The Newbloods

The Basket

It was a basket, but not just a basket.

It was a basket full of bones.

Human bones.

A cold shiver of fear ran down my spine, making goosebumps rise on my arms. I dressed on my medical gloves and began to slowly place the bones in a case, using the gear to not harm the delicate corpus delicti. I had counted and collected about 10 bones in total, but then I found a vial with a note attached to it. It read:

To whoever finds this (and to whom it may concern),

Congratulations, you have found my rotting corpse. Gold star for you. Hopefully, you are a scientist or an archeologist, because I have a medical and scientific mystery. Are you ready? Ok, here it is.

My blood was very different from the rest of my village, the Solitary Scavengers. We were people who liked to explore and grab any shiny objects, like metals and scraps, that may any source of value for us. Anyways, back to my blood.

It was a dark purple, almost violet, and I was, as they called it, "special." I don't know how to explain this in great detail, but I had a way to cure things. I could make diseases and injuries disappear, as if they were never there, and I could also move quickly, swiftly even. But I always had a craving, a hunger, a little voice in my head telling me to eat. I could never get closer to people anymore, because the pangs of feeding would return to torture me.

I was so confused. All I could think about was how she said, "...never get close to people anymore...pangs of feeding...a hunger." I've never heard of this situation in all of known science to mankind.

Then, it clicked.

This, this vial of blood and the bones, is a new discovery.

Quickly, I ran outside and beckoned for Mark to come out.

"What is it?" he questioned.

"You won't believe what I found," I gasped.

We arrived back at Science Minds Corp. I explained everything to him in the car and he read the letter. He studied the vial of blood with an iron glare. The doors whooshed open as we strode inside, going straight to the head-analyzer, Dr. Jacklyn Bellerose. She was amongst her second family, the machinery. She fiddled with buttons and turned dials and typed into keyboards. When we approached her with the vial, the "CRUCIAL" assignment folder, and the foolish grins spread on our faces, she immediately began to interrogate us.

"What is the meaning of this?" she scowled. "You are interrupting me from my work."

"We may have just found a new discovery mankind has never seen before," I exclaimed breathlessly.

"Also," he hastily added, "We need you to please analyze this vial and have a quick scan of these bones, please?"

"I'm on it," she smiled. She always loved the idea of researching, analyzing, and scanning objects, anything to get her to use the metallic wonders.

She meticulously picked up the case with the osseous matter. She placed them under the scanner and pushed the giant cylinder back into the wall.

"That's going to take a good two hours the scan," she sighed.

"And what about the vial of blood?" I questioned. My heart was beating so fast and loudly, I thought it was going to burst from my chest.

"I need to place it inside the incubator analyzer, relax," she laughed.

The machinery began to whir and lights flashed, and a small hatch opened with a hiss. Jacklyn placed the vial inside and closed it. Setting a timer, we began to wait.

Finally, it went off after a couple of hours. We found out that the bones were hundreds of years old, and that the vial of blood actually did give humans an unnatural ability. So, like all scientists, we got test subjects: five males and five females. We attentively measured out the portions of blood and injected them into each test subject.

We thought that they would begin to evolve and match the letter's description, turning into maybe a more runner-ready body, but instead, they began to cough a red substance.

Blood.