Chapter 29: 29: A Fate Worse Than Death

Victoria pursed her lips. I couldn’t tell if her expression was one of approval or disapproval.

“We don’t have the right facilities here for major surgery,” she said, “And we can’t take him to a hospital. He’ll be dead by the time we get him there.”

“I thought you were a doctor.”

“Yes, Ethan, a doctor of genetic science and theoretical physics. Not the type of doctor Stewart needs right now. But since you insist, I will do my what I can. Against my better judgement, I might add.”

Victoria snapped her fingers at two of the men. “Take Stewart to the medical bay on the lower level. We’re not staffed to handle this kind of emergency on such short notice, but I have an idea.”

“You mean there are no actual doctors on site?”

“Only when we have a risky operation going on,” Victoria replied. “Most of the staff you’ve seen are technicians. There’s a field medic, but no-one who can handle something this bad. Come on.”

Ten minutes later, we were back underground. They had set aside one part of the complex as a medical ward. Wilson was still unconscious, lying on an operating table. His clothes had been cut off him and he’d been hooked up to a drip, along with instruments measuring his heart rate and blood pressure.

Trying not to gag at the sight of all the blood and gore, I watched from a side room.

Victoria had already had me examined by the field medic to check I hadn’t taken any serious injury. She insisted on taking a couple more blood samples to study what happened after my powers were activated. I saw no reason to object. After all, finding out what I was and how my powers worked was one of the main reasons for me being here in the first place.

Wilson had been restrained. Victoria’s field medic tried to work out how to proceed. The shaft of the wood was the thickness of a child’s fist. Blood was still pouring out. The medic opted for pulling the wooden beam out.

Wilson woke up screaming as the medic rushed to stop him from bleeding out.

“He won’t make it,” the medic stated through the intercom, “That wound has punctured his liver and stomach.”

“Alright,” Victoria said.

“There must be something you can do. You said you found cures for stuff here. Isn’t there anything in that area?”

“Ethan, sometimes your naivety is astonishing. Cures take years to formulate and those are for illnesses, not injuries. Nevertheless, there is one thing we can try. It’s experimental and we haven’t tried it on a human subject yet, but it might work. It’s up to you, though.”

“If there’s any chance of saving him, we have to try it. It’s the right thing to do, and that’s all that matters. We have to prove we’re better than him. We have to be better than him.”

Victoria nodded.

“Just remember that you chose this for Stewart,” she remarked.

I frowned, unsure what she meant.

She left me in the small observation room and issued instructions to one of the lab technicians as the medic tried to stop Wilson’s bleeding. Wilson was screaming and shouting loud enough to wake the dead, and I realised he hadn’t been given any painkillers or sedatives.

He spat and swore at Victoria and, despite the grievous injury, tried to break free of the restraints.

The technician returned with a syringe filled with a pale amber liquid. Victoria indicated that Wilson’s arms should be held down. He was squirming and twisting erratically against the restraints. He swore at Victoria again. He demanded to know what she was doing.

Victoria calmly found one of his bulging veins and emptied the syringe’s contents into him.

Then she lent in close and whispered in his ear. Just a few short sentences.

A look of pure horror crossed Major Wilson’s face.

Even with the intercom off, I could hear the stream of expletives that he spat at Victoria. She simply stepped away. Wilson’s voice faltered.

“No, no, no, no!” He screamed, “You can’t do this to me, Victoria. Shoot me, kill me, anything but this.”

He raged and spat and begged for a bullet to end whatever horror Victoria had inflicted upon him.

Oh god, I thought, what has Victoria done? What could be a fate worse than death for Major Wilson?

And then I figured it out. Or close enough.

Victoria ordered extra restraints on Wilson, then told the technicians to step back.

Major Wilson screamed even louder than he had done before.

He twisted and shook, the veins on his body standing out, his muscles straining to breaking point. Ripples of grey hairs appeared across his body. His face distorted, then returned to normal. He snarled and spat as the wound sprouted a patch of thick hair, then returned to smooth skin, but partially healed. The bleeding stopped, but Major Wilson’s battle had only begun. His hands and feet cracked, stretched, snapped. His face twisted into inhuman shapes as his body shuddered.

Wilson screamed as the transformation snapped and tore through his body.

