章 3: The Portal

The low purr of the engines hummed beneath me as the limo drove through the wet streets of Budapest. Raindrops trickled down the tinted windows, twisting the beautiful city lights of my hometown into a myriad of mesmerizing colors.

The streets were alive around me, congested with cars and pedestrians going about their usual lives, blissfully ignorant of the horrors and dangers that this world had to offer.

Due to the actions of the Death Dealers and myself, Budapest—and Hungary in general—was free from any major Lycan infestation. There were still some hot-blooded Lycans who didn't get the hint that the vampire capital of the world was strictly off-limits and decided to settle here.

But those errant Lycans were always quickly rooted out and destroyed, usually no more than two days after they arrived, protecting the purity of this nation and its noble citizens from Lycan scum.

The latter was propaganda those old geezers liked to tell themselves—and budding Death Dealers—to make our race seem like noble heroes of justice, when in fact, not a single one of them truly cared about humans.

Even I, with my relatively small and meager life experience, didn't care about humans anymore—let alone the older members of my society who had lived for centuries, with some living for millennia, witnessing kings, queens, emperors, empires, and kingdoms rise and fall time and time again.

It was war, and in times of war, people told themselves all sorts of things to feel better about the atrocities they had committed or were about to commit. In a society that had been waging war for the better part of a millennium, these things were told more often than not.

I smiled wryly at the thought, my cheek resting on my fist, as the car wandered through the labyrinthine streets of the city and finally entered the Andrássy district, where towering steel and glass skyscrapers dotted the skyline and filled the horizon.

We drew closer to one particular skyscraper, the tallest of them all, with Vörös Industries stylized at the apex, shining brightly for all the world to see.

It was the headquarters of the Vörös Corporation, the richest company in Europe and one of the richest in the world. It led the way in biotechnology and computer science technology, creating cutting-edge products that revolutionized the world of science.

It was a corporation created by my parents, with my help, and with them no longer in this world, it was entirely owned by me.

As I thought about my parents, sadness and anger washed over me, making me grit my teeth and clench my fists so tightly that my fingernails nearly drew blood from my palms.

"Now is not the time," I whispered to myself as I calmed down and unclenched my fists. "It's all in the past. Stay in the present."

I released a deep breath, dispelling most of my rage and sorrow, as the car turned sharply and drove into an underground entrance beneath the Vörös Industries building—a brightly lit garage devoid of cars.

The car slowed down a few meters away from the only elevator at the end of the garage and came to a halt, parking just a few feet in front of it.

Exhaling another breath, I erased any lingering negative emotions and exited the car. I didn't say anything to Sergei as I passed by the driver's seat and paused in front of the elevator.

I placed my palm on the biometric scanner next to the elevator. A moment later, the scanner released a beep, and the elevator doors slid open. I stepped inside, and just as the doors closed, I saw Sergei turning the car around and driving out.

A low whir sounded in the space, and a red wave of light washed over me, moving slowly from head to toe.

"Identification complete. Ádám Vörös verified. Starting descent," an androgynous computerized voice announced in Hungarian. Immediately, the elevator began descending.

Some would call me paranoid for having all these security measures just for a lab. But to me, it wasn't enough. If it weren't for the technological constraints of the 1990s and early 2000s, I would've installed even more features.

The kind of research I did here warranted such measures. If any of the Elders—or even the Lycans—caught wind of what I was doing down there, I'd either have my head on a spike or be torn apart by a pack of ravenous and desperate wolves.

Thankfully, with my status, contributions, and the protection of Amelia, no one dared to question me about it or follow me here. And the few who had the authority to do so didn't really care.

After all, none of them, in their arrogance and misplaced superiority, would even dream of the possibility of my research. And frankly, that was for the best.

With a ding, the elevator came to a halt, and the doors slid open to reveal the familiar expanse of my lab. My lips curled into a smile at the sight as I stepped inside.

It was a wide, long room with white-tiled walls, ceiling, and flooring that gleamed under the bright overhead lights. The air stank of antiseptic and ozone, and the temperature was almost as freezing as the Danube River in winter.

Rows of illuminated glass tanks—or growth chambers—filled with a viscous green fluid lined the walls. Grotesque, malformed small creatures or lumps of tissue mass floated in them.

