Episode II
In the middle of a large forested area in northern Arizona, a large group of college students pitched their camp as the sun began to set behind the trees. Campfires flickered to a bustling blaze in a matter of minutes, and the sound of guitars and singing echoed through the woods far from any residential ears. Smoke billowed and curled through the branches of the canopy, most of it coming from the fire pits, but some of it rising from the lips of the counterculture loving youngsters who held boiling bongs and shimmering joints in their hands. Great breaths of sensual pleasure abounded as each person worked up a desensitizing high from marijuana and alcohol. The night waned on, and the clear night sky illuminated by the silver light of the full moon made fanciful the various howls of coyotes and hounds off in the distance.
This evening, special attention was given to a new recruit to the anti-establishment regime. Everyone in the camp enthusiastically welcomed the aspiring rebel, a young girl with red hair, freckled face, and green eyes. Drawn into the group by the object of her naïve affections, she was experiencing everything for the first time. She smoked joints, she tried alcohol despite not being of age, and let the thought of her parent's disapproval of her fade away with the grey puffs of smoke that blended and faded with the plumes from the campfires. Ignorance truly was blissful for this bunch.
In honor of this new arrival and in the ever-increasing need to pursue the latest high, her boyfriend had decided to take their relationship to a new level of sensuality and intimacy. As they sat together by the campfire in each other's arms, he leaned down to whisper in her ear.
"Are you ready to take the next step with me?"
She said nothing in response, but merely looked him in the eyes and nodded with an excited blush of her cheeks and smile on her face.
Eyes soon trailed over to the young couple as they kissed passionately, her boyfriend going from kissing to necking as they embraced tightly.
He kissed her neck hard.
Harder.
Too hard.
Becoming nervous, she tried to push away from him, but his grip was incredibly strong. The power in his grasp began to frighten her, and she began to panic as she felt sharp teeth trying to pierce the skin on her neck.
"Let me go!" she cried, beginning to struggle fiercely.
Angered at her resistance, he threw her to the ground. His figure silhouetted by the light of the campfire, two piercing red eyes glowed from inside the shadow of his form.
Looking around at the group of people who had brought her here, the same shimmer shined from behind each pair of eyes. Fangs protruded from each manic grin, and a wild, untamed ferocity burned in their expressions.
"You wanted to join us," he said, stepping closer to her. "You were going to be one of us, experience the ultimate high for the first time!"
He picked her up off the ground, holding her with a grip that cast aside any prior restraint or concern. He now pulled on her hair, forcing her to expose her neck. Barring his fangs and hissing with thirst, he leaned in towards her once more.
His head suddenly jerked back as a gunshot rang through the night. Blood trickled from the smoking hole in his upper left forehead, and he fell to the ground, his body soon fading into dust.
There was a dead silence for a good beat, save for the crackling of the firewood and embers.
Another shot rang out as another one of the young blooded vampires was struck to the ground. His body crumbled as well, sending the others into a frenzied panic. They screeched and hissed at the surrounding trees, trying to discern the direction the shots were coming from. A third shot hit another vampire square in the forehead, sending his body to the ground as though he had been clotheslined by a straight punch to the face.
Sensing the direction of the shooter, one vampire attempted to head into the trees to try and stalk this killer out. Before he could make it into the canopy, however, he was struck in the shoulder by another shot which sent him plummeting into one of the fire pits below. The vampire howled and screeched in agony as his body was consumed by flame.
Now the pack of bloodsuckers tried to retreat into the forest away from the shooter. Bullets whizzed past their heads and skimmed their bodies as they tried to duck behind the dense forestation around them. Running into the black and white of the moonlit woods, they sprinted quickly to try and outrun the sniper.
A click of a pistol being cocked stopped them dead in their tracks. Peering into the dark, a slight shimmer of mirrored shades reflected the light of the moon and campfires from within the shadows.
Bursts of gunfire flashed again and again as flurries of bullets fired from the pistol the man wielded. Vampire after vampire was killed and reduced to ash, and only a measly couple managed to find cover between the two shooters. Having emptied his clip, the agent decided to take on these two survivors on his own. He lifted his right hand into the air, holding his palm flat as though telling someone to stop.
Realizing their pursuer was out of rounds, the two remaining vampire hippies decided to take the opportunity to strike him head on. The first vampire, a surprisingly stereotypical-looking hippie with a long beard, dread locks, multicolored outfit and tinted spectacles, leaped toward his adversary in an attempt to frighten him upon approach.
