Deadly and Blonde
Chapter 2: Big Trouble
Seras paced in front of the doors to the lab where the creature she'd killed had been taken. She'd been pacing for almost three hours now, and her patience was about to completely give out. She should have been sleeping at this point, since dawn would soon arrive, but her curiosity as to the nature of the thing she'd shot prevented her from even trying. "Seras, go to sleep, it will soon be dawn and you can always find out what that thing was tomorrow night." Alucard had told her, and she knew that she would find out about the thing eventually, but the events of the night were still bothering her.
The creature had been attacking those people in the middle of the city, in a pretty well populated area. How had the thing gotten there unnoticed? Even if nobody had reported seeing it, there would have been a trail of dead or injured behind it and Seras knew the thing was too large to have come up through a manhole. So, either the thing really did manage to get into the center of the city almost completely unnoticed or someone put it there. Seras knew which of those two options she thought was more likely, but just what the hell was that thing?
Seras resumed her pacing just as the light above the operating room doors switched off. She quickly moved to sit in one of the chairs facing the entrance to the operating suite so it wouldn't be overly obvious that she'd been waiting impatiently for the results of the autopsy. The first one out of the room was Integra, who had been supervising the operation. "Sir Hellsing," Seras stood and snapped to attention as the leader of Hellsing came to stand in front of her. "Sir Hellsing, what was that thing?"
"I don't know Seras, neither myself nor any of the doctors have ever seen anything like this. The creature that you killed was human." At the look of horror that suddenly came over Seras' face, Integra quickly added, "But with the mutations whoever it was had gone through, they were as far gone as any ghoul you've fought. We couldn't even determine what gender the thing was. I have Walter trying to find out more on the internet, he seems to be good at finding things online that probably shouldn't even be there." Integra sighed, she was tired and frustrated, she hadn't been lying when she'd told Seras that they'd never seen anything like this. It had been determined that the creature wasn't a new breed of FREAK fairly early on, due to the lack of a FREAK chip, or any vampiric traits. The only thing they had found out about the thing was that it had been human at one time, and that on a cellular level there was extremely bizarre activity going on involving the mitochondria.
"Seras, you should go to bed. We won't know anything for at least another day or two and tomorrow is your night on duty. We need you rested up incase any more of these things show up. I've given Alucard the assignment of taking care of any FREAK or vampire related incidents for now, I need you to go out and keep an eye out for any more of these types of things. We don't know what they are yet, but I can't imagine that this will be the last we'll hear of this. I'm assigning you to deal with any more of these things that show up, and if possible to help Walter with his research into just what they are." Seras nodded.
"Very well, I'll see you tomorrow night." Seras turned and walked down the hall, starting on the labyrinthine path through the dungeons that would lead her to her room. Seras stretched as she went, cracking her neck and back. What ever that thing had been, it had a mean right hook, she'd practically been knocked completely through a concrete wall. Seras continued to ponder just what the creature could possibly be, and where it could have come from. She was still pondering when she arrived at her room a couple of minutes later. The adrenaline type rush she got from fighting the thing was starting to wear off and she was rapidly becoming very tired. Seras pushed open the door to her room and walked directly to her bed, ignoring the blood bag that had been left out on the table for her. She had barely managed to change out of her uniform and get horizontal before sleep overtook her.
A few hours later, in America…
Pierce Caradine sat in front of his computer at MIST headquarters. He called Rupert Broderick who was now the agent in charge of the Los Angeles MIST center, "I'm getting reports of a possible ANMC incident in London. Someone from the Hellsing organization is searching for information on cellular abnormalities and mutations involving mitochondria. Shall I try to get in touch with them to get more information, or d'you want me to block them?"
"Hellsing eh? I've heard rumors about that group, hunts vampires supposedly." Rupert laughed, "Find out everything you can about this 'Hellsing' including any government credentials they may have and report your findings to me in an hour. Oh, and get in touch with Aya; if things go south we're going to need her." Pierce simply nodded and started his information gathering. He'd already found out a good deal about this Hellsing Organization, but to get anymore in depth information than he already had, he was going to have to do some serious hacking. He found MI-5's network, and started working on the security.
Almost forty-five minutes later, when he was satisfied that he'd managed to gather most of the really important information about Hellsing he picked up the phone and called Aya's number. She picked up on the second ring, "Hello?"
