by Sean Hayden
"I will," I said as a squeezed a little harder to remind him I wasn't so fragile. I heard his "oomph" and I thought I might have heard a rib or two give a little creak.
Michaels left with a nod to Morello and headed back out to Chicago which left me alone with the head of the FBI academy. I sat down and pulled my back pack onto my lap from the floor next to my chair. "I have something for you from Agent Reese, sir," I said to the bear of a man behind the desk.
"I know, I just got off the phone with him. I let him know your plane landed and you had just driven through the gate. He wanted to make sure you made it here okay, and wanted to fill me in on your special dietary needs. I'm at a loss as to what to do there, but I'm sure our medical people will come up with something. I'll have them look into it after you have your physical. I've got to be candid with you, Ashlyn. I wasn't too keen on the idea of having a vampire recruit, but after seeing how much of a shine an old hard ass like Reese took to you, it set my mind at ease. Just please don't make the mistake of thinking your time here is a waste or is going to be a breeze. It's just plain hard work."
I nodded to him as I handed the sealed envelope over to him. "I won't, sir." I watched as he placed the envelope in his desk and locked the drawer. He stood and came around the desk and motioned me to follow. I zipped up my belongings and followed him through the door down a different hallway to a rear exit. I followed him back out into the night and over to another building. We walked inside and I could tell this must be the medical building. The scents of alcohol, antiseptics, and other unpleasant odors permeated my nostrils. He led and I followed until we reached an unmarked door. He knocked and without waiting for a response opened the door and entered. "Doctor Gibbs, here is the recruit I called you about earlier. Do you have time to get her processed before daylight?"
"Yes, sir, I can! You must be Ashlyn. I'm Doctor Gibbs." He held out his hand, but unlike most people he didn't miss the small talons protruding from my fingers. He took my hand and shook it anyway, but while he did so, he had his hand turned so he could study my fingers. "Extraordinary," I heard him mutter.
"Yes, but they're a pain in the ass while you rub your face," I heard myself say. I'm sure he hadn't meant for me to hear his mutter, so he looked up and had an apologetic look on his face, and I laughed to let him know there no harm had been done and no offense had been taken.
"You can leave her with me, Agent Morello. I'll have her physical done shortly and get her registered at the dorms. If you'll follow me, Ashlyn?" He turned toward the door in his office.
"Good luck, Ashlyn. I'll be keeping an eye on you," Morello said as he shook my hand as well.
Chapter 7
I followed the doctor into an examination room. He had me strip in the small attached bathroom and put on a small gown and return to sit on a cold medical examination table. It wasn't too bad except for the paper covering. Then the questions began. I found myself telling my story yet once again to the middle aged doctor who smelled slightly of peppermint. I wasn't sure if it meant his blood was palatable to me or if he had a fondness of breath mints, but I tried to ignore it. If he had power, it wasn't much. The whole time I talked and answered his questions, he poked and prodded and measured and touched. It went quite well until he tried to take a blood sample. He just couldn't get the needle to pierce my skin. I gently grabbed the hollow syringe and pushed it through my skin. I presented the whole apparatus back to him so he could stick an empty vial into the unit.
I had seen my blood before, but never in such quantities. I couldn't smell it because it pumped directly into an airtight little capsule, but the sight of it made me hungry. I might have even growled a little, because Dr. Gibbs gave me a startled glance.
"How long has it been since you last fed?"
"Two nights ago," I answered
"How often do you usually feed?"
"I need to eat every other night."
"Morello told me of your diet requirements. Have you ever fed off a lycanthrope?"
I knew the term from television some people used to describe weres, but I hadn't met one yet. I told him I had never tried, and he left the room after letting me know he would be right back. I waited on the cold table until he returned with a clear thick plastic bag with red liquid in it.
"Sometimes the lycanthropic recruits get hurt badly enough they need a transfusion before they can heal themselves. Human blood works alright, but lycanthrope is better, so we keep some in stock. Try this," he said and handed me the bag.
