In the year 2020, Vampires took control of society and ordered all humans placed in vampire custody. The people who were not captured formed a Resistance movement, headed by the Human Council, who began to plan the Insurgence.
I am, of course, indebted to Stephenie Meyer for this world we all play in, and these characters we all adore. Additionally, I am indebted to hitntr01, who has graciously allowed me to use certain concepts from her wonderful story "In Need of Rescue", which constitute much of the background of my own story. These include: the language Vampiri, the Rules, the machines used to draw blood from humans, Manners Training, and the plot theme of Edward working as a guard at a facility holding humans. Thank you, hitntr01.
Chapter 44 – a small issue of food quality, and a surprise on Aro's quarterly newscast
December 23rd and 24th, 2039; days 7115 and 7116
As evening fell, everyone from both the Home and Cullen covens moved from the patio to the living room, while Esme continued to hover behind Carlisle. Carlisle was watching Esme and Papa with a smile, but he wasn't saying anything yet. Emmett lit a fire in the fireplace and chairs were moved so that we could all sit around the blazing fire. Carlisle had just received a week's shipment of food for me, so Esme made dinner for all of four of us. Celeste, Hope and I had lasagna, while Hope's two year old son Ron had a grilled cheese sandwich and some fruit.
Eleazar came back from his hunt and was astonished to see the new visitors. I could tell he started picking up on Papa's boys' gifts immediately. I began to wonder what he saw. Fighter, fighter, fighter…at a time when the Volturi's primary fighters were gone, he was seeing these strong new fighters, from an unknown coven.
Eventually everybody human went to bed. Esme put Hope and her son Ron in Rosalie's old room, and Celeste insisted on sleeping with me. That meant two humans in my small bedroom. But Celeste was not to be denied. I eventually fell asleep with Celeste cuddled up against me, snoring delicately.
The mind-reader awakened me in the middle of the night with an urgent message from the allies.
Before I had made the trip to Chicago, where I met Carlisle in June, I had been working with the allies on a project where they were making improved food to sell to the captive humans. The humans existing on the living death camps had a terrible diet, existing on small amounts of dried bread and small handfuls of meat. The humans who lived as blood slaves were fed a pellet type food. It was sold under various names and had varying nutritional contents.
One tactic the allies were using to improve the lives of humans, prior to the Insurgency, was to make a better quality food, and then cut its price below the price of the standard foods being marketed, in order to get a more nutritious diet to the enslaved people.
As part of their research, the allies were analyzing the nutritional content of the various commercial brands.
The reason for the urgent call tonight was that at one of the labs, they had used a more sophisticated scanning technique to analyze the proteins. They discovered human DNA in all of the samples being tested.
They had re-tested the samples and confirmed the presence of human DNA in all of the brands being marketed. The level of human DNA varied by brand, ranging from 20% to 80% of the protein contained in the samples. They had run confirming tests in three separate laboratories before contacting me.
I sat on the edge of my bed, trying to comprehend this news, with a sleepy Celeste grumbling beside me at being awakened at such an hour. I shushed her, and she quickly fell back to sleep, then I got up and walked downstairs. Carlisle had been sitting in his office reading, since Celeste was in the room with me, and now he followed me down the stairs.
When I reached the living room, I looked between Papa, Carlisle, and Edward. I wanted to ask Edward what he knew, since he worked at a living death camp, but I held my tongue. The mind-reader was searching Edward's memories and reported that he knew nothing of the disposal of human bodies.
Finally, I spoke. "Edward, I need to ask you a favor. I need you to go to your employer and ask him how he disposes of the human bodies. Please read his mind directly after posing your question and also ask any of the supervisors you meet while you are there today the same question. Don't worry about acting disrespectful, because, believe me, it won't matter. Just get an answer and get back here in six hours."
Edward looked at me seriously, then nodded and left.
I turned to Carlisle after Edward left. "Do you have access to laboratory equipment that can run DNA tests?" When Carlisle nodded, I continued, "I need to run some tests on some samples. Can you take me to this lab?" Papa said he would send Luther with us for security. Papa knew I didn't need any security; this was more for Carlisle's sake.
I went back upstairs to my room and got dressed. Tonight I put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that I had stuffed in the back of my closet instead of the usual velvet dress and tights that Carlisle preferred. Carlisle watched but didn't argue. He had picked out my clothes since I arrived in July, but tonight I needed something else to wear.
Soon an ally arrived at the house with three unopened bags representing the three brands of food sold at Miniver's market for our test. These brands would be the food Jasper and Emmett were feeding to their humans. The possibility of finding traces of human DNA in these bags was making me sick.
Carlisle drove Luther and me to the hospital in his Mercedes. When we got there, Carlisle carried me from his car to the lobby of the small hospital, the electronic doors opening quietly as we approached the front of the building. He and Luther walked past the potted plants that stood on either side of the doors, and past the bulletin boards, still covered with the announcements for the employee picnic on the 4th of July weekend from 2020. No one had ever taken them down. There were no cops in the lobby, but a vampire was manning the front desk nervously. Since humans were treated at the hospital, the hospital had security measures in place prevent any escapes. Considering what had just happened to the Forks cops, this rent-a-cop stand-in looked nervous playing security guard.
Carlisle signed us all in at the front desk and then carried me through the sterile, silent hospital halls to the third floor. He unlocked an office for us to use and then brought the clean room suits and equipment needed to prepare samples. I told him I needed to prepare the samples myself.
"Dear, I can help. Will you tell me what you are looking for?" he asked.
