Davis stared at the person who used to be his partner.
She sat in a wheelchair. Her legs were bound closed and then tied to the frame of the chair. Her arms looked as if they were resting on the armrests, but those too were bound tightly. Each hand was encased in a strange glove with several wires coming from each to a monitor which was attached to the back of the chair. A thick leather strap encircled her neck and was pulled tight, keeping her head slightly tilted back in a position that looked just the wrong side of uncomfortable. The lower half of her face was covered with a mask that prevented her nose, mouth and especially teeth from showing. Her eyes glared at Davis. They were cruel and malignant. There was nothing in them of the intelligent, if a bit naive, woman that he had known not too long ago.
Behind the chair, some three or four feet back, pushing via a custom set of handles, was a low level tech. He looked incredibly nervous.
“Well?” Davis asked the tech.
“She was cooperative this morning, Sir,” the tech replied, walking around towards the analyst, giving the chair a wide berth to hand him a clipboard. Her eyes never left Davis though.
“She isnt after you,” Davis said by way of comfort. “She knows that Im the only one who knows where her friends are and why she cant hear them anymore.”
At the mention of the other vampires, both men saw her put strain on the straps and bindings that held her to the chair. On the monitor behind her, a small beeping started, slow and irregular.
“She also knows that if she tries anything, her friends will go away and she wont get to talk to them again. Also,” he added, patting the sidearm that could clearly be seen beneath his coat. “Im prepared for anything else.”
She relaxed again and the beeping ceased. The look in her eyes only became angrier.
“Oh calm down,” Davis said, rolling his eyes at her and then turning his attention to the clipboard. “You cant do anything to me in here. Even if you did escape. Trust me, we’ve thought of literally everything.”
People think that silence is just the absence of noise, in the same way that the dark is just the absence of light. But it isnt. Noise is never absent. The universe creates noise in the smallest of spaces. Its the first thing and it will be the last. What was here, now, was not silence. Because what had been taken was not noise.
My family, the only thing that matters to me, had been taken. And I could not find them. Their voice, their goals, their instructions. They were missing. Hidden. No mere human could do something like this. But one of them can fix it. Can bring them back. But he needs motivation to.
Davis yawned and glanced over at the woman in the wheelchair. She was still Hitch. Mostly. Her face was the same in that she had the same features. Sure, her hair had fallen out and her skin was a sickly shade of blue-grey, but her eyes still looked like her eyes and under the mask, excluding those needle sharp canines, her nose and mouth hadnt changed. But there was something that had. Something that was distinctly Not Hitch inside her. Obviously he knew what that was; he had been there when it had happened. But he couldnt put it into words. Physically, she was now a vampire. But physical was one thing. What he felt was another. Part of it was just the vindictive energy she gave off, but there was something else. Like whatever that energy was was overcompensating for something. Like one of those prey animals that has a defense mechanism that looks like a predator.
Not that he had time to do anything about it, his desk had been inundated with research requests and other mundane things. There hadnt been anything major since the unicorn incident and in times like these, he was usually tasked to other teams to draw up final reports. Now, though, he was stuck in his office, usually with a bound Hitch glaring at him. He knew why, but he didnt know why.
He was about to head down to the break room to restock his mug so he didnt have another nap at his desk when the phone trilled.
“Yeah?” he said, sounding both bored and annoyed all at the same time.
“Mr Davis,” that voice said down the line. She was not offended by his tone. “I require your assistance on something,” she continued. “When are you available to visit my suite?”
Davis swallowed hard and looked at his incredibly empty diary. “Uh, any time you want, Viola,” he replied.
“Wonderful,” she drawled and Davis smiled despite himself. “Twenty minutes, then. You know where my rooms are, do you not?”
“I do,” Davis said.
“Good. Do not bring the vampire. Have her taken back to her cell.”
“Of course. Should she be unbound?”
But Viola had hung up.
Davis had never actually been to Viola’s offices before. He knew they were the top four or even five levels of the building, but he had never been invited up, nor had any reason to go there himself. In fact, since the unicorn incident, he had not heard from Viola at all. For a while there, things had seemed to be going back to normal. As much as they possibly could, at least.
But here we go again, he thought, as the elevator dinged on the highest floor his employee card gave him access to.
“Can I help you?” a receptionist asked immediately as he exited the elevator. He was crisply dressed and very attractive, even to Davis’ eyes. He glanced around this lobby area and saw no one else.
“Yeah, perhaps,” he replied. “I have a meeting with Viola.”
