"Make you better." She feints left, strikes right. I block, but the impact rattles my bones. "The underground rings were his hunting ground. He had people at dozens of fights, watching, evaluating. Most fighters were too weak. Too broken. Too easily controlled." Her smile widens. "But you. You beat me that night, remember? A vampire. You didn't know what I was, and you still won."
The memory surfaces, the private match, the big payout, the woman who moved wrong and smiled wrong and looked at me like prey. I'd been so focused on the money. So sure of my own skill.
"That's when he knew," Valentina continues. "Watching you take down a vampire with nothing but human strength and sheer determination. He said, 'That one. She's the one.'"
"The one for what?"
"For the program." She circles closer. "He's been building an army, Celeste. Enhanced vampires. Stronger, faster, more resilient than anything that's ever existed. You were supposed to be his masterpiece."
"I'm no one's weapon."
"You already are. You just don't know it yet." She lunges again, and this time her fist catches me in the ribs. I feel something crack. "The turning was just the beginning. After that came the modifications."
"In Rome." The fragments Maximus unlocked flash through my mind, cobblestones, rain, a small dark room. Konstantin in daylight.
"Yes, he mentioned the blocks were failing faster than expected." Valentina circles me, looking amused rather than concerned. "But knowing you were in Rome and understanding what happened there are two very different things."
"The fight was in Atlanta. The underground ring. I remember that clearly." I circle her, keeping my guard up. "So how did I end up in Rome?"
"The transformation takes three days. Your heart stops. Your brain goes dark. Your body is just meat waiting to be remade." She's enjoying this, the confusion on my face, the pieces not fitting together. "Three days is a long time, Celeste. Long enough to put your corpse on a private jet. Long enough to fly you across an ocean."
The realization hits like a punch to the gut. "You took me to Rome while I was transforming."
"You woke up there, your first true awakening as a vampire. Three weeks of modifications followed. Experiments. Konstantin remaking you cell by cell." Her eyes gleam. "And when he was finished, we blocked those memories, flew you back to Atlanta, and let you wake up in that warehouse thinking it was your first night. Thinking only three days had passed since I turned you."
Three weeks. Not three days.
My real first awakening happened in Rome, and I don't remember any of it. The fragments Maximus unlocked are just slivers of three weeks that were stolen from me.
"The note," I say slowly. "'Welcome to eternity, sweetheart.' You left it to make me think..."
"That I'd turned you and abandoned you on the spot. The confused fledgling narrative." Valentina laughs. "It was important that you believed you'd survived alone from the start. We just... gave you a head start first."
"What did he do to me?"
"Ask yourself why you survived the contaminated blood." She circles closer. "A fledgling, eight months old, with no maker toguide her. Yes, Maximus gave you clean blood, but I've seen vampires twice your age die even with intervention. The contamination had spread through your entire system. You should have been too far gone to save."
I remember those hours. The black veins spreading under my skin. The certainty that I was dying. The clean blood sliding down my throat. And then the recovery, faster than anyone expected.
"The others in his facility," Valentina continues. "The ones who went feral, who couldn't be saved, they had clean blood too. Medical care. Everything Maximus could offer." She smiles. "They still died. But you bounced back in hours. Doesn't that strike you as odd?"
I don't answer. Because I don't have one.
"That wasn't normal," Valentina confirms. "That was the modifications working. Your body adapting, evolving, becoming what Konstantin designed you to be."
"Which is what?"
"A weapon." Her eyes gleam in the darkness. "That was just the beginning. There are other gifts sleeping in your blood, waiting to wake up. Enhanced strength. Accelerated healing. Resistances that no other vampire has." She pauses, savoring the next words. "And a kill switch."
The words land like ice in my veins. "What?"
"You think Konstantin would build a weapon he couldn't control?" Valentina laughs. "There's a trigger buried in those modifications. A command phrase, a signal, something. When he activates it, you won't be Celeste anymore. You'll be exactly what he designed: a perfect killing machine with no will of its own."
"You're lying."
"Am I?" She tilts her head. "Ask yourself why he let you go. Why he let you wander Atlanta, let you find your way to Maximus, let you fall in love with his oldest enemy." Her smile turns cruel. "Because it doesn't matter. When the time comes, when you're exactly where he wants you, he'll flip the switch. And you'll kill Maximus yourself. You won't be able to stop it. You won't even want to."
Across the structure, I hear Maximus roar, a sound of pure rage. The crash of bodies. A pillar cracking.
