A/N: Wow! Thanks to everyone for all the fantastic and encouraging reviews! Here is chapter 2, hope you enjoy the introduction of Molly Hooper!
Molly Hooper wasn't brave - or stupid - enough to join any kind of a rebellious movement, although she was certainly aware they existed. As someone whose parents had been branded collaborators by those who savagely resented their new place in the world, she was never going to be deemed trustworthy enough for any rebel to approach her for assistance, no matter what position she held.
Because of this, knowing what kind of persecution she would face as the child of collaborators, her parents altered her birth records, making it seem as if she were born two years later than she actually was. To the Human world, Molly Elizabeth Hooper was 30 years old, rather than 32.
Children of collaborators born before the Great Takeover tended to die mysterious, Human-caused, deaths within days of being identified as such. The fact that they were as much victims as anyone else didn't seem to matter to the more fanatical Vamp-haters. Molly could hardly fault them; most of these executioners had lost so many friends and family to their new Masters that they'd basically gone crazy with grief.
Still, it didn't mean she intended to ever become a victim of her own kind. As long as it didn't impact the Vampire world, the imposed order, Humans could do whatever they liked to one another; there were enough of them left alive, after all, for the Masters to feed on until the end of time.
Because of her parents' foresight, she survived the dangers of being born to collaborators and was well aware of the dangers life would continue to throw at her even without that stigma hanging over her head. She had a flat of her own, which she'd inherited after they'd both died, and a career as a pathologist at St. Bart's hospital. Because even with Vampires in charge of things, there were still police forces for the Humans, still crimes to be solved, murders and suicides to be determined. If anything, the Vampires were even more obsessed with bureaucracy and paperwork and the need for answers than the Humans they now ruled.
By the year 2011, Molly's life had settled into a pattern that seemed unlikely to change: working quietly in the morgue at St. Bart's, living even more quietly in her flat less than a mile away, with her cat Toby for company (pets were allowed, although organized religion and a myriad of other comforts both physical and emotional had been banned – no Humans could wear any type of perfume or cologne or scented soap or deodorant, for example, as it masked their natural scents, although shampoo and conditioners could still be scented, for some unknown reason) and the remote possibility of finding someone to share her life with.
She was actually musing on the topic of religion as she worked on the body in front of her on the day her life was so dramatically altered, wondering (not for the first time) why religion was banned when religious objects, as it turned out, had absolutely no effect on Vampires unless made of silver (to which they had some very serious allergies).
That was the day Mycroft Holmes swept into her morgue and completely upended her quiet, uneventful life.
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Molly was deep in an autopsy of a man who appeared to have been the victim of a rogue Vampire attack. With their near-obsession with order, the Masters – mostly via their half-Human offspring – policed themselves almost as ruthlessly as they did their Human slaves. It didn't happen often, since they were so incredibly picky when it came to who they offered near-immortality to, but occasionally a Vampire went, to put it mildly, completely bonkers – killing anyone who crossed their path, not even drinking more than a token amount of blood and therefore, to the rest of the Vampire world's collective mind, needlessly wasting resources and causing excessive restlessness in the Human population, which in turn could set off another round of riots and attempts at insurrection, which had settled into a lull in the last five years or so.
One of the many, many facts about Vampires that had been learned over the course of the 1990s, when they first publically revealed their existence, was that they didn't need to kill to obtain the blood they needed to survive, which made the rogues all the more troubling to other Vampires. They could and occasionally did live off of bagged blood that had been warmed up in, of all things, an ordinary microwave oven. Molly had witnessed that last first hand, when one of the few Vampires that actually deigned to work at the hospital popped by to oversee an autopsy and became a bit peckish.
Vampires held all positions of power, of course; no large institution such as St. Bart's was left to mere Humans to run, thus all administrators were Vampires or crossbreeds. There were even a few surgeons who'd been Turned and preferred to keep up with their skills even though they now regarded their Human patients more as guinea pigs in a scientific experiment than people whose lives were worthy of saving.
Molly knew the protocol when one of the Masters arrived in a room; she was supposed to bow her head and wait for permission to continue what she was doing. Unfortunately for her, she didn't realize who had entered the morgue until after she'd snapped (without looking up from the delicate process of removing the victim's heart): "I'll be with you in a minute, don't get your knickers in a twist!"
