Sarita ignored them and kept going, but she did move a little faster. She made it to the door, and a glance around as she slipped inside showed her that while one or two men were climbing down the ladders on the towers, the man in the gatehouse still had his head down as he watched his porn. Apparently, he hadn't yet noticed anything amiss. She suspected he'd be in a heap of trouble for it.
Pulling the door closed, Sarita turned to survey the room she'd entered. It was a lab, all white with upper and lower metal cupboards on two walls, a large industrial refrigerator as well as a large industrial freezer along another and a desk against the last wall. Two small, wheeled tables sat a little distance apart in the center of the room, and those caught and held her attention at once.
Having trouble accepting what she was seeing, Sarita moved slowly across the room to the first table and stared down at the top half of the corpse lying strapped on it. It was a man who was probably about twenty-five. His hair was short and blond, his face handsome but bloodless, and his upper body was in perfect shape . . . except for the fact that it ended just below his belly button where he appeared to have been cut in half.
Sarita stared at him blankly, noting that there were a couple dozen metal straps rising out of the table, crossing over his body, and then disappearing through slots in the table surface. There was one across his forehead, and then at his throat, his shoulders, under his armpits, and another every couple of inches down his torso after that for the length of the table. There were also half a dozen smaller metal straps holding his arms down from his armpits to his wrists.
Sarita turned her head to peer at the second small table where the lower half of his body lay. A small towel was draped over his groin, and there were even more straps running over his lower body, with a great gaping wound where his body had been separated. It looked as if he'd been sawn in half like a tree.
As she studied the open wound on the lower half of the body, and the one on the upper body, Sarita had to wonder why she wasn't freaking out.
Probably because of the lack of blood, she thought . . . and because it didn't look real. Or perhaps because it reminded her of Body Worlds, an exhibition of preserved human bodies that showed the anatomy of the inner body. Her father had taken her to see it at the Ontario Science Centre back in 2005. This reminded her of it, a bloodless display of inner workings. It looked like one of those. It was obviously a cadaver from the university or something.
That made sense, Sarita thought. After all, Dr. Dressler was a professor at one of the universities in Venezuela. Mind you, universities didn't generally let professors take cadavers home that she knew of.
And why both halves of the body were strapped to the table like that was a complete mystery to her.
The sound of approaching voices caught her attention and Sarita turned her head toward the door as someone said, "I will handle it. You get back to your posts . . . and do your jobs this time."
The door opened then and an older man stepped inside. Dressed in dark pants and a white doctor's coat, Dr. Dressler was tall, with a full head of snow-white hair parted at the side and brushed away from his face in waves that suggested he was a little overdue for a haircut. He had a mustache and goatee to match, but his eyebrows were a mix of snow-white and a darker brown or black that suggested he'd been a dark-haired man when younger. The skin on his neck was saggy and a little crepey and his face had the wrinkles and lines age eventually carved in everyone's face, but they were much less pronounced than she would have expected from someone she knew to be in his eighties.
"Dr. Dressler?" she asked uncertainly, before glancing to the woman who followed him into the room. Also wearing dark pants and a doctor's white coat, she was much younger, perhaps in her thirties. Her hair was blond and pulled back in a tight bun, revealing a face that was untouched by makeup but still beautiful.
At least it would have been beautiful if she didn't have such a sour expression on her face, Sarita thought.
"Sarita, my dear. What a pleasure to finally meet you," Dr. Dressler said, drawing her attention back his way as he led the blonde across the room. He clasped her hands in his and used his hold to shift her to the side as he added, "Unfortunately, you have arrived at a rather inconvenient moment. This experiment is time sensitive, so please just stay here out of the way while we do our work and we shall talk afterward."
Staying by the wall where he'd urged her, Sarita watched silently as he then joined the blonde and helped her roll the two tables together so that the upper torso of the corpse met the lower torso perfectly.
