Interesting Places (Interesting Times #2) (11 page)

Chapter 13

Oliver woke up to find SCI-3422XB
sticking another syringe in his arm. He watched as more of his blood was sucked
into a tube. “You guys never stop, do you?”

“We do not,” the cyborg said. “Unlike
you, we no longer require sleep in the conventional sense.”

“How long was I out?”

“All night, and most of the day. You
seemed to need the sleep, so we did not wake you.”

Oliver nodded. “Do you rest at all?”

“It is more of a recharging period,”
the cyborg noted. “You will find it very efficient, once we are able to convert
you.”

“Lucky me.”

Oliver sat up in the bed once the
cyborg had finished taking his blood. “How did your tests go?” he asked.

“It was interesting. Your blood had
an unusual effect on the vampire. She appeared to be intoxicated for several
hours after ingesting it.”

“Really?”

The cyborg gave him a stern look. “Oliver
Jones, have you been entirely honest with us?”

Oliver frowned. “About what?”

“The vampire was unusually talkative
during her intoxicated state. In between threats to tear the heads from our
bodies, she indicated that the two of you have met before.”

“Really?”

“We can only conclude that one of you
is lying, but we have been unable to identify what motive either of you might
have for this.”

Oliver shrugged. “I think I’d
remember if I’d met a vampire before. Honestly, I thought they were just
stories to entertain teenagers until I actually saw her.”

SCI-3422XB studied his face for a
moment. “You do not appear to be deceiving me. Then again, neither did she.
This is a very strange situation.”

Oliver tried not to laugh.
Everything
about the last six months had been strange. “I guess so.”

“Further, the vampire indicated that
her condition after drinking your blood was not the result she had expected.
She suspects you are not really a human.”

Oliver looked at his arm and brushed
off a drop of blood that had formed there after the cyborg had removed the
syringe. “You’ve done enough tests on me. Wouldn’t you know if that was true?”

“We would expect so, but nor should
an ordinary human be able to resist the nanobots. We initially suspected a
genetic mutation, but that cannot explain the thermal reaction that takes
place.”

“Life is weird,” Oliver said. “So now
what?”

“Now we will see what effect the
vampire’s blood has on you. We will compare this to the effect yours had on
her.”

Oliver didn’t see any more syringes
waiting. “You’re going to shoot me up with something?”

“No. We intend for you to drink her
blood. Your mythology indicates this is the normal procedure.”

“You understand how strange the word
normal
sounds right now?”

“Perhaps to you. We find new
situations easy to adapt to.”

“We’re going to do this right now?”

“No, we must wait until dusk. The
vampire has informed us that the change cannot take place during daylight
hours.”

Oliver had never heard of that before
in any vampire story he’d ever read. “That seems strange.”

“Indeed. We were unable to confirm
this in any of the mythology we have studied, but nor could we confirm that it
is false. A few hours should make no difference, and then we will discover the
truth of the matter. Until then, perhaps you would like to rest and watch a
DVD?”

Oliver didn’t think watching old
movies was going to make him feel any better about what was coming. “I’d like
to take a walk, if you don’t mind. It might be my last one.”

“As you wish. The guards will convey
you to the yard.”

The cyborg left the room and shortly
afterward two armed guards marched Oliver to the fenced-in area outside, where
they watched as he walked along the yard’s perimeter several times. Oliver
found he wished he could see the ocean from where he was. It would have been
nice to sit by the water for a while. If he really did turn into a vampire, he
wasn’t going to be spending much time at the beach. If he died, he wouldn’t be
spending much time anywhere.

When the sun began to set the guards
collected him and marched him back to the operating theater he’d been in the
day before. Oliver couldn’t help but feel like a condemned man being taken to
his place of execution. Part of him wanted to make a break for it and see how
far he could get, but he knew from prior experience he wouldn’t even make it to
the first bend in the hallway before the cyborgs dropped him. Their weapons had
a stun setting that he’d been on the wrong end of before. It didn’t damage his
body, but it left him immobile for the better part of half an hour. On top of
that, it hurt like hell.

The guards pushed him into the room
and shut the door behind him, leaving him alone. Oliver glanced over at the
mirror where he knew the cyborgs would be observing him. “Screw you guys,” he
said.

There was no response. A moment later
the door opened again and Maria stepped through. She was bound in exactly the
same way she had been the day before, hands cuffed behind her back and arms
chained to her sides. Three cyborgs in armor accompanied her, two holding her
arms to guide her and the third carrying a scalpel at his side.

Two of the cyborgs propelled Maria
forward, directly at Oliver, who quickly found himself backed against a wall.
The vampire looked at him curiously. “What
are
you?”

Oliver swallowed hard. “How do you
mean?”

“Your blood…I’ve never felt like that
before.”

“Well, thanks, I guess.”

A speaker on the wall crackled with
static and a voice said, “Begin the experiment.”

“What time is it?” Maria asked.

“Um…” Oliver said. “I don’t know.”

“Is it after sunset?”

“Oh. Yeah, the sun was going down
when they brought me in here, so it’d have set by now.”

“Good.” She leaned forward. “I’m
going to need a distraction,” she whispered, “so make this look good.”

“Make what look…” Oliver began, but
the vampire sank her fangs into his neck before he could finish the sentence.
Pain shot through his body again. Unlike the regular needle jabs the cyborgs
had put him through, Oliver doubted this was the kind of thing a person could
ever get used to.

Maria took one good swallow and then
pulled back. She sighed deeply and licked her lips. “I don’t think I could live
on that,” she noted, “but it would be nice to have once in a while. Like a
really good Cognac.”

