Blood Sisters

Dr. Sarah Reed hated this part of her day. She had to will her hands to stop shaking while she placed the empty rubber topped blood-sample tubes on a plastic rack . It was the same every day, five days a week. Put blood in, take blood out. A lot of blood. Sarah took the three liters of bagged blood out of the warmer that she had placed them in after taking them out of the medical freezer. Now that the blood was at room temperature it was ready, and Dr. Reed was out of excuses to delay any longer.

She was a fit, attractive and petite brunette in her late twenties. Dr. Reed had been brought on as a physician here at the Fort Miles prison on Shay's Mountain just under two years ago. The Shay's Mountain facility was a maximum security prison designed to hold inmates with mutations that were unable to be securely housed elsewhere; which was most of them.

Usually patients with mutations were seen by physicians who specialized in a relatively new form of medicine named mutation bio-physics which was usually truncated to metaphysician. Sarah specialized in internal medicine, and had a degree in organic chemistry, but they hired her anyway. Sarah soon learned that she had started work only shortly after she was brought here, or perhaps it would be a more apt descriptor. It was Michaela, a “vampire-like” New Human that had finally been brought into custody after a long, bloody killing-spree all along the East Coast. Dr. Reed had gotten this job right after completing her residency, and in quiet moments she wondered why someone with her limited qualifications and experience had been recruited for a position like this. But in the end she could not refuse, the position had prestige, the pay was outstanding, and medical school had been expensive.

Sarah had studied the data on Michaela. The subject was not like the mythical “vampire” of folklore. Michaela was a living organism. A human host body with a large parasitic infection. Where this parasite came from, Dr. Reed had no idea, nor did anyone else that she had consulted on this case. The current hypothesis was that the parasite itself was actually the source of Michaela's New Human mutation, and was likely a mutation itself. Collecting data on the subject or the parasite was very difficult, not only because Michaela did not cooperate or consent to testing, but even the tests they could perform revealed little data. Traditional imaging technology was largely thwarted by the changes to the subject's anatomy and the way it metabolized blood as its only source of nourishment thwarted most of the other tests that were allowed.

It seemed the anatomical and physiological changes caused by the parasite is what gave the host body its strange and deadly vampiric like characteristics. What influence the parasite had on the psychology of the host was unclear. There was no comparative data, so far Michaela was the only documented case of this mutation. No information had been uncovered on who Michaela might have been prior to the parasitic infection, so it was unclear if she had been a violent, sadistic sociopath before the parasite took up residence in her abdominal cavity, and Michaela had not been forthcoming with any useful information.

Drawn out of her musing by the claws squeezing her gut Dr. Reed swallowed bile. Her wide brown eyes fell on a hermetically sealed, reinforced steel security door with “F.S.D.F. Prisoner JXT-476, Michaela” painted on it in orange letters. The two officers flanking this door were women, faces mostly hidden behind the shaded visor of helmets. Bodies wrapped in the riot gear they were required to wear at this post.

Next to the door on the wall was a bright red sign warning “No Male Staff Allowed, NO EXCEPTIONS!” That sign had been posted after lesson painfully learned. Shortly after her transfer here to Shay's mountain Michaela, with a glance and a grin, apparently seduced one male officer who then killed a fellow officer in an apparent jealous rage. Ironically, it was this incident that led to Sarah's recruitment here. Despite having the wrong specialty and being wet behind the ears, there had been no physicians at the prison who were women.

The guards gave Sarah a brief “Dr. Reed” in greeting, then opened the door to escort her inside. All three of the women tensed with clenched fists, a deep breath, or a dark moment of preparation behind the shelter of closed eyes. The door hissed when its seal was broken. There, behind a thick, transparent security wall was Michaela. She was Lithe and stunningly beautiful, even in the prison jumpsuit. She had an exotic light blue shade of skin and long raven hair that cascaded down the sides of her perfect face. Michaela's cold ruby eyes glinted with dangerous seductive allure. Viper eyes that poisoned the soul. Eyes that had murdered by proxy.

Sarah hated being in Michaela’s presence. Straight as an arrow, Dr. Reed liked her men athletic and amply sized. The way her body responded to Michaela made her guts churn like she had eaten rotten fish. For those inclined towards women... Sarah shuddered. She had seen the pictures.

Prison officials had tried several ways to limit Michaela's influence. Including soundproof shades in front of the security wall so she couldn't be seen or heard by the staff when closed. Even that failed. Through some mechanism that defied any science Dr. Reed understood, Michaela seemed able to produce whatever response her depraved mind could think up by her mere presence. Like a virus, like a nightmare, you cant see it or hear it, but it still gets you.

