Alive: Nikolai

by Ethan Solomon

The last vampire in a world where everyone lives forever.

Palms Grove, Iowa, 2009

It was easy for Nikolai. He had been turned at a young age, and it hadn't been too long ago, according to their measures of time. He had brought the girl into one of the hotel rooms that had been marked for use. He could sense the place as soon as he had entered the city. The marks of his people that had been here long before him. At least 50 years or so. They were blood marks, and he would leave his own by staying here for a few days. The blood marks had helped him find this girl, telling him mostly where not to go. Because no vampires had been born here, that was an unmistakable scent, and in accordance with the creed he would try a new bloodline in this town, in the hopes of passing the infection on.

So he had sought out someone new. The library was the best place for this. 50 years ago he would have looked in the records, but the internet worked even better. Checking out the real estate of a few months ago, he wrote down a few addresses and headed out to check into them. The third house that he had passed by, quite a few hours later, almost too much later for him to be out, but it looked promising. There were 4 bedrooms in the house, and he could sense the people inside. One of them burned just right for his tastes. She was perhaps a year or two away from his original age. Not too particularly beautiful, but it was easier this way. The beautiful ones were hard to lure away. This…had almost been too easy, almost no effort at all. It weighed on him, as did all the others.

He had waited as long as he could, as he always did. They all did. He lasted almost 5 days. He watched the patterns of the town, moving around like a ghost. It was always…so easy. He had been surprised his first time how easy it had been. These girls wanted to be lured away by some mysterious stranger, and over the many years that was one thing that had stayed the same. So very trusting. But he now had to eat. He had marked his prey and had tracked her movements. All while maintaining his cover in an unused shed on the outskirts of the city. By now, he knew her routine, when she awoke, when she went to school, where she liked to go after school, and her night schedule, which was mainly studying at home. The weekend had been a variation, but it was Tuesday now, and he had known exactly where to meet her. Everyday after school she stopped at the local Dairy Queen for dinner. It was still light outside, and he took cares to cover as much of his face as possible with a hoodie and sunglasses. Some of his ilk enjoyed being out in the sun, but those that were, were the suicidal ones. You would live but scant years like that, and they would be painful. Enough to drive one mad. And Nikolai tried to avoid those groups altogether, not even approaching a city that had their stain on it.

He had met her in line and immediately his pheromones kicked in. Her pupils had glazed over and he had offered to buy her meal for her. She had just nodded, and he could practically see the gears turning inside of her head. They sat down at one of the booths and she absentmindedly nibbled at her burger, her eyes seemingly attached to his own eyes. He asked her name. "Tiffany. What's yours?" "Nick". "Where you from Nick? I haven't seen you around here before." "I just moved into town with my parents actually. We bought the empty over on Jefferson. I just got here today actually." Don't you want something to eat Nick?" He smiled at this, his teeth showing in a wolfish grin. "Yeah, but I can't stand this stuff. I'm actually going to cook something up at home later. I was just here checking out the sights around town, trying to find some people my age." It was Tiffany's turn to smile now, although hers was a languid smile, and she leaned back in the booth, showing off everything that she had to offer in the usual unconscious manner.

His stomach was growling now, he was ravenous with lust, much as he tried to stop the hunger from controlling him. He could eat three of them at this point and wander around for a week in a blood high if he wanted too. His nose picked up the overpowering scent of her blood as it moved quickly through her body, and he could see the color rising to her cheeks. There was an itching where his canines were, the fangs ready for their meal. It had been a total of almost 2 weeks now without any food at all, and he was practically delirious. But he always had to be careful lest he betray his presence too early. Even with the control he had over his pheromones, there had been instances, not with him, but he had heard the stories passed around. Vampires that waited too long and fouled up trapping the feed. Nothing good ever came from it. Either the Vampire was killed, or he or she was forced to kill. Neither outcome was acceptable.

Vampires that waited too long and were overcome by the bloodlust, a very real and dangerous symptom. He had met one once. New York City, 1959, Central Park. He hadn't even gotten a name from the man. He just lay in a corner to the northeast side, under one of the small bridges. He could smell the taint for miles, so overpowering he could practically taste it. The man was overtly feral, he could sense the wildness about him as he had drawn closer. There were 3 other vampires in the city at the time, and none of them had approached this man. But he was relatively young, and they had probably seen this countless times in their years. This Vampire attacked without warning, and for no reason. He killed his prey after toying with them, and did not feed properly off of the body. Instead, he seemed to sample the different flavors, killing as many as 5 in one night. The blood would run freely through the ground, and on the last day Nikolai had gone up to talk to the thing, to at least try to understand if he could. The thing had leapt up at his presence, its eyes betraying its fear, knowing he was facing one of his own, and yet his face clearly showed his desire for a confrontation. Nikolai had been shocked at the time, but now he understood, had spoken to his peers about the bloodlust since then. Nick had tried to speak to it for a few minutes before it had made its move. Nikolai had smoothly drawn his pistol and placed a bullet in the things forehead. He then stood over it and carefully switched the clip out. He had put the single bullet that had been given to him before this meeting and slid it into place, then cocked the gun. He placed it directly above the wound from the first bullet and pulled the trigger. The first bullet popped out of the other side, and the silver bullet began to melt inside the things brain. Nick then slid the first clip back into place, then carefully emptied it into its head. He had hoped that someone would have taken the time to do the same for him.

But that had been decades ago. With the size of the population, it was easy feeding these days, and the people were careless, over confident. Easy to lure to a meeting or a date. He had used the internet, but had grown wary of it in the recent years, afraid that one day he would be baited. He had never had problems attracting his meals when he was ready, and always took great care with the setup and cleanup. As far as the city was concerned, it should just be another missing persons case. At best, people would remember his face and they would release some vague sketch, but by then he was halfway across the country. The only truly vulnerable time was in the hunt. Having to go out and interact amongst the people. It was difficult for him to do, because he missed it. He missed the normalcy of life, and just being around it was enough to bring that pain roaring back, the overwhelming desire to eat normal food and sleep normally, and just be another person in the crowd. He couldn't even remember the last time he had just walked down a street with a crowd on it. Again, he kept situations like that to a minimum. It was thought that the less you were around the feed, the easier it was to stave off the hunger. He hadn't noticed any real difference however. The hunger was always there, always at the back of his mind, reminding him of what he must do to survive. It was a wretched cycle, and there was no end in sight.

Finishing the meal, the girl eyed him, curious about what to do next. She was definitely ready to go, it was clear in everything she did. "Tiffany, would you care to join me at my place?" She actually seemed like she had paused to consider it once more before nodding her consent. By now, her pupils were dilated from the intense drugs that were being shot in her direction. He didn't even have to control it. The only thing he could compare it to was getting horny when he had been normal. Before the disease. He stood and helped her up, taking her through the doors and unto the street. She could barely stand without his support, but he was easily able to support her just by holding her hand. His body adjusted for both of them, exerting its own inertia. At worst she would seem like she was a bit drunk.

As they walked he studied her. The chances were very high that after tonight he would never speak with her again. Well, that no one would ever speak with her again. He had had time to study the family, but he could barely feel guilty. He could barely feel anything anymore, besides the hunger. Afterwards, it would always come back and hit him, but that's what the secure rooms were for. It was the one thing that his kind usually agreed upon, and if not for the rooms, most of them would have little to no contact with their own people throughout their centuries of life. If a Vampire was to ever arrive in a city with no prior blood marks, then one was made. Money was never a problem for them to acquire, not that any of them ever spent much money. His kind lived in the shadows, a parasite of mankind. There were Vampires who lost their humanity, but they were usually put down quickly. Humans were smart creatures, and whether or not they understood the situation, they would end up taking you down. Put enough bullets into a vamp and he would go down just like any other creature. Human matter can only take so much punishment, no matter how much stronger he now was. He regenerated to a certain point, but automatics gunfire was to powerful of a weapon at short range, and with enough shots. It varied depending on the situation. He was certainly faster now as well, his reaction time and muscles in general. He didn't need to work out, his body burned through the blood he consumed and that was all. He was never fully comfortable in his own skin anymore. His body felt like an engine that was constantly being revved, and he always felt close to the burn out point. Except perhaps for the day or two after feeding. That was different. That was more like a heroin binge. Euphoric for a time, but you pay the price in the end. Coming down of the blood high and back to his reality was hard every time, and it was not something one could adapt to. Waking up to a body that had been drained of its blood by yourself was not fun for him, ever. Most of his kind were like himself, and thus they remained forever hidden, chasing the shadows. It was a shame that they all shared. And how precious few of them there were. The virus almost never caught and the victim would die soon after the feeding. Having to deal with the body was simple enough, lime pits under the rooms usually , carefully built to only be found by his people.

