then the thundering of paws and hooves against the wood of the bridge. “-!”
Code goes down with a slam. Papers go flying everywhere.
Amado turns to see Code on the ground, wrestling with one of the beasts as the rest close in. He kicks it off up, rips it off his arm and hurls it away. The file is next to his feet, plastered wet in the wood. Code scoops it up, and more papers fall out. Amado feels a vein pulse in his forehead.
“I need those papers!” he snaps. He’s not sure if the sound travels through the wind and rain, but the sentiment does, because Code straightens indignantly.
“Then you get over here and fight these things!” he yells, right as one goes flying over his head and lands facing Amado.
Amado has one moment to take in the killing intent directed at him before Code smashes its head in.
“And where’s your teleportation ability getting us out of this mess?” he continues, forcing Amado to run again. “As I see it, you’ve caused nothing but problems, and you’ve done nothing but complain and stick yourself-” he kicks a creature off his foot, “-where you don’t belong!”
Once they pass the drawbridge, Code takes them on a winding path through the forest. He throws Amado’s cloak in one direction, to divert the creatures from tracking their scent for a moment and also to inconvenience Amado. Completely blinded by the rain at this point, Amado can only follow Code through the darkness.
Code, who he trusts about as far as he can throw him and even less from there, successfully leads them to the carriage. The sound of the beasts is distant and muffled from the forest as Code vaults over the side and snaps the reins.
The patient figure of the horse jolts into action. Amado barely has enough time to throw himself onto the bench next to Code.
Wordlessly, he grabs the file from Code’s arm, where it was carelessly crushed. He isn’t dumb enough to open it as the wind whips harsher against their speed, but he feels the diminished weight significantly.
“These papers,” he says, “were the entire point of this.”
Code glares at him venomously.
“Would you like to turn back around and get them?”
“No. And eyes on the road.” Predictably, Code ignores this safety direction. Hurtling down the hill at top speed, carriage rattling and creaking, Amado can’t say he feels any safer than he had on the drawbridge. “What I’m saying is-”
Something slams down behind them. To validate Amado’s fear, surely.
“Thought you could get away?” Kabuto snarls from behind them. There’s a dramatic lightning flash that lights up his glasses and the cold eyes underneath.
Code reaches for him but the older vampire leaps over instead. He lands on the back of the horse, like a circus performer with a valiantly intimidating figure.
“Damn it.” Amado says. “He’s going to cut us loose.”
“What?!” Code yells in his face.
The reins snap. The hitch flies off the horse.
Still bearing all their momentum, but without any direction or control, they veer against a sudden turn and crash into the subsequent stone wall.
Amado mistakenly thought he had braced himself. It hits much, much harder than he was expecting. The seat buckles beneath him, and, thanks to the angle, it feels the whole carriage closes down on him, with bits and pieces spinning out.
Pinned against the muddy ground, Amado can blearily see Code standing clear of the mess. Great.
“You’re a tough dog to shake.” Code sneers. “Mangy and ill-bred, but persistent.”
Kabuto inclines his head gracefully at the slight. “I try.”
Code charges in first, and Kabuto dodges easily. Analytically, Amado sees that there is something off about the way he moves, like an after effect or a shimmer that travels ahead of him. It makes Code frustrated and sloppy as he keeps missing.
Amado, for his part, is beginning to get a migraine.
And then, like a godsend, across the battlefield of Code versus Kabuto, emerging from the trees, is Jigen.
He cuts a completely recognizable figure, even from this distance. He walks a little closer, to the edge of the carriage crash, where a wheel is still trying to spin gently, and then stops.
“Code,” he says quietly, “your posture is off. Improve it.”
“Lord Jigen!” Code yelps. He fumbles his next hit, but that’s alright because his target moves like lightning away from them.
Kabuto dashes to the tree line, and pauses momentarily to look back at them.
“Lord Orochimaru won’t forget this slight.” he says, voice traveling relatively clearly.
“I am aware.” Jigen says. “Thank you.”
Kabuto narrows his eyes, then vanishes.
“Lord Jigen!” Code tries again, rushing to his side. “I know this didn’t play out perfectly, but believe me, I did everything in my power to get that-”
“Silence.” Jigen says. He looks at the carriage wreck and bends over, peering through the rubble to look at Amado. Amado makes unimpressed eye contact. “The file?”