"Fetch the blood, Asherah," Dr. Dressler ordered as he then moved to flip latches on each side of the tables where they joined, turning the two short tables into one long one.
The blonde immediately moved to a refrigerator at the end of one wall of cupboards and opened the door, revealing stacks of bagged blood inside.
Sarita stiffened in surprise. The bags looked like something you'd see in a hospital or blood bank, but the number of them was staggering. She would have guessed there were at least a hundred bags stacked on the refrigerator shelves. A ridiculous amount for anyone to have.
Asherah carried the bags to a wheeled tray of surgical instruments, dumped them on it, and rolled the tray up next to the table, then moved off to collect two IV stands without being told. The moment she set them next to the table, Dr. Dressler collected one of the bags of blood from the tray and began to set up one of the IVs. Hanging the bag of blood from the hook, he quickly affixed the tubing before inserting the needle in the corpse's left arm. Once finished he grabbed another bag of blood off the tray and dragged the second IV around to the right side of the body to do the same. He then glanced up expectantly.
Following his gaze, Sarita saw that Asherah had gone back to the cupboards to collect something else. She was now returning with what looked like a ball gag, but with more straps. There was also a funnel where the ball would be, she noted as Asherah got closer to the table.
"Two minutes," Dr. Dressler warned, eyeing his watch as Asherah strapped the harness into place, with the funnel in the corpse's mouth.
Asherah straightened and moved quickly back to the refrigerator to collect another half a dozen bags of blood. She dropped most of them on the wheeled tray with the others when she returned, but kept one and picked a scalpel from the surgical items on the tray before moving up to the table where it was joined. She peered down at where the two halves of the body were pressed tight together and simply waited, seemingly at the ready.
Shaking her head with bewilderment, Sarita asked, "What--?"
"Shh," Dr. Dressler hissed. "You'll understand in thirty seconds."
Sarita closed her mouth, but shook her head again at the madness she was witnessing. Offering indignities to a corpse was an indictable offense in Canada and what they were doing seemed to fit that description. Unfortunately, this was not Canada and she had no idea what the laws were here in Venezuela. She'd certainly be looking into it the first chance she got, though, Sarita decided.
"Time!" Dr. Dressler snapped and quickly opened the roller clamp on the IV next to him, before rushing around the table to do the same on the second IV. Blood immediately began to race down the tubes toward the corpse's arms, but Sarita hardly noticed that--she was too busy watching with horror as Asherah poked a hole in the bag of blood she held, and allowed the crimson liquid to gush out over the body where the two halves were now pressed together.
"Dear God," Sarita breathed with a disgust that only increased when Dr. Dressler now grabbed a second scalpel and another bag of blood off those remaining on the wheeled tray and punctured it over the corpse's face. Blood immediately began to flow into the funnel fixed in the corpse's mouth.
Clenching her fists, Sarita stood to the side, revulsion curling her stomach as she watched the pair's actions. She was starting to wish with all her heart that she was a police officer in Venezuela instead of Canada and could arrest the mad doctor and his equally crazy assistant. She had n
o idea what they thought they would achieve with this lunacy, but--
Sarita's thoughts died abruptly as the corpse's eyes suddenly popped open and he began to shriek. Or tried to. What came out was a raspy gurgle as he tried to scream around the liquid pouring down his throat. It forced some of the blood back out in a small spurt that splashed over Dr. Dressler.
"You forgot the tube, Asherah," Dr. Dressler accused harshly, but quickly added, "Don't stop what you're doing!"
Asherah had started to lift away the bag of blood she was holding over the wound at Dr. Dressler's first words, but stopped at once when he ordered her not to.
"Sarita, there should be a length of tube on the counter along the wall behind me. Fetch it for me," Dr. Dressler ordered sharply as he continued to let the blood pour down the throat of the man she'd thought was dead, but who was now screaming his head off and shooting the blood back out of his mouth as he did.
Stunned now by what was happening, Sarita did as asked, found the mentioned tubing and took it to Dr. Dressler. When she reached his side though, he nodded toward the tray. "Grab another bag of blood."
