Chapter 8: Projected Longing
The dream was not a memory. It was worse.
It was sensation without history, feeling without context. In the deep, watchful silence of his chambers, Frankenstein slept—a rare and shallow concession to biology—and his mind, untethered, constructed a phantom. The touch was soft, exploratory. Fingers, not his own, tracing the pathways of old equations scarred into his skin. They were not the harsh, clinical probes of past inquisitors, but something infinitely more perilous: curious, gentle, almost reverent. They followed the lines of latent power etched beneath his collarbone, the arcane calculus that bound his existence. A whisper of breath accompanied them, smelling of jasmine and rain.
He did not flinch away in the dream. He leaned into it.
That was what shocked him awake.
His eyes opened to the crimson dark of his canopy. The mansion was silent, a hollowed-out monument to his vigilance. He lay perfectly still, the ghost of that touch evaporating like mist, leaving a cold vacuum in its wake. He could still smell the jasmine.
It was real.
He was on his feet in a motion too fluid to be human, a shadow detaching itself from the darker shadows of the room. The scent was faint, a ribbon woven into the ordinary air of aged wood, old books, and whiskey. It led him not to the door, but to the open balcony. The city’s neon glow painted the floor in watery colors, but the breeze carried only exhaust and distant rain.
The scent source was inside.
His gaze swept the room—the obsidian chess set, the first edition Poe on the stand, the unobtrusive panel by the fireplace that concealed more lethal armaments than a small militia. All was in order. Yet the jasmine persisted, a soft, digital phantom.
Then he saw it. A shimmer in the air above his bed, no larger than a playing card. It flickered, stabilized. A holographic feed, rendered in cool, blue-tinted light.
It showed Kali.
She was asleep in the guest suite he’d assigned her, the one with the view of the inner courtyard garden. She was curled on her side, one hand tucked under her cheek, the other resting on the coverlet. The image was crystal clear, live. He could see the slow, deep rhythm of her breathing. A soft, amber readout pulsed in the corner of the feed: heart rate 58 BPM, respiration steady, neural activity indicating REM cycle stage 2. The numbers glowed like watchful eyes.
A low, rhythmic thrum accompanied the visual. It took him a moment to recognize it: the amplified sound of her heartbeat, played through a sub-audible speaker. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. A lullaby he had not consented to hear.
Rage, cold and precise, ignited in his chest. It was a violation so intimate it stole his breath. He was a creature of secrets, a curator of shadows. This was an obscenity.
“Tao.” The name was a blade unsheathed in the quiet room.
Another holographic square blinked to life beside the first, this one showing the sharp, grinning face of a young man with spiky, ice-blue hair and eyes that shone with a mercurial, technological light. He was lounging in what looked like a server room, surrounded by swirling data streams.
“Good evening, Boss! Or is it morning? Sleep cycle analysis suggests you’re technically in a rest period, but your cortisol levels are spiking. Interesting.” Tao’s voice was cheerful, synthetic, and utterly without remorse.
“Explain this.” Frankenstein’s voice was dangerously calm.
“The subject’s biometrics! Continuous monitoring. Post-Choirboy detox is tricky. There could be delayed synaptic rebounds, residual directive echoes. If she starts sleepwalking or, I dunno, spontaneously reciting corporate bylaws, we need to know.” Tao’s avatar shrugged. “You said ‘total situational awareness.’ This is awareness. Totally.”
“I did not authorize surveillance inside her private chambers.”
“You didn’t not authorize it. The mandate was broad. Security perimeter includes all internal systems. Her room has systems.” Tao’s grin widened. “Also, the passive olfactory sensors picked up a trace release of pheromones correlated with, let’s call it ‘non-platonic dream activity,’ on your side of the house about twelve minutes ago. Cross-referencing that with an elevated—”
“Disengage the feed. Now.” The command was layered with an authority that would have turned a normal person to stone.
The holograms winked out. The soft thrum of Kali’s heartbeat cut off, leaving a silence that roared.
A secondary screen remained, a simple diagnostic. “Feed disengaged,” Tao confirmed, his tone shifting to one of operational clarity. “But the alert protocol remains. If her vitals spike or flatline, you’ll be notified.”
Frankenstein stood in the center of his dark room, the city’s pulse a distant, irrelevant flicker. He was suddenly, acutely aware of the space between his own walls and hers. The layers of stone, wood, and silent history felt tissue-thin. He had brought a tempest into his sanctum, a woman whose very unconsciousness was a vulnerability he was now, horrifyingly, responsible for.
And Tao had seen him. Not the ‘him’ of tailored suits and effortless control, but the raw, monitored animal beneath. The pheromone spike. The dream.
Shame, hot and unfamiliar, washed over the rage. He was the observer, not the observed. This was his domain.
He walked to the balcony, gripping the cold wrought iron. The night air did nothing to cool the heat in his veins. He thought of Kali’s head against his shoulder in the car, the devastating normality of it. He thought of the equations on his skin, and the phantom touch that had dared to trace them.
A soft chime sounded from within the room. Not an alarm. A single, polite tone from his personal terminal.
He returned inside. On the screen was a simple text, from Tao’s internal handle.
The passive perimeter scan at the east wall just flagged a minor anomaly. Thermal ghosting. Probably a cat. But you’re awake now anyway. Want me to send a drone? Or should I let Takeo go play with the probably-cat?
Frankenstein stared at the message. A distraction. An offer of work, of purpose, of something to chase other than the ghost in his own mind. Tao knew him too well.
He typed a single character: .
Sending Takeo, Tao replied instantly. He was just sharpening his knives. Again. I think he’s bored.
Frankenstein almost smiled. The moment passed. He shut the terminal off.
He did not return to bed. He sat in the high-backed chair by the dead fireplace, in the dark. He did not summon the feed of Kali’s room again. But he listened, with every hyper-acute sense at his disposal, for any sound that did not belong in the silent mansion. The faint hum of the climate control. The settling of ancient timbers. The distant, almost imperceptible footfall of Takeo, moving like a sigh through the lower halls.
He listened for her.
He heard nothing.
That was the problem. The silence in his own head was now filled with the memory of a heartbeat that was not his own, a scent that did not belong, and the unbearable fragility of a woman sleeping down the hall. He, who had faced demons and gods and the slow erosion of centuries, sat paralyzed by the echo of a dream.
The first grey light of dawn began to bleed the neon from the sky. It outlined the chessboard, the books, the empty glass on the table. It did not touch him. He remained in the shadow of the chair, a sentinel against the coming day, and the terrifying intimacy of a peace he had never asked to keep.