Chapter Zero
Prologue
And Then There Were Three
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"Okay, what do we got?" House demanded, limping into his office.
Dr. Hadley saw the way his fingers tightened around the grip of his cane, and knew he'd either run out of Vicodin or the pain in his leg was exceptionally bad this morning. But she didn't say any of that out loud. She was more preoccupied with the tickling sensation in the back of her throat and the lancing pain across her abdomen.
"Twenty-six-year-old Caucasian female," Talb replied, reading off of the med chart. "No history of health problems at all. Complaining of severe cramping in the upper abdomen. Also, racking cough, and a lung bleed. Severely anemic. Necrosis on her back. Complaining of migraine, suffering black outs."
"Okay, so, what exactly would cause all of those things? Coughing, necrosis, lung bleed, stomach cramping, anemia, migraines, and blackouts?"
Remy Hadley swallowed hard. She hadn't looked at the name on the file... why hadn't she looked? Because all of those symptoms were the result of a disease she knew quite well, a disease that only struck a certain demographic and had everything to do with genetics and nothing to do with anything else. And she couldn't tell House because they'd never believe her.
"What's the name on the file?" Dr. Hadley asked suddenly. Her four colleagues glanced at her, and then Talb glanced back at the file before raising his eyes back up to her anxious face.
"Eustacia Hadley."
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In the room with the unconscious Eustacia Hadley, a woman stood by the bed, her back to the wall. She kept her arms loose by her sides, her hair swept back and tied up in a tight bun to remove a target. Her tight, black leggings and skin tight, black spaghetti-strap overshirt were for the same reason- minimalize the target. It was all part of how she'd grown up. Stay tight, fast, alert, and you come out on top. You come out alive. Never mind what people think of how you look or how you act. Do what you have to do to stay alive.
Sasha Rampling cast a swift glance around the room. If Eustacia had been awake, the unconscious woman would have realized- or at least guessed- that her foster sister was looking for potential weapons and all available exits out of the room.
Unfortunately, there was only one, unless she shot her way through the plastic walls. And she was pretty sure that her other foster sister, who worked here at this pathetic homo sapien healing center, would be a little pissed off about Sasha shooting up the hospital room.
The black haired woman sincerely hoped it didn't come to that.
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Lucinda Rampling coughed into her fist as she staggered into her room. She had to stay away from the children! As her stomach cramped violently, the only thought that shuddered through her mind was to keep away from her foster children. Some of them were still susceptible to the disease!
The phone rang shrilly, cutting into the tense stillness of the master bedroom. Instinctively, she knew it was Remy, her third oldest child. Her first daughter. Lucinda grabbed the phone and gasped into it, "Remy!"
"Mom!?"
"Remy, call your father," she barely managed to wheeze. "Call..." Blood streamed from between her lips. She spat a gob of scarlet onto the floor. "C-call..." She tried again, and everything blurred out. She fell to the floor.
"Mom? MOM!"
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Remy Hadley punched her foster's father number into her cell, and got Marius Rampling on the third ring. Breathless as she rushed from Dr. House's office down the stairs to Eustacia's room, she asked desperately, "Dad! Are you outside the house?"
"I- yes, I-"
"Get Mom to my hospital. Eustacia's here already, and we've got her guarded. Sasha's probably here, knowing her. I'm at the Princeton-Plainsborough Teaching Hospital. Okay?"
"Remy, what's going-"
"Mom collapsed! Go get her and bring her here!" She snarled, and flapped her phone shut as she swept into Eustacia Hadley's room. To the slender, somewhat short woman standing guard over the patient with a knife half-drawn at the hurried entrance, Hadley added, "Put the knife away, Sasha."
"Where the heck did you come from?"
"Mom just collapsed," Remy replied, ignoring the actual question. Running a hand through her hair, disheveling it, the doctor sank down into a chair and let her head fall into her hands. Sighing, she asked softly, without looking up, "What are we gonna do? We have to do something. What do we do?"
"We don't tell humans about our problems," Sasha reminded her acidly. "Or have you forgotten this?" She resheathed the knife, scanning the room again. "You shouldn't have had Eustacia brought here in the first place. This is a human hospital."
"I'm a human doctor!" Remy reminded her.
"No, you're a practioner of human medicine."
"That's the same thing!"
"Not even close to the same thing," Sasha snapped. "You act human, you live human, you work with humans. You even have a human disease, one that will one day force you to give up this foolish lifestyle and become as you were meant to be. All these human things you cling to, as if they will somehow change who and what you are, but they will never make you human, Rena."
"Don't call me Rena!" Dr. Hadley snapped, running another shaking hand through her already disheveled hair.
Sasha opened her mouth to say more, then snapped it shut with a click. Gritting her teeth, she murmured, "Never mind. It's already hit Mom and Eustacia. It's spreading. If it spreads widely enough, it could spread to bitten humans. If it spreads to bitten humans, the whole state of New Jersey is screwed. So again, I have to know why you brought our sister here when these human doctors can't do anything for her."
"Because!" Remy began, but when Sasha glanced almost spastically at the door, she lowered her voice. "Because, the odds of anyone thinking to look for and then coming after Eustacia in a human hospital are incredibly slim and we have you here to watch her. No self-respecting assassin would come in with more than a few helpers. You can handle a few helpers."
"What about Mom? And 'Stacia? No one's ever found a cure for Vlad's Syndrome and you know what happens in the end. We're going to have to-"
"No," Remy said gently, and got to her feet, checking her watch. Lucinda Rampling should've arrived at the ER by now. The Rampling Estate wasn't far from the hospital. "No, we won't have to. If anyone can figure out how to treat or cure Vlad's Syndrome, it's Dr. House."
She was about to walk out when Sasha murmured, sounding almost like a little girl, "Are you sure?"
"Yeah," she replied. "Yeah, I'm sure."
"And what if it's not Vlad Syndrome?" Sasha demanded. Now she sounded more like the battle weary warrior, still ready to take on any enemy, surmount any challenge. Remy didn't want to answer her sister's question, because... because she didn't know what would happen if it wasn't Vlad's Syndrome.
"I... I don't know, Sasha. I just don't know."
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Okay, everyone, here's the prologue. "And then there were three" refers to who's got the disease. Eustacia Hadley, Lucinda Rampling, and... our mystery 3rd.
Anyway, so I'm trying something new. This is a romance/paranormal/dark fantasy/suspense. I like House. I love it. Gregory House is a genius stud. Drools. So, I'll try to have chapter one up by tomorrow or Friday. Hope you enjoyed it, and I'll try to pump up the volume (aka the writing coolness level) for the next chap.
Bye.
