Seeking.

There was a time before the great epidemics, the hoards of risen dead, and all the other countless atrocities attributed to the man known simply as Dr. Shyam.
This tale concerns such a time period, and more importantly, concerns the very man himself.
Along with our truly detestable leading gentleman appear two other individuals, one of little importance, and the other of the key value.
The first of these was a young German man known as Klien.
Unattractive and unimpressive, Klien had never truly found any real happiness in life. Rejected by his mother, despised by his stepfather, and utterly overlooked by his peers, Klien's only contentment could be found in traveling to very far away countries and engaging in activities so imbecilic that teenage theatre flicks could only softly scratch the surface of their depths.
On his most notable adventure, Klien found himself in a bar in one or another South American countries. Bearing only his small possessions and a mind considerably lightened by copious amounts of drink, Klien took to starting a grand ruckus and enraging the village dwellers immensely. Upon his violent expulsion from the bar, he lay in the dirt road for several minutes before slowly rising to his hands and only then noticing the pair of shiny black stilettos perched on the ground before him.
His bleary, bulging eyes roved slowly upwards, and found that these impeccable shoes belonged to a pair of feet, and these feet, to corresponding legs of the most fabulous and alluring shape. These, in turn, belonged to a similarly alluring torso, and so forth.
As Klien leaned back to admire the full picture, the owner of the shoes shifted onto one hip and stared down at him with lashes comparable only to jet-black Japanese fans.
This, the person of key value, spoke slowly in impeccable German.
“I’d like you to do me a favor, young sir,” she said. “If you follow me down this path, you will at its end a derelict house. Follow me inside, and I’ll guarantee you a regretless night.”
Her eloquent words proved wasted on the inebriated gentleman, who understood nothing but the basic gist of the situation.
Gone from his mind were the careful advisings of the elderly village man who he had met earlier. Gone, too, was the elder’s fierce suggestion that the traveler was to under no circumstances follow the northern path out of the town.
Klien could do little more than totter down the road after the person of key value, admiring constantly the glimmer of her wonderful shape, silhouetted in a black leather action-hero suit.
After what must have been almost an hour, the town had disappeared almost completely on the horizon, and the path came to a sharp end.
Before them, a large, tattered building rose, faceless in the darkness.
Klien saw no longer the wonderful shape of the woman before him, and instantly entered the foreboding structure, hoping to meet her inside, as she had promised.
Instead, he followed a dim glow down a corridor and through a door, and promptly fell down forty-five steps into a well-lit and metallically outfitted basement complex.
Klien stared about for several minutes before his eyes began to allow the blinding room to come somewhat into focus. Before he could truly see, a figure approached and stood before him, its gingery blur of a head cocked to one side.
Klien asked if it was the fabulously figured woman from before.
The figure replied that he was not, and then produced a knife and cut Klien’s throat from ear to ear.
The fearsome Dr. Shyam had never really been one for introductions, and the gurgling scream that Klien produced served well enough for his tastes.

Outside of the house, the woman of consequence heard the scream and burst into action.
Her actual name was known by few, but her employers preferred to call her Seek. She was one of the world’s most proficient and excellent assassins, and therefore did not see reason to bother with an actual title. Seek served her well enough.
As easily enough guessed, she was currently in the unspecified South-American country on a mission. As a woman who killed people for a living, she rarely found time or reason to do anything besides work, and was completely content to spend several weeks tracking a general threat to humanity through the jungles of South America. She did little more than track simply because the man was almost impossible to locate, and she had been given specific orders to try as hard as possible not to kill him.
In such a situation, Seek decided that the best route to take was to locate the man, and attempt to confirm his whereabouts nonchalantly with bait.
As an unliked foreigner, brimming with healthy enough insides, Klien fit the role perfectly.
Seek understood Dr. Shyam’s need to constantly continue his macabre research into the grimier details of surgical exploration; she also understood that he was currently without a healthy subject, as his last thirty-so experiments had all ended in rupturing, hemorrhaging, spurting, expiring failure and he was sorely in need of a new cadaver.
When Klien’s final, gurgling and, potently human scream pierced the night, she knew that her present had been gratefully accepted, and that the doctor was not only inside, but currently distracted.
She extinguished the cigarette she was smoking on the sole of her boot and slipped through the downstairs window.
By the time she had crept swiftly through the cracked door and down the forty-five steps, Shyam was already hard at work.
It was almost too easy.
The cocking of her gun alerted him to her presence while he was still elbow-deep in Klien’s internal workings.
“Hello.” She said, being someone who desired introductions.
“Hello,” Shyam replied, and began to ease his arms out of the fresh cadaver.
“Don’t.” Seek said, eyeing the series of scalpels that lay beside him with healthy apprehension.
There was a long silence.
“You might as well just pull the damn trigger. Subject’s got a bad liver anyway, and I don’t know how I’m expected to make it do anything.” Shyam said, crisp British syllables marred by a very slight Irish accent.
“Is it supposed to be able to, in his state?” Seek asked. “It seems like it’s carried out its full purpose.”
“You’re obviously not familiar with my work,” Shyam said, a proud smile rising to his full lips. “I’m the closest thing medical science has ever had to a true biological recycler.”
“I’ve heard you called other things.” Seek replied. She pulled a chair from nearby and sat in it gracefully, keeping her pistol trained on the target all the while. “Slaughterer. Defiler. Necrophiliac. Frankenstein.”
“Frankenstein’s work was shoddy to say the least-“ Shyam snorted. “If he could even glimpse the things I can do with a modified circulatory system, or even a bowel tract, his fictional cranium would rupture out his eardrums. As for necrophiliac,” He cocked his head to one side again, then, noticing that Seek was indeed very alluring. “I’ve been known to do a little better than corpses.”
“Doubtful.” Seek murmured dismissively, and pretended to examine the blood spatters on the wall to her left. She was actually contemplating the way the poor lighting played across Shyam’s angled, refined features and set his green eyes shining.
He looked at her, and she, surreptitiously, looked at him.
“Well, given that I’m not yet dead, I can only assume that your orders are to capture me and forcefully detain me until further instruction. I can also assume that your nifty little calling device is not going to receive a proper signal in this basement.” He cleared his throat and cast his eyes down at his still warmly entrenched forearms. “What say I remove my hands from inside this specimen’s upper bowel and we retire upstairs? I could even prepare a meal, if you so desire.”
“Very smooth, doctor.” Seek snapped, temporarily shutting him up. However, as they sat in silence and she was allowed to muse on the subject, she hadn’t eaten in some time, and couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten with company. The life of assassin is not only trying, but also entirely void of romance, no matter how trivial. And as Seek almost certainly suffered from rampant self-esteem issues brought on by her psychological stress and constant confinement to skin-tight, action-hero-type outfits, she could not think of many things she would rather do than have dinner with a handsome young man (even if he was currently elbow-deep in a recently deceased man’s gut).
“You may remove your forearms, but don’t make any sudden movements, or I’ll be forced to cut short our evening and my full pay.” She consented after quite a while.
Shyam grinned and removed his arms with a sickening suctiony sound.
As they moved upstairs, Shyam before Seek so that she could keep her weapon trained on his back, the two considered how the night might end.
Seek truly wished that Shyam would make a sudden bolt for the door, and she would be given a proper excuse to kill something and release the increasing tension between them.
Shyam really only had two desires; a distracting dinner with a beautiful woman, and her fresh, healthy liver for his latest experiment.