In her defense, it had been a long day, filled with one emergency after another; it was an hour past the end of her shift, and for the past half-hour her supervisor, Mike Stamford, had been sticking his head in the door every five minutes to check on her progress. However, even if she'd said Mike's name when she spoke, it wouldn't have mattered to the two Vampires that had entered the room instead of him.
She only recognized her mistake when she found herself seized by the iron hands of the female Vampire. "The Master requests your assistance," she hissed (the woman Molly would soon know as "Lady Anthea"), forcing Molly to turn and face the man she'd just snapped at. "And your apology."
Molly was forced to her knees, eyes wide in sudden terror. God, how could she have screwed up so badly, after spending most of her life making sure she flew under the radar, kept herself scrupulously well behaved and as close to invisible to the Vampires and potential rebels as she could manage? "F-forgive me," she stammered out, lowering her head, heart thundering in her chest as she awaited her fate.
Rogues were put down by their own kind for random, senseless binge-killings, but any Human that defied a Master was fair game. She could find herself out of a job, beaten to within an inch of her life, relegated to a Blood Reservation...
Or killed.
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Mycroft studied the woman kneeling before him. She was properly terrified now, where she'd appeared confident and assured – if somewhat harassed and overworked – before realizing her potentially fatal error. Before Anthea reminded her of her place in the new world order.
He'd been Turned, along with his entire family – mother, father, extremely difficult younger brother – in 1940. Although it had been something of a shock to discover that there was a superior race lurking in the shadows – although not, as was once believed, a supernatural race – he believed he had adjusted rather well.
Mummy hadn't, but then, she'd always been a bit too sentimental. She'd walked out into the dawn one Christmas morning and allowed herself to be turned to ash less than six months after V-J Day.
Sherlock had become even more difficult after their mother's suicide, had turned to drugs for a few decades following their Turning, cutting himself off from his remaining family – not that he and Father had ever been close, and he and Mycroft had violently disagreed as to how they should handle their sudden change from Human to Vampire – and sinking into a kind of self-destructive despair that had not, in the end, resulted in him joining their mother. Much to Mycroft's surprise and, although he would never admit it, relief. Sherlock had always had just enough of the Holmes selfishness to keep him from jumping off the edge of whatever metaphorical cliff he happened to be edging toward at any point in his life.
Now, after seven decades of existence as a Vampire, Sherlock seemed to have found some peace within himself. He'd reestablished contact with Mycroft in the 1970s – although, tellingly enough, not with their father Sigerson – and had eventually started a career of sorts, starting in the late 1980s, as part of his camouflage whilst masquerading as Human. He'd then confounded his elder brother by continuing his "consulting detective" work after the Great Takeover, although he'd been forced into an understandable hiatus during the turbulent years immediately following the Great Takeover.
Not that any Vampire needed a "career" as such – Mycroft's own "minor" position in the new British government hardly counted, since Humans desperately needed the order he and his kind had finally imposed on them – but certainly he approved of anything that kept his brother from sinking back into the depths into which he'd descended after their mother's suicide.
However, there were rumors emerging, rumors that his brother's sudden desire to function within society rather than moping about on its fringes had more to do with his belief that Humans had done just fine ruling themselves and didn't need overlords of any kind running their lives, than with any desire to acquiesce to his brother's ongoing requests that he do so.
Thus his arrival at St. Bart's. Sherlock had been granted permission by the Hospital Administrator, an Elder Vampire who'd existed since the end of the Roman Empire, to use the facilities of the morgue and pathology lab to perform experiments and examine corpses in order to assist the Human police with their investigations in his continuing capacity as a Consulting Detective.
Mycroft had come in advance of his brother's arrival in order to review the staff and facilities, and had been confronted by exactly the situation – and person – he'd been seeking for so long. The right woman to help bring his insufferably stubborn brother to heel.
