A/N: Chugging right along. This is my favorite chapter so far. Thank you for all the reviews, guys! If you like my darkfics I have an original fiction on another site that has garnered a ton of positive reviews. It's very dark; three different books about a psychopath and a psychiatrist.
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Ball Z or anything affiliated with it.
-MalRev
PROJECT OOZARU
Case File 010 - Invictus
The smell of my own blood woke me the next morning.
Nausea rippled through me as I opened my eyes to see my head lying in a dried red puddle that centered on my neck. I blinked a few times in a feeble attempt to wake up and Oliver hopped up on the bed to check on me, sniffing curiously at the blood. When I moved to shoo him away I hissed in pain and slapped a hand over the throbbing wound on my neck. It didn't hurt nearly as bad as before but it was still raw and tender. The skin had grown over neatly to leave behind a smooth scar.
Blood was caked all over my throat and the front of my shirt. I weakly pushed myself up in bed just to collapse back on the mattress, grimacing at the unpleasant scent of blood. The injury had healed but I had lost too much blood to function properly for a while. Odd. The two should have correlated. If my body could heal such a severe bite then I should've been back to normal. I curiously examined my hands only to see that they were pale and trembling. I needed more rest.
My bedroom door groaned open and a familiar mess of black hair appeared around the edge of the frame. Goku was still almost naked, only wearing black boxers that really left very little to the imagination. His fingers curled around the edge of the door and the muscles in his arms noticeably tightened when he noticed me slumped against my pillows. The tail twitched. I could have sworn I saw his irises constrict like a cat hunting its prey.
Goku smiled malevolently. "Good morning, Harper. How did you sleep last night?"
"Piss off," I rasped, wetting my dry lips with my tongue. I needed water really badly. It felt like I hadn't had anything to drink in days. My arm shook violently as I tried to prop myself up and glare at the alien standing across the room. "You owe me new sheets. Mine are destroyed. I might need to go to the hospital for a blood transfusion, too. My neck is stiff and I'm all shaky like I just threw up."
Fear prickled down my spine when Goku's smile widened. He withdrew from my room for a minute and reappeared with a sheet set in his hands, still zippered in a plastic pouch. I didn't have any spares lying around my house. Granted, it would've been a good idea considering how I drank like a sailor, but it never crossed my mind that I might puke all over my sheets. Besides, vomit washed out. Blood? Not so much. I'd be lucky if I could even get the stench to go away.
He quietly shut my door and held the sheet set to his chest. "Why don't you get out of bed so I can change the sheets for you? After all, it's my fault they're ruined."
I wanted to call him an asshole but I knew it was a test. He wanted to see how weak I was so he could judge whether or not he was going to attack. Goku watched with thinly veiled pleasure as I gritted my teeth to sit up fully in bed, woozily clutching my head. Oliver meowed and curled into a ball to take a nap while I tried to get a grip on the ill feeling in my stomach. Jesus, I felt awful.
"Don't just stand there and stare," I snapped. "Come help me get up! Where did you get those, anyway? Have you been snooping through my stuff?"
"But you're a strong, independent woman." Goku furrowed his brow and the smile turned into a condescending frown. "I don't want to play games with you. That would be cruel and sadistic, so I'll let you take the reins and be a real woman."
White hot pain lanced through my neck and I doubled over in agony as angry tears sprung from the corners of my eyes. It had to be infected. The skin had closed over it but the actual wound never healed inside so it was just begging to get worse and worse. The searing pain burned through my nerves and I gnashed my teeth together, biting back a scream. God help me.
The end of my bed shifted. I squinted one eye open to see Goku sitting two feet away, grinning maliciously while I struggled to get a hold of myself. Panting, I raised myself up several inches to glare at him and held onto the throbbing scar. It felt like poison was seeping through my body.
My palms were moistening. I could feel sweat pooling around my fingers pressed to my neck. "I need to go to the hospital before I start getting really sick. Cut it out, Goku."
"Oh, a hospital isn't going to be able to help you now." He balanced his elbow on the package of sheets and rested his chin in his palm, cool as a cucumber. "This is beyond human medicine. You're gonna have to sit here and deal with it until the pain passes. I hope you don't have to work today."
"What the hell are you talking about? You bit me! There were all sorts of bacteria in your saliva and now it's going through my bloodstream. Plus, I lost a lot of blood. All I need is an IV, antibiotics, and a lot of Gatorade to get everything back in balance. Clearly I can't get up and drive myself so you need to drive, carry me, or fly like you did the other night. If I die, you're screwed."
