?“Here we are,” Vaughn announced, easing the Mercedes to the curb in front of a sleek, glass-fronted skyscraper.

  ?“This is it?”

  ?I craned my neck to look up at the towering structure. When Vaughn mentioned an HQ, I’d expected something dramatic—a gothic castle shrouded in shadows or a hidden underground lair. But this? This wasn't any different from the Midtown corporate monoliths I used to deliver soggy fries to during my night shifts.

  ?“Here. Take this,” Vaughn grumbled, shoving a small carton toward my chest.

  ?I glanced down. He was holding what looked like a generic box of cherry juice, complete with a little plastic straw glued to the side.

  ?“Thanks, but I’m not really a fan of cherry,” I muttered. My stomach gave a painful, hollow lurch, a cruel reminder that my last meal—that pathetic kimbap—had ended up in a gutter.

  ?“It isn't cherry juice,” Vaughn replied flatly.

  ?“Huh?”

  ?“Why would I give you juice? This is a nutrient supplement for the road. Blood.”

  ?“Wait. Blood?”

  ?The word landed like a punch to the gut. I stared at the innocuous little straw. My hands began to tremble. Just an hour ago, I was a student stressing over my capstone project; now, I was being handed a juice box filled with life essence.

  ?“Are you not hungry? Your instincts are screaming, Hero. Don't let the hunger win,” Vaughn warned, his voice dropping into that predatory baritone that made the hair on my arms stand up.

  ?“I… I can’t…”

  ?“Drink. And follow me,” he commanded, stepping out of the car.

  ?As we walked toward the revolving doors, I stared at the red liquid sloshing inside the straw. The concept was enough to make my stomach turn, but the smell—sweet, metallic, and impossibly inviting—overpowered my disgust.

  ?I swallowed hard. If I was going to live this nightmare, I might as well do it on a full stomach.

  ?I took a sip.

  ?The sensation was… incredible. The liquid washed down my throat, cool and electric. It tasted unlike anything I’d ever experienced—richer than wine, more vital than water. The burning, itchy dryness that had been plaguing my throat evaporated instantly.

  ?I looked at the cardboard box in my hand and a sudden wave of guilt washed over me. Whose blood is this? I wondered. Did they harvest some poor person just for my breakfast?

  ?“It’s artificial blood,” Vaughn said without looking back.

  ?“Artificial? And—wait, how are you answering what I’m thinking? Don’t tell me you can read minds on top of everything else?”

  ?“No,” Vaughn sighed, pushing open the heavy glass doors to the lobby. “Just your stupid face. It’s telling me everything.”

  ?I touched my cheek, remembering the sting of the punch he'd landed earlier. I was no longer the "ghost in the background." Here, in this world of glass and steel, I was an open book.

  ?We walked through the lobby, and I couldn't help but gape. It was a pristine temple of capitalism—clean, sterile, and filled with the low hum of professional life. Men and women in crisp suits hurried past us, clutching tablets or murmuring into phones. They looked aggressively mundane. There were no pale, brooding figures or velvet capes in sight.

  ?I watched a woman near the reception desk laugh at something on her screen. Is she one of them? I wondered. What about the guy by the elevator? Is he a monster too?

  ?“Every single person in this building is a vampire, Kang Eun-Woo,” Vaughn said. His voice cut through my internal monologue, though he didn't even glance my way.

  ?I froze, my heart—the one that no longer beat—giving a phantom thud against my ribs.

  ?Okay, this guy definitely reads minds, I thought, a chill running down my spine.

  ?“How? They all look so... normal,” I whispered, hurrying to catch up. “Like they should be worrying about rent or deadlines, not hunting for blood.”

  ?Vaughn didn't bother to answer. He simply led me toward the elevators. The gold-plated doors slid open with a soft, expensive chime. We stepped inside, and he pressed the button for the penthouse.

  ?As the elevator began its silent ascent, the world outside the glass vanished. In the heavy silence of the small space, I took another long pull from the straw. The metallic sweetness was no longer repulsive; it was becoming the most satisfying thing I had ever tasted.

  ?I leaned against the mirrored wall of the elevator, staring at my reflection. I still looked like the same broke international student who had been dragging a broken bike through the rain just three days ago. But the lack of fatigue—and the strange, quiet power humming beneath my skin—told a different story.

  ?Beside me, Vaughn stood perfectly still, his muscular frame reflected in the polished metal. He wasn't breathing. For the first time, I realized I wasn't either.

  ?If this is what it means to be a monster, I thought, taking another sip of the blood, at least I don't have to worry about skipping lunch to save a few cents anymore.

  ?The elevator doors slid open, revealing a floor that looked less like an office and more like a high-end research facility. White walls, blindingly bright LED panels, and the faint, rhythmic hum of servers replaced the corporate ambition of the lobby downstairs.

  ?“We’re here,” Vaughn said, stepping out toward a sleek reception desk.