The pathologist was young, no more than her early thirties, still prime reproductive age. He would have her medical history researched, of course. She was also reasonably attractive, although nothing about her hair (brown-shading-to-auburn worn in a sloppy pony-tail), clothing (loose knit top and baggy khakis hiding what he suspected to be a more than adequate figure), or lack of make-up (she really needed to at least wear some kind of lipstick, her lips were much too small without any added color to them) seemed designed to draw the eye of any Human or Vampire male. It was deliberate, of course; she was obviously heterosexual but it didn't take a genius of his caliber to understand why she would want to avoid male notice, since she clearly wasn't the type to want to be brought under the personal protection of a Vampire.
A pity, that, but what Humans wanted had failed to be a concern to Mycroft the night the family's newest housemaid had joined him in his bedroom for what he assumed was to be a simple romp between the sheets – and had turned into that and so, so much more when she'd bitten him and brought him into her world.
No, the pathologist who'd just made such a fundamental error was, in his estimation, perfect for the plan he had in mind for Sherlock.
Mycroft smiled, flashing his fangs although she couldn't see them with her head bowed, shoulders tensed as she awaited her punishment.
"Let her up," he ordered Anthea, who immediately did as instructed. He stepped forward, stopping when he was less than two feet in front of her. His eyes flashed to her identification tag – Dr. Molly Hooper, Type A-B Negative, Certified Disease- and Drug-Free less than a month earlier.
All to the good. "Look at me, Dr. Hooper."
She raised her head, eyes darting nervously up to meet his. She was tiny, no more than five foot three in her flat-soled shoes. Sherlock had always preferred his women petite in his breathing days – at least, when he'd been a teenager, the last time Mycroft was aware of his brother forming any kind of romantic or physical relationship with a woman.
Dr. Hooper seemed as surprised by his use of her title as she was by the calm demeanor he presented to her where she clearly anticipated anger. "My name is Mycroft Holmes, and I am employed in a minor capacity in the government." He gave her a moment to allow his identification of himself to sink in, then continued on a different tack, knowing it would throw her off balance – exactly where he wanted her to be. "You've worked here since you were allowed to graduate medical school, two years now. Your parents are dead but not killed by Vampires, victims of Human violence, leading to your interest in pathology. You own a cat and live less than a mile from this facility."
She openly gaped at him as he recited his litany of facts, none of which he'd researched in advance. His brother could have told her what breed of cat she owned and whether or not she had any siblings, but Mycroft had no interest in discovering more about her beyond the medical information he would have Anthea research.
Bored with the deducing process, he instructed her to remove her lab coat and clean herself up, allowing himself a slight smile as he heard her heartbeat speed up and smelled the sudden increase in her fear. Ah, she expected him to begin the punishment she believed due to her snappish words. He considered reassuring her that she was not about to join the corpse currently resting on her autopsy table, then decided against it. She would be in the proper frame of mind when he delivered her to his brother's flat if she continued to believe she was about to die.
Anthea contacted Dr. Hooper's supervisor to inform him that she was no longer available to finish up the autopsy she'd started, but gave him no further information within Molly's hearing.
The terrified pathologist did as instructed. Mycroft watched impassively as she did her best to control the violent tremors shivering over her body as she placed her soiled lab coat in the laundry hamper, washed her hands and face and combed her hair, then meekly asked permission to retrieve her belongings from her locker. She waited with obvious fear for the answer; if she was told "no" it would be a clear sign that her time on Earth had nearly come to an end.
She showed the expected signs of relief when he nodded his approval. Anthea escorted her to the ladies' locker room, then brought her to Mycroft's car, waiting outside the building for them. He was already seated inside, and indicated she should sit opposite him while Anthea took her usual place next to the Human chauffeur.
Mycroft regarded his newest acquisition expressionlessly. Dr. Hooper, on the other hand, was clearly continuing to fight down her terror as she clutched her purse and jacket to her chest. Her hands were still shaking, and Mycroft was hard-pressed not to bite her; the scent of blood and sweat and sweet, sweet terror would be quite intoxicating to any Vampire.
He, however, hadn't been nicknamed "The Iceman" for nothing. Self-control had become a way of life for him, ironically enough, within days after his death and rebirth.
His brother wouldn't be able – or allowed – to turn this one down. His innate sense of fair play and regrettable attachment to the Human race would see to that.
Especially if Mycroft made it clear that this woman's life was at stake.