The Chancellor pushed open the doors to the private rooms of the woman he had been told by the Master to call Poisyn. His interaction with her up to that point had been limited to a few words of greeting and only in the Master's presence. Now, he was having to speak with her alone for the first time and he was slightly nervous. Or perhaps more than slightly since his hands shook as he put them up against the heavy wooden doors. The doors swung inward easily, soundlessly, keeping his entrance a secret, for the moment, from its occupant.

The woman he had come to see was moving through the space in the center of the room, a slender sword in her hand. The sword point traced a brief arc in the air and the next thing he knew, it was buried in the doorframe next to his head, a quivering shaft of steel with an ornate handle.

"Gentlemen knock when they enter a lady's chamber," her voice was low, husky, sultry, and somehow cold. Large, dark eyes with edges of a nasty green fixed on him, the markings covering the right side of her face, flaring up with what could only be a suppressed anger.

Chancellor bowed to her. This was not a woman like War who did not stand on ceremony. She was obviously well bred and probably several times more dangerous. While War would attack from the front, this one who sidle up and kiss before killing, infinitely more dangerous.

"Forgive me, but the Master summons," he said quietly. "He wishes you to attend him in the throne room."

"The time has come for us to begin," a smile crossed her face, her eyes lighting with an internal fire. "He is ready for us to go forth and bring his word to the world." Poisyn strode across the room, stopping as she would pass the Chancellor, bringing the tips of her fingers to his chin. Bringing his face close to her own, almost brushing his lips with her own, she said,

"When you enter my chambers from now on, you will knock. Understood?"

He couldn't help but shiver, the stories of her kisses and what they could do in the forefront of his mind. Chancellor nearly swallowed his tongue before answering.

"Of course, Mistress Poisyn."

She did not acknowledge his agreement save by removing her touch from his skin. With a twitch of her skirt, she was out of the room and down the hall, leaving him to scramble to catch up. And scramble he did, understanding that this woman was more like the Master, impeccable and more than willing to harm those who did not live up to her expectations.

Nathaniel Essex walked down the pristine halls of St. Ash, the newest hospital on the Isle of Great Britain with his hands clasped behind his back, his assistant scuttling along behind him with a clipboard as he rattled off care instructions as he got to each room door on a long hallway.

His black suit was crisply pressed; he had a housekeeper for good reason, standing in stark contrast to his bleached paper white face. Red eyes gleamed behind a pair of completely unnecessary, but still rather chic, black spectacles. Somehow they made him seem slightly more personable, at least until he smiled. The cannibal sharp teeth did nothing for his bedside manner. Of course, it didn't matter to him that he frightened most of his patients into near convulsions, but in an effort to not frighten people to death he keep his mouth rather firmly shut when he wasn't talking. He had been invited to run this hospital by the Human nations since he had managed to control the spread of Protocol 22, but he was still on human soil, so he had to make concession toward his guesthood.

"Anne, are you listening," he snapped at his assistant.

"Yes, Dr. Essex," Anne was a slight girl, barely old enough to even be legally considered an adult, with a fawning interest in the masterful and intelligent Dr. Essex. When the opening for an assistant had come up she had been the first applicant. There had only been five. The other four had not passed his preliminary aptitude test. Anne had passed the aptitude test and the personality survey apparently as she was called back to take up the position as his assistant within mere days.

"Good, Room 304," he continued, expecting that she was going to take the necessary notes and had the information on the patient in that room somewhere in the manifest she had in her hands.

Protocol 22 from its first outbreak had ravaged the human community leaving behind entire areas that were so utterly decimated as far as population that they had become wastelands. Entire cities completely abandoned as the infrastructure that ran them collapsed in on itself under the weight of its responsibility and its utter lack of personnel.

Essex had to give his former wife credit; when she created a plague, she created something worthy of the title. 'The Protocol' as it had become known had a contact spread rate of nearly a hundred percent and a fatality rate of 95. Those who contracted the disease and survived were almost universally left with little or no brain function due to the prolonged low oxygen levels the disease caused. He had created a vaccine to nearly halt its spread, but those who had already caught it prior to the widespread availability of the vaccine were sent to St. Ash to live out their days, leaving Essex in charge of an entire hospital of patients with no ability to say no to his wishes. No one made mention of this fact, or that Essex had chosen all of his own staff and received no oversight from the British government. He was after all the savior of the human race, what were they going to tell him, no?

A phone rang at Anne's belt. It was a slim silver affair, something no nonsense like someone with no interest in cellphones would have. Anne juggled her clipboard, pen, and the phone deftly, long practice apparent in her movements.

