Blood Bond

"Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!" I read the line from the page, the way a rabbit might've said it.

Annie was lying in her bed, her face pallid. An IV tube ran from a hanging, liquid-filled bag down to the black onyx band around her wrist. She wasn't in my bed when I woke up this morning, and I came over to find her here, clutching her bear. Her dark red hair was gone now, leaving only the pink ribbon headband I had gotten her.

"When she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural."

Nurse Pratchett had come by and handed me this book. He didn't say a word, just a silent, understanding nod as he placed Alice in Wonderland in my hands. And then he was gone.

Annie stirred and I stroked her arm. "I'm sorry, big sister, I had to do it!" she cried out with eyes closed.

I wanted to tell her it was alright, and I forgave her, but then what she said next made my heart crack within my chest.

"I had to cover my eyes too!"

My hand reached out and squeezed her fingers. We really are scary sisters.

For a while, I let my voice and the story carry us along in the empty room.

"'Who are YOU?' said the caterpillar."

A question for Alice and in the silence that followed, I sensed Key making his way near. I stepped up to the sliding door, and exchanged a cheese cracker from Annie's uneaten breakfast tray for the thumb drive in his mouth.

He scurried away. I wasn't connected to his mind, but I could still feel a ghost of his presence fading.

It was nothing like the puppets, where severing the connection would cut their strings, collapsing them. And it wasn't like Stonehand or Kael, where my blood was just a visitor and hadn't taken their minds.

With Key and Hope, it was different. It was a switch I could flip between being fully immersed in them or just this light, ethereal sense of their presence. Sometimes, they could even push sensations back to me, unbidden. It felt more like we were paired.

Was this because they aren't human? I remembered Anya calling Hope a monster. Because of the magic stone? But Key is… I glanced back at the circuit board on his head as he disappeared down the hall. All those points of light going out. Back when I first connected with Key, the assistant had said he thought my blood would kill everything. There must have been a lot of mice killed. But what was different about Key? Is he a monster as well?

I returned to my seat beside Annie's bed. The corners of the thumb drive stabbed into my fingers as I turned it. Whatever was in here could unlock the mystery of Blackwood. Perhaps, it could be a weapon, a shield that I could use to protect Mom and Maya against them.

A flash of unseen light bloomed in the distance. A split-second later, a stream of rich, vibrant blood essence poured into me. I shot up off my seat.

That was no mouse.

Through the glass wall I saw Julia and Professor Herbert walking this way. Professor Herbert was talking to his silver wristband, probably running an experiment remotely.

"Did you kill someone?!" I demanded between clenched teeth.

It was a mistake. I knew it the moment the words left my mouth, but the image of Aunty May shriveling as she was drained dry would not stop replaying in my mind.

Julia, seemingly oblivious to my anger, grinned triumphantly at Herbert, who nodded glumly in reply.

"Relax. It wasn't a person," she finally said to me.

"That… That's not the problem, you can't kill things just to test."

"You do know you don't have the luxury of time. Leonard?" She crossed her arms. "There are always sacrifices that must be made to fight this disease."

"So, you didn't know what kind of organism it was?" Professor Herbert jumped in.

I shook my head. "Just felt like a burst of light."

"Oh, so there's a visual element."

"No, I felt it in my body." I looked down with a start and realized my hand was on my chest.

Professor Herbert tapped intensely on his touchpad. "Interesting, does this burst sensation have a vector? Can you quantify the intensity on a scale of one to ten?"

"I can sort of sense the direction it's coming from. But the intensity? It felt stronger than before."

His questions were a relentless attempt to pin down a ghost with numbers and labels. I answered the best I could. There was nothing really to hide here, and perhaps if my answers satisfied him, he'd leave Maya alone.

Finally, he exhausted his questions, but I could tell from his furrowed eyebrows that he wasn't satisfied.

"So is this all that you two are here for?"

Julia sighed. "No, Leonard. We haven't been able to find a solution that will terminate your cancerous cells more aggressively than your normal ones." She then set her eyes on mine. "Given the time constraints, there's something unconventional that I wish to try. First though, I want you to answer me truthfully. Can you control your blood?"