The grin never left Goku's face. He rose from the bed, tossing the sheets carelessly aside, and stood in front of me with his arms outstretched, gesturing with his fingers for me to do the same. I grudgingly complied and reached toward him so he leaned forward to scoop me up off the bed. My nails dug into his shoulders when I felt his boiling hot hands on my skin. Everything hurt. I wanted to sleep more.
Goku easily peeled back the sheets while holding me close with one arm. I was too nauseous to be disgruntled by our bare skin brushing; it was too uncomfortable to bring a blush to my cheeks. The new sheet set was zippered open and before I knew it, he carefully lay me back down on the bed. I was getting worse by the minute—I tugged my comforter over my body and grimaced at how it grated against my skin. Sweat was pouring freely down my quivering arms.
I had to be dying. I'd been sick pretty frequently when I was a kid and could vividly remember how horrible it felt to have a raging fever. This was worse. It was compounded into a mess of misery and pain, all stemming from the infected bite on my neck. God, I would allow a crazy man with a blood fetish into my apartment. He'd probably kill the cat next.
A warm hand settled on my shoulder, squeezing gently. My teeth chattered. It was too hot but it was too cold to kick off the sheets. I was trapped in a cycle of discomfort that seemed to have no end. Breathing was painfully difficult so I resorted to taking rattling breaths with my mouth.
The sheets shuffled and I managed to open my eyes just far enough to see Goku lying beside me, watching my slow descent into madness. His black eyes roamed across my face. It was unsettling to be beside him in bed. I struggled to turn the other way but it was far too much effort. He cocked his head curiously into the pillows when I collapsed yet again, gasping for air.
"I'm dying," I croaked. "I'm dying and you're sitting here watching me. Do you have poisonous spit like a fucking komodo dragon?"
"Shh, you're not dying. I'm pretty sure you'll be okay. Nappa was never specific but…" Goku reached forward to touch the scar, making it tingle pleasantly. "I guess it works. I was a baby when the humans took me so I never knew anything about my home planet. Nappa was taken in as a teenager. He remembers the most and told the rest of us that…" He paused and grinned. "You'll see."
"See what?" I asked. "Can you just bring me to the hospital before I drop dead?"
"None of them can help you. If we're going to be rescuing the other men, I need to make sure no one will try to take you out from under my nose. Relax and take the day to lie in bed. Want me to get you anything? Maybe vodka can help keep your stomach straight."
"What are you not telling me?"
My phone began vibrating on the nightstand, breaking the tension. Goku reached over me to grab it and covered my mouth when I began to protest. He pressed the "accept" button and turned on the speaker phone. I was delirious with rage. What the hell did he think he was doing?!
"Harper?" asked Claire cautiously. "Are you feeling alright?"
Goku lazily turned my phone between his fingers. "Hello, Claire. Harper's alive, just puking in the bathroom. We think she has a stomach bug. Can you imagine?" He pushed down harder on my mouth, hardly able to contain himself. "Is there something I can help you with? I'm sure you don't want to listen to the sound of her vomiting."
Claire was quiet for a few moments as she drank in his words. She coughed slightly. "Um, no. Mia called and said she left the bar early last night so I was checking on her. Tell her to give me a call later, we could use some help at the restaurant tomorrow."
He agreed to relay the message and promptly hung up my phone. My eyes rolled back in my head from the pull of another wave of nausea and I hiccupped against Goku's palm. If I puked, it would be going right back down into my stomach. He leaned over me again to set the phone on the nightstand and yanked open a drawer, rummaging around until he discovered what he wanted. I watched him vacantly. My appendages were turning cold. I had to be dying.
The mirror in Goku's hand reflected the sunlight beginning to come through my window. He relaxed beside me and slipped an arm behind my neck to prop me up enough that I could see how I looked. I winced as my image came into a murky focus, blurred by the tears in my eyes.
It was still easy to tell that I was sick as a dog. My skin was nearly translucent in the sun, shimmering with a slick layer of sweat. I'd failed to take out my ponytail last night so my hair hung loosely gathered near my neck. I squinted at my eyes and was horrified to find that my pupils were two vastly different sizes, which was another strong sign that Harper was about to bite the dust.
Trembling, I reached up to touch the circular pink bite mark. I was wrong about where he had bitten me—the actual scar was near my collar bone instead of my throat. But the traveling pain was not imagined. I choked at the thin, protruding black lines that originated from the bite, crisscrossing over my pallid flesh all the way up my shoulder. I still only had a bra on so I could see they traveled over my breast to end near my heart. They pulsated.