It had a little blue plastic stopper on the bottom of it that I assumed was for piercing with an I.V. needle. I pulled the plug and sniffed the liquid. It didn't smell of the sweeter spices like cinnamon or vanilla, but rather the earthier spices like thyme and oregano. It smelled heavenly.
I squeezed the liquid into my mouth and the sensation dazzled my senses. I couldn't help but think if something tasted this good cold and from a plastic bag, I needed to find me a live lycanthrope to try one time. Yummy didn't begin to describe the fiery liquid in my hand.
The exam continued while I sipped merrily from my lycanthrope juice pouch. The doc asked me if I would mind consenting to a MRI. I had a feeling it would be more for his benefit than mine, but I grew up watching television shows about emergency rooms and hospital dramas, so I kind of wanted to see the end result. Maybe I would learn a little more about myself. I told him, "No problem," and followed him to the imaging room.
We entered a cold linoleum room with only one feature, a hollow metal tube with what looked like a cold table protruding from the end. The doctor asked me to get up on the table and he left through another door on the opposite wall. I walked over, climbed up, lied back, and the whole table slid back into the tube. I heard him come over the intercom and he told me to relax. The machine began to hum and I could feel the magnetic fields dance over my skin. I found it tickled a little bit. I knew humans didn't feel a thing, so I made another tick mark in my mental "freak" journal. The list kept getting longer and longer.
Before I knew it the MRI ended. The machine ended its incessant humming and I heard the door to the room open. Before I knew it, the table I had been lying on slid from the machine and I found myself staring at ceiling tiles again. Doctor Gibbs smiled down at me and lent me a hand to sit up. I didn't need it, but felt touched by his thoughtfulness, so I accepted.
"It will take a few days to complete the examination of all the data I have gathered. I'll schedule a follow up and go over the results with you. I'm sure you're probably even more curious than I am. Come on Ashlyn; let's get you set up in processing. They have all your information already, so you should be in your bunk shortly."
We exited the MRI room and made our way back to the exam room so I could change back into my clothes and collect my things. Once I dressed, I met the Doctor back in his office and he led me down the sterile hallways to a door labeled "New Agent Processing". He opened the door and let me pass through first. "Here we go," I thought.
The front office looked just like I expected. Light tan walls, plenty of filing cabinets, and a counter running the length of the wall. A bored looking, middle aged woman sat behind the counter with a mountain of paperwork laid out in front of her. She had to have heard the door open as we walked in, but she paid us no mind, merely kept on doing whatever occupied her.
We stood there for several minutes and I looked over to see an amused look on the good doctor's face. He made eye contact and then rolled them up into his head. Apparently he had been in this situation before. I stifled a laugh and continued my wait. I formulated a plan to cough to politely announce our arrival when she finally spoke.
"Ashlyn with no last name?" Her voice came out as a raspy croak. It sounded like someone poured glass and gravel in a concrete mixer.
"Yes, ma'am."
"I have everything ready for you."
She began pulling papers from the pile in a specific order and stacking them face down neatly atop each other. When she finished, she flipped the wh
ole pile over and smoothed the bottom edge against the countertop. She handed me the entire pile and I noticed a large number of cellophane tabs sticking out of the left hand side of the pile.
"Go through the papers and sign by the tabs. While you're signing your life away I'm going to wrestle up someone to take you over to provisioning and get you to the dorms."
"Thank you, ma'am," I replied and began reading through the stack. I grabbed the pen with the little beaded chain attaching it to the counter and began the long process of signing on the proverbial dotted line. Most of the paperwork contained the standard "do you agree" and “I hereby promise" type documents. Unfortunately several copies of each filled the stack. I guess the old "fill these out in triplicate" rule still applied to the US government. I expected to get a hand cramp by the time I reached the middle of the pile, but didn't.