Victoria returned to the observation room and held up her hands to me as if to say: ‘There, are you satisfied now?’

“Oh my god, Victoria,” I whispered, “What have you done?”

Victoria shrugged.

“Precisely hat you asked. I’ve tried to save him. The serum is a formula we’ve been working on based on werewolf saliva,” Victoria said, “Trying to capture their healing abilities. Observations have shown that people transforming from human to werewolf have their human injuries healed–although oddly enough, it doesn’t work the other way round.”

“You’ve turned him into a werewolf?”

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Major Wilson was still twisting and screaming on the operating table.

“Possibly,” Victoria replied, “If he survives, which isn’t a given at this point. We’ve not tried this on a human subject before. I can’t be sure what the result will be.”

“Can’t you give him some painkillers?”

“I’m afraid the formula is too unstable to allow us to sedate him,” Victoria replied. “It might upset the process.”

Ok, that time I knew she was lying. She didn’t even try to conceal a slight smile, but I let it go. She wanted Wilson to suffer, and I couldn’t blame her. Maybe it was vindictive of her, but on the other hand, she’d done what she could to save his life.

“How long will it take?”

“It could be three or four hours of this,” Victoria replied. “It depends on how hard he tries to resist it.”

“Knowing Wilson, it could be three or four days in that case,” I muttered. “What about afterwards?”

“We’ll cut him loose. I’ll implant a locator chip in him so we’ll know where he is at all times, in case he tries anything like this again. I shouldn’t think he’ll want to, however. With that stuff flowing through him, he’ll be hunted by Section 13 as well as any supernaturals he comes across. If he’s got any sense, he’ll lay as low as possible. Both sides will be after him.”

“Damn Victoria. That’s pretty dark.”

“You said you wanted me to save his life,” Victoria shrugged. “That’s what I’ve done. There wasn’t any other option. Besides, can’t you see a little poetic justice in this?”

“I guess…”

We left the observation room, but Wilson’s screams were still ringing in my ears hours later.

“Given everything that’s happened tonight it would be best to send you home,” Victoria said, “We don’t know if Wilson was working alone and I don’t want you to be at any further risk. I’m sorry this happened, Ethan. We didn’t expect Section 13 to attack like that. They normally keep their distance.”

“Wilson was suspended from duty. I forgot to tell you, he was blamed for the attack. Section 13 has a new head now. I think Wilson was on his own.”

“Interesting,” Victoria replied as we took the elevator back to the mansion. “Who have they replaced him with?”

“Someone called Moorecroft.”

“Huh, I haven’t heard of him. I’ll have to find out more.”

The banality of the exchange compared to the brutality of the last hour was surreal. We might as well have been discussing recent staff changes at the local supermarket.

“Nevertheless, I want you off-site for now. We’ll need to do a full security sweep. As sorry as I am that you had to go through that, I’m glad you were here, Ethan.”

I gave Victoria a puzzled glance.

“How so?”

“Who else would have saved our lives if you hadn’t been here?”

It occurred to me that, yeah, as a matter of fact, I had saved everyone’s lives.

Even Major Wilson’s.

Nobody had died, and that, at least, was a result.

*

It was gone midnight by the time the limo pulled up outside my house.

The rain had stopped, or we’d driven away from it. I hadn’t seen Alice or Vincent before I left and wasn’t sure how I felt about cutting the visit short. I could see Victoria’s point, though. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Major Wilson had prepared back up.

He hadn’t, as it turned out. The entire mission had been a solo effort. I suspect he hadn’t planned to come back alive from it. He’d wanted to get some evidence against the Pryces and send it to Section 13, force them to act and stop whatever he thought the Pryces were up to.

The house was quiet, and I snuck up to bed.

Before I fell asleep, I reconnected my phone with the battery, switched it on. Messages from Dee asking where I was. Nothing from Jess. A message from a number I didn’t recognise.

Thanks, Ethan. I owe you one. xx. Alice.

I grinned at the two kisses and wondered what Mum would say about me dating a vampire.

Then I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Before I did that, though, Major Wilson’s last words to me rang in my ears;

What the hell is wrong with your eyes, Ethan? What are you?

Despite everything, I was still no closer to an answer.

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