White, shrieking pain stretched me across the planes of time and space. Colored light streamed from every orifice and pore in my body, as if a giant hand was crushing it out of me. All that was left inside was a blackness that despite my pain reminded me of that ancient rock tune called "Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones. I felt that if there was a sun anymore it would be black, and the seas would be black. Perhaps I was insane. That is the only way I could understand this darkness and these thoughts in myself.
I lashed out with my mind and picked up bits of thoughts. Many were sympathetic for someone, others were simply observing someone, and still others were thinking with greed and maliciousness.
I didn't understand these thoughts and tried to reach further, but then a smooth, sweet mind enveloped my own and took me back to the blackness of my body. The alien mind pulsed blue and green waves of song through my body soothing and healing it as well as possible. I recognized this process as a form of psychotherapy that is most hard to accomplish, but either this mind was well trained or had a natural ability to do it, f it was working quite well on me.
I couldn't penetrate the alien mind, but a thought did escape from it. Slow down beautiful, I'll always be here for you. That was all. It sounded like a man, but I couldn't be sure.
I slowly drifted into an unconsciousness of welcoming blues and greens.
I woke up quite suddenly from a dream of blue mountains and green grass. I saw a white hospital around me and a picture of the crucifixion of Christ on the wall opposite me. I was horrified by the ugliness of his elongated, dirty body stretched out and nailed to a cross, like something hung out to dry. I guess this was supposed to calm the infirm and remind them that God is supposedly waiting for us on the other side. It was inducing the opposite reaction in me.
I DON'T WANT TO DIE! was all I could think for a while. It kept repeating in my head, over and over.
Hey, kid, if you don't shut off your motor you will die. That shut me up, fast. I turned to the plastic curtain that separated me from my roommate, and saw a teenager of about 17 years. He was tall, with a shock of rusty, red hair, and blue-green eyes. He had on green hospital pajamas. With a sardonic grin he walked over, and sat on the edge of my bed.
"There are at least 20-some-odd other telepaths in this ward. You're lucky that I was conscious enough to shut you up, before you frightened the hell out of the bunch of old grannies that are, just, surviving down the hall. You look like a mummy in your bandages. I wonder what you look like under all that. Hey what's your name?" he said. It looked like I had a real motor mouth for a roommate, but that was okay by me.
"My name is Nikita Dughan, but call me Niki please. Is there a computer console nearby?" I said, quite easily, to my surprise.
"Right here, so you can have things to do, while you wait. " He pulled a small monitor, which was basically just a screen with touch panels, from the side of the bed. "There is a compartment right here that you slide the monitor into. See this wire?" he pointed to a covered wire dangling from the bottom of the monitor,"It connects to the computer in the wall, so you don't have to carry the entire computer on your chest when you're lying down. Isn't that kind of cool?"
He was waiting for a response so I nodded. He handed me the computer and waited for what I'd do next. I punched in the code for the Person Database. I punched in my name. There it was, a picture of me and personal information on the side. The picture showed a girl of 15 years, with short, spiky, black hair, blue eyes, and a healthy, tan complexion. The info on the side was basic, like my name, height, weight, eye-color, hair-color, skin-color, marks of identification, and racial background. I had one mark that distinguished me from most people, and that was a tiny birthmark shaped like a snake behind my right ear. My racial background was primarily Scottish.
I turned the monitor towards the teenager, and watched his eyebrows raise in surprise. "What's your name?" I asked.
He turned and said,"Sean McDunnab. Uh, your eyes aren't blue anymore. They're red, and your skin is white, at least what I can see. Are you like an albino or something?"
When he said that I knew something was wrong. I typed into the computer for a mirror. The screen developed a shiny, silver color that cleared into a mirror. It showed me all wrapped up like a mummy, only the irises of my eyes were red, and the skin you could see around my eyes, and mouth was white as a sheet, and quickly turned even more white. I threw back my head and howled my way into unconsciousness.
Someone woke me up, explaining that they were going to take off my bandages, and see how my burns were doing. I was still quite hazy and didn't know what they were talking about, so I just mumbled something complacent, and let them go about their business.
I lay there for about half an hour before they took off the last bandage. Someone gasped with shock. That caught my attention and I saw that they were staring at me.
I stood up and asked for a full length mirror. The wall opened to reveal one. I walked towards it. When I glimpsed myself, I stood stock still, with my jaw hanging close to the floor. My entire body was white as sheet with veins showing in areas, and a very pink area right above my heart. The birthmark behind my ear, had duplicated itself on my belly, only larger and it looked exactly like a red, pulsing snake. What truly caught my eye was the fact that my hair was waist length and white as snow.
