The Strain: Another Season
Episode Nine

Creatures of the Twilight
Chapter Four

Quintus Sertorius' house in Ancient Rome – the morning after the purchase of Tasa, the Berber widow

Hearing of the grisly fate of her erstwhile captor from Quintus' sponsor, Faustus Sertorius, and assuming correctly that the gladiator was the culprit, Tasa gazes up in awe and nascent adoration at him.

She is either too shy or too used to subjugation to dare a glance up at the raging senator, who is now insisting that Quintus use her as a man uses his wife. Instead, she goes to stand beside her new…husband and slips her tiny hand into his huge fist as if she wishes to defend him in some way or at least stand in solidarity with him.

Quintus snatches his hand away from the girl's and steps to the side without looking at her.

Tasa hangs her head in evident dejection and Quintus stands as silent and immobile as if he were truly carved out of marble, while Faustus continues to snarl and snap like a hunted wolf at bay. He is obviously scared of Quintus and over-compensating with aggression.

Eventually there's a pause for breath and Quintus takes a pace forward, making his adoptive father swallow hard and step back.

'You may marry us if you wish it,' Quintus says with finality. 'But I will not touch the girl until her child is born.'

Faustus stares for a moment, puzzled, and then bursts out laughing. When he stops, he nods and smirks.

'You're worried you'll create another Born,' he scoffs. 'Don't be an idiot, Quintus, you can't create anything. Not a son, not another strix, not even a half-breed, NOTHING! You're a sterile hybrid – like a …like a mule.'

There's more laughing from Faustus but Quintus' bunched fists are the only outward signs of any internal struggle not to kill the senator.

Caffa – 1357

Quintus has been staring absently at the wall panelling for some time after finishing the censored tale of his own origins. At last, Hostia Sexta places a sympathetic hand on his, in an attempt to recall her guardian's focus to the present.

Quintus physically leaps out of his reverie as her touch jerks him back to Caffa.

'Oh Quintus,' says Sexta, as if she understands his previous reticence. 'I'm so sorry. That's why you hate the Master so much - he killed your mother…'

'My mother…?' murmurs Quintus. 'Yes…'

He pauses for further contemplation. Eventually his head turns her way again.

'Sexta there is something I must tell you…'

Eurasian Steppe Belt c1342

The Golden Horde, led by Jani Beg, descendant of the legendary warlord Genghis Khan, loom out of the dust and thunder of their horses' hooves on the eastern horizon. The horsemen number in their tens of thousands yet their number has diminished dramatically since they left the Steppes of Mongolia's borders with China. The Horde have been picked off by a plague – not the strain ravaging New York City in the present but THE plague, the Black Death, bubonic plague caused by the bacterium, Yersinia pestis. They infect each other and the communities they pillage along the way, spreading the disease westward along the Silk Road.

As they near the borders of the modern day Ukraine, another disease seizes the opportunity to hide itself amongst the plague-ridden horde. The Master's Strain takes hold.

The Horde travel by day and the prevalence of the Strain fluctuates according to the sunlight exposure. Timing is everything. Those "turning" in the night survive and flee, hiding in caves before sun-up (but not before infecting their comrades). Others are less lucky. Unable to seek shelter because of the Horde's code of honour and their bonds of loyalty to Jani Beg, they shrivel and die in the sun. A few are even shot as deserters when a new Lord takes over their will and demands fealty.

When the depleted, doubly infected Horde reach Crimea, they lay siege to Caffa. The city is heavily fortified within two concentric walls and "protected" by six mysterious ancient beings holding secret court in a cave system beneath the citadel. These vampiric creatures send their Hunters to wage an unseen war against the Master's minions. Outside the city walls, the Hunters are under the direct control of their respective Sires. Inside the citadel, the defence is led by the big half-breed known as Quintus, apparently motivated by a desire to protect the human citizenry as much as to serve the Ancient Ones.

Jani Beg faces this unforeseen resistance in addition to recurring outbreaks of bubonic plague and losses due to vampire attacks. In the winter of 1346-47, the Khan (or one of his advisors) has a brainwave. He orders dead bodies to be loaded into the trebuchets as the first documented instance of biological warfare. Most of the cadavers are infected with Y. pestis, others carry the Master's virus as well and a few are super-infected with the other Ancients' strains.

Caffa -1347

Tonight, the captain of the militia leads a mop-up crew following General Quintus around the internal perimeter of the city walls. These are not Sun Hunters, in on the secret, but their disfigured general has warned them not to touch any corpses and to prevent contamination by burning all bodies on sight.

However, the captain is a devout Christian and feels sickened by the heathens' latest tactic. His squad watch as another Mongol cadaver catapults over the walls and crashes through a roof to lie slumped and broken across a church altar. The captain has had enough. He rushes into the building and, ignoring his men's warning yells, he drags the body out into the street and urinates over it in disgust.

The men are horrified and won't touch him. One silently sets the Mongol corpse alight with his torch and the clean-up patrol continues, very much subdued.

The squad see nothing of General Quintus for the rest of the watch. Meanwhile, their captain gets sicker and sicker as the night progresses and increasingly irascible with it. Eventually, his lieutenant advises him to return home while the men finish their beat. The captain is too ill to resist this logic and he staggers home, pale and sweaty with bloodshot eyes and a sore throat. The lieutenant's first order is to find General Quintus, 'NOW!'

The guard captain staggers into his house, slams the door and bellows for a drink. His wife hurries to him, shushing and warning him not to wake the baby. Feeling feverish and irritable, he is in no mood for nagging and, as his wife is exhausted from caring for their newborn daughter, they argue. The argument intensifies and becomes a physical fight. Faces are scratched, shoulders are shaken and blood is exchanged. He is weak from disease, she is tired and they do love each other, so the fight burns out and they make up.

They take the wordless peace talks to bed but, because of either their fatigue or the direct effects of the Strain on pelvic vasculature, carnal reconciliation is limited to kissing and falling asleep in each other's arms.

Sadly, naptime is soon over because the baby wakes up hungry. The young mother struggles up, herself now pale and sick because of Wormwood of Ukraine's virus pumping through her body, and lurches over to the cradle. She picks the wailing child up and instinctively places her on her breast to comfort her.

Baby Sophia (the names of Hostia and Sexta have yet to be assigned) sucks ravenously, taking in great mouthfuls of breast milk. Milk that, like the placental blood in the cases of Primus, Secunda, Tertia and Quintus and the semen of Quarta's father, contains strix virus but no worms.

But Sophia is not a foetus like the half breeds. Nor is she an embryo that grows from strix DNA (combined with that from two human parents) like the three-quarter bred Quarta.

She is human, infected in the very first days of life with virus but not worm.

She is not Born at all.