They arrived at the hotel. It was a 1 bedroom hotel room, with a kitchen and shower and the usual amenities. They went in through a side entrance and he opened up the door to the stairwell. He led her upstairs to the third floor and they made it to the room without running into anybody. The rest would be taken care of later. For now, his mind was only on the feeding to come. He locked the door behind them and gently pushed her unto the bed. He pulled off his shirt and then headed into the kitchen, Tiffany watching him with glistening eyes as he pulled out a liter bottle of vodka, unopened , and brought it over to the bed with him. He opened the bottle and drank some of it himself, taking about 3 or 4 shots before handing it to her. The alcohol ran through him painlessly and without any effect. She matched him, also taking a nice chunk out of the bottle. She was already so far gone that there had been no need for the alcohol, but it seemed to disarm the women, an explanation for why they felt so fucked up. She lay back in the bed, slipping off her top and beckoning him closer.

He laid down next to her pushing her down on to the bed beside him, effectively pinning her down. But she like it. This was one that like to be dominated a bit, and he would be more then happy to take the initiative at this point. He was deliriously hungry by now, and it was all he could do to stop himself from tearing into her neck. In his mind, deeply buried right now, he resisted. He fought this instinct with all his heart. He had tried so hard at first. Trying to convince his body that eggs still tasted like eggs, and that they filled him. But pretending only got him so far. At a certain point, just as a regular uninfected human would begin to grow hungry on only blood, so it returned for him, the gnawing hunger in his stomach. Regular food did not affect the cycle. Most would eat twice in one month. Some less. He ate about one a month, give or take a week. He was constantly near starving, and it affected his speed and reaction times. It also made a feeding a true event that left him high for a few days. Incapacitated was the true word.

Once, about 20 years ago, he had come very close to bloodlust. A fellow vampire had smelled the warning signs and had come to the room. It had been New York again, his one true haunting ground. He had gone for almost 2 months and had felt relatively normal. He had kept to himself with an absolute minimum of human contact. He was secluded in a room in a motel just off 12th and Madison near Central New York. It was a 4th floor apartment and was one of the nicer ones available to him here. At any given time there were anywhere from 5 to 10 vampires staying in New York. Not just passing through, but staying for months, even years at a time. New York was one of the few places on the globe that such a things was possible. The only one in America, that was for certain. He had passed through all of the major cities here at one point, but New York drew vampires like flies to a light. The atmosphere there. The people and their attitudes toward life, the manner that they treated each other and themselves. It made for a very conducive setting for his kind. Coming here was how he had first learned what he was, and his heritage. His curse. He still remembered his first trip like it was yesterday, one of the few memories that remained with him, like a scar in his mind.

He had never been to New York prior to his first time there as a vampire. He hadn't really cared to see the city or the sights or some garbage. No. He had come here because the scent had been overwhelming. Even on his voyage across the Ocean, weeks before they had been able to see anything, he had been able to smell it. He had fed once on that trip, an elderly man that he had tossed overboard as soon as he had finished the deed. The man would not have been his first choice, but in his first few weeks of observation aboard the boat, he had noticed that man outside on the deck for hours on end at night, with no on about besides the deck hands directly above them in the pilots area, and they couldn't even see what was happening below them. He had fed quickly, but it still took almost 40 minutes before it was complete. When he had fed on the last drop of blood he flung the body overboard and made his way to the other side of the vessel, but staying outside. He also had developed a habit of spending a lot of time outside, on the forward deck of the ship, so there would be no untoward questions that he would have to deal with. He had sat there for hours, even as the rain began to pour down, thick as his hand was each drop. His body was aglow, and he could was at one with everything around him. He felt at peace with the ocean around him, the people inside of the boat, and even the boat itself.

He had to snap himself back to reality, to the present moment, to this beautiful creature lying in this bed with him, and he began to kiss her on the neck, ever so gently, and he heard her begin to moan in the pleasure of it. His fangs slid out quickly, dripping with venom and he moved fast, just cutting into her neck, allowing the blood to start flowing. She didn't even notice a difference, could not tell that her neck had been pierced and that the feeding had begun. He pulled his clothes off, throwing them across the room and she began to kiss him in return. He pushed her back down unto the bed and tore of her blouse, then pulled of her jean skirt and underwear. They kissed for a few moments, and for a minute he returned to the wound on her neck, lapping up the blood that was leaking from the small puncture wounds. And then they were together, and she was straining up against him while he pushed her down, their movements growing fevered and frenzied. She didn't know it of course, but the venom his fangs produced also enhanced the pleasure of their coupling, while numbing the wound and the constantly flowing blood, which he returned to time and time again, never taking enough to cause her true pain or to die. He needed her very much alive while he fed, the blood constantly pumping through the heart. There was no nutrition for him in a dead human's body unfortunately. So they continued to make love, taking a turn on top, which he allowed, for very soon she would be too weak to do much of anything at all. Each time she came her blood tasted all the sweeter, and before long, yet coming close to two hours since they had begun, she began to feel the effects of the blood loss, which she ascribed to their strenuous physical activity. But he was far from done. Once he began a feeding, it was morally corrupt to stop now. When he had bitten her neck, her life had become either forfeit, or the even worse possibility of her changing over. So he laid her back down on the bed, gently now, and continued to make love to her, ever so slowly and gently, and her eyes flickered opened and closed, not knowing what was happening to her, her mind no longer her own. And this was how it usually went. He thought it was a much nicer way of doing it then most of his kin did, just picking a human at random and quickly draining them of their blood. This way, the girl had a nice experience, painless and quite pleasurable, and if she turned, he would have a friend, hopefully. He had learned of this technique some 100 years ago, while he had been touring across Europe. He had come to Switzerland for a short stay, about 9 months, and had grown very close with a family of vampires, which had been odd enough, but this family had taken to acting like a vampire ruling council in their country, and they monitored all the vampires moving in their territory, for fear of a Bloodlust vampire. There he had learned of various ways to use his venom to make the victims death pain free, and even pleasurable. He had tried to spread the technique amongst the vampires he had met elsewhere, and while many found the advice useful, others were to set in their ways, having murdered for too many thousands of years already. And he could easily understand how it happened. He remembered when he first started feeding, the guilt and shame it brought, and it haunted you, at all hours, the names, the faces, the shock that developed on their face towards their end as they realized they were dying. But over the years, the pain fades from the repetition of the act, until it slowly dimmed into feeling almost nothing, how a hunter shoots a deer, or a fisherman, or any sort of butcher. Or even a sanctioned executioner. The mind develops coping methods for dealing with almost any situation, and his mind had had much longer then usual for a human to develop these coping mechanisms. But Nikolai would force himself to feel these feelings anyways, for he feared losing them more then he feared his final death, or any other sort of pain that could be brought upon him. He never lost sight that he fed on what was still primarily his own kind, and yet they were not his own kind. He was an alien amongst them, he was an animal to them and in a way, they were the beasts of a sort to him. He could not understand what force, be it of nature or god that had brought him and his kind into existence. It made no sense whatsoever, for they were a parasite, forced to rely on humanity for its very existence. Yet he could not understand what they in turn did for humanity, as it should be in a symbiotic relationship of this sort.