He was met with a single fist to the jaw that sent him through a tree to his immediate right. The impact saved the agent the trouble of staking him through the heart with wood, as a large limb protruded from his chest before he dissolved away.
The second vampire, a young woman who paralleled the previous vampire's appearance, was about to follow his lead until she witnessed what this individual was capable of doing. Skidding to a halt, she quickly sought to retreat back to the campsite. She took four running strides toward the camp, her dark dread locks waving in her face.
She stopped dead once again as a bullet pierced through her forehead. As her sight faded, she looked up at the shadow of a man dressed in black, whose eyes shined a pale green in the shadows created by the orange light of the campfires mixed with the silver of the full moon at his back.
All faded to a dull red as she fell to the ground, dead.
The new agent, choosing to wear a black trench coat and golden tie instead of the traditional all black business suits, lowered his still smoking pistol to his side and replaced it in the holster beneath his coat. His blonde hair shimmered slightly in the campfire light which now began to smolder with the ashes of the vampire who he had managed to strike in the shoulder.
"I was surprised to see you miss that one, Agent Felix," the agent said, motioning toward the pile of ash that covered the muffled flames.
"Cut me some slack, Vitus," Wesley said, watching as the air around the embers churned and roiled with heat. He always found campfires to be mesmerizing, especially the warm oranges and yellows. "I don't have the reflexes you do."
"Might I suggest you calm yourself down?" Agent Vitus said. "Your eyes are still shimmering."
"Oh," Wesley said, blinking his eyes as though an insect had flown in front of his face. "I'm still not quite used to this…" The green glow that filled his pupils slowly faded with each blink of his eyes.
"It's to be expected after such a recent operation," Agent Vitus said.
"I kind of wish it was automatic, like yours."
"You wish you had all the visual settings I have."
Amidst their conversation, the snap of a twig snapped them both to attention. Vitus quickly drew one of his pistols and Wesley swung the M1 Garand he had strapped to his back into his hands, both of them ready to shoot.
From behind the van the vampires had brought, the young redheaded girl stood wide eyed with fear.
"Is she… you know…" Wesley whispered.
"No."
They both lowered their weapons. Wesley walked over to her, smiling warmly.
"Not to worry. We're not going to hurt you."
She stepped out from behind the van, her hands shaking at her sides.
"Um… Vitus! Can you come over and make sure this girl isn't injured? I'm going to do one last sweep of the premises. Come right over here, Agent Vitus will take care of you."
Wesley led the girl over to Agent Vitus, who looked over her face for injury. Placing a hand on her shoulder, he quickly and precisely jabbed a spot on her neck. Her body tensed for a moment, then relaxed completely as she fell unconscious. Wesley caught her before she fell.
"How long will she be out?"
"Approximately three hours."
"And do we know who she is?"
"Facial scans give a positive identification. She doesn't live far from here."
"Alright, let's get going."
Vitus headed toward where they had parked the car, leaving Wesley to carry the girl.
"…Jeez, thanks for the help."
Wesley lifted the girl up into his arms, her head falling against his shoulder.
"Facial scans just from that quick look…" Wesley thought. "Nice having an android as a partner."
Wesley headed down through the forest after Vitus, leaving the former vampire campsite with a barely smoldering pit of embers, an ownerless guitar, an empty van, and piles of ashes that slowly whisked away into the wind. The full moon reached the peak of its ascension in the sky above as the two agents drove off towards the girl's home.
A month previous to his mission in Arizona, Wesley was inducted into the government agency known as the Men in Black. After his recovery from the vampire attack resulting in the death of his family, he was escorted to a government facility based in Nevada. Upon arrival in the air force base, he was taken via military escort to another section of the compound. Agent Vitus accompanied him on the journey.
"So I don't get it. The Men in Black are just the stuff of tabloids, aren't they?" Wesley said, sitting in the back of an escort vehicle.
"The organization itself was introduced during the middle of the nineteenth century," Agent Vitus explained. "You see, back then America was the land of opportunity for thousands upon thousands of immigrants. You can imagine what managed to slip through the cracks among all those crowds."
"Why hasn't the public even heard of you people until now?"
"Well, back then, the organization was rather thrown together. Vampires and other creatures were taking advantage of the growing cities and populated areas to hunt unseen. So how do you hunt what hunts in the shadows? You either find someplace darker, or you hide in plain sight. That's what we did. We dressed up in dark business suits to blend in with the crowd and kill bloodsuckers from afar. As you can imagine, the vampire population grew quite a bit with the numerous prey and hiding places available. With so many, public killings would have started panics, so covert operations were the far more sensible choice. This continued for decades, but the organization still didn't have a definite title."
