Living rough in Scorched Sands was no picnic, and thus Damian was no stranger to sleeping in strange places. Outlet pipes and cisterns were fine and all, but sometimes he would get caught outside as the sun rose, forcing the vampire to seek shelter in dumpsters and beneath derelict cars.

But never in all his undead life had he ever woken up inside an actual building.

Eyes bleary and head pounding, Damian squirmed about uncomfortably on the mortician’s slab, teeth bared as he tried to force open the leather restraints pinning him down. The room around him stank of antiseptic, and he could hear all sorts of sounds through the walls. Footsteps, voices, machinery… He was deep inside a building alright, and way out of his depth besides.

“McArva!” he cried, struggling against his restraints.

He received no reply, just the sound of a door sliding open.

“McArva, where the fuck are ya?!” the vampire screamed again.

He heard someone tut.

“Ah Christ, he’s up. Fuck,” a distinctly accented voice spoke, followed by the sound of boots tapping against a tile floor.

Craning his head, Damian saw that someone had stepped into the gleaming white room, dressed from head to toe in a protective cleanroom suit. They cleared their throat and glanced down at a tablet they carried.

“Damian?”

They had a woman’s voice, though he admitted to himself that he didn’t have much of a frame of reference.

“Yeah? What? You gonna let me go?” he asked, balling his fists.

“Aye, aye, in a minute… Just need to check some things first. Uh, let’s see here…”

They tapped the tablet, bringing up a series of holographic screens. Each were filled with enough words to make the vampire’s head spin.

“Says here you took down a full-grown ogre with a chainsaw. That true?” the newcomer asked, peering past the screens.

He shrugged. Or at least he would have, if his arms weren’t strapped down.

“McArva wanted it dead. I fuckin’ made it dead.”

The scientist chuckled and swiped the screens away.

“Pretty metal. Here, lemme get you unfettered.”

Stepping over to the slab, she reached down and hit a few buttons on its side, causing the restraints to retract with a mechanical hiss. Rubbing his chafing wrists, Damian sat up and raised an eyebrow.

“Thanks… You a part of BEDLAM or whatever?” he asked, looking her up and down.

She thumped her chest.

“Aye. Head of the Bureau’s engineering team, me. But seeing as we don’t actually have an official head of forensics, medical or R&D, I take charge of all of them too,” she replied, returning her attention to the tablet.

Damian snorted.

“I dunno what half of that even is.”

“You and me both. Right, gonna need you to strip down.”

The vampire cocked his head.

“Eh? Why?” he asked, getting to his feet.

Stowing her tablet away, the besuited scientist shrugged her shoulders and turned on her heel.

“Because dressed as you are, you’re a walking biohazard. McArva wants those rags burned pronto, so I’m gonna need you to take them off. Don’t worry, though; I’ve got a change of clothes ready for you,” she called over her shoulder as she pulled a large hose from a wheel mounted to the far wall.

He frowned. Well… she did have a point. Eight or so years of living in filth hadn’t been kind to his threads.

With a sigh, Damian peeled off his sweater and shirt, before he undid his fly and wriggled out of his jeans. Finally tossing his boxers aside, he placed his hands on his hips and turned to face the hosepipe that the scientist was pointing straight at him.

“Hold still!” she called, right before she pulled the valve.

Before the vampire could react, an unholy deluge of freezing-cold water shot forth from the hose with enough force to blast him against the tile wall. He screamed and cried out as he was mercilessly sprayed down, staining the water a sickly shade of red-brown as it ran down a drain set into the floor.

As quickly as it started, the water ebbed away, causing him to crumple to the floor, gasping for breath. Stepping over, the scientist made a small, bemused noise.

“You got a brand on your back, you know that?” she said, tapping the vampire’s spine with her boot.

“Wh- What…?!”

“I heard vampires retain scars they had before transformation, so I’ll need to look into this. Anyway, dry yourself off while I get your shit sorted.”