Amado sighs. “Mostly lost in the escape.” he says. “But I found something better.”
Jigen considers this.
“Alright.” he says. “Code, dig him out, would you?”
-
REPLICATION is a book that warrants two full days of study.
Amado locks himself in his quarters for those two days, fielding no visitors and no questions. Not that either of the vampires try.
It’s a demented, sleepless escapade for the most part. There are no windows anywhere in the castle that haven’t been boarded up, so he reads by candlelight. There are no wooden pencils either, (too similar to stakes in a pinch) so he takes notes with leaky calligraphy.
By the third day, he is ready to move into some form of application. Quietly, he moves everything one room over to the laboratory.
Not nearly as impressive as Orochimaru’s facilities, he has most of his old equipment from the university and some rarities Jigen has collected filling out the ground floor of the castle’s sprawling east wing.
He begins to assemble supplies. He needs to copy a procedure already outlined in the book. Orochimaru had jumped right to humans, and faced catastrophic failure on that front, but Amado is going to start small with a cage of mice. Additionally, he has isolated a few different variables.
The most important thing to him is confirming the existence of REPLICATION ’s primary discovery with his own two eyes. From there, he’ll see how successfully he can take control of it.
Never one to get ahead of himself, he first sits down and puts a small drop of mouse blood under a microscope. He carefully adjusts the settings.
Of course, it’s impossible not to notice when Jigen enters a room, especially one as silent and abandoned as this one. Amado finishes what he’s doing and looks up at the vampire.
“Good evening.” Jigen says. Is it evening now? Amado unfortunately can’t track time that accurately in absence of daylight.
“Is there something I can help you with?”
“Not at all.”
Amado goes back to work.
After a few minutes, Jigen shifts enough to call Amado’s attention back to him.
“This is quite delicate, isn’t it?” he says, gesturing to Amado’s workspace. “You seemed to be prepared for a tremendous breakthrough with that book. I expected something…well, tremendous.”
Amado arches an eyebrow.
“Sorry to disappoint.” he says. “I like to start small. That’s the scientific principle of a reasonable man.”
“And here I thought you were a mad scientist.”
“Tch.” Amado clicks over to another tiny, delicate microscope slide. “Even a mad scientist worth his salt has to have some patience. It’s the point of the field. Everything boils down to something very small and stupid. Once we’ve collected and understood those little things…” he tilts his head, zooming in. “...we can start drawing a bigger picture.”
“Fascinating.” Jigen has a way of speaking that leaves sarcasm not entirely out of the question, no matter how uncharacteristic it would seem. “As long as you’re seeking results.”
“What else would I be seeking?”
“I had my concerns, after that debacle at Orochimaru’s.” Jigen ignores his sentence. “Code claims you lost a majority of the notes you intended to collect.”
Amado snorts, turning away from his microscope to defend his honor.
“Those notes would have been extraordinarily useful, yes. Luckily, I found this book, otherwise Code’s carelessness would have severely cost this project. Instead, I just have a different avenue to explore. Rest assured, I will explore it.”
“Hm.” Jigen says. “Make sure of it. Burning bridges with Orochimaru was quite a risk for me.” he leans forward slightly, bringing his pale, supernatural figure to intimidating advantage. “I don’t like to miscalculate, you see.”
“Of course.” Amado feels the hair on the back of his neck prickle from Jigen’s level red gaze. He gestures to his workspace. “Put your mind at ease. The notes were on the growth of new cells, isolating individual body parts and piecing them together fresh. It’s a similar approach to what I’ve been doing, but I was hoping Orochimaru’s notes would provide clarification. With REPLICATION , however, it’s a completely different game. It addresses the recreation of pre-existing parts that are already designed to go together.”
“Hm.”
“It could be key for all of the more delicate human pieces that have trouble cooperating with each other.” Amado continues. “The inner organs especially are finicky. With this, they can all be designed with a perfect match in mind. Internal cohesion.”
Jigen nods thoughtfully. His intensity retracts, somewhat.
“In that case, I congratulate you on your findings. I won’t be too much harder on Code for losing those notes. He’s been in such a foul mood, you see.”
Amado bites his tongue. Code is always in a foul mood, as far as he’s aware.
“Will you be much longer here?” Jigen says abruptly. Amado looks around.
