A gruff-looking man with a scraggly garibaldi beard stood in front of Zane’s doorstep. His strong gray eyes gazed straight into Zane’s brown eyes as both of them kept their silence. His shoulders were wide and Zane could see this man had a body of a fighter.

“Oh,” Zane exclaimed, breaking the silence. His analytic prying eyes saw something he shouldn’t have. Yet he smiled even wider. Glancing back at the man in front of him as he didn’t miss the slight flaring of the man’s nostrils.

“The name’s Hans Jaeger. CPU. We would like you—”

“Sorry, but I’m not buying any new PC,” Zane slammed the door right in Hans’ face. But a hand managed to stop it from completely closing.

Zane peeked through the gap, meeting the gray eyes of Hans.

“We need to talk,” Hans said with a restrained voice.

“Like I said, I’m good,” Zane replied. “So can you please leave? I’m kinda in the middle of eating breakfast with my family right now.”

Zane subtly tried to close the door, but this man from CPU was showing an equal amount of strength as the door wasn’t even budging. “It’s about the vampire,” Hans said. “We need to talk about the vampire you fought that night.”

“Vampire? What vampire? I don’t know anything about any vampire,” Zane feigned ignorance. Grinning behind the door. As he wasn’t going to say anything to these people who didn’t even know how to apologize over their last unwelcome visit.

“Enough!” Hans roared as the door started to crack underneath his vice-like grip. The sounds of splintering woods echoed and seconds later a long crack went across the door. Zane let go and the door was opened wide. Rather than looking at the glare from Hans, he was more worried about this door of his.

“You just broke my door,” Zane frowned at Hans. His landlord was probably not going to like over what happened to the door.

Hans said nothing. Taking out something from inside his jacket and threw it in front of Zane’s feet. The mid-forties man kept glaring and with a whisk of his hand, he gave the signal to take their leave. The trio left. And Liz gave her own set of glare while flipping the middle finger at Zane as she trailed off behind Hans.

In the end, the agents of CPU were gone from the corridor. Shaking his head, Zane couldn’t believe how pompous those trios had been. But he did have quite a surprise peeking at that Hans Jaeger. A man that could contest with his strength was definitely someone that he should watch out for.

“Zane, who were they just now?” his mother approached. “Are they your friend?” despite the question she looked quite worried. It seemed a mother’s instinct definitely knew something was not quite right.

“Not really friends, but acquaintance I guess,” Zane said. Noticing his mom picked up the rectangular paper on the floor. “Don’t mind the mess, mom. People these days really don’t know how to behave—” he cut his words, seeing the change in his mother’s expression. “Mom? Is there something wrong?”

He looked over at the paper and saw what it was. His eyes went wide as he snatched it from the hands of his mother. Gazing at it in a daze as if he couldn’t believe how many zeroes were on that piece of paper.

“Is this the project you’d been talking about?” his mother asked. Blanketing her happiness over a gut feeling that something didn’t feel right to her. From the way he saw his son behave with those people, she worried his son was diving into dangerous water.

“Ah, yea. You’re right, mom. I guess the investor finally give it a go for the project,” Zane faked a smile that was easily seen through by his mother.

Nonetheless, his mother said nothing. She caressed Zane’s cheek, gazing at his son with tender-loving eyes. “Just don’t do anything dangerous, okay son?”

Her words stabbed right through Zane’s consciousness. As he felt guilty about lying to his mother as whatever he had been doing for the past few days was far from being safe.

“Let’s get back to breakfast. It won’t be as good if it gets cold,” his mother left first while Zane took another look at the cheque.

“Two hundred and fifty thousand US dollars,” he uttered. Staring at the cheque with a smile that kept on growing. Yet he questioned it. “But why? Did they figure out I killed the vampire and now they want to recruit me? Or is this something like a reward for killing a vampire, like a bounty?”

The only thing he could do was speculate. Then he noticed another thing on the floor, smaller than the cheque in his hand. Picking it up, Zane saw it was a business card with the acronym CPU on it. “Cryptid Protection Union sounds kinda tacky,” he looked behind and saw a single line of numbers. “But I have to hand it to him. Giving this card is basically saying if I want more money I just need to call the number at the back.” Zane didn’t want to admit it but he would have got the whole story if he just let the man talk, but what could he do? He was kind of a petty guy.

