Rise Of The Hunters - Chapter 82

“Come with me, we have much to discuss,” said Dr. Achak, turning to leave the room.

Xun’s instincts were to run after his dad and hope he made it, but instead he followed after the vampire. They crossed the hall to the door opposite, where the vampire paused. Xun looked after his father, but everyone was already gone. Had they run? Or had that female vampire captured them? Surely, he would have heard his father fighting if that was the case.

“To foster camaraderie between us, I wish to share with you the experiments I am currently undertaking. Perhaps, between the two of us, we can come to an operating agreement, that will better both parties.”

Xun looked at him, feeling dumb. What exactly had he just said? Was he trying to make friends!?

“In this room, you will see two werewolves. I do not wish for you to freak out, upon seeing them.” After watching him for a moment, and Xun saying nothing, the doctor opened the door, and led the way, leaving the door open for him to shut behind them.

Xun stepped in, after him, and stared at the two huge werewolves, where they were pacing back and forth, restlessly, in separate cages. The female vampire was watching a computer screen and taking notes on her clipboard of the two.

“These are the beasts that I intend to harvest edible nutrition from.” He glanced at

Xun and saw the look on his face. “Blood, we are intending to take blood from them.”

“You do realize that it is incredibly painful for them, as werewolves?” mentioned Xun, after running through the endless list of things he could possibly say.

“Really? And how exactly do you know this?” asked Dr. Achak, looking genuinely interested for the first time in what he had to say.

“I’ve heard it from them as they were dying. All they spoke of was how much it hurt and how evil you were.” Xun pointedly stared at the wolves as he said this, unable to meet the vampire’s eyes.

Strangely, he wasn’t insulted at all. “Did they say anything else?” he asked, snapping his fingers at the woman for her to take notes on her clipboard.

Xun thought about that for a moment. “One said that the hunger was all consuming, and that the pain receded a little when he killed and ate something.”

“That would definitely explain the killing tendency, and the insatiable appetite.” The doctor nodded in thought.

“I’ve found, that there is a protein change in the blood, when we administer the virus responsible for the mutation. It is sufficient to make the blood nutritious again, but only marginally. The only downfall, is that a short time after the change, a second shift occurs in the blood, making it once again non-nutritious. All of my attempts to halt this second shift, has only succeeded in these two specimens. I’ve never had a subject shift back to its human form at death. I wonder if there might be even more shifts, that I have missed due to early release of the subjects.”

“Why do you release them?” asked Xun, not understanding everything that the doctor was saying.

Looking at him, the vampire sighed. “You can’t be very old, I don’t imagine anything I’ve said has made any sense to you, has it?”

“Not really,” confirmed Xun.

“Then allow me to educate you in some history of our peoples, and see if I can make myself understood. It has been a long time since I have had to talk in such a way that others can understand…Vampires and humans used to live side by side. We would feed on humans to survive, and only occasionally would we step outside of the shadows to kill anyone. Usually, that would be from a young vampire that was inexperienced, and it would often be dealt with very quickly.

“Then someone, probably a human, but it doesn’t matter anymore, created a virus that was highly contagious. That virus spread across the globe in a matter of days. It caused a change in the blood of humans, that while they were unaffected, made it impossible for us to consume, or drink.

“There was a panic among the younger vampires, that erupted into war between the vampires and the humans, often causing death amongst all those involved. Populations were wiped out in many places. All of this was hugely inconvenient to those of us who were trying to come up with an alternative.

“Vampires are ruled by our elders. Those who are the oldest and sometimes smartest. However, I found myself in a unique position. No other vampire has had the interest or ability to study medicine and biology as I have. My elders basically gave me all of the resources I could possibly want, to try and come up with a solution to the problem. However, every time I got close to figuring something out, they would make up some stupid rule, to mess everything up.”

He turned in annoyance, and left the room. Xun was startled at first, then rushed to catch up with him. He was waiting at the next door, just down the hall.

“I warn you, you may know some of the faces within this room. I promise you, that I have done no harm to them, only stabilized them while I try to figure out what is happening.”

Xun stiffened at his words, alarm bells ringing in his head. As the door was opened, he saw Rick, Willow, Hayden, Lisa, and the guards all laid out on their own beds. Monitors were connected to them, keeping track of their vitals.

“What happened?” he cried, taking a step towards them, but Dr. Achak stopped him.

“They are asleep. When we arrived early last night, we found them all on the floor, spasming from seizures. I was able to stabilize them, but I haven’t had a chance to run any tests to see what is going on. I figured you would know them, so wished to show them to you, in the hope that you would understand I am trying not to hide anything from you.”

Xun wanted to run to them, and check them over. He could tell from this distance, that they looked unharmed, merely asleep. None were strapped down, there were no chains, or needles delivering medicine, only the monitor that beeped. He had enough experience with those from his stay in the hospital to know that they were harmless. Why were they here? What did Lisa have to do with it? So many questions swirled in his head, he didn’t know where to begin.