Episode four - The beast within

Lucas remembered that by 7h am that same day, the scientists went to his cell. He was pretending to sleep deeply, while the guards disabled the electrical fence and opened the door.

Carefully, the scientists entered the room, not before the guard positioned himself, pointing a heavy shock gun towards Lucas's back.

- I guess he is still asleep. How much sleeping sorum you gave him?
- About twice as usual.
But the third scientist interrupted:
- Well, make it four then. I gave him twice the amount before our meeting yesterday.

To what the first scientist answered:
- Are you two insane?
- Well, we can't kill him, remember?
- We can't kill him, but if Dr. Jones is right, we can make him immune to the sorum...
- You and Dr. Jones. Dr. Jones is a lunatic. Let me check his vitals.

A moment passed, and the conversation continued:
- He is probably in coma. His body is cold, the respiration and heart beat are too slow.
- Good, this will only help some tests I want to make. Let's move him to the exam room five.
- Yes, this is not a bad thing. Let's hope he doesn't die when he drawn most of his blood off.
- Guard, lock this cell while we prepare the exam room.
- Yes, Dr. Right away -- replied the guard.

A few minutes later, two nurses approached the cell, along with three armed guards.
They tied Lucas to a bed and took him to the exam room.

One of the guards left the room and positioned himself at the door, the other two remained, for the case something went wrong.

The doctors were very excited, as they almost never have authorization to perform tests, as the bodies are considered to be property of the military.

Two of the doctors begun to set up their equipments, while one of them plugged Lucas to a vital sign analyzer.

- I'm very surprised, he is indeed in coma. I got some strange readings from his brain, but that's probably just a fault of the equipment.

He then joined the other doctors and begun to prepare. A few instants later, one of then turned around in order to give Lucas an injection, but Lucas was gone.

- Holy shi ... The doctor didn't have the time to complete his sentence. He was thrown away to the other side of the room.

The other two doctors immediately looked behind, only to see their worst nightmare to 'come true: There was two huge blood marks on the wall, close to the door. They concluded these were from the guards.

They looked to the other side of the room and saw their colleague half crossed the wall, with bones exposed all over the place, and much blood.

They looked straight ahead and there was Lucas, all convered in blood, and with a visible rage in his eyes. He was no longer with a death appearance, his skin returned to normal color.

One of the scientists couldn't hold his thought to himself and left a word escape from his mouth:
- Impossible!

In hearing this word, Lucas eyes seemed to gain a more human configuration. The rage seemed to calm down.  Lucas then looked at the man who spoke and replied him:
- I would also say all of this to be impossible just a few weeks ago. Now can you please tell me what is happening to me?

The doctor who previously said something tried to say a few words but entered a shock state. His colleague however replied Lucas:
- Please answer me quickly, we don't have much time: how did you manage to control the anger? In your state, you should have killed both of us too.
The other doctor then could spoke a few words, even thought he was shaking hard:
- Shut up! Don't say this to him! Don't give this monster any ideas! Do you have a death wish?

Lucas felt the rage again and moved close to the doctor who spoke last, raising his hand against him.
The other doctor said loud:
- Calm down!

And Lucas immediately turned his look into something more pleasant. He then spoke:
- Sorry. My body seems to have wishes of his own. I'm afraid I'll get you both killed at any moment, so I'll keep the distance. What have you asked me before, Dr?
- I asked how could you hold your anger? It's not natural for a thing like you to hold off your instincts, at least not so soon. We know you transformed not too long ago.

Lucas felt kind of in shock but tried to understand every single word the doctor was telling him.
He thought for a moment and then replied:
- I need to know what I am and what's happening to me. When you spoke to me, I thought you might have some answers. This rage, this hunger, then slowed down a bit. I think I can manage it for now.
- Very well. You were bitten by a vampire. You are a vampire now. Not entirely, I may add, unfortunately. A human bitten by a vampire will always be half human, and this is what give you the hunger.
The other doctor was a surprised as Lucas, and shout:
- What the hell are you talking about? Half human?
- I'm sorry my friend, but I couldn't tell you. I had access to Hitler's research. It tells that there are pure vampires, and that they don't experiment this kind of pain as transformed ones do. The bone marrow still produces human stem cells, which are then swallowed by bigger vampire cells, which induces transformations on them, before they differentiate. But the vampire body doesn't produce a few enzymes which the human cells needs to function. As a reaction, they release chemical toxins in the blood stream that signals to the brain they need to feed. It's unknown how the brain "knows" that it needs human blood to supply these, so that the organism can keep working.
The other doctor went to reply, but Lucas interrupted:
- Are you telling me that these images I have about bitting human beings and drinking their blood are real? I'll have to do that to not die.
The doctor then vigorously attempted to reply:
- No, you only have to ...

