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4. Under Evil'sThumb
A guy could get pretty sick of being treated like an animal. Zack glared at Professor Hojo, wishing he could just punch him in the nose already.
"Again," Hojo said impassively.
His assistant scored Cloud's arm with a scalpel. Blood welled in its wake, forming a dark line that trickled like ink from crook to wrist. Under his wrist a beaker waited to collect it. Only when the blood plipped against the bottom of the glass did it turn red. Hojo only glanced at it. The wound claimed his attention. He poked and prodded at it, making the blood run quicker.
"Incision not sealing as fast as in earlier tests," he said into his Dictaphone. "One may infer that the subject requires haemoglobin replenishment to operate at maximum efficiency. This almost certainly proves my theory of starvation as an effective means of impeding the vampire's natural healing capacity. How long one can last without food, however –" He glanced at Zack. "– remains to be seen. Likewise the amount of damage a vampire can sustain once reduced to a weakened state. This subject has not yet expired, despite repeated attempts to 'push the envelope', as one of my subordinates recently said when he thought I was not listening."
Zack watched everything. He couldn't look away. Moreover, he wouldn't let himself. This was not the worst they had done to Cloud. Having never procured a vampire compliant enough to use in his sick experiments, Hojo was taking full advantage of having Cloud at his mercy. It helped immensely that they had leverage to make Cloud cooperate where another vampire would not. If Cloud refused, or tried to break his restraints with that legendary vampire strength, Hojo exacted punishment on Zack. It was more effective than punishing Cloud himself. It also had the added consequence of making Zack feel like he was somehow responsible for his friend's situation.
He was responsible, Zack told himself. If it hadn't been for him and Sephiroth, Cloud wouldn't be here. He wouldn't have been in the reactor that night. He wouldn't have been vulnerable and there for Hojo to abduct. He wouldn't have been turned. Zack had blamed himself from the moment he woke up in this godforsaken laboratory and hadn't stopped since.
Of course, he wasn't the only one accountable. Sephiroth had a lot to answer for. Zack still didn't fully understand how any vampire could turn the Silver General, or how the symptoms he had showed fitted in with what Zack knew about vampirism, but Sephiroth had been infected. Yet his crimes had already been punished by his death. It was left to Zack to compensate Cloud for his sacrifices.
It was hard to tell how long they'd been here. The labs were hard on Zack's sense of time, especially since Hojo and his goons liked to periodically knock him to move him from place to place. They seemed to think he was constantly a hairsbreadth from wolfing out and savaging them. It was a little insulting that they thought less of his self-control than of a new vamp's. Zack had not shifted once in all his years at Shinra. Then again, it wasn't like he had much control once he loosened the reins. His sense of self was too precious to relinquish for even a moment after he nearly lost it in the reactor.
"Tip the table back," Hojo ordered. "Slowly."
The metal tables here were all adjustable, positioned on two separate axes. Whoever was strapped to them could flip end over end or around and around, depending on Hojo's whims. Usually it was Cloud. Despite the rarity of Zack's lycanthrope, Hojo seemed far more interested in Cloud, just as he had always been more interested in Sephiroth than any of the other Elites. Genesis and Angeal had both been formidable warriors, but Hojo continuously treated them with a dismissiveness that made Zack wonder how kosher his interest in Sephiroth really was. Hojo was a genius, but he was also a twisted, creepy bastard. Who knew what his designs on the Silver General had actually been? Could they have had some bearing on what happened to Sephiroth in Nibelheim? Food for thought.
Later. Zack was totally focussed on Cloud right now. Hojo was planning something bad. Worse than last time. It was always worse than last time. Zack considered bashing his fists against the inside of his tube, but that hadn't worked the eleven-million other time he tried.
"Stop." Hojo halted the table when it was vertical. He set about measuring and assessing Cloud's body like a sinister dressmaker. All the while he talked into his Dictaphone. Sometimes he glanced at Zack's containment tube, but like a little kid watching onlookers during a tantrum. So that was how it was. He was trying to provoke Zack into a reaction. "No discernable increase in muscle mass, though subject has proven a distinct intensification of physical prowess compared with the results of his last physical examination as a human. Practical tests have shown an increase in speed and strength of approximately fifty percent over a one hundred and eighty day period."
A hundred and eighty days? Zack did a few mental calculations. That was around six months. They had been here six months already?
