Chapter 10: The Energy in the Room
Colin Robinson was eating dry cereal at the kitchen table.
This shouldn't have been remarkable — children ate cereal, it was a normal thing — except that Colin Robinson had been an infant three weeks ago. Now he sat in a booster seat that was already too small for him, legs dangling, spooning Cheerios into a mouth that spoke in complete sentences.
"The milk creates texture problems," he explained to no one in particular. "Soggy cereal is an affront to the sensory experience. Don't you agree?"
The question was directed at me. I'd walked into the kitchen for coffee and found myself facing something that looked like a five-year-old and thought like something much, much older.
"I've never had strong feelings about cereal texture," I said carefully.
"You have strong feelings about everything." Colin's eyes — still wrong, still ancient — tracked me as I moved toward the coffee maker. "You just hide them well. Most of the time."
[WARNING: Energy Vampire Detected — Passive VEP Drain Active]
[-3 VEP]
The notification confirmed what I was already feeling — a subtle fatigue, like someone had turned down my internal brightness settings. Colin's proximity was draining me, and the system was tracking it in real-time.
"You have an interesting energy signature," Colin continued, pushing his cereal around the bowl. "Like someone broadcasting on a frequency that shouldn't exist."
My hand froze on the coffee mug.
"Broadcasting?"
"Mmm." He took a bite. Chewed thoughtfully. "Everyone emits energy. Vampires are cold but rich, like aged wine. Humans are warm and simple, like fast food. You're... different. You've got layers. Static in between the stations. Like you're running on two channels at once."
He can sense the system. Or sense something the system does to me.
The Council chamber felt very far away — that moment on my knees, the loading bar at 12%, the first terrifying seconds of a second life. I'd thought the system was invisible. I'd assumed no one could see it.
Colin Robinson could taste it.
"That's very poetic," I said, keeping my voice light. "Maybe you should write it down."
"I'm too young to write." He smiled, and it was the smile of something ancient wearing a child's face. "For now."
[-2 VEP]
Laszlo appeared in the doorway, looking between us with the protective alertness of a parent who'd found their child talking to a stranger.
"Colin, my boy. Time for your stories."
"I was having a conversation, Daddy Laszlo."
"Yes, well, conversations can wait. Arthur has duties. Don't you, Arthur?"
The escape route opened and I took it. "Absolutely. Lots of duties. Very busy."
I left my coffee unmade and retreated toward the hall. Behind me, I heard Colin's voice, clear and carrying:
"He's performing for something. I can taste the difference between genuine and scripted, and he's about sixty-forty."
I didn't stop walking. Didn't turn around. But the words hit like ice water.
Sixty percent performance. Forty percent genuine.
He can tell.
Laszlo carried Colin downstairs for "stories," which I suspected meant reading from academic texts about energy distribution because that was apparently what settled an infant energy vampire. I retreated to my supply closet and sat on the cot with shaking hands.
The system tracked my elevated stress as ambient content.
[+4 VEP: Character Tension — Exposure Risk]
Marcus Webb's photograph watched me from the closet door. The face I wore now. The identity I'd stolen.
"He can see me," I said to the invisible camera. "Not the system specifically, but something. The broadcast frequency. The performance ratio. How long before he figures out the rest?"
[+4 VEP: Confessional Moment]
A knock on the closet door interrupted my spiral.
"Yeah?"
The door opened. Guillermo stood there, holding two beers.
He didn't say anything at first. Just walked in — the supply closet was barely big enough for one person, let alone two — and set a beer on my cot.
"Colin does that to everyone," he said. "The energy drain, the creepy observations. Don't take it personally."
I blinked at him. In three weeks of cohabitation, Guillermo had never once come to my room except to assign tasks or express suspicion. This was something different.
"Thanks," I managed.
"It's just beer." He leaned against the doorframe. "He got to me once, when he was still full-sized. Spent an hour explaining why my career path was statistically unlikely to succeed. I didn't sleep for three days."
"How do you deal with it?"
"You don't." He shrugged. "You just remember that he drains everyone. It's not personal. It's just what he is."
The words weren't warm, exactly. But they weren't cold either. This was the recognition of a shared occupational hazard — two people trapped in the same absurd situation, offering what comfort they could.
"I appreciate it," I said. "Really."
"Don't get used to it." But there was a flicker of something almost like humor in his voice. "I still don't trust you."
"Fair enough."
He left. I sat alone with two beers — one already open, one still cold — and tried to process the fact that Guillermo de la Cruz had just shown me something that might have been kindness.
[+15 VEP: Found Family Seed — Genuine Connection]
The counter ticked upward. The system approved of the moment.
For once, I didn't mind.
The rest of the day passed in the blur of familiar duties. Blood inventory. Cape maintenance. The endless small tasks that kept a vampire household running.
I avoided the basement.
Colin's words echoed every time I passed near the stairs. Broadcasting on a frequency that shouldn't exist. Sixty-forty. Performing for something.
The Djinn was a threat I could plan around. Laszlo's suspicion was a problem I could manage. But Colin Robinson — an energy vampire with the ability to literally taste emotional authenticity — was something else entirely.
If he kept growing at this rate, if he kept watching, if he kept analyzing the energy signatures around him... how long before he figured out that I wasn't just broadcasting on the wrong frequency, but broadcasting from an entirely different station?
Evening fell. The vampires woke. The house filled with the usual chaos of immortal creatures going about their eternal business.
I checked the baby monitor out of habit.
Colin sat in the basement — not the nursery anymore, he'd outgrown that — reading Laszlo's personal diaries with the comprehension of an adult scholar. He turned pages at a rate that suggested he was actually reading, not just looking at the words.
And occasionally, he glanced up at the camera.
Not at the lens. At where the camera was mounted. At the angle that suggested he knew exactly where the monitor was and exactly who might be watching.
At me.
[+6 VEP: Tension — Recurring Character Arc]
[EPISODE 4 COMPLETE]
[Rating: 7.0/10]
[Feedback: Strong character dynamics. Recurring character arc detected. Adjusting narrative weight: Colin Robinson elevated to secondary antagonist track.]
The episode notification was almost reassuring. At least something in this world thought the story was going well.
I closed the monitor app and stared at the ceiling.
Somewhere below, an ancient intelligence was learning to walk again, learning to talk again, learning to read the people around him like books with broken spines.
And he was already reading me better than anyone else in this house.
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