The V to Z Trilogy (Book 1): Caged Page 2

  When the pigs had been their test patients, there had just been pens in the rooms. After a thorough sanitation process, those had been replaced with hospital beds, six to each room, all equipped with ankle and wrist restraints – leather in the one room and metal in the other.

  The pigs had never been there for very long. Long enough to get the injections, long enough to be tested, long enough to see if the vaccine would work. And, finally, it had. The drug had worked perfectly, and violently, and it made her sick to think about how effectively. It would all be for the best, in the end. The pigs, at least, hadn’t known they were going to die. Best not to think about that. In science, sometimes you had to do things you didn’t like for the greater good.

  Her thoughts turned instead to the biggest mistake she’d ever enjoyed making. Mason. He wasn’t the mistake. She was. If she could somehow, what, travel back in time? She shook her head, trying to dislodge unwanted musings. Today was not a day to remember regrets long buried. Today was a day to focus on the future.

  Cate didn’t have time to start recovering herself before the lights in one room and then another popped on, causing her to jump. Motion sensor lights were great for the environment. Not so much for her heart.

  The door to room one opened up and six patients were led in. Each one quietly picked out a cot and lay down. They were so orderly; it was hard to believe they came out of a prison, although the day glo orange jump suits helped.

  Getting the government to approve testing on human prisoners had been a long battle, just not one Cate had personally had to fight. As a way off death row, these men had agreed to be subjected to tests. In theory, they would survive and, eventually, be set free in gratitude for their service. In theory, the vaccine they were testing wouldn’t harm them. The pigs, after all, had lived to be euthanized.

  Cate was glad Stan, and probably his boss, Marisol, had been the ones to go to the meetings at Congress. She assumed the meetings were with Congressmen, but they weren’t public and were above her pay grade, so who, exactly, did the approving, she wasn’t sure. She was just glad they finally had humans for testing. Of course, they were only half of the shipment.

  The door to room two opened and Mason Farino walked in. As he scanned the room, she watched him at work. He wasn’t doing much, but he stood there very intensely. She hadn’t really seen this side of him, before. He’d always been so fun, kind of goofy. She’d loved that about him. Now he looked like someone who didn’t have time to smile.

  His gaze swept in her direction and she blushed before remembering that he couldn’t see her. Idiot. He wouldn’t even know she was here. Probably wouldn’t care if he did, after what she’d done to him. Her brain was leading her into dangerous territory again. This was not the time for repressed memories to surface. And then she saw the second half of the shipment, and Mason Farino wasn’t so important anymore.

  Four armed guards escorted them in, with two guards posted at the door. Each one was manacled to the next, but unlike the other prisoners, they were in street clothes. Mason chained them one by one to their own cots. There were only four, Cate noticed. That was okay. Really, it only took one dead vampire to find out if the vaccine worked, and now they had four.

  Chapter 2

  Mason stood waiting for Frank in the garage. He’d driven to work, logged in, got his coffee, and been given the assignment to leave headquarters immediately and drive to the National Vampire Intelligence Agency research facility all while Frank apparently figured out today was a work day.

  When Mason called Frank to let him know they had to leave, Frank said he was “parking the car.” That had been fifteen minutes ago and Mason was just now watching as Frank drove up.

  He stopped the car next to Mason and rolled the passenger side window down. “What? Traffic was awful.”

  Mason got in next to his partner. “Traffic is always awful. Somehow the rest of us get here on time.”

  Frank started driving. The NVIA headquarters, where Mason and Frank reported every day, was in Arlington, Virginia. It was just another office building, so far as everyone in the area knew. At least, that was the idea. In reality, everyone in the area probably knew, if not exactly what type of agency was there, at least that it was a federal agency.

  For some reason, maybe due to the scope, the NVIA research facility had been built in the suburbs of Oakton. The area had townhouses, single family homes, shops, and a large wooded area with a secure medical campus hidden within. Again, residents could probably guess at some of what happened there. Officially, though, it was just another building.

  “This sucks.” Frank honked his horn for emphasis. “You know, two weeks ago I was in Ireland?”

  It was too early for this. “Don’t start on that again.”

  “You know what they got there? Rolling green hills, castles around every corner, and great beer.”

  Mason rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you know, I heard. Like forty-six times since you got back from your honeymoon. Can we not talk about it for maybe an hour?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like you have a life. What are we supposed to talk about?”

  Frank had a way of making Mason feel like crap without even trying.

  “Why don’t we talk about the job? Maybe figure out the day?”

  “What’s there to figure out? We sign in, pick up some vees from the basement, escort them upstairs, and leave. Then we go home, right?”

  In a nutshell, yeah, that about summed it up. Of course, nothing was ever that simple at the NVIA.

  Upon arriving, he and Frank signed themselves and the car in through the main gate onto campus. To enter the building, they had to leave their cell phones, tablets, jump drives, and anything else with any kind of signaling or storage capability behind. As Special Agents, however, they were allowed to bring in their guns.