“Possibly?”
“Hm.” Jigen says. “I would like to further discuss your findings. Join me for dinner once you’ve finished for the night. I’ll be in the south wing.”
Then he walks out.
Amado is left contemplating that, with a mild dread he has come to associate uniquely with Jigen eating at him.
The vampire is more than cryptic; he’s indiscernible. Amado’s never been exceptional at reading people from line to line and cue to cue, but he’s at least somewhat proficient. With Jigen, he’s stopped short. In his four weeks of working under the vampire’s mercy, that quality has been nothing short of nerve wracking.
He’s been known to invite Amado to dinner from time to time, whenever the fancy strikes him, presumably. Usually Code is there, or one of Jigen’s business partners, (though never at the same time; Code is poor at behaving himself around humans).
Tonight, it’s just the two of them.
Amado sweats minutely as he takes his seat across the long table. Jigen gestures to him.
“Sit closer.” he says. “I won’t be able to hear you all the way down there.”
Amado looks down questioningly at the place that has been set in front of him, then back up. Jigen doesn’t move or falter, so he hesitantly takes the bowl of soup and glass of wine with him to sit a chair down from Jigen.
That one place between them, Amado’s irrational shield, offers Jigen some bemusement.
“Aren’t we at least acquaintances now, Amado?” he asks. “Come on now. I don’t bite.”
Amado looks at him dubiously.
“I’m sure you can hear me from here just fine.” he says politely.
Jigen smiles.
He’s strangely beautiful, like a statue. With the motion of smiling, it is just that; a motion. Not clinical, not practiced, not emotionless. But certainly not warm.
In front of Jigen is an identical bowl of soup and glass of wine. Amado watches him pick up a spoon and place it in the soup, then leave it there.
Amado takes a small sip of his own. He’s long since stopped questioning where and why Jigen is getting these meals. It’s a little bland and a little watery.
“You wanted to talk?” Amado says, with another uncomfortable bite of soup.
“I wanted you to talk.” Jigen says. “Tell me where we are.”
Jigen likes status updates. Amado feels pretty accustomed to this. He fills the vampire in, going as light on the technical terms as he can. He’s still a ways out from successfully building a body, but once he has, all it will take is Jigen’s cooperation with whatever secrets he holds to successfully transfer consciousness into it.
What had been most surprising about this arrangement, from Amado’s initial perspective, was Jigen’s willingness to let Akebi come first. The vampire has made his problem clear, and his urgency for a new, unailing body removed from the centuries his has been inflicted with. Amado had thought for certain he would prioritize this, and promptly kill Amado after having taken advantage of his genius, forsaking Akebi’s need for a new body as well.
Jigen, clearly, had thought about this as well, and provided a much more appealing offer. With Akebi going first, it prevents him from placing himself at Amado’s mercy. It provides a test subject in case things go awry. And he still has Code. Even with Akebi revived and Amado’s main motivation for aiding Jigen removed, he will promptly have a new one with Code’s fangs at his throat.
No matter how he shakes it, Amado is completely at the mercy of the vampires. He’s at least lucky enough to have a chance to save Akebi with it. He can endure anything for that.
“Let me know when you’re ready to move up the scale of this.” Jigen says. “I can provide anything or anyone that you need.”
“Of course.” Amado agrees. “I should move on to human parts within a few weeks. I could use an arm or a leg.” (said with some small irony)
Jigen nods. “Consider it done.”
He watches Amado take another small bite. For his part, his wine glass, which Amado had quickly and cleverly deduced does not contain wine, is half empty.
“How is it?” he says after a moment of silence. Amado blinks, so Jigen gestures to his bowl.
“Ah.” Amado says. “A bit bland and watery.”
Jigen inclines his glass.
“You know, eating and drinking is the only pleasure I envy you humans for. I’ve always wondered at it.”
“You can’t even pretend to eat?”
“I can.” Jigen says. “But anything other than blood just tastes truly foul and dirty. And yet you all seem to take such delight in it.”
Unable to help himself, Amado’s curiosity sparks at the vampire physiology.
“So you can’t eat, can’t drink…I’d imagine your body rejects the nutrient form. You don’t breathe either, even performatively.”
Jigen shakes his head. “Of course not. Here.” he holds out his hand. “You’ll find this interesting, I’m sure.”