But the guard outside, who attempted to contact the ones inside by radio and got no answer, had triggered the silent alarm to the entire building.

Heavy armed and heavy armored  men charged the room and opened fire, even before the doctor could finish his sentence. As Lucas was between the door and the doctors, as the guards shoot attempting to hit Lucas, they accidentally ended up killing both doctors.

Lucas immediately charged against the door. His anger was so intense that he didn't feel as the projectiles of the guns entered his body, breaking some bones and perforating his internal organs.

Two guards had already entered the room and positioned on the sides of the door, while a third one was between them, still passing through the door. Lucas got to the guard at the left, which was the closest to him, and managed to hit him hard at the chest. The guard flew against the wall behind him, but for Lucas surprise, he managed to fall on his feet, with some difficulty. In the fraction of second between the guard got on his feet and positioned himself to open fire again, Lucas managed to hit the guard of the middle, who already passed the door.

 He knew his previous hit wasn't enough, so this time he hit as hard as he felt that he could. This time it was too hard, and his arm passed through the armor and the guard's body. His hand got stuck and the guard on the right was already shooting at him, so he kicked the middle guard's body while holding his hand still, throwing the remains at the shooting guard. It wasn't hard enough to injure the guard, but gave him the time to reposition in order to hit the guard at the left. But as the guard had enough time to aim, he hit Luca in the head, injuring his left eye and causing lots of pain.
 Lucas fell on the floor, but the anger was so much higher that he immediately hit his arms against the ground, with so much strength that his body flew in direction to the guard, and he then punched him in the chest. The armor didn't get a hole this time, but bended hard enough to break the guard's ribs, and to get his body to fly against the wall, this time passing through it.

Lucas took one of the guard's guns and used it as if it were a baseball bat, and hit the guard now entering the door, so hard that some guards behind him flew backwards too.

One of the guards tried and succeeded to get a knife on Lucas's neck, but Lucas, in pain, craved his teeth on the guard's neck. He felt possessed by an irresistible desire to suck the guard's blood, but he only had the time to get a little, as he realized another guard, with heavy artillery, was pointing directly to him.  Lucas wasn't fast enough to deviate the shot, which ripped his right leg off. The pain was almost unbearable, and he fell to the ground, so he could only took the bitten guard's shotgun and shoot the guy who hit him. He then charged a few rounds against other guards, but when the gun went empty, there were still four guards left. One of them tried to shoot Lucas on the head, but he then threw the empty gun at the guy, making a bloody scene I would prefer not to describe.

Lucas got on his single foot and managed to grab one of the guards by the vest, and with a circular movement, hit another guard with the roting one's foot. And then threw the guard hard against other two soldiers.

A few kicks on the bodies on the floor and only one guard remained alive. Lucas could hear on a guard's radio that a fifty man squad was moving towards that floor, and that, should Lucas escape alive, the remaining ones had clearance to start "operation darkstar". Lucas concluded that whatever that means, it should be bad.

He felt weaker. But also dominated by the hunger. He then jumped at the remaining guard and bitten him without mercy, drinking every single blood drop he could. He realised that not only he was drinking, but that some substance was liberated by his teeth, which made the victim's blood thinner and easier to swallow. At some point he fell that the victim's heart was no longer beating, but he kept drinking until he couldn't feel a single drop. He felt a complicated mixture of disgust and pleasure, guilty and freedom. But had no time to consider what was happening. The pain on his leg was reducing, and he had the impression that a exposed bone was growing relatively faster. Could vampires regenerate? He wasn't going to stay there enough time for realizing.

Episode three - Stauffenberg

There is a secret research facility 320 miles away from Lucas's home. This facility is composed by three underground buildings. There's a tunnel, inside a military base 5 miles away, that gives access to these buildings. On the ground, over the buildings, there's a huge facility that the government leases to private corporations committed with low-tech activities. Right now, there's a cotton pillow factory. One of the greatest in the world, one may add.

The tunnel divides in three, each sub-tunnel leading to a different building. Access control is made in the intersection between the tunnels, both by automated systems and heavy-armed personnel. All of this belongs to a secret organization who refers to itself as "the last frontier".

