fully adult specimens, and he educated us to fit his agenda.”
“At the time, Sofia, myself, and a few others from our crew became his prisoners, while the rest of our people worked tirelessly to get us back and to stop him from turning his Perfects and Arch-Perfects into the deadliest army the universe had ever seen,” Derek continued. “During my time in captivity, unbeknownst to me or anyone else, Ta’Zan—that was the mad scientist’s name—experimented on me, as well. He occasionally gave me a pill that allowed me to walk into the sunlight without burning, only I didn’t know that the effects would be permanent.”
“Oh…” Acheron gasped, his eyes wide.
“The pill modified Derek’s genetic structure, adding a protein that eliminated his vampiric sensitivity to light,” Amal said. “We haven’t been able to reproduce it from his blood. We need the original source of that protein, in order to design a day-walking cure for all the vampires. Ta’Zan is dead now, and he didn’t leave any notes behind.”
“Or whatever he did have written down on the topic was destroyed during our war against him, when his coliseum came down.” Sofia sighed.
“Where did he get that protein from?” Danika asked. Her expression told me she was already suspecting Visio as the source, but she likely wanted confirmation before drawing conclusions.
“We don’t know, exactly,” Amal said cautiously. “But it had to be a fit with the vampires’ genetic makeup in order for it to be added into the code, for it to function like it did with Derek.”
The corner of Derek’s mouth twitched, almost unnoticeably, as Danika and Acheron stared at one another for a good minute. “Marlowe,” Danika murmured. “Do you think he’s the…” Her voice trailed off as Acheron nodded. She looked at us. “We have reason to believe that protein came from someone we knew.”
“You’re not the first foreigners to visit,” Acheron added.
“The protein was extracted from an Aeternae, then?” Derek replied, trying to keep himself calm. These people had no clue about our detection methods, or the magic we’d used to track the protein back to Visio. For as long as we could, we were going to chalk it all up to a most fortuitous coincidence—the vampires came to visit, and, as it turned out, they also found the source of the very protein they’d been hoping to reproduce. It was a long shot, I thought, but it could still work.
Acheron nodded again. “It’s possible. A few centuries ago, a creature came to our world, claiming that he was looking to build the perfect species. He’d watched us from afar for a while and had decided to make contact.”
“Ta’Zan,” Amal murmured. “It had to be him.”
“He introduced himself as Marlowe,” Danika said.
Amal scoffed. “Yeah. I think I remember that name. He used it as an alias sometimes, just to make sure no one traced him back to Strava or his lab. He was rather paranoid about hiding his tracks.”
“He stayed here for a few weeks,” Acheron remembered. “In secret, of course. We didn’t allow him to leave the palace without an escort, but he was compliant. Didn’t give us any trouble. Eventually, we decided to give him two of our Aeternae… terrible people. A killer couple who’d murdered many innocent Rimians and Naloreans, drinking them dry like mindless animals. They were bound to be executed, but we figured Marlowe would make better use of them.”
“And that’s where he got the protein from,” Sofia concluded.
“You never met the Aeternae, did you, Amal? During your service under Ta’Zan,” Esme asked, and Amal shook her head.
“We knew he had foreign specimens in a highly secured laboratory, but he never let anyone in there. We were only allowed to assist with the Draenir pairs he’d kept in the coliseum,” she said. “To be honest, I think they died pretty quickly after he was done studying them and extracting everything he needed from them. I do remember he stopped going to that laboratory, after a while.”
We couldn’t have made this connection earlier—not without knowing about the Aeternae and how Ta’Zan had nabbed a couple of specimens for his experiments. Danika smiled, connecting the dots rather quickly.
“If this is true, and an Aeternae protein was used to make you into a day-walker, Derek, then you’re also part Aeternae, yourself.” She chuckled softly. “One of us, and one of you.”
Acheron grinned. “That’s right. There’s a little bit of our world inside you. Shall we say ‘welcome home,’ then, Derek?”
They were taking this whole thing a lot