"So how'd the name come around?"
"It's actually a rather recent development," Vitus continued. "You see, thanks to a spike in extraterrestrial sightings in the late fifties and sixties, the federal government assigned us these cases believing there might actually be some supernatural connection or relevance to them."
"And was there?"
"No. Not in the slightest. As a matter of fact, it was all either a hoax or wild claims by non-reputable sources. So, in order to try and save ourselves some embarrassment on a national scale, we requested that those who had seen these supposed extraterrestrials remain quiet on the matter, including our interrogations of them. Of course, you know how that went. They ran right for the newspapers and claimed that government agents had threatened them to shut up."
"They exposed you?"
"Almost. However, with a great stroke of luck, these claims were about as believable as the extraterrestrial sightings due to the fact that the agents we sent could only be described by the manner of their dress. Black suits. So, the public dubbed us the Men in Black. Since then, the name has stuck."
"So… you're not a secret organization."
"Incorrect. The public believes we handle extraterrestrial sightings and top secret military weapons development with alien technologies. However, we deal primarily with supernatural threats to the United States, including vampires, ghouls, werewolves, you name it. So the public identity holds no affiliation to our organization, and claims are passed off as crazy conspiracy theory. We hide in plain sight, just as we used to, and our purposes remain out of the public eye."
"So what did you call yourselves before Men in Black?"
"Oh, a number of things. First, we were the 'Federal Supernatural Defense League'. Then we became the 'Federal Division of Supernatural Inquiry'. Heck, one agent opted that we be referred to as the 'Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency'."
"They went for a name like that?" Wesley laughed.
"Actually, that name was scrapped right off the bat, but there were a couple badges printed with that name across the top, so there is recorded evidence of it occurring," Vitus explained.
"So where are we going right now?" Wesley asked, trying to look out the heavily tinted window of the car to discern their location.
"Our headquarters. You know it as Area 51."
Wesley turned to Vitus with wide eyes. "We're going to Area 51?"
"That's right, Agent Felix."
"What for?"
"Like I said, it's our base of operations. However, as you experienced during the attack on your home, you're not necessarily fit to take on a vampire just yet."
"So, what… am I going to be trained here?"
"That's part of it."
After pulling inside a large hanger bay, Wesley was escorted by Agent Vitus to a section of the base that appeared to be a mix between a chemistry lab and medical center. Beakers and flasks of chemicals and isotopes lined shelves and boiled over Bunsen burners, while X-ray and MRI tables waited in rooms down another hall.
Vitus led Wesley into a room with a surgical table sitting under a bright glaring operation light. Various instruments and wires hung from sections of the ceiling, some tipped with drill bits while others were equipped with long syringe needles. The sight of them made Wesley cringe at the thought of what Vitus had planned for him.
"Oh, don't worry," Vitus reassured him. "You won't be subjected to anything like that. Those are actually for my own treatment."
"Your treatment?!" Wesley exclaimed, looking over the painfully large instruments with wonder. "They treat you with these things?"
"Not 'treat' so much as 'repair'," Vitus said.
"…What?"
"My word, how have I gone this long without telling you?" Vitus exclaimed to himself. "I'm not human at all. I'm one hundred percent machine."
Wesley, in spite of learning all sorts of national secrets, was struck silent by this simple comment.
"An android, I suppose is the correct definition for what I am," Vitus explained. "In fact, my name is an acronym, standing for 'Vampiric Identification and Termination for United States Security'."
Removing the mirrored shades he kept on his face, Vitus stared back at Wesley with a pair of bright blue electronic lights at the center of what resembled human eyes.
"So… so that's why the vampire back then couldn't bite you…" Wesley deduced.
"Correct," Vitus said. "My skin is actually comprised of reinforced steel isotopes with a hint of silver mixed in. Should a vampire attempt to strike at me, I'm perfectly capable of fending them off."
"I noticed…" Wesley said, recalling the vampire's broken fangs.
"I'm the latest of only a few models so far. But I'm equipped with the latest in human interaction processors as well as my own personality software."
"I'm sorry… what?"
Vitus chuckled. "I'm built to be semi-human, so as to not come across as frightening to people."
"Is that… is that what they're going to do to me?" Wesley asked hesitantly. "Turn me into some robot?"
"Oh, no, no. Far from it," Vitus said.
"Oh, thank God!" Wesley sighed.
"Although we are going to give you the latest in our innovations with anti-vampire biotechnology. If you'll follow me, Agent Felix."