She tossed a towel at him before promptly leaving the cleanroom. Guttering and gasping, Damian grabbed at the towel and frantically scrubbed the water out of his eyes. He staggered to his feet, still dazed by the sheer frigidity of the water. He was hardly warm blooded himself, but that was Baltic.

“F- F- Fuckin’ H- Hell…” he stammered, rubbing himself over with the towel.

He heard the door slide open once more as a set of footprints resounded throughout the cleanroom, but these were not the thumping of boots, but rather the clacking of heels.

“I take it you’ve acquainted yourself with our resident prodigy?” the voice of Arlette McArva said.

Drying his hair, Damian turned around to face the Succubus, who just sighed and rolled her eyes.

“That lil’ bitch with the hose?! Damn near fuckin’ drowned me!” he growled, vigorously rubbing the grease out of his hair.

“You can hardly blame her for wanting you clean, Damian. Now follow me, and for hellfire’s sake, put that sorry thing away,” she commanded, stepped out of the room.

The vampire glanced down.

“Oh. Right, yeah.”

Wrapping the towel around his waist, he skirted out the door after her.

-----

Hot on the Director’s heels, Damian watched on in awe as he was led through the Bureau’s scientific department. All around him, he could see men in white coats doing… all sorts of things that flew far above his head. Things with test tubes and microscopes and those little things that set fire to other things.

As he passed, the BEDLAM staff would recoil and give him a wide berth, horrified by the vampire’s presence.

“Pay them no mind. Some within the Bureau abhor the idea of employing necrophages,” Arlette explained, waving her hand as she reached for a cigarette.

Glancing at one of the “No Smoking” signs bolted to the walls, Damian pattered after her, leaving wet footprints on the floor.

“I figured y’all would know about me enough to not be scared shitless,” he remarked, giving an onlooking scientist a one-fingered salute.

“Yes, well… There are always a few unaccountable anomalies to be wary of…”

“Eh?”

“Shush. Get in.”

She pressed her hand against a panel on the wall, causing a set of elevator doors to slide open.

“What anumal- ana- anomalies?” he asked, tripping over the word as he stepped into the lift.

The Succubus fixed him with her piercing stare.

“The brand on your back, for one thing. The letter D, burned directly into your flesh. We don’t know what that means,” she explained, selecting her destination on a screen.

Frowning, Damian twisted himself in an effort to see his own back, to no avail.

“Didn’t know I had that…”

Arlette scoffed.

“How could you; you were caked in dirt up until ten minutes ago.”

Her eyes suddenly widened as she lashed out to grab his left hand. He tried to ask her what she was doing, but thought better of it as the Director slowly raised his fingers to the light. There – around the base of the ring finger – was another burn scar, this one circling the entire digit.

“Didn’t notice that either,” he remarked, staring hard at it.

“You’d best not be so unobservant when you start tackling assignments. Come.”

On Arlette's mark, the elevator reached the lowermost basement of the Bureau. With a polite din, the doors slid open, allowing a cacophony of sound to assault Damian's eardrums. Machines whirred and squealed as tools grinded and clashed, nearly drowning out the yelling of engineers and the thumping of their protective boots. Hands over his ears, the vampire peered out into the hallway. Unlike the clean and pristine forensics department, BEDLAM's engineers did little to keep their neck of the woods in decent shape. The floor was slicked with spilled oil and dark stains, coupled with various screws and rivets that had been knocked off projects from years passed, and the air smelled like gasoline and iron filings. As Arlette directed Damian to follow him, he was surprised to find that the engineering staff paid him no heed; barging past him or nudging him out of the way as they went about their business.

"Normally I wouldn't allow such squalor, but my head engineer refuses to work in anything else," the Director commented, stepping over a large oil stain.

He frowned. True enough, there was a strange comfort to be surrounded by controlled chaos, though he couldn't fathom why.

"Who is this chick anyway?"