  ?I followed, nursing the juice box. My body felt bizarrely light, as if gravity had decided to loosen its grip on me.

  ?At the desk sat a woman who looked like she hadn't slept in a decade. She was slumped in her ergonomic chair, scrolling through her phone with an expression of pure, unadulterated boredom.

  ?“Claire. How's it going?” Vaughn asked, skipping the pleasantries.

  ?The woman didn't look up. Instead, she slowly tilted her head toward me, her eyes narrowing as if she were scanning me for malware.

  ?“Uh, hi?” I managed, feeling like a specimen under a microscope.

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  ?“Is this the new guy?” she asked, ignoring my greeting and Vaughn entirely. She stood up and walked around the desk, circling me with a predator's grace.

  ?“Yes…”

  ?“Hmm. I was expecting… well,” she paused, looking me up and down, taking in my oversized thrift-store coat and bewildered expression.

  ?“More? Yeah. He looks like a disappointment to me, too,” Vaughn added with a dry grunt.

  ?I couldn't even deny it. A week ago, I was crying over kimbap. I was a disappointment. But hearing it from a guy in a three-thousand-dollar suit still stung.

  ?Claire turned on her heel and began walking toward a row of glass pods, gesturing for us to follow.

  ?“What do you mean by ‘expecting more’?” I asked, hurrying to keep pace with their silent, long strides.

  ?“When we first detected your energy signature, we prepared for a containment breach,” Claire explained, her voice shifting into a rapid, professional clip. “We thought you’d go berserk. Most people who are turned without prior preparation end up on a rampage. They usually kill everyone in a three-block radius the second they wake up.”

  ?“What?” I froze mid-step. A rampage?

  ?The memory of the woman in the alley flashed in my mind. The burning hunger. If I hadn't fought it back then…

  ?Claire stopped suddenly, closing the distance between us until she was inches from my face. She was so close I could see the faint, unnatural silver ring around her irises.

  ?“But you look completely fine,” she whispered, squinting as if trying to see inside my skull. “No bloodlust in the eyes, no twitching. Just… confusion.”

  ?“Is that rare?”

  ?“Rare isn't the word,” Vaughn’s deep voice rumbled from behind. “It’s unheard of. Not to mention, whoever turned you didn’t leave a single fingerprint.”

  ?“Fingerprint?”

  ?“A Signature,” Vaughn corrected, his face darkening. “Normally, when a vampire turns someone, they leave a fragment of their own power behind. It’s like a biological ID. We can usually identify the 'Sire' the moment we look at the scene.”

  ?“And me?”

  ?Claire glanced down at her tablet, the blue light reflecting off her clinical, cold eyes. “Yours is blank, Eun-Woo. No trace. No ID. It’s as if you were turned by a ghost.”

  ?The silence that followed was heavy. This wasn't just a curiosity to them; it was a breach in their carefully monitored world.

  ?“So, Kang Eun-Woo,” Claire said, her voice dropping an octave, deadly serious. “Do you really have no clue? No memory of who did this to you? Nothing at all?”

  ?A flicker of a memory passed through my mind. The golden warmth in the dark, the voice that called me a Hero. But it was vague, like a dream dissolving upon waking. Looking at their cold, calculating faces, I decided to keep it to myself.

  ?“I’m sorry,” I muttered, staring at the floor. “I don't know.”

  ?“It’s fine,” Claire said, though her tone suggested it was anything but. “Now. Follow us.”

  ?We walked deeper into the facility until we arrived at a massive, circular room. There was no furniture, no windows—just blindingly white surfaces and the sharp, stinging smell of ozone.

  ?“What is this place?” I asked, my voice echoing off the sterile walls.

  ?I turned to ask Vaughn, but he didn't respond. He just stood there, his expression unreadable behind those dark sunglasses.

  ?“Vaughn?”

  ?“Brace yourself,” Vaughn whispered.

  ?In the blink of an eye, the world turned red.

  ?There was no sound of a blade, no warning. Just a sudden, violent spray of crimson splashing against the pristine white floor. I felt a strange weightlessness, followed instantly by a cold numbness.

  ?I looked down at my left side. My hand was gone.

  ?“Uhggghh... A—Ahhh!”

  ?The scream ripped out of my throat, raw and visceral, as I collapsed to the ground. The pain hit me a second later—a white-hot lightning bolt that scorched through my entire nervous system, short-circuiting my brain.

  ?“You see,” Claire said, her voice as calm as if she were discussing a spreadsheet, “when a Newborn appears, their body isn't truly functioning as a vampire yet. The old human vessels are stubborn. They cling to their limitations.”

  Vaughn stepped toward me. I tried to crawl away, my remaining hand slipping in the rapidly growing pool of my own blood.

  ?“So,” Vaughn continued, looming over me like an obsidian titan, “we have to manually prune them.”

  ?“P... prune?” I gasped, staring in horror at my severed hand lying a few feet away, pale and motionless against the tiles. “You... you maniacs!”

