What Keeps Our Hearts Beating

Chapter One

The hospital burned to the ground at midnight. Brasen stood in the shadows watching the smoke wafting into the night sky, creating a misty eclipse blocking the harvest moon from sight. The scent of charred wood and embers stung his nostrils. The blood orange flames spread their deadly fingers inch by inch...their cackling like demonic witches engulfing everything in their path. Brasen stood watching as people in hospital gowns, some children attached to tubes and other life saving devices cried from the cold, or crying because the only home they had ever known was disintegrating before their very eyes. 

Nobody important to him was hurt. He made sure of that. Having set off the fire alarm before the fire was even created. Allowing safe passage for people to follow the drill of the irritating blaring alarm, to slowly descend the steps as they waited for the fire department to thoroughly search the building to ensure its safety. He watched eagerly, earnestly as the left wing was soon engulfed by those flames, that wing that had been his torture chamber for the past year. Where they had studied him, his blood, to come up with something more powerful and more deadly. It was best that any remnants of him were destroyed. That Brasen was killed in that fire. That his blood could no longer be the "lifesaving" device doctor Leif Weber was creating. Or the "Monster" drug Brasen referred to it.

It had been an ugly confrontation but he had no rights. Dr. Weber claiming they were trying to save his life. That they needed more blood to save him from an untimely death. That the poison would eventually kill him. But Brasen knew the truth. It was the doctor who wanted to suck every ounce of blood from his prey to create something monstrous. Something terrible. Something as terrible as Brasen.

So he watched his handiwork, like a murderer returning to the scene of the crime. He couldn't linger long. Dead boys don't talk and he was sure they would suspect him. Dr. Leif Weber already fuming, his face as red as those murderous flames. His red hair soaked with sweat having tried to reenter the building. Having tried to save the harvest and his work. Brasen smiled inwardly at his wretched grief. He wished the professor would have been allowed reentry but the firefighters were not stupid and knew that the inferno would last all night. There was nothing salvageable. 

He was about to sneak away when a girl's blood-wrenching scream chilled his bones. The scream had escalated from the 2nd floor, right above the monstrous oak tree he was hiding behind. With the commotion, no one heard her scream. He glanced up to behold Zoey Johnson, a 10 year old girl wrestling with the window. It was only halfway open and she couldn't make the rest of it budge. A black fog of smoke engulfed her room and she coughed with each inhale. He turned left and right to see if anyone had heard but they were all focusing on the left wing where the fire was at its worst. The search and rescue team were too far away and wouldn't make it in time.

He looked back again at the ocean...at the boat that was waiting for him, to take him away. But she cried out his name. She had seen him. He looked up and met her sea-green eyes, the last ounce of hope in her gaze as fear glazed within. Of death. That same gaze he had beheld of himself when he had been poisoned. When he thought it was the end. When he thought he was going to die.

He threw down his knapsack and jumped up, grasping his hand on the splintering tree branch, clambering up the tree like he used to when he was a boy, as spritely as a thief in the night. He reached the top and the heat was intense, sweat dripping down his forehead. He reached the window and heard Zoey cry out frantically, "It's stuck. Brasen help!!"

"Stand back!" he ordered, reaching into his pocket for his pocket knife, the one he had been given by his father, before he was arrested for being the thief of London. Before he had followed in his father's footsteps. He lodged the blade where the lock was stuck and yanked it open with great precision, like riding a bicycle. He then opened the window and grabbed Zoey's hand.

"I'm afraid of heights," she said, staring down and afraid to step onto the swaying tree branch.

"Then don't look down," he snarled, yanking her before she could resist again and her body fell on top of him on the highest tree branch, just as the flames barged through the door and engulfed the room – right where Zoey had just been standing seconds before.

The flames nearly reached his foot and Brasen put his body over the young girl to shield her from the fire, her screams in his ear. He slowly lifted his head to make sure it was safe and used his hand as a shield from the smoke that was filling his lungs. He slowly helped Zoey sit up and told her to not look down and just to look into his eyes as they made their way back down the tree trunk. Her little hands held onto his for dear life, her eyes not daring to gaze upon the fire and on her room that was no more. Brasen helped the young girl down and when their feet hit the ground she grabbed him, holding him so tightly around the waist.

"Thank you," she said, her pipsqueak voice muffled in his shirt.

He quickly pushed her off him and was about to make a run for it when two large hands, this time not lovingly, grabbed him and knocked him to the ground. He attempted to fight them but he was no match for the strength of the man who held his face up against the muddy ground. He heard other footsteps and an EMS person rush over to Zoey to give her oxygen. He was put upright and was face to face with Dr. Leif Weber, his glasses cracked and his red flaming hair singed on the edges.

"Hello Brasen," he sneered in his deep monotone voice. "You shouldn't have wasted time on that heroic act. You should have run when you had the chance."

"Run?" Brasen coughed up smoke as the police officer yanked his arms firmly behind him. "I vacated the hospital like everyone else when the fire broke out." He blinked innocently and then added snidely, "So sad all your hard work up in flames like that. I guess you'll have to find some other guinea pig to torture."

The doctor smiled, leaning in toward Brasen, the scent of pea soup mixed with ash making him gag. The doctor then wrapped his arms around his neck, mimicking a fake hug.

"I know you set this fire," he whispered coldly in his ear. "And you surely won't get that chance again, I assure you."

"You can't keep me locked up forever," Brasen spit out, suffocating from the strangling hold.

Just then something injected into his arm and Brasen felt the world spinning around him.

"Yes I can, Brasen. Your blood is the answer and I will have it. Until you die."

Brasen felt darkness engulfing him and Zoey's sea green eyes were the last things he saw.