  After showing their IDs to the camera, they entered the building one at a time. Mason stepped through the first bullet proof glass door, waited for it to close, and then heard the slight whirring sound as he was scanned for devices. Once all clear, the inner bullet proof glass door opened and he was allowed to step into the vast, bland lobby where a guard scanned him again. Frank followed behind and they were issued visitor badges and a temporary escort who would lead them downstairs.

  “Why so quiet?” Frank asked as they walked down the stairs towards Security Central Control.

  Mason didn’t answer. Frank knew he hated this place. Most of what happened here was above his clearance, so Mason didn’t exactly know what went on. He could guess. He’d delivered plenty of vee prisoners to this building. He’d never once taken a vee out of the building.

  Frank rolled his eyes at Mason’s non responsiveness. “Aww, c’mon. You’re not starting to feel all dirty again, are you? I thought we went over this?”

  “Shut up, Frank.” His partner really didn’t know when to stop sometimes.

  Frank said, “Today’s a cakewalk. Before you know it, I’ll be home with the wife and you’ll be, well, you’ll be home.”

  Frank loved pushing Mason’s buttons. His winning personality was what made him the world’s most endearing partner. Mason tried to ignore him, and the dig – one of many he had to suffer daily – at his bachelor status.

  Frank continued philosophically, “You gotta take the easy assignments with the fun ones. Can’t be walking into a vee hive every day, can we?”

  If Mason bothered to look at him, Frank would probably wink, and then Mason would have to shoot him, so he just kept staring straight ahead until they got to SCC.

  Annoyingly, every time they came to the research facility - which, thankfully, was only twice a year or so - they had to report in to SCC for a green visitor badge and an SCC assigned escort. Mason loathed the inefficiency of it almost as much as he hated the irrationality. The security guards here weren’t field agents. They were facility security guards. Yet he and Frank had to be escorted by them to and from the vee prison as if they couldn’t be trusted to be left on their
own, which was absurd, considering every time a vee was transported, a Special Agent was required to be present.

  SCC was a split level, open space office filled with long desks with several computers on each, a wall of storage that Mason assumed held weapons, as well as one wall devoted to security camera monitors constantly cycling. A few guards sat at computers, a couple watched the wall of monitors and several looked like they were just hanging out in a little seating area. Mason and Frank were handed off to a guard who sat at the desk near the all important badge printer. Frank, knowing Mason’s mood, handled most of the paperwork. Mason still had to show his ID again and sign in. Mason and Frank were issued one walkie to use while on site, which Frank handed to him. They were also given their green badges, which were about as useless as the red ones. He could badge himself into the bathroom, but not much else.

  “Althea.” The badge printing guard called out, and a young woman who’d been hanging out in the seated area, walked over. “You’re up.”

  She was wearing the black mock turtleneck armor all the guards wore, under her gray uniform. Mason thought the armor was ridiculous. The turtleneck portion wasn’t bullet proof or even bite proof. It might slow a vee down, if he was going straight for the neck. A vee trying to escape this facility would probably be trying to kill and not feed anyway, and the uniforms left plenty of other vulnerable places open to attack.

  Mason stepped forward to make introductions. “I’m Special Agent Farino and this is Special Agent Garmin.”

  She looked Mason up and down, smirked, and then nodded at Frank. “Yeah, you can just call me Althea.”

  Frank nudged Mason, and gave him a look that said, “Now don’t you feel like an ass,” as they followed Althea out into the corridor.

  The vee prison, as it was referred to verbally, never in writing, was just down the hall from SCC. Mason had never needed to go past the guard station to drop off or receive prisoners - the vees he transported were taken from him or delivered to him outside the prison door checkpoint – still, he knew that there were fifty holding cells built into a sub basement facility beneath where they were standing.

  As they approached the prison door, they saw six human prisoners, in the orange day glo uniforms of an actual state prison, lined up against the wall, with four security guards watching them. Mason assumed, by the clothes, that these were the death row prisoners who were also being taken to the labs.

  Althea looked back at Mason and Frank and nodded towards the human prisoners, “You got an extra big load today.”

  Frank laughed. Mason just shook his head.

  Escorting vees through a building while being escorted themselves was ridiculous. Add in transporting human prisoners, who were surrounded by armed guards, and the day became surreal.

  After signing more papers and showing more ID, they received four male vee prisoners. The only thing that distinguished the vee prisoners from the human prisoners was that they were in street clothes, since they weren’t officially prisoners given that, officially, the prison didn’t exist.

  As for biologically visible distinctions between human and vee, there weren’t any. Vees looked human. As someone who spent a lot of time around vees, Mason could sometimes pick a vee out of a crowd by the way they moved. Vees were inherently stronger and faster than humans, and occasionally one would move too quickly or pick something heavy up too easily. To an unpracticed eye, the differences were nearly impossible to detect.

  After checking the restraints, Mason turned to Althea. “Would you like to lead the way?”

  She smiled and started walking towards the stairs. With all the prisoners and guards, the elevators would’ve been inconvenient, not to mention unsafe. The building was eight stories high and they were in the basement, so Mason was happy they were only going to the fifth floor.