Stainless steel workbenches covered the room, laden with various advanced scientific tools and equipment: thermocyclers, test tubes, scalpels, centrifuges, pipettes, large sequencers.

Monitors lined one side of the lab, displaying streams of genetic and other scientific data. At the center of the room was my personal workstation—a large, white circular table scattered with notepads, vials of blood samples, and other fluids.

At the far end of the room stood tall refrigerators and an air-sealed glass isolation chamber, their low hum barely audible despite my enhanced senses.

This was my personal sanctuary. The place I spent most of my time when I wasn't out there killing Lycans or enjoying my nigh-immortal life. This was the place where all my dreams would finally come true.

With an excited smile, I removed my trench coat and hung it on the coat rack to my left. I grabbed a lab coat from it and slipped it on, buttoning it as I strode to the sink on my right.

I washed and sanitized my hands, then moved to the isolation chamber. The hiss of pressurized air greeted me as I unlocked its reinforced door by punching in the passcode. Inside, a single glass vial filled with deep crimson fluid stood at the center of the chamber.

Steeling my nerves, I grabbed it with steady hands and stared at it, admiring the fruits of all my hard work with eyes full of pride and contentment. This little thing was the next step to my evolution.

It was the Corvinus strain in its pure and activated form. This was the ancestral strain of both the vampire and Lycan genetic lines. Both strains were created by a mutation caused by the introduction of Vampire Bat DNA and Wolf DNA into the activated Corvinus strain.

Apart from Lucian and his scientist, Alexander Corvinus, and myself, no one knew of this genetic anomaly that had unintentionally birthed two entirely new biologically immortal species.

If it wasn't for the fact that I'd watched the Underworld movies in my past life, I wouldn't have known about it at all. It was something that could change the fate of the two warring species, and only one of these species knew about it.

It had the inherent ability to fuse both Vampire and Lycan strains together to create a single Hybrid strain that had none of the weaknesses or faults of the two races and all their strengths, even boosting or powering them up to inconceivable levels.

This phenomenon was something that would only happen for a member of the Corvinus clan, like Marcus Corvinus, the creator of the vampire race, and Michael Corvin, both individuals born with the strain in their genetic makeup.

For someone like me, who was born as a vampire already having the Corvinus strain in its post-mutated form, it was impossible to become a hybrid—at least not with the level of technology I was stuck with.

This was where the beauty and magnificence of this genetic anomaly showed its face. I couldn't become a hybrid of the two races, but I could become the evolved version of my race.

Instead of fusing the two mutated strains together, it could evolve the single vampire strain to a level comparable, if not superior, to the hybrid strain.

It would completely erase the devastating weakness of the vampire strain to ultraviolet radiation and enhance the strengths or powers that the strain conferred, like immortality, superhuman physical characteristics, and cellular regeneration, to elevated levels that might seem godly to some.

It was my stepping stone to true immortality. Ever since I was reincarnated into this world as a vampire and realized the sort of place I was in, I had made the acquisition of the Corvinus strain my ultimate goal in life.

In the beginning, I wanted it out of fear for what would come in the future. I wanted to strengthen myself and my family for the events I knew were going to come from the movies I had watched—events that would almost annihilate the vampire race.

I needed it purely out of necessity. But slowly, as time passed, and I got to enjoy the perks of being a vampire—especially my immortality and eternal youth, as well as the privileges I got to enjoy as a pureblood and the son of two council members—my priorities started to change.

It changed into something else entirely the moment my parents died. My mother and father, the only people in two lives who loved and cherished me more than anything, died after living for more than a thousand years.

The two people who seemed so invincible to everyone else, including myself, died very simply in a car explosion because the Lycans weren't very happy with me introducing silver nitrate into the Death Dealer arsenal as a child.

I'd always known vampires weren't truly immortal. Sure, we couldn't die of disease, sickness, old age, or normal injuries like stabbings, cuts, or bullet wounds, depending on how old you were, but we could still die all the same.

I knew it, but when you lived and grew up with centuries- to millennia-old monsters like my parents and other vampires, in the safety of a castle, you tended to forget all these little facts.