From the operation room, Wesley was led into what looked to be a typical physician's ward. It looked exactly like the kind of room you visited for an annual physical rather than some top-secret medical facility.
"Please have a seat."
Wesley sat up on the bench, the paper sheets crumpling underneath him as he sat down.
"Am I here for a checkup? What gives?"
"Tell me, Agent Felix. Do you have any fear of needles?"
"Only the ones you have out over that lab table."
"Good. Then you can be awake for this operation. Please excuse me for a moment while I fetch our primary medical officer."
With that, Vitus left the room and shut the door behind him, leaving Wesley to sit in perpetual silence.
"So far it's not entirely what I expected," Wesley thought. "I wonder if that Hellsing organization is anything like this…"
He swung his feet back and forth, tapped his fingers against the sides of the bench, and gazed around the room with its bare white walls and annoying fluorescent lights. He glanced over the medical equipment in the room, which was pretty much the same as any other general health care facility. Cotton balls, tongue depressors, cotton swabs, a box of rubber gloves, and a small chrome sink. There wasn't a single aspect of the room that was out of the ordinary.
"I wonder what kind of person they have working as a medical officer in a place like Area 51…" Wesley thought. "Must be a veteran. Having to put up with dissecting monsters and creatures… he's got to be a real toughie."
A quick knock on the door snapped Wesley out of his thoughts. Vitus entered the room, shooting a quick smile at Wesley as he stepped inside.
"Agent Felix, I'd like you to meet Agent Wolfgang."
"Wolfgang…" Wesley thought, standing to meet his new associate. "This guy must really be something to have a name like that!"
Through the doorway stepped a young woman with long flowing red hair, stunning figure, vanilla white skin, and pale green eyes. She wore a dark blue button-up dress shirt and tie underneath her white lab coat, and she held a vanilla folder and clipboard in her left hand.
"Agent Ariel Wolfgang," she said, extending her hand. "It's nice to meet you, Agent Felix."
Wesley was struck dumb for a moment at the sight of such a beautiful woman extending her hand to greet him. Blinking, he came back to his senses and swiftly grasped her hand with a firm handshake.
"I'm Felix! I mean, I'm Wesley. Agent Wesley Felix."
"Agent Wolfgang is one of our finest medical minds in the organization," Vitus said. "She has extensive knowledge in biochemistry, anatomy, genetics, neuroscience, and many other areas of the medical field. She is cooperating with other experts in the development of new 'anti-monster' technologies, so to speak. She will be overseeing your medical care and supervision while you are working with us."
"You sure can pick 'em, Vitus," Ariel said, looking Wesley up and down with a skeptical look. "But once this procedure is done, even he won't be something to scoff at."
"S…Scoff at?!" Wesley said in a hushed voice, more to himself than anyone else. "I was a soldier, for God's sake!"
"Be that as it may, Agent Felix," Ariel said, causing Wesley to jump slightly, "even you witnessed what the army's training was good for against what we see every day."
"I can't argue with that," Wesley said, running a nervous hand through his hair.
"That's why we're going to give you this," she said, pulling a transparent vial of silver fluid from the inside of her lab coat. The glass was surrounded by a protective metal casing and the liquid inside appeared to be swirling shades of grey and shimmering silver.
"That's going inside me?" Wesley said, eyeing the fluid with apprehension.
"These are a dose of nanobots," Ariel explained. "You'll be receiving multiple injections of these microscopic devices over the course of your training. They will allow you to reconstitute your body in a number of different ways."
"Reconstitute…?" Wesley said, confused.
"You'll be able to change your body to better combat monsters," Vitus said.
"Wait… I can control these things?"
"With time and training, yes," Ariel continued. "You can make minute but effective changes to your body's structure during combat. For example, these could shift the materials that make up the surface of your skin to better protect from blunt trauma. With enough time, the result could be on par with Vitus' own defenses."
"So a vampire won't be able to bite me…!" Wesley said, beginning to imagine what would be possible with this biotech upgrade to his body.
"However, these machines do carry some form of risk," Ariel said. "You are going to be the first human trial for this treatment. And the first place these machines need to inhabit before becoming effective… is in your head."
"My brain?!"
"In order for them to react accordingly, it's vital they interact with your central nervous system. Just shooting them in anywhere could result in them going out of control and destroying entire portions of your body."
"So you want to shoot those little robots… which have the capacity to destroy my brain if something goes wrong… right into my head?"