She stepped into me when I hesitated. "Our data from Susan May show points where her degradation slowed when you were yelling out. Now, Leonard. I need you to be honest with me. This is for your own good." She took another step closer, her chest was now up against mine. "Remember, our deal about your sister, it's only valid if you survive."

"That's not fair!" I lurched at her but she pushed back, her body solid and immovable. I closed my eyes for a long second. "Alright fine, I can, but not well. You saw what happened."

Julia nodded as she backed off of me. "But perhaps it can be exercised. Remember when we said your blood seemed to be protecting the malignant cells? I want you to try to do the opposite when we run our rounds of induction. We'll monitor you closely to see if we can nurture some biofeedback."

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Professor Herbert's shoulders slumped dejectedly. "Hopefully, we will at least get some interesting data."

I thought of Aetheria and what I need to do on the other side. "Can I… at least have a few days before starting? I was umm… enjoying my break."

Julia raised an eyebrow. "Three months gives us a very slim margin of error, Leonard. We don't have the luxury."

"I just… want to enjoy being healthy again for a few days longer." I turned to look through the glass wall at Annie lying there in her bed with the IV dripping in.

Julia followed my gaze and exhaled another sigh. "Fine, three days before induction." Then she turned to Herbert. "Think of some exercises he could do given those parameters."

She was about to leave when I waved her down. "Can I go do some real exercise with a friend today? It might be my last chance for a run?"

—

Kyle wouldn't go easy even against a friend with cancer.

Of course, I had the benefit of being full, with the blood essence of three hundred lives coursing through my veins. My legs pumped against the ground. Long strides carrying me past the blur of pine trees. The muscles of my body all burned; a relieved kind of ache from weeks of being bedridden and shut-in.

Kyle wheezed as he chased hard after me, just a few strides behind.

We were running in the forest in the back of his home. I felt a little guilty choosing him as my running 'friend', but I didn't want to put Chloe or Sam in danger, let alone Maya. Besides, he's the son of the Mayor. No one would touch him right?

My legs carried me the last few steps to spot where we started from, and I bent over, with my hands upon my knees, exhaling fire from my lungs. My shorts and shirt were completely drenched. It was a good, long run.

I glance over at the onyx band around my wrist. I was sure they were getting plenty of data about my blood doing work during the run, but I didn't care right now.

Kyle staggered to a halt a few seconds later, his chest heaving up and down. He slumped forward as well, sweat dripping down to the dirt from the tendrils of his drenched, hazelnut hair. He turned to me and we shared a long glance before the release of laughter rang through the woods.

"God damn, speedy! You still got it. Can't believe you beat me after being in a hospital for so long." He tapped his own chest. "Definitely the right call saving you that first spot on the team."

After taking a long drink, and letting my breathing settle, I turned back to him. "You got the laptop?"

Kyle moved over to his duffle bag, and pulled out a small square computer. "Yup, bought it brand new! Charged it too!"

I quickly sat crosslegged on the grass and flipped the laptop open. Once I was on the home screen, I grabbed the thumb drive from my own gym bag and plugged it in.

It was easy enough to open the directory, and browse to the files. There wasn't much to blueprint schematic. I have already explored a lot of the rooms in the facility, and so it was just a matter of putting labels to the rooms. The desert biome was just 'Desert Habitat 01', and the lab where I had my blood drawn was 'Processing Lab 04'...

Down at the lower levels were a few strangely labeled rooms such as 'Hi-Energy Containment', 'M-Dim Accelerator Array', and 'Bio-Func Crystalization'. What the hell was an M-Dim? I wondered. Multi-dimensional? The names sounded like something out of a video game, not a cancer research center, and Crystalization… Soul Seeds? No it can't be. A knot of unease tightened in my stomach. There were no descriptions, just line draws of large machinery in the rooms.

Then came files on the creatures and people I had seen as a mouse. Most of them were just logs of different treatment regiments of various drugs named with long serial numbers. Pictures of people, mice, a few dogs with lesions and tumors on them that progressed over time. Uncomfortable pictures, but I suppose it was expected for a cancer research organization.

A few files popped up of more exotic animals, a couple of whales, elephants, and that squid. So Blackwood had the resources to experiment on more types of animals, but this wasn't a smoking gun that I could use against them.