A humourless smile tugged at the corner of the Succubus' mouth.

"Keeva Titch. Whereas my authority is absolute regarding most of the Bureau, my word means little down here. In this little warren, she considers herself the matriarch, and as long as she keeps producing her marvels, I'm inclined to let her believe it."

Nodding slowly, Damian peered through an observation window as a cadre of machinists readied some kind of prototype machine gun for firing.

"She some kinda doctor or professor type?" he asked, jogging after Arlette as she turned a corner.

"Not exactly. I believe she was kicked from her university before she finished her doctorate."

"Huh. Why's that?"

"I'll let you ask that yourself."

Reaching a door at the end of the hall, the Director placed her hand against a scanner mounted next to it. It clicked, beeped and whirred, causing the door to smoothly slide open.

The workshop that lay within was unlike anything Damian had ever seen. It was as though a hardware store and a scrapyard had been detonated within the confines of the Bureau's basement. Workbenches laden with half-assembled devices lined the walls, which bore wire racks laden with impressively complex firearms. Metal scraps and loose materials carpeted the floor, and as Damian struggled to pick his way across it, he found himself nearly tripping over haphazardly stacked ammunition crates.

"I see you found the place alright," called a familiar voice from the back of the workshop.

Staggering back, he looked up to see the selfsame individual that had doused him with water not a few minutes earlier, this time without her cleanroom suit. She bore bright blue eyes and a freckled face, with brown hair that had been tied up with a loop of copper wire. Her labcoat was just as filthy as he surroundings, and as she flawlessly circumnavigated the chaos of her domain, Keeva Titch offered the vampire a thickly-gloved hand.

"Keeva Titch. I'll be in charge of your equipment," she explained, gesturing for him to shake it.

Unsure of just how to proceed, Damian gingerly placed his hand in hers, only to cry out in pain as her grip tightened exponentially. With a grin, Keeva's vice-like hand squeezed Damian's fingers, threatening to break them altogether.

"D- Damian. Fuck, stronger than ya look, ain'tcha?" he gasped pulling away.

She shrugged.

"You flatter me. I don't even work out."

"That a fact? Heard you got kicked from your school. What for?"

"Oh, you know. The dean didn't take kindly to me hacking my arm off with a bandsaw."

Eyes opening wide, Damian watched on in amazement as Keeva stuck out her tongue and abruptly tore her gloves off. Where he expected to see a pair of fleshy arms, he was instead met with two prosthetic appendages. Despite looking handmade, her gunmetal arms seemed to work as well - if not better - than a pair of regular ones, and as she twisted and articulated her mechanical joints, the engineer beamed proudly.

"Got my left hand stuck in a lathe. Didn't like being unbalanced, so I cut the other one off too!" she proclaimed as if that was something to be proud of, bashing her metal fists together.

Behind the pair, Arlette scoffed.

"And got excommunicated from your family as a result," she commented, drumming her fingers against her arm.

"Hey, fuck Titalitech! I didn't wanna be part of their shitty conglomerate anyway! They whored out the Titch name, and I don't wanna be a part of that!"

Marching over to a toolbench, she pulled out an antiquated tape-measure before gesturing for Damian to stand next to her. Taking a seat by a reloading bench, Arlette lit a cigarette and popped it into her mouth.

"Titalitech is the world's leading technology firms. Leaders in the biotech field, and big players in most others. Headed by the Titch family, Keeva here was headed for a position in their Research and Development department, only-"

"Only I'm too big of a fucking embarrassment, so they kicked me to the curb! Can we please stop talking about this?"

The Succubus raised her hands.

"I meant no offense, Miss Titch."

"Good. Alright, Twilight; arms up."

Damian raised a quizzical eyebrow, but did as he was told. With a devious grin, Keeva got to work measuring him from top to bottom.

"What's this for?" he asked, glancing over at Arlette for help.

The head engineer laughed.

"What else? We're gonna play dressup!"