"I want your expertise in reading the results. I don't want you prejudiced by seeing the samples," I answered. I could sense his frustration, but this charge was serious and the validation of the charges needed to be provided by humans. We could not rely on vampire allies, who were, after all, still vampires, giving us the information we would base the main attack of the Insurgency on.
After the samples spent the allotted time in the analyzing equipment, the results were printed. The reports showed that all of the samples contained human DNA. This meant that all three of the brands being sold at Miniver's contained anywhere from 30-60% human DNA. We were being fed our own dead.
Carlisle was distraught and enraged, as he confirmed my results.
I shared his feelings. As much as we knew about vampires, how could we not have caught this before? We never really asked what happened to the bodies of our dead. We knew they weren't being given proper burials, but thought the bodies were buried in some kind of mass graves or were being incinerated. Initially they had been incinerated, starting in July, 2020, as vampires found the stench of decaying human corpses left behind after the Event offensive. At some point though, someone thought of a more economic use for the human dead.
I was sickened. I was trying to block my thoughts from my cousins, but it was hard. I couldn't go back to Carlisle's house just then, with the two of them there. Carlisle drove me to Edward's house and let us all in.
The mind-reader told me that Edward had picked up on the fact that his facility had recently begun sending the bodies of the humans who had died to the food manufacturers.
No one over the age of 39 was kept at any of the facilities. The women over 39 years of age were occasionally sold to wealthy vampires, to be kept as servants in large houses, to do cleaning, polishing, laundry and other chores that the younger, more attractive "pets" used as blood sources were too inexperienced to handle. The older men, on the other hand, were generally sold to the local vampires, who would turn them loose in a forested area for a hunt. Any human who was 39 today would have been around twenty years old at the time of the Event. They would have had enough experience of the natural world prior to their incarceration in 2020 to recognize a forest and try to flee into it, even if they suspected what was coming. That made them good sport for vampires.
People who had been born on the living death camps, on the other hand, were initially so overwhelmed at the natural world after having spent their entire lives in the manufactured cinderblock worlds that they weren't considered sport. Their eyes would have trouble adjusting to natural light, and since they wouldn't have seen any natural objects, such as trees or grass, before, they were overwhelmed at the sight.
But if the camps couldn't find buyers for the humans turning 40, they would just kill them, now that there was a market for the bodies. The bodies of the girls who didn't survive childbirth were also turned over to the food factories. But the biggest suppliers of human bodies had been the brothels, as the sixteen year old human girls generally only survived 4-6 weeks of sex work.
There were only a limited number of food manufacturers. All of the manufacturers' food products had been tested by our labs, and all contained human DNA. The allies were waiting. I told them I wanted to know which Human Containment Facilities had been supplying the bodies, and who else was supplying the bodies to the food manufacturers.
The Resistance was going to launch an operation against the manufacturers, and all their owners and suppliers, at midnight. All of the food would be removed from all stores, facilities, and shipments as well as storehouses. Any bodies not processed would be removed for proper burial. The allies would replace the food at the facilities with better quality food, including beans, fruit, and vegetables.
I asked my mind-reader, who had been a Buddhist monk while human, to help come up with a ritual cleansing for the humans who had unknowingly consumed their own, and a ritual to perform over the food that contained human remains. He agreed. He also suggested consulting Carlisle for assistance, since he had been a preacher when he was human. I decided I would do that after I got done with Aro.
I finally went back to Carlisle's house around noon, after an exhausting night spent first running the tests and then waiting for the results. Papa had sent for six more of his boys to serve as additional security for Carlisle's house, and the allies had moved from Forks to the house as well. The allies felt there was no reason to hide their presence from the Cullens anymore. They still kept their UPS or other delivery uniforms on hand in case they needed to go into a city, but were now wearing their regular clothes.
December 24th was also the night of Aro's quarterly newscast. Celeste and Hope sat on the sofa with me while we waited for it to air. The human council had been notified of my confirmation of the allies' findings. I told the Council I planned to destroy all vampires involved in or profiting from this atrocity involving the captive human's food supply, and the Council had agreed with my course of action.
Aro came on TV at his usual time, for his "State of My Empire" speech. He always took a few questions, usually carefully rehearsed. But we had time to get an ally into his press room, someone prepared to pose an unrehearsed question.
After Aro delivered his prepared remarks, the time for questions was announced. When it was the ally's turn, he asked, "Were you aware that human bodies were being used to prepare the human food?"
Aro blinked in surprise at an unrehearsed question, then gave his trademark smile, and said, "But it has always been this way. Cattle and chicken feed contained the carcasses of cows and chickens, so why shouldn't human food contain human remains?"
When Aro gave this response, Celeste started crying; Hope just looked at me and squeezed my hand. My order to stand down had been revoked. It was time. One of my roles during the Insurgency was the execution of Aro Voturi. The allies had hacked into the TV system, and the President of the Human Council's voice came over the air. He had a short statement prepared, as he expected to be cut off quickly. "Aro Volturi, for your crimes against humanity, the Human Council in Exile has sentenced you to death. The execution is to be carried…" his voice was cut off.
Aro lifted an eyebrow, still on camera and smiled. "Well, it seems…"he began.
Then he lifted his hand to one of his eyes and began to rub it. Both eyes glazed over white and within a few more seconds he fell forward. His death came within a minute, and he was left lying face down on the news desk, face tilted to one side. His guards tried to cut off the TV cameras, but our cameras continued to broadcast the image. Aro's death was carried over the news media to the entire vampire world. The doors were locked to the broadcasting room, and the hidden cameras installed two years earlier by the allies for just this purpose remained on. The picture of Aro's body stayed on the screen and was sent out over an emergency broadcast channel for the entire world to see.
In that moment, it had begun. The Insurgency was now in progress.
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