  Frank fell in beside Althea and started telling her about Ireland. Mason easily tuned him out. He wished he could as easily ignore his own thoughts. He hated the bureaucracy of the NVIA. There was so much waste. Coming here to act as babysitters, when the guards onsite could clearly handle taking the vees for a walk, was just one of many stupid policies Mason had to deal with.

  He’d become an agent, a field agent, because he wanted to protect people. As altruistic as it sounded, Mason had really wanted to help make America safe again. Unfortunately, he spent half of his days performing dumb jobs that anyone could do – and this was one of those days. What made today worse was that Mason was certain there were things going on in this facility that his stomach didn’t agree with.

  He understood the need to find a cure, the need to stop vampirism from spreading. He knew that figuring out how to do that required testing. He also knew that not every vee he arrested was evil, not every vee he arrested was even a killer. Many of them had found ways to live with human donors. Some of them had even returned to their families, after the change, hiding in secret rooms by day, tucking their kids in at night. Yet Mason was to arrest them, just the same, and take them to places where they disappeared, places like this.

  Mason had learned, after his first few months at the agency, that it was best to put such thoughts out of his head, as much as possible. Frank was the most tolerant special agent Mason had discussed the idea of innocent vees with, the idea that biological testing on unwilling subjects was unethical. Frank was tolerant because he didn’t tell Mason he was an idiot, or a vee sympathizer, or threaten to report him. He’d just told him to shut up.

  On the fifth floor, Frank stood guard in the hallway while Mason inspected the vee lab room. It looked like a hospital room, except the cots had restraints on them, and there was a wall to wall mirror on the far side of the room. He wondered, as one did when looking at a two way mirror, if someone was watching him.

  The guards led the vees in and strapped them down by their wrists. Mason went from one to the next, to the next, checking that the restraints were secured. The first two lay quietly while Mason looked over their restraints. The short, chubby one with the peace tee shirt and hoodie actually pulled at his chains like he was trying to break free.

  The last vee he checked was tall, thin, and had piercing blue eyes that seemed to take everything in. Mason recognized him. It’d been a long time since he’d seen him on the news, but this was the guy who’d been trying to get vees the right to vote. As Mason bent over him, the vee very loudly sniffed him.

  Mason startled. A knee-jerk reaction to an unexpected sound. The vee smiled. He was trying to assert control, to show that he wasn’t afraid. Mason felt bad for him. He still thought he had the power to scare someone. Mason was sure that, before the night was out, the vee would be the one who was scared.

  Chapter 3

  Daniel surveyed his new surroundings from the hospital bed. They weren’t bad, for a prison, or a lab, as he understood this place to be. The bed had clean linens on it, which was odd considering what they planned to do him and the other vees in this room, as if providing this one small comfort in some way compensated for taking away their freedom and very likely their lives. Not that he planned to stick around long enough to find out exactly what they would do, if he let them.

  The two way mirror was a bit of a joke. Did they think vees were brain dead animals incapable of reason? A lot of people seemed to think the opposite, that vampires had magical qualities - like seeing through two way mirrors, perhaps, or having no reflection. The truth was a bit less exciting. Daniel couldn’t fly, change into a bat, or control minds. He could see himself in the mirror as often as he wanted to, and, let’s be honest, he often wanted to. Not at the moment, of course. He hadn’t showered in nearly a week. So he didn’t strain to see himself in the mirror, nor did he try to peer through it, since both would be a waste of time.

  The agent guy, the one who looked too skinny to be a cop, checked the chains on each of the vees before heading for the door. Daniel made sure to smell him, loudly, when he leaned over his bed. Daniel loved smelling humans. For one thing, it freaked them out. For an
other, you could always get a sense of who the person was from how they smelled. That was one thing vees all had in common, heightened senses.

  There was nothing special about this cop. There rarely was. The liked coffee and curry and washed with some generic brand of soap. Thankfully, he did not employ after shave. Sometimes sniffing could backfire and send you into a sneezing fit. It’s very hard to appear threatening whilst sneezing. Daniel kept cool, sniffed loudly, and startled the guy, giving Daniel a moment to treasure. Sure, it was childish, but you had to get your kicks where you could find ‘em in a place like this.

  As soon as the agents had left and closed the door, Carl started talking. Daniel had come to realize that talking was this Carl’s “thing.” Carl was short, pudgy, and pale and he talked nonstop. More specifically, he plotted nonstop. Carl’s magical vampire power seemed to be never getting tired of hearing his own theories.

  “What do you think these chains are made of? There’s probably something in this room we can use. Look around you guys. I’m sure we can find a stick or something.”

  “A stick? A stick? What the heck do you think you’re gonna accomplish with a stick?”

  That was Jerome piping up. Jerome was the opposite of Carl. Tall, dark, and built like a wrecking ball, with about the same amount of patience. Daniel just ignored Carl, and the rest of them for that matter. Jerome couldn’t bear Carl’s stupidity. He kept trying to find a way to fix him.

  “First of all, a stick would just break, you try to put that up against metal.” Jerome argued. “Secondly, you think we’re gonna find a key or a crowbar lying around? Is that what you think? Cause I am pretty sure they thought of that when they brought us in here.”