He was losing the girl. Even though she felt nothing, her breathing had grown raspy and her skin was pale, nor was she moving below him. Her face belayed her ecstasy still, but the signs were there. It was time. He forced his fangs further into her now, the small punctures becoming tears in her neck the size of her thumb. She cried out, for though she could feel none of the pain, she could feel the pressure being applied, and he was now sucking in the blood greedily, lightheaded from the rush of energy that it was pouring into him. He stopped everything. He got up from the bed and dizzily collapsed to the floor, covering himself with a sheet as he heard the girl take her last breaths, gasping for the air and beginning to cry. The guilt overwhelmed his nausea and dizziness, and he got up, quickly put on his pants, and then covered the girl with the sheet, pulling her close to him so she would not die alone. He did not take anymore blood, so disgusted was he with everything. And then it was over, and she was dead, the sheets drenched with blood, his jeans moist from all the life force that had continued to flow out of her, and still did, what little of it there was trickling out in time to her fading heartbeats. He picked up the body with all the sheets on the bed, all with one arm, and with his mind, found the peg that latched the compartment in the room on the inside of the lime pit. As far as he could see, even with his vision, there was nothing down there. But there must be at least one or two bodies down there. No matter and he tossed the whole bundle down into the compartment, which was under the dresser, which had been bolted to the opening. When he had released the bolt, the entire dresser had easily slid aside and then he had to release the second set of pegs that opened the compartment. And he could smell nothing down there, which was as it should be. He then closed the lid and mentally relocked it, then slid the dresser back into place and mentally put its peg back into place. He was exhausted, and had barely been able to do this vital operation before passing out. That was why what he did was so dangerous, this blood high, or blood fever as it was sometimes called, incapacitated him, and with a few short seconds, he fell back unto the bed, which was soaked through with blood, and fell into a deep sleep.

He slept for about 3 days. He had pre paid for the room for 2 months, so their was nothing to worry about in that regard. But when he awoke, he had the strangest feeling that something was wrong, dreadfully wrong. He got out his bag and splashed bleach all over the mattress and anything else in the room he thought needed it. There was no need to be stingy, and he took his time carefully reviewing the place after he had finished the first time. Finally, he sat on the edge of the bed, looking around the dingy little room, which only brought back lustful memories of his last memories in here, and then that followed with all the guilt and disgust. He forced himself not to vomit, for that was a horrible waste of his precious resources, all that emerged was endless streams of blood. So he controlled it, and once again lay down in the bed to rest, sleeping for another 12 hours. When he awoke, he was finally beginning to calm down, the paranoia he chalked up to an effect of the blood high. It was 4 in the morning, as good a time as any to move on, leaving at night attracted less attention, and he preferred it that way. He felt freshly charged, all his capabilities working in overdrive, and it felt good, invigorating. The temptation to just give in and feed at ones whim was always there, always tempting. It was like any drug that existed for his human counterparts, who abused whatever substances seemed to come their way. His self control had definitely improved over the many years that had gone by since his transformation. It was not something that came easy, the control to live amongst mankind and not partake of their blood at any time. When he had first turned, the first few months were vague hazes in his memory, blood fevered dreams that he wished were not his, but this was his life, chosen or thrust unto him, it didn't matter. This was his life now, and it was all he could do to rise in the morning and not try to kill himself in some fashion or another. This was no existence for a human being, or what had once been human. It was inhuman and cruel in many ways. But if he was careful, he would live practically forever, and he could not bring himself to make a decision on the matter. On the one hand, as a human being, he had been born with an insatiable curiosity, one that drove him forward even now, everyday a quest to see what would come, what new adventures awaited him. And then the other side of him, knew times such as this, killing and mutilating and hiding the body of an innocent, the blood of many staining his hands and haunting his dreams at night.

He had to get out of this town now, and quickly. It was a small town, where everyone knew everyone and as soon as it was realized that the girl was missing, eyes would be turned his way soon enough. He packed his few changes of clothes into a bag, some cigarettes, a lighter, a Bible, a small radio, paper and pen and some American bills. He went once over the room, and then again, a second time, making absolutely sure that there was nothing in the room that gave anything of its last few days away. There was no way any human being could ever get into the pit, so he wasn't in the least worried about that. But blood stains, hair, anything of that sort could not be left behind. There could be no trace of him when he left this town. There were those that hunted his kind, those that had been wronged by one of his own, or the Hunters, the semi organized group of humans who for as long as there had been vampires had tried to keep track of them, and to exterminate them. He really couldn't blame them for trying, if he were one of them instead of a vampire he might feel the same, but he was defensive of his own kind, no matter how "evil" they may be. These things had not changed when he had been turned. Loyalty, a very human trait still burned strongly inside of him, as did so many of those emotions he wished he could leave behind. Like guilt. And remorse. Jealousy, anger and rage and pity and fear and love, and all those other little things that make people what they are. He wished that becoming what he had become allowed him to switch these emotions off, but there was no such easy way out, much to his dismay. He had no time for this now. He had to move on, as was his life. Staying in an area where you had just fed was the number one no-no.

He opened the door and the beautiful warm breeze brushed inside, his hair wafting gently in the breeze in stark opposition to what had occurred in the room behind him. Before stepping outside, he pulled out his small scimitar from its sheath on his back. Pulling up his shirt, he made a small deep slice on his fourth rib from the top, marking this feed. There were already a few hundred of these marks, and he remembered the person associated with each one. The blood dripped freely from the deep wound for a few seconds before it started to regenerate, sealing off the blood flow and leaving only another small scar in its wake. Only now did he step out of the room and into the waning sunlight beaming down in front of him as the sun made its way over the horizon, the beginnings of night and its shadows emerging in the world around him. He was right on one of the few main streets in town yet there was no car traffic, just a few pedestrians making there way through town. No one paid him any attention, although it was likely that the girl had already gone on report as missing. Most of the foot traffic seemed to be heading to a bar which had extremely loud music blaring from its open doors and windows, cigarette smoke pouring out in huge billows of sweet smelling smoke. He was almost tempted to stop in for a smoke and a beer but he knew he couldn't. In the next city in a few days, he would take some time to relax before beginning the hunt once again. So he moved down the street in the measured canter that he adopted in these situations, the carefully measured walk to look as though he wasn't carefully measuring his walk. When he was on the outskirts of this little town in the middle of nowhere he would begin running. The first thing he had done when arriving here was checking his map for his next town, and that would be Denver, Colorado. Not exactly a town, not anymore anyways. He could still remember his first trip there almost 60 years before, and then it had also been a tiny city, but he had heard that it had grown into one of the major metropolitan cities in this country now, and he was ready for the change a big city would bring.

So he moved on through the city, carefully picking his way through the mostly deserted streets so he would run into as few people as possible. It only took him about a half hour to make his way to the city limits, and when he did he breathed a sigh of relief. Yet another notch on his chest, another city to never return too. He began to run now

2042, London, England, Zone 4 of the current U.N. Partition.

London was great for him. The constant rain and cloud cover were perfect for his kind, unmatched for any major city in the world. It was relatively easy to find a city with plenty of cloud cover and rainfall year round. But London was the largest, most populated. Unfortunately, it was also the most heavily monitored and policed in the last century or so. It seemed that after the traumatic experience of WWII almost a hundred years ago the government had developed a certain…well, paranoia he would call it. This made it most difficult to walk the streets without the proper Ident cards or Bio-Ident imprinting.

He had paid a small fortune for a Bio-Ident chip to be placed in his wrist, and he was able to move freely throughout most of Europe without a problem. Feeding was a much larger problem for him. The amount of hover cams flying around made it damn near impossible for him to find a secluded area, or even to lure some girl to a hotel room without being spotted. It took extremely careful planning, almost all of his free time after a feeding to plan the next one. It was a downer for him, no free time to relax and drink in the sights that this current edition of London offered. London in many ways stayed the same throughout the ages, but the flavor of the buildings, the tone of the people, the way they treated each other, well that changed almost year to year here he felt. Every time he came back, every ten years or so, there was something indescribably different about the place, from the colors to the smells. And it was certainly very freeing to be able to move about the city during the day with no trouble at all.

But the times had changed in recent years. He couldn't quite place his finger on it, not yet. Usually, human beings could almost sense his presence. Not in any tangible way, being able to identify him as a vampire or anything of the sort. But they could feel the power he radiated as he walked down the streets, unconsciously giving him a wide berth. Until he turned on the charm anyways. Once he identified a mark, they were his. He had never failed in reeling in a feed once he had set his eyes upon one. Never. And yet, what was different about this place now. The new government had made many changes, from the redistricting of all the time zones on the planet, to the power the local authorities held.