Going down the leftmost tunnel, one reaches the building where Lucas was taken. This building hosts  exclusively the "Project Stauffenberg", a super-secret research team founded in the early 50s and named after Clauss Stauffenberg, the german official who became worldwide famous in his failed attempt to assassinate Hitler. He was a ultra-secret spy for the allies, a secret that is kept to this day. His responsabilities were to infiltrate a secret research facility which held Hitler's secret research team, "Verfaulte Welt".

By that time, Stauffenberg discovered one of Hitler's secrets: he was using blood transfusion from people they called "Unsterblichen" (immortals) to make super-strong soldiers.

As his report told that the germans were successful in their matters of making super soldiers a reality, the order came from the allies that he should attempt to destroy the Verfaulte Welt team, a task he succeeded in performing, but that had several consequences, exposing some of the allies spies. Stauffenberg's instructions were that if more than two third of his cell were exposed, he was then to put in practice operation "spiel vorbei", which consisted in killing the whole Hitler's top-rank officers and, if possible, Hitler himself.

Stauffenberg had no chance to killing Hitler's men, but an unique opportunity presented that lead him into the so-called failed attempt in murdering Hitler. What the story doesn't tell is that Stauffenberg would have been successfull, if Hitler himself wasn't a super soldier, in fact, the last one injected before the Verfaulte Welt team was destroyed.

The story tells that hitler left the briefing room where Stauffenberg's attempt to bomb him failed (altough the bomb did fire) and told his man: "- I'm immortal!". A few moments later, he met Mussolini, and the fact that Hitler was unharmed did put a very strong impression on Mussolini, as he later would told the world.

So, it was at least since world war two that secret organizations knew the existence of people with special physical capabilities.

When Lucas woke, he was moderately drugged and being kept in a jail cell. He immediately tried to search his body for bullet injuries, but there were none. Not even a scar. In fact, he felt stronger than before.

He attempted to touch the cell bars, but they were electrocuted and the pain was unbearable, even for Lucas.

He noticed a man in white dresses entered a room not far away. He attempted to listen to what was happening on the room, but the man closed the door behind him. Lucas was under the impression that if he tried hard enough, he could listen inside the room anyway, and so he remained focused, in silence, and concentrated on that very same room. Slowly, he become to hear some whispers, and the sound begun to get more and more like words, and finally, he could listen to a conversation. He could identify that there were at least three man on the room.

The part he could listen went more or less like this:

- I'm telling you, accordingly to our documentation, it was the first time we ever succeeded in taking one of them by force. Generally we use other means, like drugging. And I don't like the results, Dr. Jones says that the stress of the fight made him stronger. Much stronger than any one we ever seen before.
- Dr. Jones has this unproven theory that they evolve whenever they concentrate on something hard enough. I don't think that this is the case.
- Whatever happened to him, he was moderately strong when we got him at the city, but now he is at least three times stronger than subject 34, which in turn was the strongest we ever saw.
- Too bad we had to kill subject 34. But now we can proove once and for all whether Dr. Jones is wrong or not.
- I'll set the subject in order to perform some tests by tomorrow. The high comand however instructed us to collect as much blood from him as we can, and that we put him on the freezer, afterwards.
- In other words, they want us to treat him like every other subject. Which is a shame, our research could be years ahead if we could test the body and not only the blood. But orders are orders.
- Well, we can do turns on tests. I only have to freeze his body after noon.

Lucas kind of disconnected from the conversation at this point. He was in a mix of surprise, disgust and anger. He was so angry that he begun to imagining drinking their blood and then smashing then against the wall. He then reacted against this image, thinking to himself "this would not be human, and I am a man, not a monster".

Lucas realized that he would have to come up with a plan, if he was to leave that place alive. Or at least, "unfrozen". He didn't quite understand what the men meant by "to freeze him", but he was pretty sure that this would be something painful and disgusting, and that it sounded a bit like death.

He had only during that night to come up with a plan. And it would be a long night.

Episode two - Taken

Lucas couldn't sleep that night, nor could he sleep at any other night that week.
He did however feel amazingly well. He knew that this could not be normal, nor healthy, so he went to see a doctor.

The doctor couldn't find anything wrong with him, other than the fact that his parameters were very unusual: a very low blood pressure and heart beat rate, very fast reflexes and reaction to the light, a very low muscular tone and yet the strength that the doctor would later comment  with his colleagues as if it was "the strength of four men". What the doctor never heard of was of someone that didn't sleep for such a number of days and remained sane, or, more than that, perfectly functional.

He subscribed a sleeping drug that Lucas took and it worked amazingly. Lucas slept all night, only to wake a few minutes before his alarm clock rang. He felt very awake, and again, without that morning numbness that he had his entire life.