Their death was my wake-up call. It was at that moment I knew I could still die. Despite my immortality, I could still die just as easily as any puny human. That my eternal life wasn't very eternal after all.

After that incident, I didn't just need it to survive anymore. I needed it because I was terrified of dying once again. I needed it so that I'd have the power to live through anything.

I needed it to have the power to control my destiny and make my eternal life as eternal as it could possibly be. So that I wouldn't have to die in a foolish and meaningless war started by a man who couldn't handle the concept of change.

I became obsessed after that. Even through my years of revenge and pain, it was still in my mind. I knew where I could get it. The ancestor of vampires and Lycans was very close by, watching the war and stepping in to clean up the mess always.

But it was impossible to get it from him. With his strength and resources, honed and accumulated for close to two millennia, it was impossible to meet him, let alone take his blood.

So I had to play the long game. I had to wait for Michael Corvin, the direct descendant of Alexander Corvinus, to be born and mature. I didn't like it, but I had no choice.

Thankfully, vampires were inherently patient creatures, so to me, I didn't really have to wait long. I tracked him down in the United States using my extensive inherited resources and got as many samples of his blood as I wanted, whenever I wanted.

After, it was just a matter of stimulating his dormant Corvinus strain by incorporating it with the vampire and Lycan strains, activating it as a hybrid strain, cleaving the vampire and Lycan portions of its genetic structure using nightshade- and silver-derived exonucleases, and then purifying the leftover activated portion to get the strain in its pure and activated form.

It wasn't easy to do this. I first had to sequence the vampire and Lycan genetic codes, synthesize the specialized exonucleases using nightshade and silver, purify and stabilize the needed portion, and then do a lot of tests—some unethical—to verify and observe its effects.

It took years of sweat and blood to do this, but eventually, with patience and most importantly, a relentless driving factor, I'd done it successfully.

...I just wished my mother and father were here to see and enjoy this with me...

I sighed helplessly, a sad smile forming on my face, but I shook my head and replaced it with a smile of joy. Wherever they were right now, I was sure they wouldn't want to see me sad and depressed at this critical moment of my life.

They'd want me to be happy with a smile on my face and a pep in my step, telling me to dwell in the present and leave the past to the dusty historians. And that was what I was going to do.

Chuckling, I strode to my workstation with steady hands and opened the hypodermic needle, slotting the tube into it.

"Here goes nothing," I said as I clenched my fist, exposing my pale veins, and calmly inserted the needle into one of them. With a hiss, the device ejected all of the liquid into my bloodstream, completely emptying the tube.

"Did it work?" I asked myself rhetorically and frowned as I hadn't felt anything changing within me. There wasn't any discomfort or pain as I was expecting—something that usually accompanied your genetic structure being modified or rewritten.

There was nothing. But just as I was about to take a blood sample to run some tests, my eyes widened as something started happening.

It started as a low whine at the back of my mind, but it steadily increased until it filled every portion of my mind. Then, my eyes widened in horror as I felt something I didn't think I'd feel again.

Pain. The kind I felt forty-four years ago...

"Ahhhh!" I yelled, grabbing my head as it rocked my mind once again. It was less intense than before, but this one was more acute, more concentrated, more deliberate as it tore only at my brain.

My knees buckled from the pain, and I fell on my knees, my screams louder than before as my fingernails morphed into sharp claws, piercing into my head and drawing blood that trickled down the sides of my head onto the pristine white floor.

The pain intensified, but now, I could somehow feel my mind reaching out, sending out 'tendrils' of my consciousness somewhere.

It took only a few seconds for these tendrils to 'touch' something, and the very instant they did, I felt an unexplainable connection form—a tether forever linking to whatever my 'tendrils' touched. In that instant, my pain vanished like it had never existed, my screams ceasing.

I felt the tether widening, forming a hole, and the air in front of me hummed loudly in my ears and started tearing, screeching into my ears.

I raised my lowered head at the sound, and my eyes almost bulged out of their sockets as they witnessed what was happening right before them.

It started as a notable and dense black dot in the air but gradually widened and increased in size, tearing apart the fabric of space and time to form a dark red swirling portal as tall and as wide as my body right in front of me, humming ominously.

"...What the hell is this..."