Dominic Varro was already seated when Wei walked in, which was also a statement. The kind of man who was already seated when you arrived. The kind of man who considered getting up to greet someone a concession rather than a courtesy.
He looked mid-forties. Wei knew he was roughly eighteen hundred years old, which was a number so large it had stopped meaning anything somewhere around the eight hundred year mark. Romano-British heritage, the story went, which tracked with the precise, considered quality of his face—the features of someone accustomed to managing perceptions. He wore a charcoal suit that fit the way very expensive things fit, which was to say you didn't notice it at all. His hands were folded on the table in front of him.
The table itself was set for two.
Real food. Wei registered this immediately, the way you registered cold when you'd been cold for too long—not as sensation but as the memory of sensation, the ghost of warmth. A plate of bread and oil. Glasses. Something in a covered dish that smelled of broth and herbs and the specific, maddening comfort of a meal made by someone who knew what they were doing. He could almost smell it. Almost.
Varro watched Wei cross the room and take the other chair. He didn't offer his hand.
"Mr. Chen," he said. "You look well, considering."
"Considering I'm dead."
"Considering the circumstances." A small correction, delivered without emphasis. "I appreciate you coming."
"I appreciate the honest advice from your courier," Wei said. "Was that intentional? Sending Rosa to tell me I should come because you're less dangerous thinking you're in control?"
Something moved in Varro's eyes. Not surprise—vampires of his age didn't do surprise, or if they did, they had converted it into something more useful. Something closer to assessment. "Rosa made that call on her own," he said. "She tends to."
"Then she's more interesting than this room suggests."
Varro looked at the room—at the expensive table, the quiet lighting, the covered dish—and then back at Wei, and he said: "Yes. She is." Without irony, Wei thought. Possibly the most unguarded thing the man had said in centuries.
They sat with that for a moment.
The proposal was exactly as thorough as Wei expected from a species that had been running contracts since the Roman Senate.
Varro laid it out without preamble: the Blood Consulate had been running a research program for forty years. The program's focus was corpse cultivation—specifically, the preservation of animated dead matter across photonic exposure. Photosensitivity was the primary limiting factor in vampire longevity; the older a vampire became, the more vulnerable they grew to light, until even ambient daylight became catastrophic. Jiangshi traditions—Chinese corpse-soldiers, cultivated through qi mechanics rather than blood exchange—showed no photosensitivity whatsoever. The Consulate wanted to understand why.
Their researchers had made progress. Not enough.
They needed a living practitioner. Or—and here Varro allowed the smallest pause—the closest available equivalent.
The offer was this: the Blood Consulate could provide Wei with a temporary animated dead body. Not a jiangshi—the mechanics weren't there yet, that was the entire point of the research—but something adjacent. A preserved corpse, approximately Wei's age and build (they had been thoughtful about this), animated through partial qi transfer from their most advanced jiangshi specimen.
With this body, Wei would be able to touch things. Pick up a coffee cup. Walk into a room without adjusting people's perceptions. Eat food, partially—the qi transfer would make digestion technically possible, though possibly unpleasant. Be seen by humans without effort. Use a phone.
Call his mother.
Varro said this last thing without emphasis, the way you laid down a card you'd been holding for a while.
"In exchange," he continued, "for one year of cooperative research participation. You would attend scheduled sessions—no more than twice weekly—and answer questions about the bell mechanism, about jiangshi command interfaces, about unclaimed soul physiology as you experience it. You would not be required to participate in any physical procedure. Interviews only."
He slid a document across the table.
Wei looked at it without picking it up.
"The contract," he said.
"The agreement. Read it fully. I've had it drafted by someone who understands both human and supernatural contract law."
Wei pulled it toward him.
The text was forty-seven clauses. He read every one of them, which he could tell mildly surprised Varro—most people didn't. Most people were dazzled by the offer and treated the contract as a formality.
Wei had spent four years of his life signing employment contracts for warehouse logistics and delivery work. He had learned to read every line.
Clauses 1 through 12 were standard: parties, duration, scope of cooperation, termination procedures. Reasonable. Clear. Almost aggressively fair.
Clause 13 was where it started.
The Unclaimed Party (hereinafter "the Participant") agrees that any development of divine domain territory occurring during the term of this agreement shall be disclosed to the Consulate within fourteen (14) days of occurring...
He kept reading.
...the Consulate reserves the right of advisory consultation on matters pertaining to domain cultivation practices that may interact with Consulate research interests...
...in the event of domain territory achieving threshold status (defined as 10% saturation or above), both parties agree to enter a supplemental negotiation regarding domain application to Consulate research interests...
He turned to the last page. The signature line.
Dark gold text drifted across his vision, very quiet, barely there:
FORMAL OFFER DETECTED. CLASSIFICATION: CONDITIONAL OWNERSHIP CONTRACT. REVIEW RECOMMENDED BEFORE EXECUTION.
Review recommended. Wei almost laughed. That was one way to put it.
He set the pen down that Varro had placed beside the contract, and he said: "Tell me about the body."
"It's ready," Varro said. He pressed a small button beneath the table's lip and a panel in the wall—Wei had not noticed it, which was itself impressive—slid aside to reveal a long glass case, climate-controlled, lit from within.
Inside the case, something that looked, from a distance, almost exactly like a person.
Wei looked at it for a long time.
It was male. East Asian features. Black hair. Twenty-something. The skin had the slight wrongness of very good preservation rather than life—too even, too still—but it was close. It was very close.
It looked nothing like him. But it looked like what he used to be.
He picked up the pen.