  ?“Don’t worry. You’ll be fine after a week or two. It all depends on your regeneration powers,” Claire said, her voice a cold, professional rasp. “Think like this: old hardware couldn't handle the new software. So we’re changing the hardware as well.”

  ?“No, no, no!”

  ?I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the end.

  ?But the end didn't come.

  ?Instead, a terrifying clarity washed over me. I looked down at my mangled arm, at the jagged stump where bone and meat had been severed. I saw the blood—so much blood—pooling around me, yet I didn't feel the familiar thud of a heart trying to pump it out.

  ?Deep inside, I felt something foreign coiling around my bones. Like cold wire integrating with my marrow.

  ?Is this it? I whispered internally, the horror settling into my marrow. The moment the ghost finally disappears?

  ?The First Hours

  ?I couldn't feel my arms, my legs. That was a lie—I could feel them perfectly. Every severed nerve ending screamed in high-definition, a symphony of agony that human pain receptors were never designed to process.

  ?This is temporary, I told myself. Just temporary.

  ?But as I lay there in the sterile white room, strapped to a medical bed I didn't remember being placed on, a darker thought crept in: What if I'm broken permanently?

  ?"Was it worth it?" I whispered to the empty room. "Saving one kid, just to become... this?"

  ?No one answered.

  ?Hour Twelve: Acceptance

  ?The pain had become... background noise. Like the hum of a refrigerator in a quiet apartment—always there, but your brain learns to filter it out.

  ?I watched the stump. Really watched it.

  ?At first, there was nothing. Just raw meat and exposed bone. But then, slowly—impossibly slowly—I saw it.

  ?A single muscle fiber twitched. Not a spasm. It was deliberate. The fiber reached across the gap, searching for its missing twin. When it found nothing, it didn't stop. It split. Multiplied. Wove itself into a temporary bridge.

  ?I wasn't healing. I was rebuilding.

  ?This is what Vaughn meant, I realized. This isn't recovery. This is evolution.

  ?The pain was still there, but I wasn't afraid of it anymore. Pain was just data. Information. My body's way of telling me where to focus the Ichor.

  ?Kang Eun-Woo, the delivery boy who skipped lunch to afford textbooks, would have screamed until his voice gave out. But that boy is dead.

  After some time, the world faded. First, the hum of the lights died out. Then, the white ceiling dissolved into gray static.

  ?My body had initiated a total lockdown. It shut down my sight and hearing, diverting every ounce of energy to the wound. In that sensory void, the internal connection became absolute.

  ?I didn't just feel the pain anymore; I felt the architecture.

  ?I felt the calcium crystallizing into a new bone, sharp and dense. I felt the muscle fibers reaching out, weaving together like steel cables, snapping into place with a precision that felt less like biology and more like engineering.

  Snap.

  ?The final nerves in my hand connected with a sharp, echoing jolt in my mind. The paralysis broke.

  ?I stood up on the cold floor. I was no longer a butchered experiment. I was a creature fed by the very people who had mutilated me.

  ?“You're standing.”

  ?The deep, vibrating baritone rumbled from the doorway. I looked up to see Vaughn leaning against the frame, his massive arms crossed over his chest. He checked his sleek watch, his brow furrowing behind those dark sunglasses.

  ?“Three days,” Vaughn muttered, his voice laced with genuine disbelief. “Most Newborns take a week just to stop sobbing on the floor. You’re already fully regenerated.”

  ?“You pruned me like a goddamn tree, Vaughn!” I snapped.

  ?My voice sounded sharper, carrying a predatory edge that had never existed back in the NYU lecture halls. I flexed my new fingers, marveling at their unnatural perfection. No scars, no stiffness—just cold, efficient power humming beneath the skin.

  ?“Is this how you welcome everyone to the 'community'?”

  ?Vaughn didn’t apologize. He simply stepped forward and tossed a heavy object toward me.

  ?“Catch.”

  ?My hand shot out. It was a blur—faster than thought. I caught the object with a reflex so sharp it frightened me.

  ?I opened my hand. It was a watch, sleek and obsidian-colored.

  “Put it on,” he commanded. “It’s a tracker and a status monitor. It’ll tell you exactly how much of a monster you are.”

  ?I snapped the cold metal band around my wrist. It fit perfectly, as if it were made for my arm alone.

  ?Bzzt.

  ?The device vibrated once. A tiny needle shot out from the underside, pricking my skin. But it didn't stop at the surface. It dug deeper, until it connected with a sharp, magnetic click against the cold presence buried inside my wrist.

  ?[System Synchronization... 12%... 89%... Complete.]

  ?A faint, blue text flashed across my retina, followed instantly by a translucent crimson screen flickering to life above the watch face.

  USER STATUS: Kang Eun-Woo Class: Newborn / Weaver

  ?Blood Quality: [ B+ ]

  ?Blood Quantity: [ C ]

  ? Blood Manipulation: [ D ]

  ? Hunger Rate: [ 41% ]