It almost seemed to him that the locals resented the authority that the worldwide government had taken, had taken the power that was formerly held only by the local government. Now they took there orders from the U.N., as did the rest of the planet. He couldn't blame them for being a bit resentful; he understood how it was to relinquish control of destiny all to well. But there hadn't been a major conflict in a little under 30 years now, ever since the quick war that was now referred to as WWIII had occurred. Most of Israel and large parts of the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. were still heavily irradiated, although New York was now referred to as New Haven, and was enclosed in a huge Terra Dome that encompassed most of the state of New York as well as New Jersey. The dome had been built over a ten year period, and about five of those years had been used to filter out the radiation. Now most of the space was occupied by U.N. offices, the only place on the planet to contain U.N. offices. From what he understood, most of the real players in the planetary authority lived permanently on the Global Space Command Station, or for short, GSCS.

Perhaps that was the change he sensed. Not a relaxing, as should be in this case of eternal life for all, and no war or fear of being bombed. But some underlying tension, some loss of trust in ones local police, when knowing they could be overruled by a higher authority. There was also a loss of independence; London was no longer the flavor of London as it had been through the ages…now it was just another city amongst many of English speaking cities, no flavor distinction amongst all the different regions he traveled too. The imposed rule had allowed a freedom of safe travel that had never been seen before, and this caused a mashing of cultures that would soon become one global culture, no differentiation between the different zones of the world. Of course, that was likely the plan, as far as he could tell. A place like Saudi Arabia no longer held any mystery to the outside world, for it was just as accessible and safe as any other region on the planet, and you could see or do anything you could there as you could anywhere else.

This seemed to drain something, some spirit of the people, some of the pride that it was to be from a particular place, knowing you were different then the people halfway across the world. A sense of place in the world. Everywhere he went the people seemed dazed by the endless possibilities now available to them, to the point that they all seemed paralyzed, doing whatever it was they had done for the years before they had received their "gift". Now they all understood the gift that haunted him, except that they had it easy. For them, they did not need a living breathing human for sustenance. He hated them now. He never had before, but envy clouded his judgment. Now the people all around him had the only upside to being what he was, and he was only left with a curse, the curse that he would now have to live with forever, amongst men that lived forever. It changed the balance of power in man's favor. A person going missing was a lot less frequent now, and the planetary police investigated each one extensively. The requirements to get through security checkpoints were becoming impossible to circumvent. He was not one that minded having to carry papers to get by, and the small chip inside of him that allowed him to move freely around most of the world seemed a small sacrifice to pay. That little chip had cost him a small fortune, which he had slowly had to steal over 2 years, almost one million dollars in total. The chip had a locator device that only activated for five minutes when being actively scanned, just to fool the networks. Otherwise, he was completely off the grid, and he could only work off the books and for only a few weeks at a time at most. It was rather difficult to find work this way, so he was stuck doing minor break-ins in small out of the way places, taking what he could off of victims, some electronic fraud, and pick-pocketing. Again, all very distasteful stuff to him. It made him feel like scum, but he had no other choice. He was a parasite off these people scurrying about, and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

He had been in London for under for just 2 weeks, and if all went well, he would have no need to feed until a little bit after he left. He had come for a meeting, arranged over a secure dedicated line that had burned its lines out electronically after just one use. The device was still usable, just not over that frequency, ever again. Each device came with varying amounts of one time frequencies, and one of the only people he knew on the planet anymore, Clayton Moore, or Clay, had given this particular one to him with 10 such frequencies built into it. He had never used it before, but it was one of the few attempts made to keep The Conscious, what the civilized vampires now called themselves. He always laughed at this, but he had accepted the device without question. These days, any information at all was hard to come by, and through Clayton, he could be made aware of anything of interest, and a meeting could be arranged between many or single member of The Conscious. Most vampires numbered themselves among The Unconscious, refusing to mingle in large cities, carry any devices with them, attempting to fit into the new world they found themselves in. He heard and saw from this kind less and less, and it was an ominous sign to him. Less then 100 years ago, he couldn't find a city that didn't have a few vampires in it, if not then, then very recently. Now it was next to impossible. He hadn't been to London in years, almost 42 to be exact about it, and he had jumped at the invitation. He had been in the Western hemisphere for awhile now, and he had been looking for an excuse to head back to the other side of the world. There were many more people over here, and it was almost becoming a problem at this point. But there was plenty of room on the globe still, just resources that were being stretched, and the Moon and Mars had become excellent temporary sources of minerals and massive food automatically operating fields of food, endless stretches of fresh vegetables, animals, water reservoirs, grains, everything. And it was working, slowly, to relieve the problem. For now. He saw it as a temporary solution for these people, but he couldn't concern himself with that. He had to focus on staying alive, not being caught. London was so much worse now then he remembered it, and it had been bad. America was close to achieving the same status, and the rest of the world was surely only a few years behind. At that point, if his people didn't get organized, he couldn't see how they could survive. And these were the symptoms that he was seeing, seeing less and fewer and fewer roamers, and even less in the cities. It became harder and harder year by passing year to skirt the attention of the ever present security drones, the eyes of the robot's of these people, the Mark's as they called them, for the astonishing variety mimicked man himself. They could never be mistaken for a human being though, if only in the way that they moved, always very tense and alert, and for his kind, the way they smelled.

He awaited his friend at a small café, privately owned, right outside of the eastern end of London, in a district called Poplar, adjacent to the Chrisp Street Market and the Thames. He could just see the Tower of London off in the distance. The street traffic was heavy, and the different scents and sights were an assault as well as an affront on his senses, his eyes being well adjusted for living in darkness, not so much so in the day. Not that he could not see well, but it induced the feeling reminiscent of a pounding headache, not something he would enjoy for long periods. He sipped a coffee he had paid for by scanning his ident-chip, which accessed a dummy account, set up for this dummy I.D. There were always U.N. police walking by, all having been trained in space, indoctrinated into their forces, and were issued a generic visa, losing all nationality they had once claimed. It seemed to work for the most part, at least from his outsider's perspective. He was growing a bit impatient with Clay, he was already running a half hour late, and soon he would be tempted to get out of here and back into his hotel room, but he was reluctant to leave without having completed his reason for being here. More and more so, he began to realize that it would be next to impossible for him to live here and it would likely be his last visit ever. Instead of wanting to prolong his stay, he was anxious to be gone from this place. He would miss it, he missed any place that he knew he would never see again, as was becoming more and more common.

And then finally, 45 minutes late, there was Clay. Nikolai highly doubted Clayton was his real name, as this vampire was quite obviously German in origin, tall, classically handsome, built like a tank, blonde hair and blue eyes. German all the way. He had never questioned Clay about this, and had never felt the need too. If he had something to hide, that was his business, and Nikolai couldn't care less. He was just happy to have a friend at times, a face he knew through the years. And somehow, even though he always expected it to be gone, there was that spark of humanity, that little bit of happiness, a leftover from the days he had been a human being. Clay was grinning broadly and came up to give him a careful hug, which Nikolai awkwardly returned from his position sitting at the table. Clay slid into his seat, his movement's panther like, quick as a cat could be, his eyes darting about always, barely settling on Nick's own eyes. He signaled the waiter and murmured something quietly to her, a quick smile and predatory flash of teeth telling her to hurry, a large denomination credit chip in her pocket assuring no problems.