I turned and walked back to the bed, oblivious to the doctor and attendants standing nearby. On an impulse I traced an intricate design in the air with my fingers. Suddenly, I was wearing a deep red gown, and my hair was braided in a single braid.
The attendants basically ran out of the room, babbling of magic. The doctor was frightened but enthralled. I turned and looked at him and saw his life throbbing near his throat. Fascinated I slowly stepped forward, smoothly like flowing water or blood. I traced the vein with a single finger. I stroked it with my lips and luxuriously extended my teeth in to it. The doctor sighed slightly and soon lay limp on the floor. He was still breathing, but he was unconscious. I echoed the doctor's sigh and slid into the bed to fall asleep. An ache in me I had not known existed was finally gone.
Niki! Wake up! You're in serious danger! It's me, Sean. The doctors are coming to experiment on you! I slowly rose from my dreams of blood. My body felt like it had been pushed through a strainer. I wanted to stay in my blood dreams, but Sean's mind shouts and this hunger deep in my belly drove me out of bed.
I looked down expecting to see a red dress. Of course there wasn't one. I wondered why there should be one. The snake on my belly was simply a light, red sort of thing; almost like a tattoo. The doctor was gone as well. There was a pair of pajamas on a chair near the bed. Probably from the night before. I slipped them on and walked around to Sean's side of the room. He was pacing anxiously.
It's a good thing that the doctors are never empathic or telepathic. Good thing telepaths wouldn't be able to stand being doctors, because of the pain in the operations, healing processes, and such. Otherwise we would be ruined, he projected, as he motioned to the door. I followed him out of the room, down numerous hallways, and into a storage room. It was filled with doctors outfits, pajamas, medical equipment, and necessities like shaving kits, dried food packets, water tanks, canteens, and other stuff.
I spread a blanket on the floor, and went into a shaving kit. I took the scissors, stepped on the blanket, and cut off my hair. I heard Sean gasp as the flurry of long, white hairs fell to the ground. I turned to him and handed him the scissors. He looked at me blankly.
Trim it, stupid. I need to disguise myself. Especially with hair, eye color, and skin color like this. His eyes cleared and he took the scissors. He gently took my head in his hands and started to fix the ragged ends. I almost closed my eyes in the pleasure of his hands in my hair. Then I shook myself awake. It must be that I haven't had anyone cut my hair in so long that this is such a pleasure, I thought. Yeah, that's it. That's why I feel this way.
When he was done, I threw the blanket filled with white hair down the trash chute, went to the doctors outfits, and took down one my size. Sean took down one, too. We outfitted ourselves with face masks. We then left the storage room. As we travelled through the halls I looked closely at each doctors' identification badge. As we neared the exit from the ward I saw that there was a gateway through which we must pass. There were guards who checked the identification badges of each person who traversed through the gateway. If the person didn't have a badge, they had to go through a DNA check.
Is there no other way out of this ward? I projected to Sean.
No. Why?
Well, we need identification badges. Otherwise we will have a DNA scan. I have a way of creating some I.D. badges, but I need to get to a sheltered area, I shot at him.
There is a broom closet right over there. That is a good spot, isn't it? he replied. I nodded in response, and we headed that way as if in deep discussion. When we reached the alcove of the closet, I traced an intricate pattern in the air, and an I.D. badge appeared on each of our shirts. The pictures were us, only a whole lot older. I took off my face mask and altered my face to look like an animate representation of the picture, with another pattern. I took off Sean's mask and did the same to him.
We continued walking towards the gate, smiling, and talking softly, as if in some deep conversation. If some one could really here what we were saying, they would realized that we were speaking gibberish. Truly our hearts were in our throats and we could barely think straight, not to mention speaking. We both knew that if we were caught, we would become experiments for the doctors to fool around with. That was something I wasn't about to permit to happen.
The guard was this big, brawny, Hispanic guy. I smiled congenially and allowed him to examine my badge. He frowned and shook his head, blinking, as if he couldn't quite see straight. Then he nodded and allowed me to pass. I walked through the gate feeling a strange, buzzing sensation. I got through easily. I waited on the other side for Sean to go through his own ordeal. Once through, we grinned at each other and walked on, breathing more easily.
We had to go through only one more gate before we were on the outside. I looked up and smiled at the clear blue sky. The shining sun was the most gorgeous ball of gas I had ever seen. I was enamored with the world. I undid the illusion on our faces, and using another finger pattern, that I was compelled to use, I changed our clothes into typical civilian clothing.
