Bethany took Stella to the Elders’ Vault Room. She opened one of the chambers and waited for it to slide forward. She put Stella into the chamber, then softly bit her on the neck and gave her some blood. After centering her in the chamber, she closed the door and her unconscious friend went sliding back into the wall and was gone.
Opening another panel, she entered another code and the center of the floor, which held a large crest on it, opened to a width of six feet. An apparatus came up from the opening and stood four feet high in the center of the room. The machine was black and had a row of connections for tubes all around its sides, and at the top was a flat-bottomed square tray with a large hole at the bottom. Bethany inspected the machine and when satisfied, she went back and pressed another button; it returned to its hiding place and the floor closed back up. With a spring in her step, she walked quickly out of the room and down the hall and brought back the cocoon of baby Kelly.
She raised the device once again and placed the cocoon in the top tray. There were tubes below the tray that swung up and around to the top of the cocoon, stopping within an inch of the cocoon’s surface. Bethany paid her respects to the cocoon and did not want to sacrifice it, although she would have to. She looked over the cocoon one last time; it would feed those that survived this. Bethany activated the wall panel and the apparatus descended into the floor and it closed. Clear tubes then came from the walls above each of the vault chambers and extended down one foot. She inspected them all and then opened the door for her vault to prepare it.
Bethany was checking something inside her vault when she looked up and saw a reflection through the side of the chamber wall. A man was slowly creeping toward her, automatic rifle in his hands. Bethany acted as if she did not see him but raised her head to judge his reaction. The man stopped. She pressed the button to close the vault and it began sliding forward back into the wall. Unaware she was watching his reflection, the man held still. He aimed his rifle at her but he did not move.
When the door was nearly closed, in the blink of an eye, Bethany was inside. The man shot at her before it closed but missed. He stood in front of the chamber and fired at point-blank range several times, yet did not damage the wall. This was Mike Chambers.
“Aww!” Mike Chambers screamed as he fired.
Bethany activated the one-way wall and watched him with a smile on her face. Empty bullet casings littered the white floor as he emptied his weapon, reloaded, and screamed and fired some more. Bethany wanted to burn him alive. She had duties to perform and like before, could not exhaust herself or all would be lost. Her palm tingled, wanting to form a deadly fireball but she resisted. She could not have the pleasure. Then, a thought occurred. A broad grin spread from cheek to cheek.
Unlike the other chambers, these held more buttons. She pressed a button on her left and a blue circle appeared on the outside of her chamber. Mike stopped firing and stepped back. Bethany pressed another button and the edges of the circle turned red, color cascading down into the center, darkening in the middle. Seconds later a beam shot out of the red spot and knocked Mike Chambers up in the air; he slammed into the opposite wall and hit the floor, unconscious.
The chamber door opened again and Bethany stepped out. She went to the man, leaned down and bit him on the neck, and injected him with a blood enzyme that would store him. A cocoon enveloped the man and after covering him from head to toe it began to change in color from an off shade of white to a light brown, before shrinking to half its size.
Bethany smiled down at the cocooned man. “You will provide nourishment for my people to pay for what you and yours have done.”
She went back to the panel and pressed some buttons that caused the floor to open back up and the floor apparatus to rise higher than before. Bethany opened a door on the machine and took out a syringe filled with a black liquid. She injected the brown cocoon with the contents of the syringe and waited for it to take effect. After a few moments the cocoon shrank down to the size of a small baby. It then changed its color again and became almost black in color. Bethany took the cocoon of baby Kelly out of the top tray, and placed the cocoon inside a hidden door in one of the vault walls. She picked up the new cocoon and placed it in the tray.
Bethany pressed a button on the device and sharp needles protruded from the tubes and slowly pierced the skin of the cocoon, moving deep inside. Drips of blood gathered around the outside of each tube before drying. Bethany inspected the machine once more and then allowed it to descend back into the floor.
She shut the door and activated two sequences on the panel. The first started a timer that would encase the outer walls and tunnels in concrete. The second activated explosive charges at each tunnel entrance and inside each shed structure. Bethany stepped back into her vault and it sealed tightly. She felt the explosions as her chamber shifted slightly and a few dust particles fell from above her head. The plan had worked: the complex was now sealed from the outside world.
Bethany had but one last duty to perform, and it would be the most exhausting, the one only a Queen could perform. She stepped out of her vault and raised the floor apparatus back up and watched the floor seal around its base. From the panel she activated the tubes above the chambers in the room and watched as they stretched to the machine, connecting them all. She activated the machine and it started making a low humming sound.
To the far wall by the panel she had been using was another hidden switch and when she pressed it the tile next to her feet disappeared into the wall. Below the tile was a small metal platform Bethany stood on. With the press of another button the panel slid back up out of sight and she descended on the lift to the floor below the chamber room. In this small room stood the rest of the apparatus machine that could not be seen from above. It was in the middle of the room and reached from floor to ceiling as a long cylindrical glass tube surrounded by a black metal casing, tubes splitting off it like tree branches.
Knowing the intense pain the process would cause, Bethany hesitated for a brief second before standing in the machine and placing her hands into the receptacles at her sides. The device clamped down around her hands, pressing them out flat so she could not move. Sharp needles pierced the skin of each wrist and she winced at the pain. The machine pulsed, suctioning blood from her wrists, to be carried to the top of the device and in turn to the chambers throughout the complex. Bethany heard the steady hum from the top of the machine as it did its job of pulling her life’s blood from her body and redistributing it to each of the chambers.
Stella lay barely conscious in her chamber. A tube came from above her and made its way down to the back of her neck. The self-guided tube found its mark and plunged into the side of her neck, stirring her to life. Blood began to flow in the tube in small droplets; this would sustain Stella for as long as Bethany remained alive. The same tubes descended into all the other chambers and nourished whoever was inside them.
Bethany grew weak as most of her blood was taken from her in the startup phase, but she had prepared and was ready for her sacrifice. She gained her nourishment from the cocoon above. Every so often the machine would pulse and take blood from Bethany’s body and with the pain she was tempted to leave the machine. At first the machine drew blood quickly with rapid pulses, but as time passed it would lower its pulsing rate to minutes, then hours, then days, and finally would only need to pulse once a month. With this arrangement, Bethany could feed and keep her people alive for years, even decades underground. Their world was a self-contained one that provided them with unlimited sources of everything they could possibly need except one: blood.
And for this one need, they would eventually need to surface once more.