Omaha, 10 years before
For the first time since she left the mansion, Madeline wonders if she has made a terrible mistake.
Getting here had been the easy part. You know where I am. You know what I want. She knew alright. And now here she is, looking up at the gleaming steel-and-glass facility where she had spent the majority of her life a captive. She hadn't expected to feel a wave of nostalgia for the old place; but nothing could have prepared her for the visceral wave of terror that grips her as horribly familiar smells assailed her nostrils, as she looks around at the flat Nebraska skyline that had been her only view of the outside world for thirteen years. Her knees turn to jelly, and she sags against the chain-link fence, willing her heartbeat to steady, her mind to clear of the screaming impulse to run and never look back.
If anything, the place has grown more sinister in the months, all too few, since she'd been away. The clinic had always been a chilling, unfriendly place; but before it had been bright, and clean, and busy. Now an air of sordidness, neglect, clings to it. Several windows on the ground floor are broken; no lights shows in those that remain; KEEP OUT signs hang peeling on the the steel gates which are ringed round with forbidding chains.
Madeline reaches into her bag, takes out the chilled thermos of blood she took with her from the mansion. She doesn't know what might happen if she were to try and rescue Jessica whilst in the throes of her own overwhelming, blood-borne powers; but one thing she knows for sure: without them, neither she nor her sister stand a chance. Once Fiskel has Madeline in his clutches, he would have no qualms about discarding her sister, her only human sister, like so much garbage. Maddy can't allow that. Her life after the hospital, though it has become just an accumulation of griefs and lost friends, is still precious to her by comparison to what she'd had before. She can't give it up without a fight, and certainly not for nothing in the end. Whatever happens, she has to know that Jessica will be alright.
And so she tips her head back and allows the cold blood to course down her throat.
The effect is as electric as it has been before, in the sick bay with Erik, on the terrace with Charles. She feels her skin awaken, every millimeter of her body increasing in potentiality, vitality. She feels strength throbbing into her limbs, her body leaning instinctively forward into a predatory crouch. All the smells which frightened her just a moment ago increase in richness and detail, a four-dimensional time-lapse artwork of the world around her even when she closes her eyes. And suddenly, she can smell him – Fiskel. His scent is everywhere, on the chains binding the gates, scattered like broken glass across the deserted hospital car park, and a thick concentration somewhere, somewhere inside-
Without even thinking about it, she has vaulted over the 10-foot fence, landing lightly on one knee directly in front of the double doors. Her heart is thrumming deliriously inside her chest with the sheer joy of living, and she had to remind herself that she is here for a reason – she was here for Jessica.
Jessie.
The memory of her sister's scent is old, but Maddy has no trouble raising up the sick six-year-old ghost who had once been her only reason for living. She raises her face and sniffs the air, catches a whiff of something almost right – but not quite. Older. Weaker. And with it-
Blood.
The second her hyper-attuned nose catches hold of that red rag of scent, all bets are off. Her body reacts faster than her mind, is through a broken window and up three flights of stairs before she even realizes her own danger, a danger she had somehow failed to consider in all her misgivings –
Have to, have to, have to-
The dark corridor blurs as the scent sharpens, and Madeline feels the tip of her teeth pierce her tongue as she recklessly throws herself into the room where that insanely desirable smell hangs thick as smoke, intoxicating her entirely.
The side room is filthy, and threaded through the roaring reek of the blood, Madeline can detect a sickly-sweet rot of infection. Septicaemia, supplies some impotent relic of the girl who spent hours diligently studying with Hank. It is unpleasant, but somehow nothing to do with her, does nothing to tone down the scream of the thirst that consumes her as she looks down at the girl on the narrow surgical cot.
Jessie.
The word falls meaningless into her head as she takes in the gaunt, unconscious face, the matted hair the same colour as Maddy's own, the wires trailing carelessly from canulas to empty fluid drips. The only thing that means anything are the fresh surgical scars, each one a ringing red demand to drink, drink, drink.
As Madeline bent over her sister, the girl's eyes flutter open, glazed with fever.
"Who are you?"
Madeline sinks her teeth savagely into her sister's throat.