“Of course,” the man said, flicking his eyes from Davis to the computer screen in front of him. “And you are?” he asked, without looking back.
“Davis, analyst.”
“Of course,” the man repeated in an identical tone as before. “She is with someone else right now, it appears you are a few minutes early.”
“Id rather be early than late with her,” Davis said a little too sharply.
“Of course,” the man said. “Please take a seat over there and someone will escort you up when she is ready for you.”
“Thanks,” Davis said without meaning it and took a seat on an orange chair that was both comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time.
After almost ten minutes, well after the time she had said for him to come, he stood to ask the receptionist how much longer it would be when a door behind him opened and a young, harried woman left in a hurry, her eyes downcast, she rushed past Davis, into the waiting elevator and disappeared behind the closing doors.
“She is ready for you now,” the receptionist said with the fakest smile Davis had ever seen.
“Good, thank you,” Davis replied and walked over to the door when the woman had left from.
“Not that one, please,” the receptionist said. “That one behind you,” he pointed to an open door that Davis had not seen.
“Sure,” he shrugged, turned, and entered through it.
The office was not as big as Davis had expected. At one end was the door he had just entered and closed behind him, at the other was a reasonably expensive looking desk and on either side of the room were shelves lined with books and artifacts that he didnt recognise. He should, but for some reason he couldnt think about them properly.
“Ignore that,” Viola’s voice said from behind the desk. Had she been there when he entered? He couldnt remember.
“This place,” he tried to say.
She snapped her fingers and his mind cleared immediately. He looked up and she was seated behind her desk, dressed in her usual office attire and smiling rather alluringly at him. “We dont have time for that today,” she said. “We need to talk about our guests.”
“I had a feeling,” Davis said.
“There is a problem,” she nodded. “Our three guests have not proven to be cooperative.”
“Did you expect them to be?” he asked, leaning back in the chair he had taken in front of her desk. “They are openly and actively hostile towards us. Besides Hitch, theyve turned three other techs. We only keep Hitch alive because of her actions against the unicorn.”
“I am aware,” Viola said darkly and her change in tone chilled Davis to his core. For a moment, she looked totally different. Not even human. But before it even registered in his head, she was back to normal. “Has the woman provided anything of use?”
“Yes and no,” he said, sighing, knowing this day would have come around at some point. “Shes like them, a fully formed vampire. Every test weve done, every comparison weve made, shows that she is identical to them on a cellular level. Age her up 500 years and shes the same as the elder, right?”
“Yes,” Viola said, listening intently.
“But she isnt the same. Shes still Hitch. I dont know if thats because shes still to fresh and some part of the vampirism overwrites all that over a longer period of time or if its something else. But I think she, the vampire, is struggling to,” he paused for a moment. “Keep it together, I think is the best way to put it.”
“Can you explain why?”
“Explain?” Davis asked, making sure he was being as explicit as possible. “No, I cant. I dont think anyone who works here can. We simply do not have the experience with vampires to understand them properly. Can I speculate about why? Absolutely, but it will be clouded with my own biases.”
“Speculate then,” she replied, waving her hand as if to accept the conditions he stipulated.
“Its as if there are two entities within the one body; Hitch and whatever the vampirism is. A connection to the others, as weve already discovered. Sever that connection and perhaps we can switch the balance; bring Hitch back.”
“Have you made any progress with these hypotheses?”
“Well, thats the thing, I dont know. We cannot see into her head. I believe that she is still the vampire, but I think she isnt the same, in some way that we cant see, as the others.”
“Meaning?”
“Thats why I havent reported on any of this yet,” he said slowly. “I dont want you or anyone else to get excited or hopeful or anything about anything. But it may be that we can, if not reverse the effects, mitigate them in such a way that we can bring back the original person.”
“That would be exciting, yes,” Viola agreed. “But there is a problem. A problem and maybe a solution.”
“Whats that?”
“Our friends across the ocean have,” now it was her turn to pause to come up with the right set of words. “Requested the return of our guests, including Hitch.”
“I see,” Davis said, the wheels in his head already turning. “I assume you are reluctant to grant this request?”
“On the contrary, you, along with my other researchers, have concluded the same thing, that we are facing diminishing returns on what we can learn from these creatures. They would be better off, and on this I do disagree, in their natural habitat.”
“That is a problem,” Davis agreed.
“But,” she said. “Those people, they know more than we can ever hope to. Perhaps you could learn something from them?” she smiled sweetly at him and before he could stop himself, he heard his own voice agree to participate in this mission.