As I stared in growing terror, Goku's fingers entered the reflection and traced one particularly thick line. "It'll go away soon enough. Nappa told me we'd poison and kill humans if we tried it on them so this confirms my suspicions that you're nowhere near being human." He opened my fingers and wrapped them around the mirror's handle, smiling at our reflections. "Fear is a good look for you. I'd like it if you wore that expression more often."
I covered my mouth with my hand. My reflection wasn't Harper Williams. It was a hollow shell of the woman who had been thrown from foster home to foster home. It wasn't the girl who beat up boys for her adoptive sister. It wasn't the party girl who lived every day like it would be her last. The icy blue eyes staring back were not those of a survivor, but of a defeated woman who had been bludgeoned until she could no longer raise her head. I couldn't believe that woman was me.
No, I wouldn't believe that woman was me.
I furiously hurled the mirror across the room and it shattered against my door, startling Oliver from his nap. Goku put his hands behind his head, idly watching me peel the sheets off my legs to sit up. They were already soaked in sweat. The poison was spreading. I swung my legs around the edge of the bed and grabbed my other nightstand to wobble to my feet. My knees shook terribly but I gritted my teeth together and stood tall after a few seconds. I wasn't going to let him win. I wanted to wipe that self-satisfied smirk off his face before it become permanent.
"You'll never break me," I hissed, hunching over from exhaustion and pain. My vision swam and I staggered, back on the brink of collapse. No. Stand proud, Harper. "I'll… I'll show you. I am not weak. Weakness is bullying people who have no way to defend themselves. Weakness is…" I squeezed my eyes shut and braced myself on the nightstand. "Weakness is tearing people down when you can build them up. I'll show you, Goku. You'll be the nicest person in the entire fucking universe."
Goku raised an eyebrow. "Lay down. Your energy is dropping."
"No! I'm not doing anything you say anymore. You need to learn that you can't bully and scare people into doing what you want. I'm taking a stand for all humans. Stop pushing me around and treat me as an equal or else I'll…" I pointed a wavering finger at him and rubbed my eyes, momentarily without any support. Seconds later, I was clutching the nightstand again.
The alien sat up Indian style, gracefully draping his hands over his thighs. He cocked his head. "Or else what? You'll give me more of your pseudo-inspirational speeches? Lay down, Harper. Stop taking everything as a personal insult. You're not a human so why do you care? We're above them. We're apex predators, designed by evolution to be better. Face it: you're not like them. You are an outcast."
Tears were pouring down my face. I'd steeled myself to maintain control of the sobbing part but the excruciating pain couldn't be ignored by my body. It was a gut reaction. I shook my head and stumbled backwards without direction to slump against the wall. Goku stared at me with a mixture of irritation and genuine curiosity. If I squinted hard enough, I saw concern.
"I will never betray the people I love," I said. "Even if what you're saying is true…" My eyes were drooping shut. I couldn't take much more. "I will never forsake my family. Being stronger doesn't mean I'm better than them. If anything… if anything, it gives me more reason to protect them."
"They'll turn on you," he said, leaning forward. "You'll be shunned. They'll want to kill you for being different or turn you into a weapon. Bloodlust is a part of who you are. You channeled it into something else: parties and sex and drinking, but that can't last forever. I can tell you're excited to feel blood drenching your fingers; to watch the light fade from a human's eyes. One day, the people you love will become the monsters you hate."
I dug my nails into the wall, furiously shaking my head. "No! I love Mia. I've never even thought about killing another person. It's wrong and disgusting and—"
"You liked it when I bit you. It made you feel alive. Our race can feel things much more vibrantly than humans do. Things that feel good to other people feel heavenly to you. The sensations of pain and pleasure frequently mix. You like drinking and you like vomiting all of it up afterwards. You always thought you were weird but you figured it was just a quirk. It's not. Saiyans have such acute senses that everything gets jumbled together on a constant basis. We like to feel overwhelmed."
"Shut up!" I shrieked. "Get out of my fucking house before I throw you out!"
"Come on, Harper. If you admit what you are, you don't have to feel alone anymore." Goku offered me his hand with a beguiling smile. I'd only know him for a day or two but I already knew his intentions were very bad. "Let's save our race. Together."
Suddenly, my doorbell began ringing madly and I heard pounding on the door. I looked toward it longingly but Goku was immediately on his feet, herding me back to bed. He moved so fast I couldn't see exactly what he did. I wound up in a clean change of clothes, with the shirt being a turtleneck, and he was in a new outfit that definitely didn't come from my closet. He buttoned his jeans and smoothed down the front of his t-shirt before leaving my room.
I sank below the sheets, hoping the turtleneck obscured the mysterious bite. I would never hurt Mia. I couldn't. She was my sister. I would never see her as anything less.