Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Crimson Nights and Scarlet Dawns ❯ Chapter 2

So I'd really like feedback on this chapter. Where was I confusing? What didn't make sense? All suggestions for improvement will be accepted with glee.)

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TWO:

After an indeterminable time, the anger began to fade-- there is only so long a body can hold on to that kind of emotional intensity, after all, especially when nobody is present to direct it against. And as the anger slowly died out, the fear that had been walled away behind it began to emerge.

Duo stared sightlessly at the ceiling, seeing it only as a white blur, and had to fight very hard to keep himself from trembling. There was a sort of babbling panic beginning to worry away at the edges of his thoughts-- telling him in no uncertain terms just how completely helpless he was, and gleefully imagining all the terrible things that might be in store for him in the near future. The longer the silence stretched, the louder the panicked voices grew.

When the door swung open again with the faintest of rattling sounds, Duo nearly started crying with relief.

The doctor from earlier shut the door carefully behind her, and cast an appraising glance at Duo, who did his best to return it with some measure of his earlier defiance. He was fairly sure the effort was greatly lacking, but she seemed to see something in his eyes that she approved of, because she nodded once before crossing the room and snagging a chair.

Surprisingly enough, she dragged the chair over to Duo's bedside. Sitting down, she folded her hands across her knee. "My name is Sally."

Duo actually started a bit as the silence was broken, then recovered himself and dredged up a ghost of his scowl. "Well, that's nice. You'll forgive me if I don't shake hands, I hope?" He gave one more half-hearted jerk at the bands around his wrists.

Sally actually sighed, and a faintly regretful look passed over her face. "I'm afraid you'll have to be restrained for a little while longer," she said. "I need to explain some things to you, and I can't afford to have to fight you to get you to listen." The corners of the doctor's mouth actually curved in a real smile, not the polite and sterile thing she had worn earlier. "I know this won't make it any easier on you right now, but there are very good reasons for doing things the way we have," she said earnestly. "I am truly sorry for the way you've been treated."

Grumbling, yet unable to work up much true resentment in the face of such obvious sincerity, Duo just sniffed dismissively and returned his gaze to the ceiling.

The doctor held her silence for a moment, giving Duo a chance to speak, but when it became obvious that he wouldn't she leaned forward a bit and began. "The reason you're here, Duo, is because you were attacked two nights ago. Are you sure you don't remember any of it?"

Two nights? I've been out of it that long? Taken aback by the revelation, it was a moment before Duo remembered that he'd been asked a question. "No, I-- I don't think so." He frowned in concentration, trying to make the fuzzy memories come clear. "There might have been someone, but I can't really remember."

"Don't worry," Sally soothed. "That's fairly normal in your situation. Well, luckily, one of our people was nearby, and dealt with the attacker-- we've treated you as best we can, though there will be some lingering effects that, I'm afraid, will never quite fade." She hesitated very briefly before continuing. "There really isn't any way to do this except to dive in headfirst, so-- tell me, Duo, what do you know about vampires?"

There was a moment of stunned silence as Duo jerked his head and gaze back to the woman staring at him, and his mouth gaped open. Then, the silence was broken with a laugh. "Vampires? You've gotta be kidding me."

Sally was silent, looking at him solemnly, and Duo's humour quickly died. "What are you trying to say, here?"

"Let me tell you a story, Duo-- and try to suspend disbelief for a while." Sally settled back into her chair, eyes shifting until they stared off into unknown space. "Quite some time ago, a particular young woman died of mysterious causes, and was found at dawn in the middle of the street. The undertaker couldn't determine the cause of her death, but eventually decided that it had been blood-related. Therefore, as no family member stepped forward to claim the body, the undertaker had it turned over to a local group of rather unorthodox scientists, who were researching blood-borne diseases."

"You mean to-- cut her up, or something?" Duo grimaced in disgust, momentarily forgetting that he was supposed to be sullen and silent. "That's disgusting."

Sally shrugged. "It was a fairly common practice, at the time. How do you think humans learned anything about medicine in the first place, if not by dissecting corpses and figuring out how the body worked?"

Duo shuddered theatrically, making his wrist restraints rattle faintly. "Still disgusting," he muttered.

"You're probably right," the doctor replied blandly. "But it happened, nonetheless. The study began around noon on the same day as the girl's body had been discovered. They worked quickly, to take as many samples as possible before the corpse began to decay. Though they really needn't have bothered," she continued matter-of-factly, "since as soon as the sun went down, the girl came back to life."

