Deep within the bowels of the Tower, a demon stirred into consciousness. The announcement over the speaker that had been placed in his living quarters awoke him quite suddenly, and he growled in irritation as he rose within the darkened room. Did they have any idea what time it was? Stretching his limbs and smacking his lips tiredly, he found that his mouth tasted of blood. What was he doing last night? Eventually his senses recognized the sound of labored breathing next to his futon, and he remembered the girl. A really pathetic specimen, pulled off of a street corner after having an unfortunate encounter with a few of London's more normal vampires. She had escaped unharmed, but that was before the Hounds got to her. Unfit for service, she was thrown into the pit of the same sort of beast that had damned her. Her breathing was shallow and her pulse faint, but she was still alive. Good, she would last for another few days at least.

Kawakami Hideo, as he was formerly known, set about cleaning himself up for the apparent meeting that would soon take place. He showered, brushed his teeth and examined his face in mirror, all without turning on the lights. To any mortal, the room was pitch black, but he could see fine, and preferred to keep his quarters with way. Gave him an advantage against intruders, he figured. He idly considered shaving, but then decided that he didn't care enough. A black suit, no tie, collar open, black shoes, gold watch, gold cufflinks, this would do. Running a hand through his long, thick hair, he brushed it back behind his ears and out of his face. There, that would suffice. Even if he didn't care how he looked, the organization wanted him to maintain a certain image. An image of what, he wasn't entirely sure, but he met their standards all the same.

He emerged from his small quarters, locking it behind him biometrically, and entered the dimly-lit hallway outside of it. The Tower was like a termite nest; sure it went high up, but it went underground just as deep, and that's where everything important was kept. The conference room was a fairly long elevator ride up, and so the vampire had plenty of time to curse his employers for demanding that he attend a meeting during the hours of day. Even when he wasn't exposed to sunlight, he felt kind of sluggish when he knew the sun was out. Possibly in a supernatural sense, but mostly in a damned tired sense. Luckily, the conference room was in the heart of the building, and thus lacked windows. His foot slipped a bit as he stepped out into the hall from the elevator. Was that sand? He had a feeling he knew who he was about to run into.

The conference room was full of the usual assortment of varying degrees of freak. Some were normal, in a purely scientific sense, and others you had to know their smell to understand that they weren't human. Others, like the sandy snake-man that Hideo was loathe to deal with, were quite obvious. Many unfamiliar faces; Hideo may have met some of them, but he sure as hell didn't remember them. Regardless, he was eager for this company-wide meeting to get over and done with. He seated himself at the table, choosing a chair at random, and slouched down in it, trying to rest his weary eyes.