Chương 81: The Limitless Bloodline

The woman she'd just met was Gideon Vaughn's daughter. Kelly had seen a file once. A rumor. A security feed showing the aftermath of Venus Vaughn's 'enforcement'. All she had seen was shrapnel and blood vapor. Kelly's expression was one of pure, clinical interest.

"How efficient is Venus' crew's cleanup? Do they bill by the hour or by the body?" Haider grimaced.

"There is no crew. There is only her. And the report filed after."

"Daughter? I thought he only had sons. Wasn't that kind of his whole thing?" Reggie, who up until this point had been doing a pretty convincing impression of a statue holding its breath, asked. Apparently, he'd held assumptions about the most powerful man in humanity—Kelly wondered how Reggie could've missed such an important interplanetary detail.

"The youngest? Why her? Wouldn't Vladimir Vaughn have made more sense? That guy's insane." Dr. Haider shrugged.

"She stays out of the public eye. I believe they had a genetic proclivity towards male scions." He glanced at Kelly and altered his language.

"From what I understand, the family's tendency to produce male heirs may be a side effect of all the genetic modifications done to him over the centuries. Or maybe it's just a powerful mutation, if the rumors are to be believed." Manuel relaxed once the underboss was out of sight, nodding in agreement.

"She's the third born. Her… whatever it is that makes someone get born, it must have been resistant as all hell." One might wonder why the most powerful man in the systems would bother building a potential rival. Maybe he was lonely. Kelly understood the sentiment. She absolutely could not relate to the staggering lack of foresight the whole endeavor screamed. Being special was pretty great. It came with a great view and zero credible competition.

Vaughn was a freak of nature—a long-lived being among billions of lessers, a biological dead end who had decided to live forever. His cells, his one-in-a-billion mutation—the source of all his unassailable power—were utterly useless for making more of him. They were poison to any other life form.

So the few children he and entire armies of reproductive embryologists had managed to scrape together over the centuries were drawn from scattered sources across star systems—a desperate, ongoing search for more winning lottery tickets in a universe that had already cashed his. It wasn't exactly easy to find a match when your biology came with a 'do not replicate' warning label. Being a one-in-a-billion mutation had its perks, like eternal life, unlimited power… and zero dating options. Vladimir. Venus.

Vladimir meant "ruler of the world." Also the name of Vlad the Impaler, a historical figure famous for staking people and inspiring legends about vampires. Who looked at a baby and thought, 'You know what this needs? A legacy of mass murder and nocturnal blood-drinking.' And 'Venus S. Vaughn'. The 'S' stood for 'Samedi.' In Roman mythology, Venus was the goddess of fertility. In Haitian Voodoo, Samedi was the god of the dead and resurrection. Sure, other parents gave their kids middle names like Grace or Marie…

Gideon went for 'Wake the Dead.' Kelly appreciated the cultural reference. If Vaughn wasn't a giant piece of shit who'd destroyed her world, perhaps they could have been friends.

"Love + Death + Resurrection… because apparently 'Lisa' wasn't edgy enough." She turned to face Dr. Haider.

"Venus Vaughn. What's her deal exactly?"

"She's like Gideon… or at least, we think she is," Dr. Haider said, his voice low, measured.

"She inherited whatever mutation makes him… different. As far as we know, there's no upper limit to what she can do—she can augment herself indefinitely." His eyes darkened.

"She could kill you without even trying."

"As in what, she's a 100-EQ A-rank and vaporizes you with laser eyes—""No." Dr. Haider's voice cut through, sharp. It held an edge of something more than caution and a little closer to fear.

"A literal flick of her finger could end you. Forget warning. Forget fighting back. Nothing you own or know will stop it. If she or Vaughn wants you dead, you die. Any action you take is just a delay. A short one." Stacy nodded, her nanoswarm form stilling to a perfect, attentive statue.

"We think she isn't as strong as him. As her dad. Gideon Vaughn. And since we're not the top dogs in every corporate market, even with her partnership, her current power must have limits. But we don't know them. We don't know where the line is. She keeps… incrementing." This only made the mad scientist more interested. What kind of augments did you install in a person who showed no overclocking limits? How did the systems even interact without burning out the host?

It was obvious she would have technology no one else had ever seen. Proprietary hardware. Experimental wetware. Kelly made a mental note to check it. One loop. Just to see the specs. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"So when she said I'm not as impressive as I should be, she was talking about..." Kelly let the sentence hang. Stacy finished the thought.

"Yeah, she was probably talking about Gideon. Which is honestly just weird. Comparing anyone to him is pretty dumb, a ladybug standing next to a planet. If anything, I'd take it as a compliment. I don't know how the hell you could remind her of her old man, though. Maybe the strongest guy in the known systems is annoying too." Stacy giggled. Kelly grunted, but her mind stayed glued on Venus's words. What the hell did Kelly have in common with the Gideon Vaughn?

