NECROCITY TIMES - Issue #1 - HALLOWEEN SPECIAL

WPRS Short - All Hallow's Eve

Written by: brucerelgin

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A stale odor of medicine and death surrounded the old woman. The moment I saw her I knew what The Magistra was planning. I gripped the bars tight. Pushed against the door.

"Step back and let us in," The Magistra said.

"No. I'm staying in here, and she's staying out there." I nodded at the old woman, who was propped against the wall like a used board. "For as long as it takes."

"It's shameful enough you were bitten by ghoul last night. Don't add insubordination to the list." She nodded down the hall and I smelled sweat mixed with ink. Agent #9 was down there. "Wheel it here."

I shook the door. The space between the bars was wide enough for me to get an arm through. If The Magistra would just come close enough, I could show her why I needed the door to stay locked.

"I'm sorry. It was Halloween and I let my guard down."

She shook her head. "You said you thought it was a costume?"

I shook my head, unable to answer.

"Inexcusable."

I heard a wheel's squeak on the stone floor and looked up. Agent #9, out of reach, pushed a door sized mirror in front of my cell, angled to let me see down the hall to the stairs. Two agents were carrying something down them.

"Do you have any idea of the trouble we went through last night because of you?" The Magistra asked.

My eyes felt heavier than I could ever remember and the only thing that kept my hands from shaking was my grip on the bars. "I'm not going to do it."

"This has been a particularly bad year. We've lost too many agents in the field. I'm not going to lose a senior operative over such a stupid mistake." She crossed her arms, a sign that said her temper was rising.

"Just let me die. Please."

"You do understand the wealth of institutional knowledge that you carry. You have most of the library memorized and your field experience is matched only by my own. I won't allow you to die. You are needed too much."

I gripped the bars tighter, fought the exhaustion and hunger that pulled at my whole body. "I'm not going to do it."

The Magistra looked past the mirror, down the hall. She nodded once, turned back to me. "Yes, you will."

I had always wondered why the cells in the basement of the WPRS had bars for doors instead of solid wood or iron. The shaft of sunlight ricocheted off the mirror at the bottom of the stairs, down the hall, into the mirror outside my cell and through the door directly into me like a wave of scalding water. Its impact blew me back from the door and into the back wall of the cell, where I tumbled down out of its reach. For that half second I had felt it's power, it's purity. As I crawled further away, all I could feel were the burns it had left on my face and arms. I tried to open my eyes, couldn't tell if they were there and blinded or had completely burned away. But, I heard the metallic clink of the key and the grinding of the door swinging open.

"I went to the trouble of having you turned to keep you intact, if not alive. You will feed. You will survive. You will make yourself useful again. You will do this until we find a better solution." I felt The Magistra's footsteps through the stone floor, and something else...shallow breathing

Then, above the odor of my own burnt, dead flesh, I smelled the old woman. She smelled of medicine, death...and blood. They had laid her on the floor.

I began to drag myself toward her body. The Magistra was right. I would feed, I would survive and make myself useful. It was the only way I could pay for what I was about to do.