“Alright Michaela, you know how this goes, stick your arm through.” Dr. Reed stated firmly. Michaela made Sarah order her to do this every single day, it was so annoying. “Hmm” Michaela licked her lips “Lunchtime… are you sure you won’t join me Sarah?” her voice was like fine wine and the desire it created in Sarah to be touched by this evil creature.... rotten fish, rotten fish. “Be quiet” Sarah snapped.

Michaela smiled widely, sharp teeth chilling the room. She finally put her arm through an aperture in the security wall that had been custom designed for this procedure. Once through, Michaela's arm was automatically strapped down securely and her hand went into a thick metal glove designed to protect those on the far side from her touch... or the claw like nails that could shred Kevlar.

Dr. Reed drew out three vials of Michaela's vile blood, which glowed slightly with the pale green of bio-mutant energy, willing her hands still and drying cold sweat on her lab coat. Then hooked up the first of the liters of blood that the subject needed to sustain itself. Giving or taking its blood required what was essentially an armor piercing needle. A standard IV was not capable of penetrating Michaela’s tough blue hide, though it was smooth as cerulean silk.

Dr. Reed always wondered what these samples were for anyway. She never saw any testing results, and if she needed a blood sample for her own rarely-approved diagnostics it required an additional draw, which Michaela always resisted. Sarah knew that there were other blood samples like these being taken at the prison, she had seen them, but Michaela's was the only blood she handled. All this blood was eventually sent to a place called Atlantic Life Laboratories in Virginia, c/o a “Dr. Tom Smith”.

Sarah snorted under her breath, like Tom Smith is a real name she thought. Perhaps working at the prison had made Sarah cynical, but she had a growing sense of unease about the research the government was conducting here. Whenever she asked about the blood, Dr. Reed was told that the reason for the sampling is classified. When she protested she was assured that proper medical procedures and ethics were being followed. After that she was told to “just do her job.” Dr. Reed did not believe the story they fed her for a second. She let them treat her like an idiot and she decided to play along until she paid off her medical school debt.

Sarah had today's samples, and the creature was being fed. She glanced up at the guards and nodded. There was no need to tell them that she would be back in an hour and that they should replace the empty blood bag with a fresh one every twenty minutes; the routine followed every day. Leaving the subject alone with it's meal, the clank and hiss of the door let the women breathe again. Heads nodded and shook. Reassuring hands clasped shoulders under lab-coat or body armor.

Sarah walked slowly back towards her office, the soft-sharp echoes of clicking heels echoing in the vacant hallway. She could feel the sickly cold blood from Michaela right through her lab-coat pocket despite being sealed in 'Dr. Smith’s' sampling tubes.

Increasingly intrusive, unwelcome erotic thoughts of Michaela kept haunting her mind, worse today then usual. Sarah paused in the hallway, leaning up against the cool wall next to the ladies restroom, willing the visions of the creature from her head. They would keep coming, that’s how it was when the thoughts were this bad. She would be obsessing about Michaela all day and dealing with the unwelcome feelings in her body that those thoughts always caused. Sarah felt trapped, she could try to work through it and feel sick and distracted all day, or… just do the one thing that had worked in the past to get rid of the creature’s influence. Sarah sighed. This seductive power of Michaela was deeply disturbing, forcing these sexual, physiological responses on a person, responses that just got worse and worse until you gave in to the creatures twisted intentions.

What Dr. Reed had to do to purge the Vampire from her mind made Sarah hate herself every time she did it. She would reach into herself, and it would dig up dirty feelings of shame from the graveyard past that she desperately wanted to stay buried. Her eyes bit back tears. At least once it was over, she could move on with her day.

Perhaps the cruelest part of the whole vampire mystique is that they are often seen as darkly romantic, teenage heartthrobs, even tortured heroes. Once you have met someone like a vampire, you know better. They seduce you, they strip away your power, your will, and they take what they want.

Sarah, like so many women, had been raped when she was in college. She had dealt with that the best she could, and the wounds caused that day had since scarred over. Working with Michaela reminded her of the rape every single day; making those scars feel fresh again. Sarah shook her head and pushed her fingertips into her temples. The lights in the hall seemed to bright. Her body quivered under the weight of her personal horror. Then a flare of anger threw her a lifeline. Medical school debt be damned, she so needed to find a better job then this.

“Just get it over with” she told herself. In frustration, Sarah shoved the restroom door, which protested on its hinges as it swung open. Dr. Reed walked through, feeling more and more disgusted at the unwelcome, increasing physical arousal. In some ways, this was worse then being raped. There was no question in Sarah's mind what she did, or did not want that night, and despite the fact that there was sex, there was no confusion, the rape was an act of violence, she had the emotional scars to prove it. This... this perversion of desire that Michaela creates is worse, because it is still rape, but it was rape where you lost control of your body, it was like your mind knew what was happening, and was horrified, but was powerless to stop it, meanwhile you are betrayed by your own body as it seeks release. Sarah closed her eyes tight against the tears, locked the door and shut off the lights.