"So my friend, how the hell have you been, where the hell have you been, tell me that all is well with you!" Nick smiled; he had missed this sort of friendly banter, much as it became wearisome after a short while. So he sat there, sipping on his latte and telling Clay all the recent news from the Americas, everything that could be learned from being there, and not actually living there. There was much to say on the matter, and it was a good half hour before he ran out of things to say. Clay was partaking of a huge deli sandwich on some artisan bread, never once breaking the image of a normal person out to lunch with a friend. Never once did they discuss what they did with their time, only where they had been. Everything else was taken for granted. He was dying to ask how Clay got by here…and he was tempted to phrase a question tryig to ascertain that, but he was worried. Clay had called him here for a reason, and he would be getting to it soon. Soon, Clay finished eating and drinking, and calmly sat back, his eyes finally looking straight at Nick's. "We can talk here safely for a few minutes now, I just activated a refuser…we should have at least ten minutes in case we are being watched….Nick, I'm leaving London…it's become impossible to live here. Already I eat out of town, but I find it more and more necessary to find a cabin out in the woods in the countryside, and to feed days away from there. I called you here to say good-bye, and to give you some advice, which is that you do something along the same lines." He had expected something like this. "You know me Clay; I'm a roaming soul-." "This isn't the time for that kind of talk. We are an endangered species now Nick. Too many of our mutual acquaintances have gone missing in the last few years, either dropping off the face of the world, either that or worse, and you can imagine what that is". Clay's features were growing stormy, the conversation was upsetting him, and understandably so. "Listen Clay, there's nothing I can do about it…I can't say I haven't seen it coming. But I just can't do that. I need to keep on the move. It's my way."

Clay leaned forward. "Then this is good-bye my old friend. I am dropping off the network, its too risky to take with me. I doubt very much that I shall see you again. Whatever is happening is happening quickly. I wish you the very best of luck in your travels." Nick reached his hand out to clasp Clay's. "And I wish you all the luck in your hiding. And I have no doubt…"

There were airships coming down. 4 of them. Military issue, Hercules class, heavily armored and carrying 14 soldiers each. This was a no fly zone, but these ships were coming down just at the end of the street, less then a half a mile away. He was still gripping Clay's hand, which suddenly shoved him downwards and away. "Run. I'll take care of it." And then Clay was gone, jumping over the railing and headed directly to the black armored soldiers boiling out of the hovering airships, waving his arms and screaming like a fucking madman. Nick was running now, in the opposite direction, fast as he could without revealing what he was. He heard screams from behind him and had to stop, to turn and watch, whatever it might cost him. Clay was engaging in hand to hand combat, using all of his raw strength. But these soldiers were wearing full military bio-suits, and blows that would crack a human open like an egg barely even dented their armor. They were using electric prods to push Clay into a corner, and when they finally had him on the ground, his wounds already starting to close, one of the soldiers aimed a ridiculously large looking weapon and fired. A crackling blue net shot out of the nozzle and pinned Clay to the ground, sending near constant high voltage shots through Clay, who was screaming in agony now. The soldier pushed a button on the gun and the web snapped closed, a thin tether still attaching it to the gun, which was then placed in a holder on the aircar, securing the still struggling vampire.

And then they were fanning out, 56 soldiers all streaming down the street, their weapons held at the ready as they moved quickly through the crowd. They obviously knew he was here, and he began to move now, fast, fast as he possibly could, becoming nothing more then a blur through the streets of London. He looked up once when he heard an aircar fly overhead, and he saw a small figure, electricity arcing through thr net still, dangling in open air as the vessel made its way to supersonic speed. For a fleeting second he wondered where they were going, and how this would be played out on the news that night. This had been so public, the men obviously knew what they had come for, had been very well informed what it was they were capturing. Stun weapons to take him alive. So many things to take into consideration as he moved out of the city and into the outlying forests. He hadn't seen even one indication of being followed, but he wasn't going to take any chances, and he hadn't stopped running for more then two hours, and he wouldn't stop until he felt safe.

He went over everything in his mind, the call he had received. The meeting place. Clay hadn't seemed nervous at all, at least not more then usual. Most importantly, those had been U.N. troops, on a U.N. airship. How the hell would the administration explain this on the news. Such large government excursions were infrequent and when they occurred, were always tracked by 1000 different satellites and chatted about interminably on the news nets. He had no idea where the hell he was, and it had been yet another hour so he slowed down, using the stars to place himself. He changed his direction only slightly northwestern to head to one of the smallish border towns, a place called Hedinborough, population 3,700. It was passing eight now, and he wanted to get into a bar or restaurant where he could catch the news. He wasn't plugged into a lace or anything portable and he needed to catch the news tonight, or at least get on the nets before U.N. Intelligence filtered out all the reports. Without Clay, he would have no contacts into the unplugged networks of information.

It was another hour before he got to the city. There was a small privately owned café with a few rooms up top, and he was able to secure a room with his bio-ident easily enough. No one even looked at each others faces anymore, not if the id checked out. Fake I.D.'s were so rare and costly they might as well not exist anymore, and if it said you were good, you were good. Either way, it was time for him to start working on a new one now. He sat at one of the tables and a steaming caf was brought to him, along with some croissants. Just a normal pedestrian passing through. There was a large monitor on each of the three walls, two turned to the news, one international, one local and a soccer event on the third. He waited two hours there, watching the screens before he saw the story. It was a 30 second flash, explaining that a eugenics violator had been arrested by a small U.N. force in London and was being held on U.N. Sector 3 Orbital Command Station. That was all he needed to see, and he headed up to his room. A eugenics violator? It made sense, you could explain it that way if you wanted too, but a violator would still be plugged in, wouldn't need such a force to be taken in, just a two man unit to calmly arrest. There had been no mention of the struggle put up, no video at all. He would log on to the internet one last time before pulling out that ident chip, and he would not find any mention or vids of what had happened. Clay was gone, just like that. But he would find out what was going on, however long it took him. If it was the U.N. hunting his kind, he would have to do something, anything. He couldn't just allow his kind to be wiped out. His kind had just as much right to live as the humans…right?

Authors Note: I feel like I have a lot I want to say here, a lot I want to explain about the characters and the story, and something tells me people wont like the ending, perhaps wanting to go a little further, but hey, this is it yo. I can only let the story explain itself on its own merits. So as always, Enjoy.

2572, Mercury, Genghis City, Polar Region, Sector 4, U.N. Territory

It was so hot here, even the filtration systems on the Cirrus III couldn't completely cool of the ship, and he couldn't leave the engines running for fear of detection. No one else occupied this side of the planet, no one at all. No research stations, no cities, nothing besides for his tiny little shuttle, which got buried in the hot blowing winds less then a day after he landed, each and every time, without fail. Every time he had to leave, which was at the end of every month, the engines strained against the kilometers of sand it had become buried under.

But the ship was the wisest decision he had ever made, allowing practical invulnerability. When he had originally bought it, he had to sit down with her and rip out most of her original U.N. military equipment, trackers, weapons, and trim. He had spent three months taking stuff out, and another four putting replacement Koeiplerrian made, black market bought equipment. The trip out to Pluto had been harrowing, and was the longest in system jump he had ever made. He had brought someone along, a young girl from Georgia that had agreed to come along on the trip. The whole time, he was just freaking out that they would be stopped and boarded. He hadn't been able to find anyone selling Ident codes for the ship, so until he had gotten to Pluto and to his contacts he had been vulnerable. He had fed three weeks in, not wanting to show any signs and have to deal with her freaking out, and it had been quick and clean. The body was now floating in space at 17 A.U. from the sun.

Once on Pluto, he couldn't even deal with the ship yet, having to find and secure food for himself in a new and unknown environment. His hosts had been more then happy to point him to the underground here, and finding a Nightingale had been relatively easy. Wherever there were men…Everything else was just following the plan. If anything, it ended up being easier out here, the disposing of the body. And he was never around long enough to see what kind of investigation they made. Those days were long over, his fight against the men and women that sought him. He was content to run now, to hide. Mercury was as close of a home as he could think of. This Solar System was his only confinement, and there were plenty of little out of the way colonies to jump around, picking up his prey, bringing them back to his ship, once it was up, and running. Nightingale's were a favorite easy target for him, but after a hundred years or so, the security began to catch up with him and the few others that were still alive. There were maybe 8 or 10 vampires still alive anymore, and most had survived exactly as he had, by abandoning Earth at the first chance and living on the run. There couldn't be any resistance; they had never had a chance. By the time they realized they were fighting a war, it had already been over, most of their comrades gone, what had happened to them was a fool's guess. No one knew. They had tried hacking U.N. files regarding the ops concerning vampires, but that hadn't gotten them anywhere, just traced and tracked for an uncomfortably long time before he could get some new registry codes.

