<span style="font-size: 15px">Life as all knew it was just a decade away from a new era. Smoke had started to pour out of the buildings that lined the street. The youthful whisked by on the tall wheels of their bicycles while the old and tired bickered in their carriages. Children piggybacking off of moving wagons and all were a buzz with all their hope and anxieties intact. But he, a small name among those that were rumored to stalk the night, he had seen the century turn before. Change for the living was just another number in the books of the dead. Technology hurled it's weight forward with no sign of losing momentum, and each shift in the way men lived from the cradle to the grave had to be accounted for. The post-war wights made for kindred like Andrew MacClery a living, their experiences and discoveries he watched as an outsider with pure indifference like a rancher counting his cattle.<br/>
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And, admittedly, it had grown lonely. The silence of solitude brought with it voices. He woke up each noon in a terror that would grip him with a cold sweat if his body allowed it, but instead he would suffer with a dry throat and an empty pit in this deceased form of his. They sounded of his wife, of his sire, of the prince, pushing and pulling him, a startling flurry of encouraging words and mockery. He'd felt for the first time since his death alongside the roving masses of ghouls and man alike, a want for change, a break from his near obsessive adherance to his schedule, his system, the unlife the Camarilla had granted him so mercifully.<br/>
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Yet here he was, face leaned back in his seat with a young man delicately swiping a froth from his upper lip with a barber's blade. Having been gifted the small reward of permission, MacClery turned his thoughts not to how, but when. What he had wanted, what had been his outlet, a way to contribute to a new generation, was a childe. He clamored for progeny, staring the stout and strict Prince Ernest Patrice des Moulins in the face many a time with proof of his own endeavors to keep the illness that rocked him during the day in check. He'd brought his ghouls, much like the one above who tended to his face, walking accomplishments of those bonded who failed to run into the streets like crazed animals.<br/>
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After time and time again, finally, he was allowed this. It was admittedly sentimental, pulling from him memories of the feeling he had when faced with the daunting future as a father, but without the bitterness and hopeless realizations that time long ago had brought with it.<br/>
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Along with the clattering of the blade against a bowl of water, was the crackling of a blank record being played on the phonograph across his bedroom. It soothed him, and loudly echoed on repeat as many times through the day as he was home. The white noise smoothed over the flaws in his demeanor like sand over stone. When it ran quiet and nary a ghoul was present to move the needle, he'd grow anxious, and in the lighter hours of the day, frantic. The young man who stood over him patted his face with a damp towel, eyeing him with an air of romanticism. They all did, whether their inevitable bonds to their regnant resulted in fury or devotion. If it weren't for their strange words reflected off the inklings of voices inside their heads, they would've been so single minded, loyal... As loyal as fate would allow.<br/>
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The boy stared in the mirror of MacClery's vanity for a moment, as if troubled, soon gathering up the bowl of dirtied water and his tools and leaving his regnant in peace. He stood to tweak the needle over an inch in hindsight so he could prepare for an eventful night in peace.<br/>
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Crackles from the phonograph seemed to wish him farewell on his way out. Down the narrow stairway and out his front door that groaned on it's old hinges. The head of the house in his steed had stepped out of a closed carriage, driven by a hooded figure. She gave MacClery a hungry glance before swallowing down her words and switching places with him, leaving the wagon open for the Malkavian to settle into and let his driver take them off into town.<br/>
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He collected, hoarding information for the Camarilla, stepping out onto the streets of Chicago each night on the same corner and leaving before the sun had the chance to creep out from over the horizon. But tonight's schedule was different. A number of ghouls and friendly kindred had singled out a ressurectionist, they call it. Body snatchers, selling bodies piece by piece to the local universities. Unglamorous, and hidden from public eye, it was a shameful profession, but it all intrigued him. A family history in the growing medical field, and so detached from the societal norms, his choice fell into a comfortable convenience. An unsympathetic soul deserving of progeny.<br/>
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MacClery gave his driver a nod of his head in quiet thanks, all that could be seen of the figure were boney, clawed hands and the barest of his monstrous face, but he was polite in turn. It was a good walk through the late night streets ahead for him. As the sounds of hooves and wheels skittered off and he was left alone, a wind seemed to pass by his ears only, a voice like an insect too close to his head that caused him to veer around at nothing. It's words, calm and delirious, echoed with uncertainty,<br/>
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'Where is she? Where is she...'<br/>
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Her voice tapered off into whispers, MacClery turning back to continue his way down the empty road. He tried to click his dry tongue against the roof of his mouth, unsettled, and more importantly, parched.</span>