***

Elsewhere in the prison, A dead man was seething. There was not enough room to pace in this 5x8' cage. He liked to pace when he plotted, back and forth like a stalking panther eying dinner. Instead, he gazed past his reflection in the mirror, his cold hands gripping either side of a stainless steel sink. It was still first thing in the morning and allowed himself a moment of vanity with the mirror before starting his scheming for the day.

Victor Davos was his name, though he often called himself Davos Muerte. In his earlier years he went by such nom de plumes as Lazarus or The Hangman. It had been a while since he felt the need for such colorful epithets. These days the press were doing it for him. They started using The Dead Man a few years back. Not a bad name he supposed, if somewhat provincial.

Handsome enough that people did web searches for his photograph and teenage girls with more angst then sense made fan-sites of him. Victor had well groomed, ample light brown hair This crowned a pale Northern European visage with steel blue eyes and a hawkish nose. Tall and gaunt, though he would say “svelte”, the Dead Man had to lean forward a bit on his sink in order to face the mirror straight on. It’s too bad Jeremy Irons is getting too old he thought, Irons would have been the only actor Victor would trust to play him when they got around to making a movie of his life, which should have ended in 1918… and again in 1939, 1942, 1953… he’d lost count of all the times he should have died, starting with his hanging in 1918. Yet here he was, fit as ever, not looking a day over thirty-five.

Being dead would be far better then being caged at Shay’s Mountain. A federal prison located in the middle of Ft. Miles, an army base here to guard the prison, more properly known as The Fort Miles Special Detention Facility. He thought this made for a lousy acronym, and Victor was constantly reminded of it whenever he saw the F.S.D.F. lettering stitched into his bright orange jumpsuit.

The Dead Man had been here for about eight years now, transferred from USP Lewisburg after his second escape attempt. Other then the fact that he apparently can’t be killed, Victor did not usually consider himself in the same category as the delusional, ignorant or tights wearing crowd here with all their New-Hum abilities strange or annoying. A fool with powers is still a fool he often thought. Of course, to Victor Davos, most other people were somewhere between a fool and an idiot.

Shifting his gaze back to the mirror, Victor noticed something out of place. He froze as his high-octane brain played back his sensory memory, looking for yes… there it was. Victor had seen the reflection of a suspicious dark spot on the floor, a dark spot that was not there yesterday. He bent down and looked closely at it, quickly coming to the conclusion that it was the dried stain of a drop of blood. The implications of that ricocheted around in his brain for a second… he cleaned his own cell, every afternoon. That spot was not there last evening when he went to bed, yet here it was this morning. He started to tighten the Velcro straps of his prison shoes as a cover for why he was bent down, knowing that he was under constant surveillance, like every other inmate. He scuffed away the stain as he stood.

The odds that someone was actually looking at the screen showing his cell right this second were slim, but not slim enough. He sat down on his bunk and mused over this finding, running his minds eye over his skin as if trying to feel an injury. There was something just out of reach of his consciousness, something in the depths of his memory trying to get to the surface. Moments passed with heartbeats in his ears. He stood up again and deftly unsnapped the top of his jumpsuit, allowing him to pull off the t-shirt underneath, which he tossed into his laundry. He then went through the motions of washing up his lean muscled arms and chest. Without making a pause he felt over the antecubital fossa of his left, then right arm. He felt the slightest of bumps. He quickly dried up, and stretched to get a close look, seeing exactly what he expected. A slight wound over where the median cubital vein flows. Victor smirked. He remembers almost everything he ever reads, including old medical textbooks.

He turned this awkward stretch into a yawn as a cover in case a CO noticed his discovery of the what had obviously been an venipuncture done without his consent. His brain feasted on this information and he smiled to himself as he lay down on his back. Victor healed, very quickly and completely. He did not get sick from disease or infection, and he never got scars, likely a fringe benefit of his suspended aging and/or undying condition. That meant this tiny puncture was recent, less then 3 hours old he would guess.

A trace of blood on his spotless floor. An unexplained wound on his left arm. Add to that a dreamless, deep sleep last night that lasted well past dawn, which for him was rare enough to be noticed. He got plenty of sleep on his many trips to the grave, he hated sleeping when he was in the quick. He wondered at what drug they found that would work on him, and be subtle enough that he did not notice either ingesting it or feeling an aftereffect. The Dead Man cracked his neck back and forth, looking up at the bland gray concrete sky which was the ceiling of his cage. Something is up he concluded, determined that whatever was going on he would turn it into a way out of this prison, even if it killed him… again.