"Damn it," he cursed. The ever-present breathing mask picked up the murmur. Hojo kept the masks fastened over their faces while they were in the tubes so they could breathe in his airborne drugs and have them mix in their bloodstreams with the mako liquid absorbed through their skin into a potent, numbing cocktail.
Hojo stopped. He looked right at Zack. There were speakers in the masks too, and these had broadcast his words across the room. "You have something to add, Specimen Z?"
Hojo's decision to replace their names grated like nothing else. Zack could snap Hojo like a twig, but here the scientist had all the power. He also knew how to hammer home that fact. One bad move and they were toast. Worse than toast. He could turn them back into dough and pound the shit out of them, and they couldn't do a thing about it.
"How about 'you're a sicko'?" Zack replied glibly. He only slurred his words a little. That was progress. Sometimes he could barely get his lips to work at all. "Or 'what does a guy have to do to get a decent sandwich around here'?" He smiled, though most of the expression was hidden by the mask. He knew he shouldn't provoke Hojo, but the guy's smug face made him want to break things. Possibly bones. And teeth. Definitely teeth. "Or maybe 'I'm going to make you so sorry you were ever born, you'll want to crawl back inside your mother and divide back into single cells'."
Hojo's expression twitched. He sighed, like a teacher facing a recalcitrant student. Turning back to the lab table, he waved at his assistant. "Bring me Kit Box Forty-Two."
"Yes, sir."
"You really should learn to control your mouth as well as you control other things about yourself, Specimen Z," Hojo said, almost conversationally. "Cooperation would make your life much easier."
"Your life, you mean," Zack retorted. "I don't see us getting cut much slack if we're compliant." Zack's gaze shifted to Cloud, whose eyes were averted. Cloud was focussed somewhere inside himself, as he had taken to doing lately when on the table.
To say Cloud wasn't taking well to being a vampire would be a heartless understatement. At first he had cried over Nibelheim. Then he had yelled about the unfairness of the situation. Zack couldn't blame him. He wanted the yelling back. It was better than the despair when Cloud realised the full ramifications of what had been done to him. He was no longer human. He had become what he had been trained to hate and kill. It was a lot for a guy to absorb, never mind being trapped in a mad scientist's laboratory, kept in a tube like a frog in formaldehyde, and experimented on. The fact that Cloud had maintained any sense of self was amazing.
Most vampires fell to bloodlust within their first week and became little more than mindless beasts. Those were the kind Shinra had created a specific fighting force to kill. Not content with monopolising the supply of power to the continent, Shinra Electric Company had swung hearts and minds back in their favour by proposing themselves as the saviours of mankind against 'the vampire threat'. Few vampires were able to overcome the bloodlust. Those that did retain sanity were still changed from who they had been before they were infected. Even Sephiroth fell to the mind-altering side of the virus, which erased things like mercy and compassion, while enhancing pride, superiority and a desire to dominate. The virus wanted to spread as fast and far as possible, and the best way to do that was to make each infected person want to pass on the 'gift' of vampirism. In mindless vamps this was submerged under a simple desire to feed, but the stable ones were a whole different problem.
Cloud had exhibited none of these symptoms. Instead, all Zack had been able to pick up was a sense of self-hatred and misery, though part of that could be grief over his village and family. Cloud was a gentle soul. He wasn't cut out for the long-term effects of conflict. Zack had often wondered what drove him to join Shinra. He knew Cloud had harboured dreams of joining SOLDIER for a long time before actually moving to Midgar. Maybe the sense of honour that had made him take on Sephiroth had also made him want to protect others from things that go bump in the night.
Hojo assistant came back with what looked like a plastic suitcase. Hojo laid this on a separate work surface and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. He talked to Zack as he worked. "Your constant threats serve no purpose other than mild irritation, Z."
"Works for me," Zack said chirpily. "By the way, die a painful and embarrassing death."
Hojo opened the case. Metal gleamed inside.
"No!" Zack propelled himself at the side of the tube. "Leave him alone, you bastard!"
Hojo drew out the surgical saw. He tested its heft and weight, laid it on the counter and lifted a series of scalpels and lancets, each more brutal looking than the last. Finally he took a marker pen from his top pocket, turned back to Cloud and drew a dotted line in a Y-shape across his chest and torso. It was the kind of line drawn on corpses to guide pathologists during autopsies.
"Stop it!" Zack roared. "Hojo, you –"
Hojo raised his Dictaphone. "I will now examine the effects of severe trauma on the subject after being starved of haemoglobin for –" he checked his watch, "– seventy-five hours. Dissection beginning at 0700." Ignoring Zack, he lined up his chosen blade and made the first cut.
