Time Traveling Vampire Assassin (TTVA)

Chapter 3: The Vampire

If you haven't guessed it by now, there it is: the SSRHE had caught itself a genuine vampire. I'm not one for suspense, and I figured the 'Vampire' part of the title would give it away anyway, so I wasn't going to drag that little 'plot twist' out. When they got him to the facility, Bill called my dad, who then proceeded to freak out, run around the house looking for things, and shout about how he needed to leave for the London facility right away as there had been a very important development at work... even though it was 2 in the morning. My mother was not happy about this. When I figured out it was Mark, I begged to go, but my father insisted that I stay and come to the lab tomorrow, saying that I would only get in the way.

When I arrived at the facility the next day after a 3 hour drive to London the lab was buzzing with activity. I asked the secretary where I could find my father and the new test subject, but was told I had to fill out some paperwork before I could go see them. She hurried me into an office and placed a stack of forms in front of me.

"Just the basic confidentiality agreement and safety precaution forms, as this is a new and potentially dangerous test subject your father is dealing with," she informed me while hunting around for a pen.

"Dangerous?" I asked. "How could just one guy be dangerous with all the security we have around here?"

"Well, it's not my place to say, and I'm not even entirely sure. You'll find out soon enough," the secretary responded.

After I finished filling out the forms, not really reading them all the way through of course, the secretary showed me to the room where Mark Smith was being held. I thanked her and knocked on the door. My father opened it, saying "Oh, you're here, well don't just stand there, come in, come in."

One half of the room was full of computers, medical equipment, and various machines and monitors. The other was separated by a one-way mirror looking into a holding cell of sorts, with a simple bed, toilet, and chair. Chained to one of the bed legs with a long chain attached to a cuff on his ankle, was Mark Smith. He was sitting on the bed glaring at the glass with his dark brown eyes. He had shoulder length wavy—or perhaps just messy?—dark brown hair and unusually pale skin. He was wearing a plain light blue hospital gown that must have been put on him while he was knocked out.

"We already questioned him, and he seems to think he became immortal through a blood exchange with another immortal," my father said.

"What, like a vampire?" I asked incredulously.

"Well, yes, I know it sounds crazy, but we've run some tests and he seems to heal very quickly, and the samples we've taken have burned to ashes in any exposure to sunlight."

"Yup, that sounds exactly like a vampire," I say as I pinch the bridge of my nose, not able to believe that this is actually happening. I had learned to become accustomed to some pretty unbelievable stuff, but vampires? That was just too out there for me to accept. I wasn't the only one in the lab to think this way, there were many scientists muttering to themselves and each other about possible scientific explanations for our captured Dracula over in the cell. I heard snatches of conversations, such as:

"It must be in the blood right? Like a disease transmitted through blood contact?"

"...no visible difference in the blood cells, maybe DNA?"

"...samples appear to last for extended periods of time, but how..."

And so on and so on. It seemed that how he existed was still a mystery, but no one doubted that the existence of this kind of creature could potentially be a major threat, or a great opportunity.

After a while Mark became restless, pacing back and forth in the cell and continuously watching the door, with what seemed like hunger in his eyes. When more people were sent in to question him, escorted by armed guards of course, he lunged at them and had to be sedated again. Once he woke up, he started halfheartedly hitting the glass and occasionally shouted something along the lines of, "Are you people planning on starving me to death? You won't get much information once I'm dead!"

My father was working on adapting the time machine/teleporter (which he decided to name the Personal Time and Space Transporter, or PTST for short) for human, or vampire, use. I assisted him by sending in any new information on Mark and by bringing him various tools and documents.

I told him that Mark wasn't looking so good, and that a few lab assistants kept finding themselves oddly compelled to open the cell door and walk inside. They kept coming up with random excuses, like needing to take some more samples, or question the subject further, but were repeatedly stopped by other scientists who weren't affected.

He responded by briefly looking up, muttering something that sounded like "interesting, hafta get someone t'look into that" and continuing to type something on his laptop. I could tell that he didn't really care, he was more focused on the time machine.

A few days after that, the time machine was finally ready to be tested on Mark. While he was sleeping (they found that during the day he was completely out, nothing woke him up, so they performed most of the tests during the day) some scientists, including my father, went into the cell to put the machine on Mark. It had many complicated and bulky looking parts, including sensors attached to a hat of sorts as well as wrist and ankle cuffs. Once they had secured the cell, they set the machine to transport him ten minutes in the future and activated it. As was expected, he vanished, along with the machine. We all waited with bated breath for the ten minutes that seemed to stretch into hours, before he finally reappeared. Apparently, having all of his molecules pulled apart, thrown into the future, and reassembled was enough to wake him up.

The scientists exchanged worried glances as he wobbled before falling to the ground. He looked mostly fine, except that he was a bit paler and drawn out looking. He glared at the mirror/window before ripping the machine off and smashing it on the floor.

"Somebody stop him! He's ruining the equipment!" exclaimed one of the scientists.

I looked over to my father and, while he didn't look happy, he wasn't as shocked as concerned as the others.

"It's fine, we still have the blueprints and I can make another one. This is unfortunate, but at least we know it works," my father stated rather calmly.

"Should we go in there and collect the equipment?" asked an assistant hesitantly.

"Get it when he passes out again" my father replied.

I asked my father if the reason Mark looked so pissed off was because the transportation had hurt him in some way, but he brushed it off by saying

"Whatever that creature is, it can withstand much more than the human body. If it's fine enough to be able to smash my equipment, it's not too injured. We'll continue the experiments tomorrow with new equipment."

To be continued...