When she awoke she thought she was still dreaming, because she could taste blood. Evidently she had bitten her lip while sleeping, allowing blood to pool in her mouth. She was confused and disturbed as she at upright, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. She wiped her chin with her wrist and checked the pillow to see if any blood had stained it. There was a tiny spot, so with a frustrated sigh she pulled the pillow case off and threw it in the laundry basket in the corner of the room. Groggily she hauled herself into a standing position and stumbled to the bathroom. A cursory glance in the mirror showed no major injury to her lip, just a slightly swollen spot. Good, she thought, don't want people to think I'm getting sloppy and being beaten.

Climbing in the shower confirmed that she was, in fact, awake. The process was helped by the thirty second blast of icy water that always began the showering process, as the apartment complex's many other tenants tried to turn on their showers around the same time. Eventually the water would get hot enough that it didn't feel like torture. She liked that initial blast though, however much it annoyed her. It instantly woke one up, bursting the mind into clarity.

Once her shivering subsided, she pondered her dream as she began to lather her hair. If she described it to anyone, it would be a nightmare. It was hellish and dark, there was blood everywhere and people were screaming. But she wasn't afraid in the dream, and now that she was awake, she was very much afraid of that. She was sickened with herself, because in the dream, she was aroused and relishing in that hell. After rinsing the shampoo from her hair, she scrubbed her skin as hard as she could, trying to wash away the feeling of being so dirty. She was, at least, very clean by the end of her shower.

Wrapped in a towel, she wandered through her bedroom and into the kitchen, flipping on the coffee pot on the way to the fridge. She was awake and out of the shower more than an hour earlier than she needed to be, but she didn't want to go back to bed. She didn't want the dream to continue. Unfortunately, due to the early hour, she wasn't anywhere close to hungry. The meal she'd eaten before falling into bed still seemed filling, but to not eat now was foolish. She had a long shift ahead of her, and being hungry would just make it interminable.

She could hear the Agent who lived above her thump about his kitchen. He was often up this early, though she never understood why. Normally she didn't care, but his loud footsteps were grating on her already raw nerves, and she wanted to throw something at the ceiling to shut him up. He knew she worked the same shift, and he knew that this was early in their day, despite the hour. She glanced at the clock on the coffee pot. It read 3:17 PM. Fuck it's going to be a long night, she cursed silently.

As a Junior Agent of The Organization, assigned to the Night Shift, life was quite uncertain. She was given the small apartment free of charge. She had access to health care facilities at any hour of the day or night, provided she wasn't neglecting any of her duties. She received a generous allowance, which she was able to save up to buy the things she wanted. Necessary things such as food, clothing and hygiene products were provided for her, free of cost. Life outside her job was orderly and, ultimately, taken care of by someone else. However, her job was what made things uncertain. It was very dangerous to be a Junior Agent on the Night Shift.

The Organization was founded four hundred years prior, when Vampires began their war for supremacy over humans. In the time before The Rise, as the aggressive appearance of Vampires was referred to, there was a massive population crisis. Countries were expanding their borders, over-lapping each other, with provinces and states demanding their own sovereignty. The world was on the brink of war. Massive cities began to take over country-sides, drawing most of the population for hundreds of kilometres around them. Eventually, the countries of the world consolidated into city-states, massive expanses of urban sprawl, housing populations of hundreds of millions. The Organization was a branch of a country's military that was kept together when the city-state was formed. Then, it was more like a police force than a military unit. When The Rise happened however, The Organization overthrew the fledgling Vampire government that had tried to establish itself within their city. They drove the Vampires from the city and began campaigning in other cities. Presently, there were more cities under the control of The Organization than there were cities under the control of one of the Vampire Leagues. There were only a few cities that had no presence of The Organization, but it wasn't through lack of trying. The Vampires were simply too entrenched there to be removed. There were also cities deadlocked for control. Neither side had an upper-hand, and thus, to be openly on either side of the fight was highly dangerous.