"Dr. Essex's office," she answered without hesitation despite the fact that they were in the ward and not the office. Anne, tell Dr. Essex that I need to speak with him immediately. "Ah huh," she replied to the person on the phone. "Dr. Essex," she offered him the phone after a few seconds.

Essex closed one white-gloved hand over the phone bringing it to his ear.

Dr. Nathaniel Essex?

"Yes?"

Johnathan Andrews, sir, Burnt Heart Cemetery. You had the body of your wife moved here when you returned to Britain. There appears to have been some vandalism to your wife's crypt. Your presence is requested at your earliest possible convenience to discuss repairing the damages and the reburial of the body. Whoever did this removed her body from the crypt entirely. Please come as soon as possible, sir.

He stood there for one minute exactly, the phone to his ear looking rather like a man who belonged on Wall Street, his face impassive as whoever was on the other end explained the situation.

"I see," was all he said before flipping the phone shut with a definitive snap. He handed it back to Anne, his face still very much a mask. He did not doubt that the vandalism had occurred. It was general knowledge that his wife had engineered a virus that had killed off more than a third of the human population on Earth. There was surely going to be some kind of retaliation for that. That did not, however, make him willing to forgive those who had taken her body from its resting place. He had very carefully considered the decision to move her when he returned to Britain. Only after realizing that he wanted to be able to see her from his home did he finally decide to move her body to what would be her final resting place.

"Anne, I am unfortunately going to have to leave to handle some personal business. Take the orders for room 304 and duplicate them for rooms 305-315. The orders for 400-415 are going to be the same as yesterday's."

"Has something happened, Dr. Essex?"

"Yes, Anne, but it's nothing to worry about. Please, finish those orders for me and then you have the afternoon to yourself. I will not be returning today."

He turned back toward the stairs and walked away, leaving his assistant staring owlishly at his back. Anne shifted from foot to foot, obviously unsure what to do in this situation. Then, chewing on her lip, she set to furiously copying the orders for the five nurses that Essex kept on night duty.

Burnt Heart Cemetery was the ancestral resting place of the Ascher family, the family that had brought his deceased wife into the world. The family that had driven her to seek what help she could for a then unnamable difference in her. The family that had driven her into his arms. Practically in the backyard of the Ascher manor, called Ever Rest, the cemetery was quiet, exclusive, and secluded. Now two men stood outside a stone building, one in overalls, grungy and tired looking; the other wore a black suit looking unnatural among the heavy, ancient oak trees that grew among the graves.

The door to the building had been blown off with some kind of low class explosive. Just enough to destroy the door, but not the building itself. Inside on the floor was the body of Mrs. Essex, looking as if the person who had been in process of carrying her had simply dropped her in the center of the floor. She looked rather like some kind of life-size doll in her black dress. Nathan had resisted the urge to go in and gather her up off the ground; it simply seemed incorrect for her to be left that way. But the police needed to come and take their pictures first.

"Sir, I didn't see anything. But I promise to double the security, no man should have to worry about his loved ones being pulled up like this."

Nathan made no reply immediately, his eyes intent on the form that lay on the crypt floor. Something, no, everything about it was wrong. The color of her hair, the shape of her face, the length of her limbs, everything was just slightly off.

"Mr. Andrews, I am right in assuming that you have notified the police of this criminal act?"

"Yes, sir, they just haven't shown up yet, Dr. Essex."

"Go wait for them at the gate, I want a moment with her." Nathan waited until Johnathan had shuffled off before he entered the crypt, stepping around the body lightly in an effort not to disturb anything. He hadn't looked at her too closely, unwilling to acknowledge that he had come back and she had not when he had first awoken, but now he studied the face of the body that had supposedly been his wife. His mind came to the conclusion quickly, that this was not indeed his wife, but some facsimile that had fooled many, including himself.

He was not a man given to swearing, but he let loose a string of curses. If this was the body in his wife's grave, where was his wife?

"You summoned me, Master," Poisyn stopped at the foot of the stairs leading up to Apocalypse's throne.

"Yes, I sent for you. You and War are to go and collect Famine. It is time for her to be returned to the fold. Go. I have told War what you must know. Do not return without Famine."

"Of course, Master," Poisyn bowed to him in acknowledgement of his orders and looked to the one who had been designated as her partner. "Shall we go?"

"Yeah, let's," War had obviously been waiting, somewhat impatiently, for Poisyn to show up. But then War was always impatient. The two women walked away, leaving Apocalypse and the Chancellor alone in the throne room.

"You fear her rightly. She is one that I will have to control tightly," said Apocalypse to Chancellor.

"As you say, Master," agreed the Chancellor, suppressing the urge to shudder once again. If even the Master considered her a possible threat, she truly must be dangerous indeed.