His father shut the door and set his axe down next to the umbrella stand. They didn't any umbrellas in it. If they did get rain it was a tropical storm, and that meant finding a safe place to hide – preferably underground in a caller or in the caves outside town. No umbrella would save you from that kind of weather. Still, the umbrella stand was a family heirloom, so it sat by the front door, ugly but permanent.
"I wish you wouldn't do this," his mother said to his father. She wasn't the type of woman to wring her hands, but she clattered plates and cutlery onto the table with more force than necessary. "It's not safe."
"It's a vampire," his father replied. "That's the point. Nobody's safe until we catch it and kill it."
Her lips thinned. "Dinner's nearly ready. Wash up and sit down."
His father went to the bathroom. He followed, watching from the doorway. He had always thought of his father as indestructible. Hunched over the sink, splashing his face with cold water, he still looked imposing, but there was something overwhelmed about his stance too, as if he was only just holding himself together.
A week had passed since the first sightings of the vampire in the forest. The town had been in lockdown ever since. Nobody had been killed, so nobody had alerted officials and called out military types who would rip the town to shreds in their search for the creature. His father and the other older men wanted to keep the whole affair private. What good would it do anyone, they reasoned, to have people from Shinra or one of those amateur vampire hunter groups poking around? Shinra was bad news. Maybe the vampire would leave on its own. If it didn't, they could take care of the problem and not have to deal with inquiries that would damage the town's reputation and bring a wealth of unwanted paperwork and sanctions down on their heads. Farfig, the nearest other town to experience a vampire attack, was still under curfew. Housing squaddies from Midgar paraded around town, brandishing guns and massive swords 'to keep people safe'.
He had been to Farfig. Those men were a disgrace. He had resolved then, when he saw them lounging around in cafés and on street corners, never to be so dissolute. If he ever made it out of here and joined Shinra, he would throw himself into his work. He would make sure nobody ever looked at him the way the people of Farfig looked at their 'protectors'.
"Dad?" he said hesitantly.
"You should be helping your mother serve up," his father said, patting his face with a towel.
"Can I go with you next time?"
"No."
"But Dad –"
"I said no."
"But –"
"We've been through this. It's too dangerous."
"I'm not a little kid anymore. I know how to fight."
"You know how to fight shadows and imaginary enemies."
Stung, he muttered, "I could take on a vamp, no problem."
"And you'd die trying." The statement was blunt and wounding, like a billy-club to the face.
"Dad, I'm fifteen years old. I don't need you to –"
"I'm not having this conversation." His father brushed past dismissively.
He trailed after the taller, broader, more experienced man. "But I want to help!" He hated how desperate he sounded. All his life he had heard how vampires were dangerous, how they should always be on guard against them, not to invite strangers into the house, to keep stakes in handy places. He knew the routines inside and out.
"You can help by staying out of the way." His father sat down at the table and pulled him into the chair opposite. "And by passing the potatoes."
"Your father's right," said his mother. She lifted the mismatching lid off a crockpot inherited from her grandmother. Her life was a myriad of past generations seeping into this one. Spiced rice dotted with discs of brilliant red sausage sent a cloud of steam towards the ceiling. Some ancestor's recipe, no doubt, given a modern twist because her husbanded hated lentils and her son was allergic to turmeric. "It's strange to think there didn't used to be any vampires to worry about."
"I thought there'd always been vamps?" he said, taking the ladle.
"In myth and legend," said his father. "Then Shinra started poking about with mako, stirring up things below the Planet's surface. They've done a lot of good, but they've loosed a lot of bad things as well."
"Don't you ever talk like that outside this house," his mother said sharply.
"Don't worry, I'm not such an idiot," his father assured her.
"Shinra created the vampires?" He couldn't believe that. Shinra saved people from vampires. Sephiroth was from Shinra, and he was a great hero. There were rumours he had killed an entire nest all on his own, and brought their heads back as proof.
His father shook his head. "I didn't say that. What I will say is that things have been come back into the world that should have stayed asleep. There's a lot worse than vampires in those myths and legends."
He stared at his plate, suddenly not hungry. "I bet Sephiroth could take out whatever crawls out of them," he said sullenly.
"I'll bet he could, son," said his father, fully aware of his hero-worship. "Now eat your food. Do you have any homework?"
"Daaad!"
"I'll take that as a yes."
To Be Continued …