I sped past a few more files, and froze when a few words caught my eyes: DNA hybridization, Morphological modification, Varying radiation exposure…

The pictures in the file spoke louder. A lizard with patches of fur growing over its scales and teeth for eyes, captioned simply: Unstable, Terminate. A bird whose wings had been reshaped into crude, multi-jointed arms with its head lying limp on the ground. Then a gelatinous, red blob that had a chillingly, humanoid outline to it.

"Oh, god. That is awful man!" Kyle grimaced behind me and had to look away.

I tore my gaze from the file and scrolled through the others. Most of the human subjects had censored, blacked out lines in their info. It wasn't apparent at first glance what was done to them, though almost all of them had a lifeless, mile-long gaze staring out from their pictures.

A few stood out, tugging at the odd sensation of eerie familiarity within me. A few large men and women built broad and bulky, with square faces. Others were more lean, their faces held that androgynous look of the elves—their ears weren't sharp, but they were different.

"Wait, is that a little girl?" Kyle called out from behind me.

Annie's picture stared back at me. Annie Hastings, mother: primary specimen AX-42, father: Patient Alan Hastings. The rest of her file was black out. I swallowed harshly. Annie was a result of their breeding experiment? Suddenly, what she had said earlier sent goosebumps all over me:

"I had to cover my eyes too!"

My entire body shuddered. I definitely cannot let them get a hold of Maya! But what can I do? Is what's in this drive incriminating enough? Who would I even go to, especially in this town which they practically own.

After glancing quickly through my own massive file, and the ones on Mom and Maya, I found one last directory. It was labeled: 'Encrypted?'

Strange, did the spy not know what this was and just grabbed it?

Inside was just one lonely file, not a document but an executable. I hesitated, thinking of all those warnings about viruses and malware. But still, would it even run on this laptop's OS?

Curiosity won out over dread and I clicked on the file.

The screen went completely blank and a giant standing crystal appeared in the center of it.

My body went still, petrified.

The Wardstone.

Five circles appeared around the crystal. In them were wavy lines that made me think of fingerprints. Inexplicably, I felt compelled to reach out to it with my hand.

"Dude, I didn't get a touch screen." Kyle's distant sounding voice called out to me.

My fingers touched the circles and a jolt of electricity zapped through them. The Wardstone turned red and then faded into the image of red veins. Then a display popped up, a large hand, bulging with grotesque muscles, and wicked, sharp claws for nails. There were numbers with labels beside the image, different chemicals and their amounts, proteins, hormones… I wasn't fully comprehending, but somehow a deeper part of me did. My blood?

I thought back to when I did research on the retractable cat claws, and spitting cobra fangs. I didn't fully grasp in detail how it all worked, but my blood did. How else could it have created the palm-fang.

The display flickered, and an arm appeared. More grotesque, bulging musculature, now covered with throbbing veins. Detailed stats popped up with gland information, sinew attachment points, and skin/shell composition. I found myself drinking it all in. It wasn't my mind, but something deeper, more instinctual absorbing it all. I can't stop!

"Hey Vega, snap out of it!" Kyle's hand was on my shoulder shaking me.

But I kept flipping through the images, absorbing all the data that showed up. It was all body parts, all unnatural, deformed and hideous. Tusks that stretched out of jaws. Spikes protruding out of backs. Massive legs throbbing with those bulging muscles, and clawed feet. Long fleshy tubes extruding from arms that can spew acid like bombardier beetles…

Then finally, I arrived at the last image. A giant humanoid filled the screen. Its body encased in bulging, twitching muscles and a thick, oily hide made of what I knew to be organics and metal. Vicious claws tipped its hands and feet, and from its back, two leathery wings erupted, stretched taut over a frame of jagged bone and sharp, protruding spikes. Its face was a mutilated scowl with knife-like fangs lining its jaw. And from its head, a pair of sharp, curved horns thrust outwards.

I was stuck staring. This was the tapestry from the temple, made real. The thing we High Royals were meant to fight. The one true enemy of the Chosen.

"Holy shit. That thing is a…" Kyle uttered, fear heavy in his voice.

The word came crawling out of the depths of both of my selves.

"Demon."