Oliver blinked twice and shook his
head to clear it. The vampire had taken much less blood this time; he didn’t
feel nearly as dizzy as before. Still, it wasn’t an experience he’d choose to
repeat.

Maria nodded at the cyborg with the
scalpel. “Now,” she said. “Like I told you.”

The cyborg stepped forward and drew
the blade across her neck in a quick, clean motion. Blood welled up in a line
on her skin. She smiled at Oliver. “Come give me a kiss.”

The cyborg who had been holding the
scalpel put it away and seized Oliver, forcing his head forward until his lips
were touching Maria’s wound. He felt her blood seeping between his lips and
into his mouth. It was room temperature rather than warm, but sweet and spicy
with none of the metallic taste he might have expected. He couldn’t help but
take a swallow. “Now remember,” she cooed, “give me that distraction.”

Oliver’s stomach did a flip-flop and
he suddenly felt sharp pains in his abdomen, as if he’d swallowed a handful of
razor blades. He pulled back from the vampire, who watched him with interest.
The three cyborgs did the same. Oliver took a deep breath; he felt his body
heating up with fever and sweat began to form on his forehead. It was similar
to the way he felt when his body was rejecting the cyborg nanobots, but far
more intense. His body was no more receptive to vampire blood than it had been
to those tiny machines.

Oliver leaned forward, retching once,
and then vomited the blood and the contents of his stomach onto the operating
theater’s clean tile floor. Tendrils of smoke rose from the blood, and then the
blood itself caught fire as if someone had dropped a match onto a pool of red
gasoline.

Maria watched the small blaze for a
brief moment. “Good distraction,” she said. Then she jerked her arms outward
and the handcuffs and chains binding her arms snapped as if they’d been made
out of silly string. She turned in one quick motion and seized the nearest
cyborg’s head, yanking it sharply to the side until his neck snapped. Before
Oliver even registered what had happened she drove her fist through the next
cyborg’s chest plate, rooting around for a moment before tearing his heart out
through his ribcage. She held the heart up so the third cyborg could see it,
then reached out and twisted his head around so far it was facing in the
opposite direction. Oliver heard a loud snap, and then Maria pulled the head
right off of the cyborg’s body.

The cyborg bodies had hit the ground
before Oliver fully realized what was going on. “What are you doing?”

“I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to
rescue you,” Maria said. Then she turned and hurled the severed cyborg head
through the mirror that led to the observation room. The glass shattered like
it had been hit with a mallet, revealing half a dozen cyborgs standing there.

“We seem to have underestimated the
vampire’s strength,” SCI-3422XB noted. Maria was through the broken mirror half
a second later. The next few seconds looked to Oliver like what might happen if
six cyborgs got caught in some kind of industrial blender. Maria came back
through the mirror once she’d finished with them, absently tossing a severed
cyborg arm aside.

“We should probably get going,” she
said.

Oliver stared at her. “You’re
Luke
Skywalker
?”

The vampire shrugged. “Your friends
told me to say that so you’d trust me. It’s quicker than explaining all of this
to you. Now let’s go.” She took an assault rifle off one of the cyborg corpses.
“Do you have any idea how to use this?”

Oliver took the gun and examined it.
The cyborgs had brought their own weaponry when they’d invaded Earth, but the
basic principles looked the same. “It fires energy bolts,” he said. He raised
the gun and looked down the barrel. “As long as it’s just pulling the trigger,
sure. But where exactly are we going to go? They control the entire west coast,
unless you’re thinking of the San Diego Resistance?”

“We only have to get as far as
Filbert Street.”

“What’s on Filbert Street?”

The vampire stopped to pick a bit of
skin out of her teeth, examining it for a moment before dropping it to the
floor. “Look, I’m not going to pretend I understand any of this, but your
people have a way to fix everything. I didn’t remember any of the last year, I
mean the
real
last year, until they found me.”

“The
real
…hang on. Who sent
you? Who are these people?”

Maria looked into his eyes. “You
really don’t remember any of this, do you? Artemis? That twisted bitch Sally
Rain?” Oliver shook his head. “Not even that talking cat you hang around with?”

“No, I…
talking cat
?”

“Forget it. Let’s go.” Maria turned
and started for the door. Oliver hesitated for a moment, then followed her. He
had very little else in the way of options, he thought. Even if he was
captured, he’d only find himself back in the same situation he’d been in an
hour ago. Unless the cyborgs just decided to kill him, which was probably
inevitable, anyway.

Maria eschewed bringing an assault
rifle of her own, but moved so quickly in the face of danger that her hands
were probably more effective than any weapon she could have brought, anyway.
Two cyborg sentries met a quick end in the first hallway they entered almost
before Oliver had even noticed they were there, and much less before he’d have had
time to think about raising his weapon and firing at them. A moment later he
found himself watching as Maria flattened the skull of another cyborg up
against a wall. “I’m surprised you don’t…you know.”

Maria wiped cyborg blood off of her
face. “What?”

“Eat them.”

“Only when I absolutely have to.” She
made a face. “They taste
awful
. It’s those little machines in their
blood.”

“I guess we’re lucky they can’t
convert you.”

“
You
certainly are.”

Oliver followed the vampire down a
series of corridors. The medical center was largely deserted, which Oliver took
as a hopeful sign. He hadn’t been outside the grounds since he’d been brought
here, but could only hope the rest of the city would be similarly empty.
SCI-3422XB had told him that most of the city’s converted population was
involved in the war effort, and that only an occupation force had remained
behind. He had no idea how large that force might be, but if they were lucky maybe
they could get as far as Filbert Street before anyone noticed them. “How do you
plan to get out of here?”