This. Only this, always this, this is heaven, this is everything, everything I've ever needed this this thisthisthis-
Madeline doesn't exist anymore. She is Jessie, she knows her utterly, every tiny detail of her life, and most of all her shame and guilt and guilty pleasure at being the one who lived, her need to live that little bit more to make up for, or perhaps to spite, the little sister she barely remembers, the one who was sacrificed for her, a debt she can't ever repay, a double-size glass for her own life that she could never ever fill, not even when pushing herself longer and harder than anyone else up and down the length of the swimming pool, not even when singing as loud as she can in church, not even when wrapping her legs round Tommy Bennett's bucking hips on the hood of his car down by the lake – how can you live enough to make up for somebody else dying for you? She didn't deserve it; no-one could deserve it; and so it was almost a relief when she was pushed into the trunk of her own car and driven God knows where and that crazy guy who wouldn't answer any of her questions started cutting on her, day after day for what seemed like forever now – "why are you doing this?" But she knew why; she had been too lucky, been given too much, and he had been sent now to call in the debt-
Maddy pulls up a moment, gasping, her throat flexing spasmodically, her heart thudding hard and slow and blissful, her face heavy and hot, more, more, more-
Everything is coming slower now, and this is so good, it had hurt at first when the strange red-eyed girl had bitten her, but now it feels so sweet, like falling into a warm pool of dark water without bottom, no need to breathe forcing you up again, just an endless, effortless drifting down, and down, and down-
"Ah, Madeline. So happy you could join us at last."
Madeline springs back against the wall, her sister's blood dripping down her chin, her sister's life still crowding and clouding her mind as Fiskel steps into the room. He stinks, she notices, his unwashed skin sour with a filth of old fear. But he isn't frightened now, though he should be. He is excited, thrilled even, in spite of the horrifying spectacle they must present, the monster and her sister-
Her sister. Oh God. Oh God!
Jessica is gasping shallowly for breath, blood trickling from an ugly wound in her white throat, her eyes glazed and staring intently at nothing, her lips moving with no sound coming out. Hideously, the smell of her blood is still crying out to Maddy, tempting her, even as the horror of what she has done threatens to spill out of her still-bloody lips in helpless screams. She turns on Fiskel.
"Save her! Don't let her die! I came back, didn't I? I did what you wanted! What the hell have you done to her?"
Fiskel shook his head, an ugly, eager little smile on his lips.
"Save her? I think it's a bit late for that, don't you? She was already dying, I'm afraid – you took to long to come, you see. I had a schedule, promises to keep, to people who lack patience. When I wasn't able to provide them with the cure I had told them I could, they took a deposit in lieu."
He holds up his left hand, and she sees that the little finger had been chopped away above the second knuckle.
"You can sympathise, I'm sure, my dear. Although I notice yours has grown back now? Clearly you have been able to access further capacities since you left here – I can't wait to examine them under more suitable circumstances." She snarls at him, unable to bear the sound of his voice anymore, that same old self-satisfied monologue, but with an unhealthy hint of hysteria that had never been there back when he was the one who had had all the power.
"Nothing. You'll get nothing unless you save her, let her go! What have you done to her?"
Fiskel raised his eyebrows.
"What have I done? Really, my dear, that is a bit rich coming from you. What a fascinating monster you have become! But really, don't feel too bad about it. You've done her a favour; blood poisoning's a nasty way to go.
"When you didn't come back, you see, and my clients became so, shall we say, impatient, I had to do something. And that's when I remembered, I did still have a bit of you, somewhere – left in storage, as it were. And your sister really has looked after those body parts of yours very well. Such a good, healthy specimen; a weaker subject would have died after I took the kidney, but she hung on long enough for me to reassign the lung as well. But without a proper aftercare team, really, it was only a matter of time before she succumbed to infection. Couldn't be helped. And anyway, she bought me the time I needed. By the time my clients realize the organs haven't worked as I'd promised, I'll have the genuine article to offer them again."
Fiskel claps his hands and laughs, a short, self-conscious, mannered little laugh that sets Madeline's teeth on edge.
"I'm so looking forward to working with you again, my dear. It'll be just like old times."
And that is what finally does it. Madeline has been in a welter of shock and confusion, her power disorientating her, her sister's blood surging hot and delicious and horrifying in her veins, making it impossible to think. She wants to go to Jessica, to save her, to drink her, to run, to fight. But Fiskel's little laugh suddenly drags all of her wildly oscillating thoughts spinning inward into one single, overpowering desire – she wants him dead, and for a moment, nothing else matters.
Madeline springs.