Turning, she picked up the bag and offered it to him. He took it with one hand, waited a heartbeat for the one he already held to empty, then tossed it aside and moved the fresh bag over the mouth.
"Hold this," Dr. Dressler commanded once he'd punctured the new bag as he had the first.
Sarita hesitated, but then moved around to the opposite side of the table and took over holding the new bag of blood. Her hands were trembling, she noted, but she did her best to hold the bag steady and ground her teeth together as the corpse continued to scream, sending most of the blood shooting back up through and around the funnel and onto her and the doctor both now. But a moment later Dr. Dressler was feeding a tube through the funnel and down the man's throat. The tube, apart from ensuring the blood got to his stomach, also appeared to hamper his ability to scream. The moment several inches had been fed through the funnel, his screams stopped.
Quite sure the action was only adding to the man's pain, Sarita had to look away and shifted her gaze down to Asherah rather than watch. The assistant was tossing aside the first bag she'd cut open, but quickly grabbed and opened another over where his body was split in half. Sarita shook her head, unable to believe what was happening.
Dr. Dressler finished inserting the feeding tube, but didn't then take back the bag of blood she held as Sarita expected. Instead, he hung two fresh bags from the IV stands next to the ones already in use. It drew her attention to the fact that both bags were already half-empty. IVs usually didn't work that quickly in her experience. All she could think was that the catheter must be larger than the standard. She had no idea what it might be doing to the corpse's veins though.
The very thought made Sarita give her head a shake. The man obviously wasn't a corpse. Corpses didn't move and scream. But he should be a corpse. He'd been cut in half for God's sake. That thought kept running through her head as she held bag after bag over his mouth while Asherah did the same over his wound and Dr. Dressler manned the IVs and fetched fresh blood from the refrigerator as needed.
Sarita was holding her sixth bag and beginning to think this would go on forever when Asherah suddenly growled, "Time."
Dr. Dressler immediately glanced at his wristwatch, nodded, and then beamed at Sarita. "Very good. Asherah will clean up the worst of the blood, and then take over with that last bag you're holding. I have to make a note of the time and then we can talk."
He hurried away to the desk she'd noticed earlier, and Sarita turned her attention to Asherah as the woman reached under the table and retrieved some kind of nozzle. It was only when she pushed a lever and water began to run out over the midriff of the body that Sarita realized what it was.
Careful to keep her hand in place over the funnel, Sarita bent slightly to look under the table and saw that the top half of the table was fixed in place, only the bottom half was movable. Two pipes ran up one table leg, one pipe ending at a hose with the nozzle on the end, the other to a drain on this side of the table. Straightening again, she checked to be sure the bag of blood was still over the funnel, and then looked over to see that Asherah had already rinsed away most of the blood from the body.
Finding the spot where the upper body had been separated from the lower half, Sarita saw that they were now joined, with just an angry red scar where they had once been separated.
"Madre de Dios," she breathed, unable to believe her eyes.
"Move."
Glancing around with surprise, she saw that Asherah had finished with the hose and moved up beside her. Even as she noted that, the woman took over holding the bag and urged her away. "El Doctor wants to talk to you."
Sarita stepped back, her eyes returning to the scar where the body had once been cut in half.
"Move," Asherah repeated coldly. "You are done here."
Noting the dislike on the woman's face, Sarita reluctantly turned to walk to the desk where Dr. Dressler was scribbling furiously in a notebook.
Apparently finished making his notes, he raised his head as she stopped in front of the desk, and he smiled at her widely as he stood up. "Thank you, Sarita. Your help was invaluable."
"What exactly did I help with?" Sarita asked with a frown as Dressler moved around his desk. "That man was dead."
"Not dead," he assured her, crossing the room to the cupboards and retrieving a couple of syringes before moving to the refrigerator. "And not a man."