Sean grabbed my arm and propelled me to a shady park across the walkway. He sat me down and looked truly frightened. I was totally puzzled by his attitude.
"What's wrong? Did I do something?" I asked.
He looked dubious for a moment. "Well, I don't know how to ask you this, so... How did you do that back there? Is it true? That you killed a doctor? What are you, now?"
I looked at him levelly and said,"I don't know."
"How's that supposed to explain anything?" he half shouted.
"It isn't. I can't explain anything that has happened, since I woke up. I don't understand much more than you do! Okay?!"
"All right. This isn't solving anything. Now, what did you do to the doctor last night?"
" I,...I sucked his blood, I guess. I'm not really sure, but that's what I remember doing."
" Great! So you're a vampire? This has got to be a joke!" Sean was hysterical.
I frowned for a moment in thought. Blood. Hmmm. What if it has something to do with my blood type. I'm blood type AB aren't I? Yeah, that's it. I remember the nurse, who gave me my blood test, told me that I was lucky. I was the universal recipient. Well not anymore, since we have discovered the other life forms in the "universe". There aren't very many of us anymore or something like that. In other words, being AB blood type might have something to do with this "vampirism". They said something about burns, right? Maybe I should look up something in the hospital records about this.
"Sean, I'm blood type AB, which is the universal recipient, right?" I said. He nodded, skeptically. "Well, what if that has something to do with it. The doctors said something about burns when they were removing my bandages, last night. I want to look at a console."
I got up and started towards the nearest console,(they're everywhere). I managed to get into the hospital records and saw that severe, complete body-burn survivors were usually blood type AB. I also saw that the doctors who helped unwrap the bandages occasionally fainted from a loss of blood, always with the AB blood type people. One of the victims of the burns was the long-lived, albino rock star, Mick Jagger. There was a news broadcast of an interview with him. It showed him saying that he had no comments while he walked past the camera. I stared at the picture of him walking away, and something caught my eye. I zoomed in on the spot behind his right ear. There was a tiny birthmark of a snake there. I suddenly realized that the news story was mostly about what he thought of having turned into an albino after his treatment, following an accident between his limo and a chemical truck. This chemical truck was coming from Strong Memorial hospital, in Rochester, New York, with a load of a drug that they thought would cure AIDS. Apparently it killed on contact, because the limo driver was eaten by the chemical, and the limo was partially melted. It was a miracle Mick Jagger had survived.
At the credits, of the news broadcast, it said that a certain scientist had studied this chemical. His name was Dr. George Silisky. I got his address and visual phoned him. I was lucky to catch him at a good time.
"Yes?" he said. He was a plump, Santa-Claus-like guy.
"Uh, I have a small problem. You know that drug, F.2500, that you did a research paper on?" I said.
"No, don't tell me. Let me guess. You were possibly splashed with it, are an AB blood type, and it is possible that you are now a vampire," he said.
"How did you guess?" I stammered. I was shocked that he had figured out so fast.
"Well, my dear, mentioning F.2500 and being an albino with a problem makes it obvious." I started to twiddle my fingers. "No, no my dear. You can't alter your appearance too much with magic. You'll have to make do with the more primitive uses of hair coloring and color contacts. Just like the many before you."
"How did she get this way?" asked Sean from over my shoulder.
"Well, well, the vixen has a fox to ask the harder questions for her." He chuckled as I glared at him. It was so simple to be at ease with this man. "The tests that were run, on the replicas of AB people, show that F.2500 burns out all the color in the body, almost like the body dies but stays alive. It is too strange to describe. I'm not even truly sure what happens. All I know is that only AB people survive and they are drastically changed. Tell me, my dear, what is your name?"
"Nikita Dughan. Why?" I asked.
"Let's see," Dr. Silisky typed something into the computer. The computer screen divided in half, showing a slightly smaller picture of Dr. Silisky, and a news report.
It said that four weeks ago a school tram collided with a truck containing a load of drugs that were government priority. It was suspected that F-2500, now an illegal drug by order of the World Health Organization, was one among many banned drugs, in the truck load. The collided airmobiles fell free about 200 feet before safety net beams caught and held the vehicles. The damage had already been done, and more than 40 people were dead from the F-2500. One, Nikita Dughan, was in the hospital recovering from serious burns. It listed several other people, and among them was Sean McDunnab, recovering from many broken bones.
I turned and looked at Sean. He shrugged. I turned and looked at the doctor.