Communicating was certainly easier now, with the few of them all possessing there own ships, all with fake registries, they were able to use the Nets from time to time to contact each other, mostly to let each other know that there was one or two less of them. And so the decades had marched on. He had gone to Mercury for the first time around 2120 and had been using it as a resting place since then, burying his ship there for weeks at a time, then blast out, head to one of the many mining cities scattered around the planet, or heading further out system, never to Earth though, never again. He would never forget his last few weeks there, the frantic discovery that operations like the one that had taken Clay were taking place all over the globe, and then reaching a peak around 2090 or so. All he could do was watch and hide, staying out of major cities, using equipment to determine satellite orbital paths and staying out of their sights, livin completely off the grid. This restricted him from commerce, hard currency wasn't an option past the 2025's or so. The years all tended to blur together at this point, and he had to refer to the Icarus's onboard to get more specific information from his own journals that were stored in there.

It got lonely out here, and that was the sacrifice he made, he knew the hands of not a single soul in this day and age. He spent most of his free time reading, books that he downloaded and kept in the Cirrus III, a virtual library that never ran dry. He only signed on to the nets when he absolutely had to, and always away from Mercury, for fear of drawing eyes towards him. And the eyes were always watching. It wasn't avoiding them. It was getting out fast enough after the job was done. No more lounging around after a kill. As dangerous as it was, he moved right afterwards, whether the deed was done in his ship, or if the city was big enough to hide in for a time and he got a hotel room. There could be no relaxing, not until he was back in his cozy little hole out on Mercury. It wasn't only dangerous, but draining, and each time he fed, he felt his time fading away. This was not how his species was meant to live, and it took its toll on him. His soul, what little there was left of it, was suffering, driven from his anti-social behavior to a place of extreme paranoia and disillusionment. There was nothing to be done, nothing he could do. He had tried to fight them, the men that chased after his kind, but there seemed to be an endless supply of them, wherever he went. Waiting for him. Anticipating him. He had grown so tired of killing them. He didn't want too, thought fondly of mankind, was constantly astonished at what they had become, in what was a relatively short time, for him, and now for them as well. In 2056, he had traveled to the Centauri system, and from there, the Virgil system. Both trips had been aboard Supra-Luminal's, Behemoth class vessels that were half the size of Luna, carrying up to 300,000 people per trip. And still it was terrifying for him. He had needed to feed twice on the way to the Centauri system, and when they arrived, there had been troops waiting. He had hid on the ship for a week, the most he could before the giant ship debarked. Once he was off, everything was as easy as it had been on Earth back in the day, little security around the bar's and hotels, all easily fooled by his recently purchased lace I.D.'s onboard A.I. system, which worked with him to avoid and fool security better then he had ever been able too.

The lace was a new acquisition, something he had only given into about 70 or 80 years ago…Bettie would know the exact date, she always reminded him on the day, like it was a holiday to be celebrated… He had met someone on Mars Orbital 4, a U.N. engineer who said that he could build a custom lace, designed with only the components his client asked for. When he had described exactly what he needed, an A.I. that would help him avoid the authorities would be able to monitor things at a level that he never could. The engineer had agreed, and hadn't charged him for the labor, only for the parts. When they met, he hadn't given the reason for the discount, just a silent exchange of goods for credit. 17 million Galactic Credits to be exact, including the operation required to implant the lace. Humans all had them, and he had been at a serious disadvantage without it. With Winnie, what he had called the little voice in his head, he was now on the same playing field as the U.N. troops that tracked him. He knew what they knew, but at a distance, separated from there networks and operating in his own little sphere of existence. He never thought that he was the type to be solitary, even if he spoke to no one, he preferred the sounds of a large city, the feelings that he could ride, ride like an emotional wave the peaked and crested. But he had grown to love Mercury, the solitude that he could achieve, a quiet piece of mind that he couldn't achieve on Earth at all. It was something about the knowledge that you were alone. And the viewports all looked out at the Sun, the blazing glorious sun, and at that distance, the Sun took up the entire field of vision, a blazing, pulsating, living thing that invaded your senses. It was inside of you, which disturbed his sleeping patterns to no end. Better then it was anywhere else though, the intense paranoia that crept up on him everywhere he went.

His kind had been wiped from existence, having never been given the chance to develop on there own. No, they were just parasites, feeding off of there own kind, having been brought out from there own kind. Now, the new children that were born after the gift of immortality had been granted them were genetically perfect from birth, no diseases or mutations. No, just perfect little boys and girls, couldn't be more test tube perfect if you tried. All through the natural process that had been granted them. And they had learned about the parasites feeding off of their society very soon after they were granted such long term vision, and then it was man who stood on the higher pedestal, who looked down at the prey it now found littered around. And man had struck, and had been victorious for the most part. For all he knew there were none others left, that he was the last of them. It had been a good twenty years since he had spoken to anyone at one of the assigned waypoints, which for good reason were well out of the way.

In 2378, the U.N. had divulged most of the information they held on the parasites, all the medical information they had "acquired", and some of the I.D.'s that the remaining vampires had been using. They knew. They knew all about them, had tracked them for 2 years before moving, taking out 83,000 vampires, a number that had astonished Nick, he hadn't guessed that there were that many at all. The reports also said that there were still several hundred left running around. That had been almost two hundred years ago, and he had abandoned Earth a year and a half later, where reports were coming in everyday of vampires being captured and taken to the orbitals. He never heard or saw from any of them again, that he knew. What that meant, he couldn't be exactly sure of, but it couldn't be anything good. Although he would soon be finding out for himself.

He sighed. It had been an inevitably, and he had just been postponing it, traipsing around the Universe thinking that he could outrun these human beings that were now organized against him, endless resources at their disposal. The signs had all been there, pointing at his eventual capture, but at a certain point there was nothing he could do. He missed Mercury now, and a memory struck him, the first time he had been to Mercury and had hibernated there for a month. After landing the Cirrus III, he had gone out on the surface, the first and last time he had ever went outside of his ship on Mercury. The bio-hazard suit he had worn wasn't rated for long term exposure, and from the second he had cycled the airlock out the onboard computer started clamoring that he return inside the ship, but he had wanted to explore a little bit. The environmental system started whining as soon as the direct sunlight hit the suit, and he could literally hear the material crackling and popping as it began to cook in the heat. He stood out there in the blazing heat that surrounded him for just a few minutes; until the suit warned him of imminent exposure, and he had made his way back inside faster then he had moved in a hundred years. When he had stripped out of the suit, it was burned mostly to ash, which disintegrated as he took it off. When he was out, there was nothing left besides a few fiber optic filaments that were covered with a tungsten alloy. The rest was completely unsalvageable. His next time out he had bought a suit that would last for at least a few days out there in case of emergency. Not that he had ever had the choice to use it. He wished he had never come back from the Centauri system. Centauria IV was the first to have been settled and terra-formed from pole to pole, and it had reminded him so much of Earth, a rough, frontier border world, much less localized authority and digital watchdogs roaming around. He would have had an easy time of it there, but it hadn't felt right, had felt like a trap waiting to swing shut around him. So he had made the arduous journey back aboard another Supra-Luminal, the Flying Mantis. It had been so odd to travel aboard those Goliath class vessels, worlds unto themselves, no true day and night, people about at all hours of the day, and enough of them that one or two going missing wasn't something that was noticed for quite awhile. When he had gotten back to the Sol system and to his ship, which had been patiently waiting his return, along with the main back-up of Winnie, a small version of her had come along in his lace for company. He had gone straight back to his hole on Mercury, the last place someone would think a Vampire would hide, in the broadest, hottest daylight possible outside of a tight orbit around Sol.