In fact, his latent feeling was a sense of power and strength, and he used this feeling that day to improve his work: he decided he was to review at least three firm cases before going home at night. By six o' clock, he had achieved the detailed review of sixteen cases. It would've been a record, if someone kept track of this sort of productivity scores. A law firm is not a place for speed, it's a place where precision and attention to the details and corners, and what even Lucas couldn't realize at the moment is that he had achieved both without even feeling tired.

During these days, Lucas got used to the attention, as he got well known due to his so called "police episode". Since everybody on the firm knew who he was, he begun to interact socially more often, to the point of having small talks with almost anyone up to the task. The people begun to perceive Lucas as a fine young man, and to slowly forget why he become a sort of celebrity. He wasn't a partner at the firm, and his work was more in the backgrounds; the "hard work", as he called it. However, as the weeks passed, more and more he was knew. Many people came to him, both for work and personal advises.

One day, however, Lucas woke in fever. The hunger was very strong, as he didn't feel since his days on the woods. His mind was sort of dominated by a strange passion, one whose subject he couldn't yet identify. And he also felt weaker, although the feeling was worst than the reality.

His wish was to call sick and go to see a doctor, but he had an important case analysis to do at work, so he went out anyway. The light sort of made his eyes hurt, and almost every single smell on the street made him feel numb and disgusted.

He managed to get at work, only to realize he couldn't concentrate enough to finish, so he asked permission to leave and to see his doctor.

The doctor was very surprised with Lucas's appearance, and ordered a few tests, which would took a few days to get ready. As Lucas seemed stressed to him, he told Lucas's boss to give him a few days off.

All Lucas's activity during those days were to eat a lot and sleep a lot. He felt overthrow by this strange desire, a kind of hunger that made him insane, specially because he couldn't identify what he needed. It was not a normal body request, like for food, water, sleep, sex, etc.

It was something very strong and very new to him, that, he felt, if worst, would make him go insane.

A few days later, his doctor got the results back from the lab, together with a note that said the results were too unusual, but were remade in a different facility and were indeed successfully confirmed as real. It recommended the doctor to contact a researcher in order to try to interpret what could give those strange results.

Lucas was called and went to see the doctor on the very same afternoon. The doctor explained that the results were unusual, suggesting a bone marrow disorder like a cancer in terminal stage,  however, some parameters were "too normal" for that scenario, while other suggested the probability of that plus co-morbidities.

The doctor considered that the symptoms pointed to a form of poisoning or genetic disorder, but if this later  option were to be the case, Lucas would have exhibited at least some unusual parameters since born.

He asked Lucas if he could send a copy of his medical history and recent test results to a researcher which had some papers suggesting explanations for that sort of results. Lucas give him a signed consent and went home to sleep. Since then he was in constant fever and sometimes had nightmares. He was under the impression that he could feel whenever someone on the street nearby was smoking, and that smell in particular made he feel even sicker.

 It was only three days after he have his consent to the researcher, when he woke up with his door being put down, and with armed men forcing their way through his house.

One of the man shot at Lucas with a electrical wire gun, and the shock made Lucas fall on his knees. Another man then moved forward to try and hit Lucas with the back of his gun, but Lucas was faster and punched the man. He didn't aim too well, so his fist touched not the man's chest, but the man's shotgun, which was broken in the half, but the punch was so strong that the man and the one after him were throw away against the wall, which was broken, as well as the spine of the man who was behind the one with the shotgun.

Immediately, one of the other man took a loaded gun and attempted to point at Lucas, but by the time he was ready to press the trigger, Lucas already had jumped over him and destroyed the gun. Moved by an unknown form of instinct, he killed every single man that were in the room, some of then violently, and all in a matter of seconds.

Another squad of armed men begun to open fire against the room. Lucas was hit in the chest and in the arm but managed to jump of the window. He was pretty sure the jump would lead him to crash onto the ground, and so was very surprised when he managed to fell on his two feet, but the third squad, what were on the street awaiting to charge into the building, opened fire against him.

The squad leader ordered a cease fire and made they put Lucas's bloodied body on the back of a truck. Then the remaining of the military - tough unidentified - team left the scene before the police arrived.

A man falls - Part 3

Lucas woke feeling better. His consciousness was restored, the hallucinations stopped and he could manage, for the time being, the hunger that was beginning to raise inside him.

