They emerged one after another, eight different faces carrying identical expressions of neutral attentiveness. The hallway, which had felt reasonably spacious when it was just Dimitri and Mattie eating breakfast, suddenly shrank. Eight immortal bodies occupied a lot of space, and not just physically. There wasa presence to them, a density, as if the merged consciousness generated its own gravitational field.
All eight turned to Mattie.
"How are you feeling?" Number One asked.
Mattie was sitting up straight in her chair, her bandaged hand in her lap, and Dimitri saw her take a steadying breath before she answered. "I'm in pain, but the medication helps, and I'm alive, which I owe to you. If you hadn't come when you did…" She didn't finish the sentence. "Thank you."
They smiled at her.
All eight of them. Simultaneously.
The same smile, on eight different faces, the same degree of lip curvature, the same slight crinkling around the eyes, the same warmth that was either genuine or a masterful simulation.
Dimitri had to suppress a shiver. There was something deeply wrong about watching eight males smile in perfect unison at the woman he loved. It was like staring at an optical illusion that his brain kept trying to resolve into something that made sense and kept failing.
Mattie, to her credit, didn't flinch. "It means a lot to me," she said. "That you came to see me."
"We will always come," Number One said, and the simplicity of it was somehow worse than an elaborate promise.
Dimitri cleared his throat. "I'd invite you to sit, but as you can see—" He gestured at the hallway. Two chairs, one dresser, a narrow corridor designed for foot traffic, not hosting a committee of eight. "We're a bit short on seating."
"We are comfortable standing," Number One said. All eight bodies arranged themselves along the wall with the ease of soldiers accustomed to long watches on their feet. "And we would like to hear the explanation that you could not give us downstairs."
Straight to it, then.
Dimitri leaned against the wall opposite the Eight, positioning himself where he could see all of them while keeping Mattie in his peripheral vision. He folded his arms across his chest, then unfolded them because folded arms were a defensive posture and he didn't want to signal defensiveness.
"What I'm about to tell you has to stay between us."
Sixteen eyes regarded him with patient intensity, and then eight heads nodded.
"It will be our secret," Number One said, and as he lifted his fist to his chest, the other seven did the same.
It was a vow, and Dimitri knew instinctively that Dave would not break it.
"I've transitioned," Dimitri said. "Into immortality."
The words hung in the hallway like smoke.
Dimitri had told Petrov the same thing just yesterday, and Petrov's reaction had been shock, questions, and a grab for the vodka.
Dave's reaction was…nothing.
All eight bodies went still.
It wasn't the studied stillness of people choosing to be quiet. This was something else, a total cessation of movement that extended to the involuntary. No blinking. No breathing. No micro-adjustments of weight or posture. Eight male bodies suspended in perfect stasis while the consciousness behind them processed the information.
It lasted maybe five seconds, but those five seconds were the most unnerving thing Dimitri had experienced since the night Tarik had bitten him.
Synchronized movement was unsettling. Synchronized stillness was terrifying.
"How?" Number One's voice broke the silence, and all eight bodies seemed to reboot simultaneously. A breath, a blink, a subtle readjustment of weight.
"The only plausible explanation is that I had dormant immortal genes. I had no idea that I carried them, but then Tarik bit me the night he attacked me in the bar." Dimitri kept his voice steady and clinical as if he were presenting research findings rather than revealing the most profound change in his life. "His friends pulled him off before he could pump in enough venom to kill me, and instead of dying, I transitioned."
"And now you are immortal."
"Yes."