The upstairs Agent dropped something, which shattered. The downstairs Agent glared at the ceiling. She was going to kill him. "Agent, why did you beat Senior Agent Reynolds with a coffee mug?" she imagined her interrogator asking. "Well, Senior Agent," she imagined her response, "He was slamming about and breaking shit at an ungodly hour. I think I was entirely justified. If one refers to Section 1.374 in the Handbook, under Personal Decorum of Agents…" Her thoughts trailed off as she smiled at her own joke. Section 1.374 said that Agents were not permitted to have sex on the job. Section 1.375 said that if Agents wanted to have a "relationship of intimacy with another Agent, that Agent may not be of the same Partnership, of un-equal rank, or be brought into the relationship under guises other than romantic interest, be that financial incentive or tactics of intimidation…" Using Section 1.374 as a defense for killing Agent Upstairs would be rather pointless, and would probably just make her look stupid.

She looked at the coffee-pot clock. 3:31 PM. She quietly groaned and poured more coffee. She had to leave for her shift in one hundred and five minutes. Actually, one hundred and four minutes. It was the 28th of October. Her week was going to go rapidly downhill. October 31st was the worst night of the year for The Organization. The Vampires seemed to believe that the day was somehow more special than the day previous and the day following. They were never very clear on the specifics of why. Because they operated at night, the night of the 30th was as awful as the next night. The Vampires were exceedingly active from midnight to midnight on the 31st. The popular theory was that the Vampires were just fucking with everyone, and celebrating another year that they were out in the open, waging their bloody war on the humans. The Rise had occurred on October 31st.

Bored, the young woman tapped her table-top computer, bringing it to life. She logged in and began scanning the civilian news bulletins. There was nothing exceedingly out of the ordinary. There were more deaths, more death threats, and more mutilations. Sighing, she logged off the civilian pages and logged into the information database available to Agents. It held news articles that were too graphic or controversial to be published, confidential reports on movements of the Vampire Leagues within and outside the city, a list of obituaries that was updated daily, among other things. She checked the obituary list on a daily basis. She wanted to know firsthand if a friend had died. No one she knew had died in the previous 24 hours. She nearly signed off the page when she noticed someone's name. Interim Agent Simmons, Leonard, age nineteen. Frantically she opened the link and read.

Interim Agent Leonard Marcus Simmons (age 19) went missing with his Mentor (Senior Agent K. Dawson) on the night of October 23rd. His body was recovered on the night of October 26th. He was found with major wounds to his neck and ribcage, as well as injury to his hands and face, indicative of interrogative torture. His body was found within territory of the League of Nichelle, and it is likely that he was killed on the night of October 23rd.
Cause of death: exsanguination due to Vampire inflicted wounds of the neck.

The young woman's eyes were wide with fear as she feverishly scanned the list for Dawson's name. It wasn't there. She next checked the list naming Agents that were missing. Her name wasn't there either. Then, dreading the worst, she checked the list of names of Agents that were hospitalized and quarantined. She found it there. The young woman was devastated. Karla Dawson had been a friend of the girl's parents and was her godmother. Dawson had taught her at the Academy and would have been her mentor had Dawson been free. If she was quarantined, then it meant that she had been bitten and had lived. If she was quarantined, The Organization was waiting to see if she had been Turned. If she had been Turned, then she was as good as dead. The young woman wanted to cry. She suddenly resolved to go see Dawson.

Throwing her cold coffee down the drain, she left her mug in the sink and dashed into her bedroom to change, a piece of toast forgotten on the table. The Junior Agent pulled on civilian clothing and packed her uniform into a backpack. Her body armour was in her locker at Headquarters, and wandering around in uniform without it was a stupid way to get killed. Vampires may not be active in the day, but their human minions were. She was dressed and locking her door within five minutes.