He found himself sleeping on the floor, dirty as hell, and smelling bad. He remembered what happened but had the impression it was just a nightmare. He tried to imagine alternative explanations, because the idea of being bitten, by a crazy human, was already too unbelievable. The idea of being bitten by something *not human* was definitively part of a nightmare. The explanation Lucas made for himself was that he was robbed by a crazy person that drugged him. Everything was just an hallucination, a crazy history he was far from being ready to share with anyone.

However, there was a flaw on his history: as he reached a road, and a cab passed by, he managed to find lots of money inside his wallet. What kind of crazy thief would leave the money? He then begin to feel worried, what if the guy was a pervert? Oh crap, *that* idea was unconceivable! The idea of vampires begin to sound more feasible.

He got home, a small apartment he shared with other two colleagues. At that time, they already left for work. Lucas attempted to take a fast shower, but the dirty was too much so he had to try again, slowly. When he was already dressed and shaved, the fog on the bathroom's mirror begun to fade away, and he noticed he had two scars on the side of his neck. The scars looked very old.

He then managed to go to work. He was a trainee at a small law firm, Guliver & Smith, which had only begun to draw attention as they managed to defend and set free one of most prominent judges of the supreme court, who was accused of being part of a conspiracy to set a few drug-lords free.

As Lucas entered the building, Sandra, the lobby receptionist, screamed "Good Lord! We thought you were dead!". Lucas got really scared with her scream, and very confused, since he was sure he was only missing for a day.

Sandra continued: "Where the hell were you? The cops gave up searching for your body on the woods five days ago!"

Lucas felt weird, as he thought he only was missing for a day, but something inside him knew she was telling the truth. He begin to breath very fast, and his heart was like it would blow away.

He managed to calm down a little, and asked her: "But how the cops knew I was in the woods? I woke in there this morning, and I don't quite remember what happened to me."

Sandra was astonished. She replied: "They found your blood outside a bar, near the trash. They concluded you had a fight, probably someone tried to steal your money and you fought back ... the trail lead to the river, and they tried to find your body for two days, until someone noticed several blood marks on the sideways of the road nearby, and again, the tests revealed the blood to be yours. They searched for three days, and then gave up. We tried to contact your relatives but couldn't find anyone. I think the TV reported your disappearance for the entire state, tough."

Before she could finish her last sentence, Richard Smith, one of the lawyers, the son of Patrick Smith, one of the company's founder, and a very good friend of Lucas, dropped his switcase on the floor and run to Lucas, giving him a hug and a small slap on his face.

- What the hell, Lucas? You almost killed everyone of concern! Where in hell have you been? Wait, don't answer: My father will need to listen to this. He almost cried whenever your face appeared on TV.
- Ok, Ok, but please, let me come to my room and leave my stuff in there.
- Alright, but how did you come here? With the police?
- No, I went home and took a cab. I woke in the woods this morning, I didn't know this much days had passed!
- Holy crap! Sandra, can you call the cops and ask for the detective in charge of Lucas case? He needs to know he is good and well, and I'm sure he will ask Lucas to go to the police station to give his testimony.
- Yes Mr. Smith, Right away.
- Sandra, I told you before; You can call me Richard. I feel as old as my father when you call me as a I call him.
Sandra laughed, and picked the phone.

Richard and Lucas took the elevator to the 10th floor, where Lucas used to work. Although the elevator was empty when they got in, and that it went straight to the 10th floor, by the time they got there, most people on the building was already aware that Lucas was back, so when the elevator's door opened, Lucas was welcomed by about sixty people, and more than half of then didn't work on that floor.

Mr. Patrick Smith went down to the 10th floor and announced he would excuse everyone from the firm from not working that day, if they wish to attend to the party the firm would gave to Lucas.

Lucas was feeling a bit uncomfortable, and he thought to himself "what if I went missing to use drugs or something? Now they throw me a party, that's weird".

They made a little celebration, as Lucas told his story over and over again. Mr Patrick remembered he had to attend to the court in about half a hour, and asked to speak to the judge on the phone. The judge got so impressed with the story that he rescheduled the court session to the next day, and declared the day as a city holiday (a thing that by law only the city major could do, but the major didn't contest that later, as he liked the idea very much).

A press conference was scheduled to 8h p.m., but the conference room of the firm was too small, so a hotel two blocks away was kind enough to lend theirs. The Major, the judge and almost every personality on the city managed to get there. Some were forgotten, and got pissed of. Other were invited but couldn't get in, as the conference room was completely full half an hour before the ceremony begun.

Every major TV station on the state sent a team, and some of them would rebroadcast their version of the story nationwide.

Lucas was lost in the woods and confused by the morning, but at night, he was very famous. What a day.