But they had been waiting for him this most recent time, hiding behind the other side of the sun, waiting to jump into the system after he had landed and settled in. They had jumped into the atmosphere, and the air compression made a bang that made him think the world had torn itself apart. And then they were outside the ship, forcing the airlock to cycle open and allow them in with some sort of hack, over-riding Winnie's ship security protocols in an instant, the power immediately shorting out throughout the ship, Winnie's protestations dying out with a whimper. Once they were through the airlock, they took control of the lower deck, while he tried to seal himself into the bridge. They came up and waved a keycard, and like magic, the doors slid open, leaving him sitting there, defenseless. There were four soldiers standing there, all wearing the uniforms of U.N. Special Forces, and they were all carrying absolutely wicked looking rifles. One of them raised his rifle, it could have been a he or a she, he couldn't tell through the full armored suits they were wearing, which matched the rifles almost too well in their sleek silver finish that seemed to flow in the ships dim light. And the suits did flow, being manufactured from controlled liquid titanium that sealed itself around its inhabitants, becoming a living habitat for its occupant. The soldier that had raised its weapon pulled the trigger, blue-white lightning leapt from the emitter into his chest, and there was now a small silver stake in his chest. This was all the first 2 seconds. In the next two, the stake's midsection slid aside and 16 filaments jumped out, wrapping themselves around him. In the next second, the filaments activated, sending just enough of a current through him to incapacitate him, not enough to bring him to any true measure of pain, but enough to stop him from being able to compose a real thought or offer any real resistance. He tried to break through, straining against the cords wrapped around him, but they only made themselves tighter, and now he was left in real pain. He found himself on the floor of his bridge, twitching, the floor sliding by him as a tether attached to the stake buried in his chest dragged him out. When he got to the docking bay, a flow metal suit was laid out on floor for him. One of the metal drones indicated his/her hand for him to get in, and when he tried to resist they just tripped him into it, and he found himself on the ground again, the slick liquid like material feeling its way around him. He had started to panic and there was Bettie whispering inside his head for him to calm down, and he felt her release some sort of endorphin mixer/creator into his blood stream. He hadn't wanted to install that option with his lace originally, but his lifestyle suggested that he should, and Bettie could be very persuasive when she wanted to be, and he was happy that he had now. The rush of drugs slowed his breathing and calmed his thoughts so he could think clearly. The stake in his chest had disappeared, folding itself into the suit, which by now had sealed itself completely around him. No visor was offered to him by the onboard, and he felt a small prick at the back of his neck as the suit first interfaced with his lace, and then overrode Bettie's files. He thought he heard a whispered good-bye, but he could have been imagining it. The rough male voice of the suit came through, explaining how it would feed him and how he should proceed with his wastes, giving him the estimated time of the journey and destination, explaining how he would have no control over the suit during the journey. There would be no window to the outside world, no monitor, no music, no light. The destination was Earth Orbital 1, and the time was 2 weeks.

He had been stuck in that miserable suit for 2 fucking weeks on his way here, and had only been released when he'd gotten into this miserable room, where he had been strapped into a chair connected to a terminal, which had accessed his terminal and left him incapacitated. His one lace had turned against him and made him prisoner in the chair, no straps required. They came in occasionally to pump him full of drugs, and he had had to check with Bettie every once in awhile to find how long he had been in here. The drugs affected his ability to talk to her, and just getting the time and date were acts of difficulty, focusing on that little voice that seemed to be swimming about in his brain, fading in and out. Whatever drugs they had given him were abating his hunger, for in total it had been two moths since he had fed. Not eliminating his hunger, he could feel it growing stronger, but it was stretching that time out to a maximum, past the point of where he would have been able to hold himself and stay alive. He hadn't known something like this was possible and wondered at the concoction of drugs that was being fed into him. Bettie probably knew, if he had been able to ask her. He hadn't realized how much he had gotten used to her constant presence until she had been silenced, that constant little friend who was more of a friend then any human he had ever known. She was a Designated A.I., a program sufficiently smart to be classified as Intelligent. Of all the humans he had met, none had acquired nor sought this ability. Too invasive for them. Like having another wife they said, one that lived in your brain and you couldn't shut up and so on. But Bettie was custom made, illegal. She was his friend, the only friend he had that had ever looked out for him, and she had enjoyed it too, because that was what she was made for. And now she was dying. Because he was slowly but surely dying.

The door leading into the chamber slid open, the outer solid one first, and then the perma-glass secondary slid aside as well. Four armored soldiers came in and took up posts around the room. Two Doctors followed the soldiers, and they came and stood by him, checking his vitals and then proceeding with a few injections. They then left, and an unarmored military uniformed man came in. He was forever frozen at about 50 years, meaning that this was a man who had lived since the "Gift" had originally been given, had already been into the aging process when he had been cured. He back-handed Nick a few times then straightened his face. "YOU, WILL NOT TRY ANYTHING, DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND ME, SUCKER?" The voice was a bomb going off in his head, the drugs sending him spinning out of control and the screaming man turned into a nightmare that kept on smashing his face in while screaming. This continued for some time in that manner, no explanation given, the methods of punishment increasing. It seemed to be at least a few hours before "Sgt. Mar'in" as he liked to refer to himself slacked off. The "Sgt." ordered the chair to strap him in, and 4 heavy duty clamps materialized over him. The soldiers left, then the Sgt., with one last look at him, turned and left the room.

An hour passed. Maybe two. He couldn't fucking tell. Then someone new came in. Young, frozen at about 22 or so, he'd guess. Jet black hair and piercing, soul sucking black eyes that seemed to have lives of their own that they wanted too tell. He sat down on a chair that he had carried in with him, just a little piece of foam that floated in the air when he left it alone, and carried his weight easily. He seemed very relaxed, and pulled out a cigarette, with the freshest smelling tobacco he had smelled in 500 years, give or take 50 or so. And then he lit it. On the fucking space station, he lit the cigarette; revolving through space at 84 RDI's a second, over the gleaming blue diamond that is Earth, the sun just rising over the Sector 4 zone. And then he offered Nick one. Nick could barely nod, but managed it. The young man came over, stuck a cigarette in between his lips, and lit it. "Your going to have to take care of the ash, my friend…I was worried that Sgt. Martin would kill you before I arrived, and I apologize…he does tend to get a bit over-zealous. But there was no avoiding it; I had other matters to attend to. Matters even more pressing then you Nick, sorry as I am to say it". He sucked down his cigarette as he spoke, finishing it in the space of two minutes, as Nick feebly tried to get pulls from his own cigarette, the nicotine hitting him like a hammer and sending his already light-head into the clouds, until it rolled out of his lips to land on the floor, where it continued to smoke for a minute before it put itself out. As hard as this new-comer sucked on his cigarette, it seemed to continue on, the tobacco burning ever so slowly while producing white clouds of smoke at the slightest hit. "Forgive me, you might not recognize me in your current state, but I'm sure you must have heard of me, its been kind of hard to miss in the last few centuries. My name is Zachary Taylor, I am the current serving head of the U.N." "I know who the fuck you are. You're the one who signed the death warrant on my kind, you son of a bitch." These words echoed something in him, sounding so hollow as he said them. Zach smiled, and then started to laugh. "Well, I'm sorry Nick, but what would you have me do? Would you have me allow you're "Kind" as you so delicately put it, to just run around, eating human beings for food? Is that what you would have me do? Look at you, you fucking animal." Zach got and walked over to him, and as he did so, guards standing outside rushed in, but Zach turned around pointing at the guards. "GET THE FUCK OUT, DON'T COME BACK IN!" And the guards stopped meekly in there head first rush in to protect their leader, about faced and went right back out, sealing the door behind them.