"Again, this is one of many doses. This particular batch is programmed to interact with your various cerebral cortexes and some areas of the spinal cord. The first batch will be injected at the base of your skull, where the cerebellum rests at the lower part of your brain."
"But I'll be knocked out, right?"
"You will actually need to remain conscious, so you can tell us if there is anything going wrong during the operation."
Wesley was beside himself with anxiety over the process of this procedure. He took deep breaths, breathing through his nose and trying to weigh the pros and cons of what the Men in Black wanted to do to him.
"What will I be capable of…" Wesley finally said, "…if this operation is successful?"
"In truth," Ariel said, "the possibilities are endless."
There was a long silence as Wesley considered his options. Vitus looked him up and down, no doubt trying to predict what Wesley's response would be. Ariel moved her eyes from the vial in her hands back to Wesley, awaiting his answer.
Finally, Wesley gave a long, steady sigh.
"Do it."
After the first few injections, including the first located in his nervous system and the second to various regions of his bone marrow, the third injection was scheduled after Wesley's gradual recovery from the previous two. For the third time within the month, Wesley was strapped down to a padded chair and given various sedatives to numb the pain of the small nanobots that would course through him after each session. This time, the bots would be traveling through his bloodstream.
"Alright, Agent Felix," Ariel said for the third time. "I'm going to go over what exactly we're going to do to you today."
"You're going to shove a needle in me," Wesley said with a groan, tired from the pain and annoyed at the same old song and dance Ariel went through each time. "What else is new?"
"This injection is fashioned to be carried by your bloodstream throughout your body in order to begin synchronization to your body's various functions. This is the primary set of nanomachines that you will use to augment yourself physically. The previous injection for the bone marrow was to create reserves for your body to replenish, although you'll need more of those as time goes on and your bots wear out."
"And what sorts of pain will this one cause?"
"You'll most likely feel the most pain at the injection sites, due to the nanobots spreading from those points outward through your blood vessels. The sedatives we gave you should prevent pain from spreading throughout your body."
"And this is the last one I'll need?"
"Until you require a check-up, so to speak."
"Fine. Proceed, Agent Wolfgang," Wesley said, facing his eyes straight ahead and bracing for the needle's puncture.
"Very well, Agent Felix," Ariel said.
Fixing a syringe to a brace next to Wesley's chair, she gradually brought the needle over to Wesley's neck and punctured the needle into one of his jugular veins. She pressed down on the plunger, forcing the same metallic grey and silver fluid into the blood pumping down to Wesley's heart.
Wesley felt a sort of scratching sensation, almost like a painful version of an itch you couldn't reach beneath your skin. It spread from his neck down to his chest, becoming less painful as it went. Once he felt it reach his heart, he gasped as the small tingling sensations that had worked their way down suddenly spread throughout his body, like a swarm of clawing insects just burst out from his chest to down his arms and legs and even through his face.
Looking down at his arms, he noticed a small grey tinge coursing through the veins beneath his skin; the nanobots. It was a very light tinge of grey, but he watched as it flowed under his flesh, outlining the entirety of his circulatory system up to his fingers. He could only imagine how it looked on his face, and the thought didn't give him much comfort.
However, as he watched the noticeable grey lines slowly faded and dissipated, and his skin returned to normal. The pain in his neck refused to subside, but there was a clear reason for that. He felt a trickle of warm blood drip down his neck as the needle was carefully removed and his neck cleaned and patched.
"Once those sedatives fade, you'll feel noticeably sore. That's due to the nanobots integrating themselves into your muscle tissue and various other portions of your body. But, other than that, you will be able to begin testing within a matter of weeks. How do you feel?"
"Like a million bucks," Wesley said, pressing a hand to the bandage that covered his neck.
Training to master these new machines inside his body took more time than Wesley had imagined. Things started out small, like trying to have the bots assist in the mending of small cuts or bruises. These immune-like responses didn't take long to master, but the types of injuries had to be calibrated into the nanobot's memories, so almost every type of wound needed to be exacted in order to be healed and, therefore, have the necessary processes stored.
This included the breaking of bones.
"We want to make this as painless as possible," Ariel was saying. "We just need to know which bone you wouldn't mind having us break."
"Are you nuts?!" Wesley said, glaring at Ariel. "I've never broken a bone in my life! I have no idea what kind of pain that causes!"
"It's quite surprising that you didn't sustain any such trauma when you were attacked by those vampires…" Vitus commented. "Many survivors aren't nearly as lucky."
"Trying to guilt me into this, Vitus?" Wesley asked.