Manuel, immediately after the corporate oligarch heiress left, wanted actionable intelligence. His voice stayed low, the door barely sealed.

"Why is Venus early?" he asked. He looked at Dr. Haider.

"You said she wouldn't be here until Thursday. Once you had built the cage for the teleporting Man-dog. The wolf." Stacy was already shaking her head, her voice bright and pointed, a deliberate announcement.

"She's here for Dad's stabilizers, and to meet Ren." Manuel looked at her.

"The old man? He's up? Already recovered from surgery?" Dr. Haider nodded. The tension drained from his shoulders.

"He's up. Ate an hour ago. He's in the back, going over what happened with the wolf." Manuel exhaled—a visible wave of relief at the mention of Ren. His stance softened from a fighter's crouch to something solid, ready.

"Good. That's good." Stacy shifted into the couch, drawing one leg up beneath her, her fingers tapping once against her knee before going still.

"He barely looked tired when I saw him earlier."

"He wouldn't," Dr. Haider said. He picked up a glass and gestured.

"The work was built around his baseline. The surgeons planned for what he is." Stacy leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand.

"He wanted to see the security feed from the wolf's intake. Said he'd have notes for us by the time we were done here. That says more than any scan could." Dr. Haider set the glass down, the motion unhurried, and folded his hands.

"His recovery was never in question. The only variable was how fast his body would accept the integration."

"And it accepted it," Stacy said.

"It accepted it," Dr. Haider agreed. Manuel leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms. The tension around his eyes had smoothed out.

"I'll feel better once I see him myself." Kelly, the mad scientist, watched closely. One name—Ren—shifted the room's atmosphere. The looming presence of a potential peak elite, or a potential corporate demigod, was suddenly no longer a threat, just a guest with business. That made Kelly's curiosity pique. Who was this 'Ren'? And why did his presence—awake, eating, working—elicit such relief in the face of a walking apocalypse? How could it make a catastrophe feel almost like a scheduling conflict?

"Good. Either way, my teleporting portal protégé—and whatever Trait keeps him breathing—is safe despite the corporate goddess of impregnation, sex, death, and murder stopping by," Kelly said, and the relief in her voice was real. The poor bastard from the outskirts, the one whose body and psyche had been fused with a portal monster, got to live another day. Maybe someday she'd dig into how a twisted thing like that managed to pick up skills. It seemed horrific.

The cost was being a subsumed mess, overtaken by an invader's biology, psyche, magic, and maybe soul, thanks to toxic hotzone mist. But he'd achieved the truly, technically horrifically impossible.

"Yeah, for now," Dr. Haider said. He looked past her, out the window. A pair of giant winged lizards were tearing at an aircraft, trying to wrench it from the sky. The craft fired back, rounds going wide, vaporizing chunks of a nearby tower. He watched for a second longer, then turned back to Kelly.

"You said you were trying to get stronger, that's not hard to understand. Given the current state of the world." He paused, choosing his words.

"I would say it's not like you, but if you're serious about it, you should meet Ren. He'll help. And you can hit something while you're at it—it'll help you get over the funk you've been in. You said you have a dog? That's good. You should bring him, too." He let out a slow breath.

"Just—don't be excessively yourself around Venus. Try not to upset her." He met Kelly's eyes.

"A disagreement would be... complicated." Kelly translated 'complicated' instantly. An organizational euphemism for being murdered so thoroughly a reset might feel like a courtesy. She smiled, intrigued.

"Alright, I'll take you to him." Why was he being so nice to her? Even more than usual. Dr. Haider could always be relied on and had always helped her. Sure, they had history, and sure, they had a good relationship, but this felt… special. Was this a recruitment bid? Was he trying to upgrade her and welcome her into the fold? Kelly had no interest in either. She had no desire to join his organization. But she did want access to a few of the resources it held.

Kelly nodded and followed him past living spaces and a storeroom filled with broken and questionably legal augments. One of the rumors about Dr. Haider had always circulated, and now she could see it for herself. He was an expert in exploiting augment law loopholes and capable of creating technology that violated humanitarian laws and war crime statutes. His criminal connections, his genius, and his inventions combined to make him nearly untouchable, and any sentence levied against him existed only as a formality.

She followed him with the intensity of a cat stalking a laser pointer, fascinated by the gadgets and gizmos that let him operate above the law. Kelly, secretly hoping to swipe a "how-to-ignore-the-rules" manual, practically fell into step behind him, trying very hard not to trip over her own curiosity. Whatever he had? She was going to make it hers. They reached a set of double doors. Dr. Haider opened them, revealing an opulent lift waiting inside. Kelly stepped inside.