"This is Sean McDunnab. He was in the crash. I don't even remember this accident. Why?" I said.
"I'm not sure. If you'll excuse me I must be going. Don't worry I won't tell about you. You can always call me if you need assistance. Oh, by the way, one side effect of being your state is that you will never die. Maybe this could be called the Vampire Syndrome. Think it's a good name, eh?" He chuckled and disengaged. I looked at Sean and raised one eyebrow. Dr. Silisky was definitely deranged.
"What do you remember of this collision?" I asked him.
"I... I can't explain verbally. Wait a minute," he said.
His face contorted with concentration. Suddenly I got an image of being in the bus and suddenly being crushed against the ceiling by a section of the floor, which had been dented in. There was severe pain. The world kept turning inside out and spinning. Colors flashed around and the world became black. In a hospital room I (Sean) heard someone was screaming themselves hoarse. This girl was a telepath. She was trying to throw herself out of her own body. I (Sean) took her back to her own body and performed some psychotherapy on her body, using the colors of my eyes as the colors of healing. I (Sean) let her hear one thought. "Slow down beautiful, I'll always be here for you". Apparently it worked for she went to sleep.
I woke up suddenly from this vision. This was from Sean's point of view. That means the white pain in my memory was the crash, and colors actually were being squeezed from my body, I thought to myself. I stared at Sean. "The healer was you! You saved my life, even though you were in so much pain yourself," I half cried. I threw myself against him and kissed him full on the lips. We were both shocked when the innocent kiss became something more. I drew away. This couldn't be happening. It complicated things even more. I couldn't fall in love with him now. NO!
I turned and ran, unable to face him. He shouted something, but I couldn't hear. When I couldn't run anymore I collapsed in a small indent in the wall for people to sit down in.
I woke up and stretched. Looking around I realized that I was lost, hungry, and I had to use the lav'. I went to a nearby computer console and after I found where I was, I looked up Sean's record, ignoring my growling stomach. I stared at the information. I was ecstatic. He was blood type AB. Then I frowned. Why hadn't he said anything?I thought. I went to a nearby restaurant. I ate absent mindedly, went to the bathroom and left after a quick DNA scan, for the credit to pay for the meal.
I returned to the park with the hope that he would be there. I called out to him in my mind. I waited for almost ten minutes before I saw him. I waved and ran to him.
"Why didn't you say that you are AB blood type? You can be like me, we can live together forever!" I cried. He didn't say anything. He looked strangely troubled. He ran his fingers through his hair and frowned. "Well?"
"I want you to know I love you, but I had to do this," he said, monotonously. He whispered into a wristlet I didn't remember from before.
Three bulky guards and a skinny man in a doctor outfit materialized next to me. The three thugs grabbed me and held me tight. I struggled unable to understand. The skinny guy, whom I assumed was a doctor, walked up to me with a needle.
"Puncturing her right behind the right ear should kill her," the doctor said. I struggled even more, screaming at Sean to stop them. He stood there silently observing, expressionless like a robot. I finally realized what was happening. I stood there dumb with shock and heartbreak.
He wants to kill me, because he doesn't really love me, I thought. Even so, I was puzzled by his attitude. Wouldn't he show at least some expression? I thought.
"Wait, let me ask Sean a question," I said, quite calmly. The doctor looked surprised and nodded. I turned towards Sean. "Why did you go to the trouble of saving me just to kill me?"
"I needed you for my own experiment. I truly do love you, but in the name of science, you are a glitch, just like all the other vampires. I must kill you all so that human kind can live in peace. Go on with it, Warden." He spoke so evenly and cooly that I doubted that he was human. I tried to read his thoughts, but only got gibberish, like what a computer sends out.
The doctor kept advancing. I used my last defense. The thugs had not clamped my fingers together, so I traced an intricate pattern in the air, and watched as the guards and doctor were torn into little bits, which quickly disintegrated into slivers of bone.
Sean's eyes turned into swirling orbs of wild, angry, red light and he advanced with hands outstretched to try and suffocate me. When his hands tightened around my throat, I traced another pattern with my fingers into the air, and watched him turn into a little pile of circuits and metal scraps. It was just as I had suspected. The hospital had somehow kidnapped Sean and replaced him with an android, after I had run away from him the day before. I buried the bone slivers and scrap metal at the foot of an oak sapling.
I am now residing with Dr. Silisky. I wish to send a message to Sean, where ever he is. Slow down, beautiful, I'll always be here for you. I will find you.