"Not in the least," Vitus said. "Just reminding you that our enemies are much more likely to tear you apart limb from limb than just break a bone or two. Compared to them, we're being more than generous."
"I don't…" Wesley started to say, but realized what Vitus was telling him. He would be facing far worse out in the field, and if these machines could heal his wounds, there wouldn't be much to worry about. It needed to be done. He extended a shaking hand to Vitus, looking away and grimacing as he prepared for the impending pain.
"I'll make it a clean break," Vitus said. "The pinky finger will be the least troublesome to deal with."
"Just make it quick…" Wesley said, clenching his teeth.
Suddenly, he felt a pair of hands lifting his face upward. Ariel gently faced him toward her, looking directly into his eyes and staring deeply. Wesley was at a loss for words; her green eyes were mesmerizing.
"Just relax," she said. "I'm right here."
Wesley couldn't find the words for a response.
Snap!
Wesley muffled a yell from the pain that shot up his hand and arm from the broken bone, and the dull throbbing ache that followed was numbed slightly by the adrenaline that had slipped into his bloodstream from both the anticipation and the break itself. Ariel removed her hands from his face, quickly splinting and wrapping the broken finger.
To Wesley's surprise, the pain in his finger began to fade quite quickly. The unusual, out-of-place feeling he had in his finger was slowly shifting back into place and becoming stronger. After around five minutes, the bone felt completely healed, like nothing had ever happened. Ariel removed the wrap and splint.
"Try moving it, please."
Wesley bent and flexed his fingers and found no unusual feelings in his formerly broken finger.
"Wow…" he said. "It's done already."
"Alright, that covers cuts, bruises, burns, sprains, torn muscles, and even the removal of foreign objects from your system. Now we can cross broken bones off the list."
"Is that all there is?"
"There's some that you'll have to experience firsthand if you want them to be implemented," Ariel said. "Some things we just can't do with your express permission."
"What could be so-"
"Like gouging your eyes out," Vitus said, cutting him off.
Wesley shut his mouth, not wanting to imagine something like that being required of him.
"There's one more common injury we can subject you to here. It shouldn't be too bad," Ariel continued.
"Really? What's that?"
"Concussions," Ariel said.
"Wha-"
Vitus struck Wesley hard over the head, knocking him unconscious.
Time continued to pass as Wesley became more and more adept with his new biotech upgrades. Soon, he was assigned to missions of varying degrees of severity, first going up against regular humans associated with underground vampiric organizations. One such mission had him set to track down and interrogate one such representative. And on each mission, Vitus accompanied him to track his progress and render assistance when necessary. The two agents now followed their target down a darkened sidewalk during the middle of the night in a rather deserted part of a nearby town. The individual in question turned down a dark alleyway.
"I'll head him off at the nearest intersection," Vitus said.
"No need, Vitus," Wesley said with a confident smile. "I'll handle this one on my own."
His dark trench coat flowing behind him, Wesley rushed into the alley in pursuit of the target. Vitus followed, walking at a gradual pace.
"He's certainly made progress. He can definitely handle a simple-"
A fierce sound of hissing and howling erupted from the shadows of the alley.
An ambush.
Vitus rushed to the alley's entrance, and could clearly distinguish Wesley's figure in the dark, wrestling with what appeared to be the attacking vampire who had leapt from above down onto his back. Their intended target stood by, watching the spectacle with a smug grin on his face.
Vitus drew his pistols, and set the vampire in his sights.
Before he could get off a round, however, Wesley managed to yank off the vampire from his back, toss it above his head, catch it by the throat, and pin it to the ground, all with one hand. The cracking of concrete resounded off the alley's walls.
The sound of a silenced gunshot puffed through the air as well, signaling the death of the vampire.
The informant, in a fit of panic, drew his own gun and shot for the single overhead lamp that illuminated the alleyway. The shattering of glass and the spark of the broken light bulb gave way to concealing darkness.
Vitus's systems automatically switched his cybernetic visual sensors to night vision, and in the green glow he could see both Wesley and the target clearly. He was trying to run back towards Vitus and out the alley before Wesley could notice.
But before he could make it halfway, Wesley spun around and shot him straight through the heart. The man dropped dead in the middle of the alley, a corpse before he even struck the pavement.
"Well, well," Vitus said, sheathing his pistols. "Looks like you've made more progress than I thought. Both enhanced strength and night vision adaptations already. Very impressive, Agent Felix."
Switching back to regular vision, two glints of glowing green eyes just barely illuminated the smile on Wesley's face.
END EPISODE II