"Hi, Aya, it's Pierce. I need you to come down to headquarters as soon as you can, we've had an incident and may need to deploy. I'd give this one an 'oh shit' rating of 8 out of 10."
"Pierce, you know I'm on leave. I need to take care of Eve, she's still just a little girl you know." Eve was indeed still a little girl; It had been almost four years since she'd been rescued from the Neo-Ark facility. Since then the girl had exhibited few, if any, signs of aging. Her mind was maturing at a normal, if somewhat accelerated pace. She was, it was estimated, about fourteen or fifteen years old at this point, but she still appeared to be about nine. Aya figured that it was due to the girl's mutated mitochondria, since her own had a similar effect on her physiology. Aya was thirty two now, but could easily pass for at least ten years younger. In-fact, she didn't look like she'd aged either since the Neo-Ark incident.
"Yes I know. Why don't you bring her with you to headquarters, we can figure out how to manage the situation from there but we really need you to be here for this one."
"Fine, I'll be there in half an hour." She hung up the phone and looked at the young girl standing next to her. "Eve, we need to take a little trip to see Pierce and Rupert." Eve smiled, Pierce always gave her candy when they went to see him. Aya went to her room to pack some clothing quickly, it sounded like something serious was going on; she should be prepared in case she was dispatched directly from Headquarters.
Pierce leaned back in his extremely well worn in computer chair. He'd found out just about all of the information on this Hellsing organization, at least all of the information that he could find. Now he just had to wait another ten minutes until Rupert came back. Pierce decided to go over all of the information he had collected and printed out quickly, to make sure he hadn't accidentally left out any important information. Among the information that Pierce was unable to find in his research was of course the information about Hellsing's two resident vampires.
Rupert came in precisely on time, one hour from when he'd left down to the minute. "So, what have you found?"
"Everything. I've got personnel records, requisitions for materiel from the military, records of some incidents that they've handled, and of course the contact information to get in touch with the head of the agency directly. The head of the agency is one Sir Integra Wingates Hellsing, but before I continue, we should wait for Aya to get here. She should be arriving in fifteen or twenty minutes.
"Fine, I notice you said 'Sir Integra Wingates Hellsing'."
"Yes, she is one of a group of important advisors to the Queen affectionately known as the Knights of the Round Table. Hellsing agency is apparently in charge of the defense of England against all sorts of supernatural threats."
"I see. So they are a government supervised agency, probably reporting directly to the Queen I'd imagine. I guess that means they would have to be trustworthy enough for us to be able to contact without having to worry about too much public exposure of our agency." Rupert sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the desk from Pierce. "I guess all we need now is to wait for our star agent to arrive." He chuckled, Aya was certainly one of the most skilled hunters, and her unique talents gave her a strong advantage over the others, but she was stubborn and would often bend or completely ignore her orders.
Aya arrived about twenty minutes later. She decided to leave Eve with Jody for the duration of the meeting and went upstairs to meet with Pierce and Rupert. Aya walked into Pierce's office and sat down in the chair next to Rupert. "Okay, what's the scoop?"
"We've got a possible ANMC incident in London. We're going to be contacting the agency over there that dealt with the situation and the cleanup to verify our information." said Rupert. "Depending on the severity of the situation I'm afraid we may have to put you back on active duty as you have certain methods of dealing with these things that aren't available to the rest of us."
"Who will take care of Eve if I end up having to go to England?"
"I could if you'd like," volunteered Pierce, "I'm sure Jodie might be interested in the job too."
"That is of course assuming that you're not being sent with me as."
"Right, forgot about that. It's been quite a while since the last major incident after all."
"Well, now that we're all here," started Rupert, "I'd like to give this Sir Hellsing a call and see if there's even anything for us to be worried about. But first, I'll need you," he pointed at Pierce, "to get in touch with our government and get them to give us permission to contact and help these people if need be. Aya, I want you to get some practice on the shooting range, you haven't been on active duty in a while and I don't want you to be rusty."
Aya nodded her assent. She had been off duty for a couple of months now having taken off during a slump in NMC activity to concentrate on caring for Eve. She doubted her shooting skills had fallen all that much since she'd left the agency, but it'd still be a good idea to get back in practice. She left the office and started off towards the shooting range.
She hunted down Jodie to get her to supervise the shooting range while she was there and found her playing with Eve. The two were fooling around doing simple gymnastics and the like on the padded ground of the shooting range. Aya called out to them, "Hey Jodie, unless you'd like to give me some real practice with moving targets I suggest you get your tail out of there."
