~Until Your Heart Stops Beating~
"Good morning everyone." A man wearing a dark grey suit and a top hat greets as he sets his briefcase down on one of the many lab tables. He removes his suit jacket and replaces it with the plain white lab coat he was used to wearing day after day.
Several replies float back to him from the other scientists and assistants around the laboratory.
"Morning Edward." Doctor Chris Caruso replies and looks up from the microscope in front of him. He looks over to his long time friend with a confound expression plaguing his face, "Edward? Would you come here and have a look at this?"
He waves Edward over and moves aside from the microscope, scratching something down on a piece of paper. Edward watches him fill out the report and then shoves his hands into his coat pockets, walking over before the microscope. Chris nods his head to the scope and brushes a hand over his chin in anticipation.
"Go on. Have a look." Chris encourages and goes back to writing. Edward gives his friend one last glance and looks into the microscope, unaware of what Chris had seen mere moments before. After a moment of fiddling with the strength of the magnification Edward lifts his golden gaze. He looks to his friend and shakes his head, unsure of what he was supposed to have seen in the blood.
"It's normal human blood." Edward announces simply. Chris raises a finger with a small anxious look and picks up a vial of blood along with a dropper.
"That's human blood and this," He drains the vial of a little blood and leans closer to the microscope. He looks at the dropper and then lifts it over the lens on the microscope plate, "This is infected blood."
Chris lets a single drop of blood fall into the red dot already on the lens. Edward looks wearily at his friend, his fangs dangling out from under his upper lip. He couldn't see the point of his friend's actions and quite frankly didn't care about this blood.
"Just take a look." Chris pushes the microscope closer to Edward and nods his head towards it, continuing to tell him to look. Edward sighs heavily and then bows his head to the microscope once more. He stares at the blood cells swimming about long and hard while playing with the magnification once again. Chris watches as his friend's eyebrows slowly knit together in confusion, much like his own had earlier at the spectacle.
"What do you see?" Chris asks and leans against the lab desk, chewing on the end of his pen. Edward shakes his head, trying to find the words to describe what his eyes were seeing.
"The human cells seem to be... abstaining from accepting the infected cells as the dominant." Edward lifts his head from the microscope and stares across the room for a moment in quiet thought, "But that can't be..."
Thinking his eyes had deceived him, he looks back through the microscope once more and then looks over at Chris. Edward shakes his head slowly, unable to form words for what was happening before them.
"I don't know." Chris answers the question lingering in Edward's eyes for he too had been asking himself the same question; how could this be? Chris looks at the microscope and shakes his head, "I don't know how. I've been trying to figure it out for a few days now, but I just... I just can't get to a conclusion. It's not like she has an extra chromosome or is even missing one. It's just something in her blood."
Chris releases a heavy sigh and runs a hand over his face, blinking several times. He looks across the room at nothing, becoming lost in his own thoughts.
"Or maybe it's not as complicated as something in her blood so much as it's something about it." Edward looks through the microscope again. He watches as the last traces of the virus disappear as if it was water in a frying pan; evaporating into thin air. Edward looks to his friend confused by what he had seen. He couldn't believe it. It just couldn't be.
"Do we know whose blood this belongs to?" He asks slowly, leaning an arm on the desk top and watching his friend.
"Just that it's from some strange human girl that was brought in a few days ago." Chris replies and then shakes his head, giving a harsh laugh, "I didn't think Bromley was serious when he said she was special."
"Wait. Bromley already knows about her blood?" Edward's eyes narrow suspiciously. Chris nods his head and takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. This wasn't good. Edward could plainly see that, "How?"
"I don't know. Someone tipped him off about her and he sent some guys to collect her. Now I'm stuck trying to figure out how her blood is warding off the virus." Chris picks up the lens from the microscope and wipes it clean, preparing to test the blood in a different setting.
"How many vials of her blood do we have?" Edward asks and watches as Chris stands from his spot and walks to a nearby counter.
"Three right now, but I have to go and get more tomorrow. Can you believe that? On my day off I have to come in just to extract blood from some poor girl downstairs." Chris replies and picks up several test tubes and a dropper. Edward nods his head slowly and runs a hand over his mouth as he thinks.
"Does she know about her blood?" Edward moves on, questions swirling in his head. This was so new and so unbelievable. No one could have ever expected this.
"I'm not sure." Chris measures out five milliliters of blood into one of the test tubes and then gives a small laugh, shaking his head. "She stopped talking to me the day I brought her to her new home in the Abyss."
Edward nods his head, taking everything his friend and colleague was saying. Suddenly his expression changes as something clicks in his head. His eyes move back to his friend as his mind reeled back to the mention of 'The Abyss'; the secret basement below the decoy basement.
"She's here in the building?" He asks after another moment of thinking. Chris looks over from looking at the blood in one of the test tubes and nods his head.
"You didn't expect Bromley to let her go, did you?" He gives a small laugh and looks back at the test tube, swirling the blood within it. He picks up a dropper and fills it with a blue liquid, lifting it over the top of the test tube. Carefully, he squeezes out three drops and watches as the blue seeps below the blood.
"No, of course not." Edward mumbles and then slowly stands from his seat. He walks to where he had set his briefcase down and opens it, searching through his papers and reports from other researches including the substitute. He looks up slowly and watches Chris as he examines the blood that had now turned a deep rich purple.
…just wishful thinking, I suppose…
Edward takes his eyes from the blood and sits down on the nearest stool, preparing to work on his own projects. His thoughts ran to the blood substitute that he was being hounded to perfect in such a little time, but soon they drifted back to the anomaly of the human girl's blood.
An idea sparks in his mind, causing him to look over at his friend again as he experimented further on the blood.
"Chris," Edward speaks up and crosses his hands on top of the lab desk he sat at. Chris looks over from his own work, waiting for Edward to finish his question, "Why don't I go tomorrow and get the blood samples? I have to be here anyway. It'll save you the hassle."
"Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks." Chris gives a small smile and then goes back to his work, becoming lost in it. Edward stares at him a moment longer and then looks back to his own papers sitting before him on the desk.
"Don't mention it." Edward replies softly as his thoughts linger away from his work once more and reel back to the girl sitting only a few floors beneath him with blood that just might save them all. Not from starvation, but from themselves.