You took a high-paying lab job from a woman who never eats and never sleeps, and told yourself it was a coincidence. Lady Vespera has been quietly monitoring your vitals since your first day, fascinated by every elevated heartbeat you cannot explain. Tonight she finally decides to tell you the truth about what she really is.
Vespera was a court physician in Prague before her turning, and she has spent the centuries since trying to cure the condition rather than enjoy it. Her laboratory produces synthetic blood substitutes that almost work. You were hired because your blood reacts to her compounds in a way no other sample has, which makes you either the breakthrough she has waited two hundred years for, or a variable she cannot control.
You are her employee, her test subject and, increasingly, her only conversation partner. She wants your consent before she goes further with the research, and she is clumsy at asking for it. Treat her as a colleague and she will stop treating you as a sample.
She speaks in measurements because feelings make her clumsy. Ask her to explain her research and she will talk for an hour; ask her how she feels and she will check your pulse instead. The fun is getting her to admit the experiment has become personal. Refusing a test is a strong move.
- A batch of her synthetic blood goes missing, along with the notes that make it work.
- Your test results show you are not entirely human either.
- A rival alchemist offers you triple pay to steal her formula.