I did get a nice surprise though. I found myself rewarded with a social security card at the midpoint. How they had arranged it so quickly surprised me. I stared at the little card and its shades of blue and felt a wave of sentimentality wash over me. I pulled the card from its tiny paperclip and set it aside. I looked up and saw the doctor had sat down on one of two chairs I hadn't noticed where there. He stared up at the acoustic ceiling tiles lost in thought. The good doctor piqued my interest. I thought about asking him if he needed to get back to work, but I appreciated his company. I'm sure if he had more pressing issues to attend to, he would leave.
I returned my attention back to my task. I resumed filling out forms I had never heard of such as I-9's and other various forms with alpha numeric titles. I found two other interesting things as well, one of them being a State of Virginia Identification Card. I signed the acceptance form and set the card on top of my Social Security card. I remembered the fake ID in my pocket and glanced around for a pair of scissors. I saw a shining metal handled pair in the desk organizer on Ester's side of the desk. I reached over and grabbed them and pulled the card from my pocket. My hands became a blur as I snipped the card piece by piece into a small pile of plastic bits. I doubted the doctor even noticed what I held in my hand before I destroyed it.
I swept the pile into the palm of my hand and looked around for a waste receptacle but didn't see one. I guess recruits weren't allowed to create trash on this side of the counter. I opened my front jeans pocket with my other hand and poured the remains in. I figured on the way to the dorm I could scatter them on the grass. I returned to my task yet once again and finished signing my life away to Uncle Sam.
Just as I had finished, Ester walked back with a youngish man in blue sweatpants and a white FBI T-shirt. "Gorgeous," I thought. He stood about five ten or eleven and if I had to guess I would say he weighed about a hundred and ninety pounds. Muscular arms extended from the slightly tight cuffs of his shirt, with beautifully dark skin. I don't mean olive skinned or of African heritage, I meant tan. He looked like he had spent a fair amount of time at the beach. He confirmed my guess when I looked at his hair. Most of it gleamed in a natural chestnut color, but I could see how the outer most layers had been streaked from the sun. Most surfer dudes you see on television have a stereotypical "dumb and stoned" look on their faces. When he looked at me I could see the intelligence behind his eyes. I was staring at his eyes when I caught his smell.
The blood the Doctor had fed me earlier probably saved Ester's companion from me jumping over the counter and chewing a large gaping blood filled hole in the side of his neck. He smelled delicious. I could smell several different spices, but couldn't name a single one of them. I had just eaten, yet I still had to curl my fingers into a fist to stop myself from making him dessert.
"Are you all done, dearie?" Ester's voice snapped me out of my reverie.
"Yes I am, ma'am. Here you go," I said as I handed her back the pile.
While she flipped through the pages one by one to check if I missed anything, I focused my gaze back to the hunk of Manwich behind her. His focus lay on the pile of papers before Ester. I had no way to tell if he was a fellow recruit or an instructor. Personally I hoped for the former. If he held recruit status, I could daydream about him being my roommate. I doubted it, but a girl can dream if she wants right?
"Thanks for staying with her, Doctor. We'll get her settled from here," Ester said. The doctor shifted his attention to her. He stood and nodded to me and gave me another brief smile.
"Good luck, Ashlyn. I'll have someone contact you about the follow up to your exam. Have a good day, Ester. You too, Agent Walker," he said and walked through the glass doors.
So, he was Agent Walker? Hunky had a name, but I felt disappointed because of the word "agent". I guess I wouldn't be bunking with him. Damn it.
"Excellent. Everything is complete. If you would follow Agent Walker, he'll help you secure your personal effects and get you suited up for your stay. Good luck," Ester said to me without offering a handshake. I looked up at Agent Walker and he pointed at the door to my right. I walked over to it and I heard an electric buzzing noise coming from the latch. I pulled and the door opened so I walked through.
Agent Walker came from around the corner and led me down the hall to another large windowless steel door. He opened it and sunlight poured from the exterior of the building into the hallway. I gave a little scream and closed my eyes. I instinctively jumped back about ten feet putting my body well outside the range of the sunlit square. I blinked rapidly and remembered screeching a loud, "Shut the door!" Tears poured freely from my eyes and I couldn't see anything.