After a moment, Amado assumes he intends for him to take his pulse. He does so, two fingers on the wrist, finding nothing at all.
Damn, that is interesting. He can see the still veins faintly beneath the skin, cold blue, but there’s just nothing. He knows, logically, there’s no reason for any signs of life, has observed it from a distance, but the distinct wrongness compels him.
Jigen pulls his hand away and uses it to take another sip from his glass.
“Do you still feel physical sensation?” Amado says. He then begins to regret it because it sounds literally inappropriate. “Temperature, texture…?”
Jigen arcs an eyebrow.
“I’ve found compared to humans, our other senses are quite heightened.” he says. “Sight, hearing…and yes, touch.”
“Hm.” Amado considers that.
“And if you’d like to probe for weaknesses next, I’m afraid I’ll have to be a bit vaguer.” Jigen continues, with a knowing smile. “Rest assured, the mythos is almost entirely inaccurate.”
Amado rolls his eyes. Of course he would say that.
“The boarded up windows beg to differ.” he says. “Also, the soup. Seems to be some kind of Czech recipe. Onion, oregano, caraway…but no garlic?”
“Aren’t you clever.”
“I thought that was common knowledge.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Amado catches something in the doorway, pulling his attention from Jigen’s waxy smile.
It’s hard to discern for a moment, from the dark shadows, but the red eyes and hair catch in the light. Code stares down at him, pressed flat to the wall, likely hoping to evade Jigen’s notice.
He narrows his eyes slowly, from frigid to a deathly glare. Amado feels a horrible intent leaking from across the room and immediately loses his appetite.
“What is it, Amado?” Jigen begins to turn his head to look, at which point Code leaves.
Amado shakes his head.
“Nothing.” he says. “Nothing at all.”
-
One week later Amado breaches into human territory.
That is to say, his experiment with the mice reaches a successful conclusion and he is ready to go bigger.
Ideally, of course, he should spend time carefully and painstakingly running down every aspect of this, but that would also involve testing the limits of Jigen’s patience, which is broad but certainly finite.
He fusses over the subject of today’s experiment, a frigid, neatly severed human arm, under the watchful eyes of two impassive vampires. Amado has observed that for most things recently, if Jigen is there, so too is Code.
The arm sits restfully on one platform of Amado’s machine. He pulls down a glass case over it and locks it tightly. After that, he flips a few switches, waits a moment, then flips the rest. It begins whirring and clanking loudly.
“That’s it.” Amado tells the vampires, pitching his voice over the sound. “That’s the show.”
“That’s it ?” Code repeats mockingly.
“All that’s left to do is wait and monitor everything.” Amado says. “I haven’t built this machine to this scale before, much less this level of accuracy. As long as everything goes smoothly for the first ten hours, we can leave it in peace.”
“It takes ten hours to clone an arm?”
“No. Realistically, it will take ten days.”
“That’s longer than it took to build the damn thing!”
“Code.” Jigen says. Immediately, the younger vampire steps back, removing himself from Amado’s personal space. “If your years have taught you anything, let them at least teach you the value of time.”
“I-of course, Lord Jigen.” Code bows his head, mollified. “I just question whether the human ,” he emphasizes this with a sneer, “is working to the greatest heights of his efficacy here.”
“I’m doing anything I can.” Amado says. “Like Jigen says, time is valuable. Maybe even moreso to me with my…insignificant human lifespan.”
“Is that so?” Code says through gritted teeth. Jigen just inclines his head agreeably.
“You have a sound mind, Amado.” he says. “We will put some faith in it.”
Amado likes the sound of that. Code clearly doesn’t. Even without blood flow, it seems a vein bulges in his forehead.
“Is there anything else you need for this, at the moment?” Jigen continues, gesturing to the machine.
Amado shakes his head. “Like I said, I’ll just watch it carefully for the next ten hours. Although I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to have a few more cases of fuel, just in case.”
“Of course.” Jigen turns. “Code?”
Code’s eye twitches. He turns and leaves wordlessly, slamming the door loudly enough behind him to be heard over the roaring machine.
The other two watch him go. Jigen’s mouth twists in displeasure.
“Are vampires still privy to the contentious teenage years?” Amado says, a little lighter in humor than is warranted.
“Something of the sort.” Jigen shakes his head minutely. Amado shrugs and returns to work.