“I probably need to visit a bank to see whether this is real or not,” Zane said.

* * *

-One Week before-

Liz felt the cold floor on her skin as she lay there bound by the thin plastic ropes. She was tied quite tightly as the thin plastic ropes dug into her skin which each movement she made. “Fuck!” she cursed. Trying to get herself out of this mess. The burning rage in her fueled her desire to get out of this and enacted revenge on the one who did this to her. But rage wasn’t always helpful. She who had taken a crash course in escaping being tied could not use the things she learned to the best of her abilities. The rage kept clouding her mind, distracting her from being calm.

Two hours later, she was still in the same position and still hadn’t given up. She tried to wiggle her naked body out of the restraint as her action was nothing short of being useless. Cursed words kept pouring out from her lips to the point of actually cursing Zane for him to die. She was too engrossed in her hate that she didn’t even realize the appearance of a few white silhouettes passing by outside the windows. Not to forget she was on the highest floor so perhaps she wasn’t really alone up there.

“Liz?” a familiar voice rang. Liz looked up and shouted to the top of her lungs. “Here!” The woman kept on shouting, trying to get the attention of someone who called her name. Soon, a figure stood near the door. “Griner?” SK flashed his phone’s light at her and saw the state she was in. She was stark naked and SK took a good look at her for a while.

“Stop staring at my ass, and get me out of here!” Liz shouted.

SK snapped out of it and knelt beside her. He pulled out his small swiss knife and cut the raffia ropes. “You really pissed him off, didn’t you?” SK grinned.

Liz glared and covered her breast with her arm. “We’re going back there, and I’m going to shoot him at his fucking head,” Liz roared.

“Well, that would be a problem,” SK chimed in.

“Why?”

“We made a mistake, Liz,” SK said. “The vampire that he fought is dead, so we’re really in the wrong here.”

“Fuck you. There’s no way that’s possible,” she denied.

“Unfortunately for you, it is,” SK said. “Baguette did a routine crime scene second check, and he found a pile of ashes in the alleyway. The one that we missed,” he emphasized on the missing part. “Baguette did an initial test and there’s a high probability of the ashes being from a vampire.”

SK noticed the worsening frown on Liz as he continued, “yea, Liz. This time we kinda fucked ourselves up.”

Both of them rendezvoused with Baguette who was waiting outside of the hospital. The Viet-Cong wannabe found them after tracking SK’s phone as he then released SK from the agony of being tied down. He was a man of not many words and even after seeing Liz naked without a thread he was still unperturbed.

“Chief is waiting,” Baguette said in his thick accent.

All three of them got inside another small car, a kancil, the smaller older brother of the Myvi as they went back to their rundown hotel. Liz wore any clothes she could find as SK accepted the video call from their headquarters.

Hans Jaeger appeared on the screen as SK reported what happened over the course of their vampire hunt. SK left nothing untold as he reported everything. In return, the duo had an earful from Hans for their reckless attempt in the investigation, especially at Liz. The gal with two meters in height could only stand there with her hands on her back. She had managed to maintain a poker face throughout the meeting, but what came out of Hans’ mouth made her face contort.

“We need to recruit him,” Hans said.

“What?!” She retorted. “Chief, we can’t let that guy be in our organization, and we are still not sure whether he is in the clear yet.”

“Stand down, Griner,” Hans coldly said. “You know well we’re in need of fresh recruits and someone who could potentially kill a vampire shouldn’t be ignored. And SK’s report is enough to tell me what’s going on, and you better keep yourself in check if you don’t want to get suspended.”

Liz clenched her jaw, trying her best not to talk back at her superior.

“I’ll be coming personally after a few days, so in the meantime, keep a watch on him, and be sure not make any problem,” Hans ordered. Glancing slightly at Liz. “Do I make myself clear, Griner?”

“Yes, Chief,” Liz replied. But deep down, she would not let this slide even after Zane joined them.