Zach came back at him, and he tore the hospital shirt off of Nick's chest, exposing the endless series and repetitions of deep scars on him. "Look at you! What would you have me do? 6736. I'm sure you know that number, since that's how many scars you have on you, you fuck. That's how many people we estimate you've killed. You're a fucking murderer." Zach stood there for a minute, his chest heaving as he eyed Nikolai, then he calmly sat back down in his chair, all the while keeping a wary eye on the limp vampire sitting before him. "You should feel honored Nick, honored that it took us so long to catch you. Just think about the amount of resources that has been invested in you, the millions of man hours of time that were spent on tracking you, the billion of dollars the U.N. invested in technology to rid ourselves of your kind. And you are the very last one. At first, it was a little game, but then we started to really lose track of you for long periods of time. Until we found the radiation trails leading to Mercury, repeatedly. It was random that we got the data, a semi-annual measurement of Sol's activity. Wouldn't do to let our home worlds sun blow up on us, now would it? I wonder what it would feel like to be the last of my kind. But what is your kind anyways? A parasite perhaps? We investigated it thoroughly, trying to trace back the lineages of the vampires we were bringing in, trying to figure out how long your people had a history. Not until 860 B.C. or so, given what we can estimate." A guard, not equipped with a bio-suit, interrupted them but instead a tray of drinks came inside, placed one in the hands of the Secretary General, and one in the hands of Nikolai, who sniffed at it suspiciously while the guard made his way out of the room. "If we wanted to drug you further, or kill you Nikolai, I wouldn't need to put it in your drink. It's just tea, brewed with the same herbs that we use to abate your hunger." Nick needed no further convincing and sipped quickly at the steaming beverage, and after just a few seconds, he felt his muscles involuntarily relax, his mind comfortably numb in such a manner that he hadn't felt even once since he had been changed over, forever ago. "The drugs in that tea, the one that helps you, temporarily, anyways, um, they work for a very short time, and your internal chemistry quickly overcomes the drug, building up natural anti—bodies to fight the "virus". That's the best we have been able to come up with, in the past 400 years or so since we started pursuing those types of possibilities. The possibilities of curing your kind, instead of just getting rid of you. Your own kind, at their height of power in the 18 and 1900's had made some preliminary research on the matter, when some of them began to refer to themselves as The Conscious and they were able to begin organizing themselves to be able to conduct large scale operations such as those. Those experiments were completely unsuccessful, the magnitude of their failures horrific in most cases. Then came the Gift, the final Gift from our Lord and Savior, and we suddenly had new science to play around with, new ways to think about what these incredibly long lives meant. After all, if god created us, and we now have undeniable proof, then we know that god approved you all, you had a purpose here on this planet. I refuse to believe that you are simply parasites, for what do us Humans gain from this relationship? All we love is population numbers. Well now yours have dwindled, your population forced into hiding, you had less and less chances to spread this….disease of yours, that if you had any fucking guts at all, you all would have done yourselves in rather then continue living. And of all of them to have survived, I would not have guessed that it would be you, and not for quite this long. We caught the second to last one almost 45 years ago now, and have been pinpointing and assembling logistics and probability reports to find you. It was Mercury that gave you away, Nick. Too me, what's funny is that in 2579, I vacationed on the Geo-Desic Sub Orbital there, and looking back, I really don't see it as a home for a vampire. Don't get me wrong, it was a beautiful sight. You don't really understand the power of Sol until your sitting as close as you can to it. And you lived there, for hundreds of years. I can only imagine what that must have been like for you." Nikolai was starting to regain some of his senses. And this humans words were beginning to make sense to him. Although what they were talking about, he had no idea. "So why am I here…what do you want from me, why not just kill me already?" Again that gently laugh, the young man throwing his head back with a whole-hearted laugh. "So many of them asked the same thing. You know, at first, I hated you. We all did, all the people working on eliminating your kind. We worked with a vengeance, I personally oversaw the committee in charge, approved the funds necessary to operate. I couldn't be thee to see all of them being brought in, but I tried as often as possible. You see, after all this time, you are still a giant mystery, one of the few left to us, one that few of my population even thinks about, not anymore anyways. But for me, I had to know, I had to know where you came from, where and what you evolved from. Eventually, in the 570's we figured it out, traced the lineage to a single man who in the 600's infected himself with some perversion of animal bloods and other manner of infectious diseases. You see, my friend, you are a disease, not a natural evolution of our species, one that would keep us in check from growing to large in numbers perhaps. But no, you are nothing, a leech upon us, feeding on our own, but as rational and conscious as any man, not even having the excuse of being a simple answer, a Predator. You are just a sick human being, who is reliant on us for feed. I can't let you go traipsing around the galaxy, you understand? I couldn't put you away on some planet and forget about it, I would need to feed you all. Besides that, I feel that you all deserve to die; you've earned it, with all that you've done. So again, my question is now, what the do I do with you? You're the last surviving member of your kind. Now I must offer you the same choice that I offered all of your brethren."

Nikolai was trying to struggle out of the chair he was strapped down to, so Zachary went at him for a few minutes, taking of his jacket first, a civilian one, not military issue, and then let fly with his fists for a good five minutes, landing punches all along his face and into his chest. When he started panting from the exertion, he eased off, and sat back on his chair, sweat dripping from his crew-cut brow. Nick was damaged, but he didn't hurt easily and sat back in his chair relatively calmly. "Fuck you….what have you been doing to us?" "That's complicated Nicky…and it ties into what I was just about to say." "Before you fucking beat me you mean?" A smile on Zach's face. "Yes, before I'fucking' beat you. Exactly. And now hopefully you will pay attention to what I'm going to say to you, unlike your brethren, who chose to sit here and rave at me like maniacs until I was forced to kill them. And I will kill you. Make no mistake here Nicky, I don't care that you're the last of your kind, we are not trying to preserve your kind, we are trying to commit genocide. Your choice is simple. The Last Gift, our last gift, humanities gift quite obviously did not apply to your kind. When applied, the serum turns Vampires into blind, deaf, crippled retards, who do not feed, do not eat, do not sleep, and die within two years of accepting the cure. Your other choice is that I personally, as the unanimous leader of humanity, will execute you for the murders that you have committed. Do you understand me?" "This is fucking bullshit! You can't fucking do this, you don't have the right. God created us just as he created you, you and I can both honestly say that, how can you justify doing this. We are here for a reason." Zach got up and began to pace about the small chamber. "Don't you understand? You are not a creature of god, you're an abomination. You have no soul, we know that now, we can understand that. I would kill you and up-load your consciousness into Isaac's planetary network, I would do that for you, but with all the mechanical magic at my hands, everything that I can, resurrecting people from the very dead, I can do nothing for you. Normally, when we people die now, their lace's upload all the current information of the host, and the Soul-Gate's transmission of the ephemera allow us to bring back even the accidental deaths, allows us to speak to the dead, which is something were only just getting into. But you, you must be put down, like a rabid dog, for your own good. Now, what would you have of me?"

Nikolai was tired, tired of everything. Tired of running, tired of living. It was over. He had put up the best fight he could, and still it all ended in this little room, orbiting Earth aboard one of this mans colossal space stations. But he wasn't ready to just go down. Not just die here. At least he would live out what little days remained to him. "If I'm gonna be a cripple, you gonna take care of me or what?" Zach smiled. "I don't know whether to tell you you've made the right decision or not, that your life will be hell from here on out, and when you die it will go to hell, because most of your life has probably consisted of a living hell, and you've lived quite a bit longer then any of us. If it counts, I'm sorry. As for your living arrangements, you will stay in a care facility right here on Geo-1. This is also my home, to a certain extent in that I'm here often on business, and I think I'll check in on you Nick. I would be curious to hear about your…life experiences. I am also sorry to say that the next few weeks will be quite painful for you, and the years after will only continue your suffering, which you have righteously earned however. But I'm still sorry, you understand?" Nikolai looked into the eyes of this ancient young man and saw a pleading for understanding there, and he couldn't be mad at him, because he was right. "Yeah, I understand."

Zachary got up, took his little stool with him, nodded once more at Nikolai and left the room, his long black armor-weave jacket sending a soft breeze brushing by Nick's face, cooling the sweat that was still dripping off of him. After about a half hour, he noticed a definite leveling out of the environmental flow in the room, adjusting to a more tolerable 76 degrees. After another half hour, the four guards came back in and took up positions around the room, followed by the same two doctors as before. One of them carried a satchel bag, which he opened and the other of the two, who could have been twins, short, stout, brown hair and brown eyes, both wearing thick glasses that hid monitors behind them, took out a wicked looking needle, with a jet black liquid inside of it, so thick it almost looked like oil. Two soldiers came over and made sure he was properly sealed before the Doctor with the needle shoved his face right in front of Nick's. "Are you ready, you piece of shit?" Great, attitude, just what he needed now. "Yeah. Go ahead, sir." And the needle was plunged into his throat, the liquid invading him like lava pouring through his veins. And then the pain overtook his body's ability to cope, and he was blissfully welcomed into the darkness, the darkness that would now never leave him, his friend forever.