Duo gaped a bit, then couldn't help but give a little snort of disbelief. "Excuse me?"

Sally leaned back into her chair and propped her hands on her crossed knees. "A person bitten by a vampire," she explained conversationally, "if left on their own, will spend the first day after infection in a state virtually indistinguishable from death, while their body goes through the necessary changes. They will wake as a full vampire the following night. In retrospect, it's fairly obvious that this was the case with that nameless girl."

A faint memory surfaced in Duo's mind, of a burning, shivering pain at his throat. He swallowed heavily. Why do I have a bad, bad feeling about this? he thought faintly, even as the doctor continued her story, seemingly oblivous to his thoughts.

"The girl rose at sunset, but the scientists somehow captured her and locked her away securely. The continued their research through the night and the following day.

"That night, shortly after sunset, the laboratory was viciously attacked by a large group of vampires, there to free the girl. All of the scientists were bitten; many were mangled to the point where they would not rise again." Sally's face was solemn. "Whatever else may be said of vampires, they are intensely loyal to each other. They will go to any lengths to avenge one of their own."

Moving smoothly, the doctor swung to her feet and strode across the room, opening another of the numerous cabinets along the far wall. "At that point, the facts get a bit fuzzy-- it is known that five of the scientists survived the attack, by using the products of their research. It took them a long time to get it right, and during that time they suffered both from the vampiric changes and from the necessity of testing their work on themselves. But eventually, the transformation from human to vampire was not only slowed, but stopped."

Reaching into the opened cabinet, Sally withdrew a small vial of yellowish fluid, which she held up for Duo to see. "The five themselves are gone, now, but we still have the products of their research. We have this." She gave the vial a slight shake, making the liquid slosh in its confinement.

"And what, exactly, is that?" Duo asked obligingly.

Sally carefully placed the vial back where it came from, then walked back to her chair and sat again. "When injected into someone who has been bitten by a vampire, that formula acts as something like an antidote to the infection-- it neutralizes the agent in the blood that causes the changes, though it can't reverse the changes that have already occured. It can't," she finished solemnly, "make someone human again once they've been bitten. Though most of the changes take time to come into effect, it seems that some are instantaneous."

A thick silence descended in the room. Duo stared blankly at the ceiling, trying to dredge up his disbelief, his scorn-- all the things he needed to dismiss the doctor's story out of hand. But the memory of pain was coming clearer and clearer with every second that passed, along with the fuzzy image of a dark shape bearing down on him, the feeling of a cold fire in his veins--

After a moment, Sally stood and wordlessly began to undo the straps holding him down.

When the last of the cuffs was released, Duo slowly sat up and swung his legs of ther side of the bed, absently flexing his muscles until the faint stiffness left them. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the doctor sitting down again, and he could practically feel the weight of her eyes on him. It was a long moment before he turned his head to look at her.

"What was that stuff I drank, earlier?"

Sally met his flat gaze with a sympathetic but firm look of her own. "Synthetic blood," she said bluntly.

Duo flinched, closing his eyes. A spot of phantom pain burned on his throat, mocking him.

"This probably won't be much comfort," the doctor's soft voice came to him, "but in a way you're very lucky. The antidote doesn't work on everyone; some are too far gone, some just aren't responsive to it. The only way to tell if it's worked is through the synth-- full vampires seem to need something in real blood that isn't in our stuff. That's why we had to tie you down. If it turned out that you didn't respond to the synth, that the antidote hadn't worked--"

"That guy waiting by the door would have put me out of your misery?" Duo finished caustically.

There was a brief moment of silence. "Basically, yes," Sally finally said.

Duo shivered, and slumped down to bury his face in his hands. "So what am I, then?" he asked faintly, voice muffled by his fingers.

A light touch on his shoulder turned into a comforting clasp of fingers. "Just the same as the rest of us," came the unexpected response.

Confused, Duo lifted his head and found Sally smiling slightly at him. As he watched, she opened her mouth a little further-- and from behind the white wall of her teeth, two pointed canines slid down into view.

Duo was fairly sure he gasped, but the sound went completely unnoticed in the roaring rush of shock that swept through his head. His mouth worked soundlessly as the fangs receded from view again, leaving only a normal, if faintly mischevous smile behind. "You--"

The fingers on his shoulder squeezed again, warm through his shirt. "What," she said softly. "You didn't think you were the only one?"