She raced to the transit station, barely making the shuttle. It was mostly empty at this time of day, with only a few civilians on board. Most were still at work. Day Shift Agents were still on shift for another two hours and Night Shift workers wouldn't start transit for another hour or so. The shuttle took fifteen minutes to arrive at Headquarters. The young woman raced through the grounds to the hospital. She barged up to the counter and barked at the receptionist, "Where is Senior Agent Karla Dawson?"

The receptionist, a heavy-set red head wearing enough make-up to age her an extra few years raised a penciled eye-brow, looking down her long nose at the bossy young woman in front of her. "May I see some identification, please?" she asked snootily .

The Junior Agent glared at her and dug her access card out of her backpack. She thrust it across the counter at the receptionist. "Where is Senior Agent Dawson?" she repeated, politer this time.

The receptionist was making a big show of checking the other woman's credentials on the computer, and was thus ignoring her. She smiled sweetly, showing yellow teeth and replied, "Unfortunately you don't have the clearance to see her. She is in Level Three Quarantine. No visitors below officer rank are permitted, Junior Agent Korr."

"She is my godmother," Korr begged, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice, "please, I won't tell anyone." She sounded weak. At the moment, she didn't care.

The receptionist softened. "I'm sorry Junior Agent," she said sincerely. "No one can see her." As she handed back the access card, she gripped the younger woman's hand and kindly said, "It'll be alright, she's with the best doctors at Headquarters. If they're doing all they can for her. And if it turns out for the worst, they are very humane in the treatment of those who have been infected."

Upon hearing her godmother be referred to as being infected, Korr jerked her hand away, clutching her access card. "Thank you for your time," she muttered before trudging out. When she reached the steps outside the entrance, she sat down heavily, put her head in her hands and fought back the sob that was building in the back of her throat. Dawson was as good as dead. If she was in Level Three Quarantine, it meant that she was as good as Turned, and they were just waiting to see if there was a chance she hadn't. The odds of checking out of Level Three Quarantine were about one person in twenty. If she had been Turned, the doctors would euthanize her. Korr jerked violently when a hand touched her shoulder.

"Jaden," the man asked, sitting down next to her, "What is it?"

Korr sniffed and wiped her eyes. "Karla Dawson is in L3Q," she said thickly.

"Dawson," the man repeated. "She's a friend of your mom, isn't she?" Korr nodded. "Oh Jaden, I'm so sorry," he murmured, slinging his arm around her shoulders.

Jaden Korr threw her arms around him and squeezed as she tried to reign in the torrent of emotion that threatened to burst through. Her mother died in childbirth, her father was murdered a few years prior, and now her godmother was quarantined. She felt so alone.

After a few minutes, she regained control of herself. "Thanks Adam," she mumbled lamely, "Sorry. I must be keeping you from work." Adam was an intern doctor at the hospital. He had attended the same primary school as Jaden, and they had remained friends when he went to the civilian schools to become a doctor instead of to the Academy to become an Agent.

Adam had arrived twenty minutes early for his shift, thus he waved off her apology. "Do you need to take the night off?" he asked, going into doctor mode. He was concerned about his friend. Agents that went out emotional often came back dead or worse.

Jaden shook her head. "I'll be fine," she assured him. "I'll walk back over to the Main Compound, and I'll be alright by then."

"Are you certain?" he asked, watching her for signs of hysteria or catatonia.

"Yeah," Jaden replied tiredly. "I think the best thing for me right now is to do my job. That's what Karla would want. And that's what she would have done."

"If you insist," Adam replied warily. "Can you do me a favour?" Jaden nodded. "Come back and see me at the end of the night. I want to make sure you're ok. Alright?"

Jaden smiled wearily. "If you insist," she echoed. She leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. "Thank you, Adam. I'll see you later." Adam hugged her and wished her a good shift before getting to his feet, brushing off his backside and walking inside. Jaden mimicked the action, but instead walked down the stairs and towards the Main Compound, aiming for the locker-rooms.