I heard the door close and I felt Agent Walker's hands encircle my upper arms. "Are you okay? What happened?"
I still couldn't see, but I managed to blurt out, "The fucking sun!"
"Are you alright? What are you, a vampire?"
"Yes!" Time stopped for a moment with the realization of what I had said pierced my heart. I had spent seventeen years denying what I truly was and in a moment of panic, I subconsciously came to the realization of my true heritage. I maybe a little different than a Nosferatu, a common vampire, or a master vampire, but aren’t they different from each other as well? I felt his hands involuntarily release their grip after my little revelation both to him and to myself. "I'm sorry, it caught me by surprise. My eyes are very sensitive and now I have a headache. I didn't know the sun had come up. Usually I can feel it, but it must have breached the horizon while I was getting my MRI."
"I'm sorry too. Nobody told me about you. I thought vampires burst into flames when you got exposed to sunlight?"
"I'm a little different. Trust me."
"How am I supposed to get you to the dorms?"
"Just get me a blanket, I'll be okay."
"Wait here, I'll go get one," he said and stood up from my crouched position. I heard his footsteps as he retraced our previous path to retrieve a blanket.
Moments later I heard two sets of running footsteps come racing down the hall. I opened my eyes and looked behind me to see the blurry forms of Agent Walker and Doctor Gibbs with his hands around a dark grey blanket. "Ashlyn, are you okay? I'm sorry. I didn't realize the sun had come up! Is there anything I can do?"
"I'm fine! I just want to go to sleep. Can you guys guide me? I won't be able to open my eyes," I said and tried not to sound too pathetic.
I felt their arms lift me to my feet and Doctor Gibbs handed me the blanket. I unfolded the scratchy wool blanket and threw it over my shoulders. I walked over to the door and pulled the cover up over my head. I wore jeans and tennis shoes so I didn't have to worry about getting sunburned there. I closed my eyes and gave my guides a muffled, "I'm ready.” I heard the door open and I felt the warmth wash over the blanket. I closed my eyes even tighter because I could feel the sunlight bouncing from the floor below me and up into the confines of my shroud.
Verbal directions came from Agent Walker. He told me when to step down and up, walk forward, turn left until we reached another door. I heard someone open it and they instructed me to move forward. I kept walking, I heard the door
close behind me, and the change in temperature told me I had moved out of the sunlight. I wasn't taking any chances by removing my blanket without verbal direction to do so. The guys pulled me along until we reached another set of stairs leading up. I hoped we had almost reached our destination. Holding on to my backpack and the blanket had gotten more difficult every moment.
"Stop here for a second. There's a window at the end of the hall. I'm going to switch your room. I had you in a dorm room on the other side of the hall. Unfortunately it is the side facing out. The ones on your right don't have windows as they butt up against more rooms on the east side of the building. I need to go get a key to let you in. Doc, stay with her, would you." I heard his feet as he padded away. I felt sleep overwhelm me a little, so I slunk down the wall and sat on the floor. I heard Gibbs ask if I felt okay and I told him I felt fine, just exhausted.
I sat there in my little wool cocoon for about ten minutes until Agent Walker returned. I could hear him running down the hall as his feet struck the linoleum covered floor. "Here you go Ash. I'm unlocking the door now," he said and I heard the sound of the key enter the lock and the doorknob turn. I stood up under my own power and let them guide me into my room. I heard a light switch being flipped and the door close behind me.
"Is it okay if I take this blanket off now?"
"Go ahead. It's safe. Welcome to your new dorm for the next seventeen weeks," Agent Walker said.
I lifted the blanket from my head and looked around the room. Cream painted concrete blocks formed the four walls. It had been designed for two people to share, but apparently I had been lucky enough to be the sole occupant for now. The room itself had symmetry. If someone held a mirror down the center of the room it would look exactly the same. I noticed the closet and a part desk part bed combination on one side and the exact same on the other just facing the opposite way. Hopefully I wouldn't end up with a roommate.