Jodie looked up from where she had been helping Eve to keep her balance in a handstand. She gave Aya a look that said Ha ha. Verrry funny… "Alright, we'll be clear in a second. Do you need me to supervise for you?"
"Yeah, it'd be great if you could."
"Fine. What do you want to start with?"
"Level two, M4A1 please. Oh, and Jodie, see if you can't unfreeze my Bounty Point accounts since I wasn't scheduled to come back yet."
"Sure, I'll work on that while you're running the program." Jodie pressed a series of buttons and flicked a switch, "Alright, here goes. Good luck." Aya didn't respond, but she hadn't really expected her to. The program started and she watched as the blonde hunter killed off series after series of simulated targets. Well, seems her shooting hasn't gotten any worse. she thought, guess I'd better see about getting that account un-frozen.
An hour and a half later Aya had finished running all the levels of the program using both the assault rifle and a shotgun. After all that practice she was getting fairly tired, and it probably wouldn't really be worth it to continue and move on to the 9mm weapons. She signaled to Jodie to stop the program and went to go lie down for a little before she got back to practicing.
HR
Seras awoke early, well, early for a vampire anyway, so around five thirty in the evening. Integra had a meeting of the roundtable this evening to discuss possible implications of the appearance of that creature. The meeting would likely take quite a bit of time, so she decided to take care of something she'd meant to do later that night anyway. She made her way to Walter's room. She found him sitting in his room typing away at the computer. She knocked lightly on his already open door and walked in.
Walter looked up from his work, "Ah, Miss Victoria, is there something I can help you with?"
"Yes, I was wondering if you might be able to find me some armor piercing, explosive rounds for the Seraph. No need to worry about blessed silver in these ones though."
Walter nodded, "Very well, it will likely take a day or two however."
"Thank you Walter." Seras gave him a little wave and walked out of the room. Now that she'd gotten that out of the way, there wasn't much left for her to do until the meeting was over. She hadn't been talking to Walter for very long though, so it would still be quite a while until she'd be able to talk to Integra. Not really able to think of anything else to do, she walked back to her room and plopped herself down on the couch she'd brought there from her apartment.
Seras groaned, she was by nature an upbeat, energetic type of person even though she was dead; and there really wasn't all that much for her to occupy herself with around Hellsing manor. There weren't even any good shows on TV anymore, so she amused herself mostly by pondering silly questions like what the garbage men must think when they see all the emptied blood bags pour out of the dumpster into their truck.
Normally at a time like this Seras would go out and wander around the city, but she was waiting for Integra's round table meeting to conclude; and that could take another five minutes or another five hours depending on the amount of bureaucratic bull shit that was brought to the table on that particular evening. Seras hoped that the meeting wouldn't go on for too long, besides being bored, she wanted to know just what she was going to be assigned to do about this new threat.
Sighing, she got up and walked over to her small book-shelf and pulled out her half finished copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula. She'd received the book as a gift from Walter the previous Christmas. It was strange, she didn't really feel like she should celebrate the Christian holy days anymore; after all, she was supposedly a particularly un-holy type of demon. She still wondered about that, whether or not she had condemned herself to some eternal damnation when she died by making the choice to become a vampire.
Forgetting about the book, she laid down on the couch again and stared at the ceiling. Was her physical form really more important than who she was and what she did? Sure she'd killed and she'd drunk blood. But she'd never killed anything but FREAKs or ghouls…or that thing she'd blown a hole in the day before she reminded herself. Even the blood, she'd only ever had the medicinal blood supplied to her by Hellsing, and that was donated. Sure, it wasn't donated with the intention of feeding a vampire, but wasn't it going towards the same goal in the end? After all, the blood was saving the lives of others, whether by giving a transfusion, or feeding Seras who hunted the monsters that haunted the London nights.
Or am I just lying to myself? she wondered. Maybe I really am just a monster now. It had seemed like such an easy choice to make, an eternity ago in that little church in the town of Cheddar. She hadn't had the time to ponder philosophy then, stuck in a death trap with no hope of escape. The choice had been a simple one to her, live or die. But was this really living after all? She couldn't go out and have fun like she used to, she couldn't contact any of the few acquaintances she'd had while she was alive, and she'd probably never have any sort of meaningful relationship.
"I may be a creature of the night," she whispered to nobody," but does that mean I have to be a monster as well?"