Eyebrows rising, Sarita peered back to the table. "He looks like a man to me."
"Yes," he agreed, bending to retrieve two ampoules from the refrigerator. "But he's not. He is an immortal."
"Immortal?" Sarita asked, following him back to the table. When he didn't answer, but concentrated on preparing a shot for the man, she glanced to Asherah as she tossed the now empty blood bag away. When the woman then moved around to the wheeled tray and grabbed another bag of blood, Sarita thought she intended to keep feeding it into the funnel. Instead, she replaced one of the now empty IV bags before grabbing another bag and replacing the other as well.
"Immortals are scientifically evolved mortals," Dr. Dressler announced, drawing Sarita's attention back to him. "This man is full of bio-engineered nanos programmed to keep his body healthy."
Finished filling the syringe, he set the ampoule on the wheeled tray and then simply held the shot and peered down at the man he called an immortal as he explained, "These nanos fight disease, repair the ravages of sun and time, and--as you saw--repair injuries."
Sarita shifted her gaze back to where the body had once been separated, and was quite sure the scar was smaller and less angry-looking than it had been just moments ago.
"After enough blood there won't even be a scar," Dr. Dressler announced. "The blood is what powers the nanos you see. They apparently use it to replicate themselves as well as to make repairs and so on."
"Blood," Sarita murmured, glancing toward the empty blood bags now littering the floor.
"Yes, they need a lot of it when injured," he said with a nod. "But even if not fighting illness or repairing an injury, the nanos need more blood than their host bodies can produce to keep them young. The nanos have forced their host bodies to evolve to make up for that need. In effect, making them scientifically created vampires."
When Sarita turned to him with disbelief, he glanced to Asherah and said, "Show her."
Asherah unhooked the harness from around the man's head and began to slowly remove it, pulling the feeding tube out with it.
Sarita half expected the man to begin screaming again, but other than a weak moan he was silent. Once Asherah had set the harness and tube aside, she picked up one of the disposed blood bags and sliced it open, then wiped up the little bit of blood left inside. It amounted to a couple of drops at best, but she waved it under the man's nose and despite his seeming to be unconscious, two of his upper teeth shifted and slid down in his open mouth, becoming fangs.
&nbs
p; Gasping, Sarita took a step back.
"It is fine. We are safe," Dr. Dressler assured her. "Although if those straps were leather instead of titanium it would be a different matter. Aside from giving them fangs, the nanos make their hosts incredibly strong and extremely fast. They also have astonishing night vision. And they can read and control minds," he added grimly, finally bending to inject the man with the shot he'd prepared as he said, "Which is why we have to keep them drugged."
"Them?" Sarita asked with a frown.
"There are eighteen here in my labs," Dr. Dressler said, straightening from giving the shot.
"Why?" Sarita asked with dismay as he put the used shot on the wheeled tray and set about filling the second syringe. "Surely they're dangerous?"
"Not normally, no," he assured her. "As a rule they consume bagged blood. In fact, it's a law among their kind, now that blood banks exist. They are forbidden to bite us mere mortals."
Sarita relaxed a little. If they stuck to bagged blood that wasn't so bad.
"And even before blood banks, they apparently weren't allow to kill anyone they bit. It's how they've managed to live among us with no one the wiser all these millennia."
"Millennia?" Sarita narrowed her eyes on the doctor, but he merely shrugged.
"Apparently they were a people isolated from the rest of the world who advanced technologically much more quickly. The nanos were a result of one of those advancements." He pursed his lips and considered the man. "They claim their home was Atlantis, and that when it sank into the ocean, only those with the nanos survived and crawled out to join the rest of the world. They also say that in Atlantis they had doctors and hospitals as we do today, and were given blood transfusions to combat the nanos' need for extra blood. But when Atlantis fell it was an end to those transfusions. Technology in the rest of the world was far behind that in Atlantis, and the nanos forced fangs, speed, and the other abilities on them so that they could gain the extra blood they needed to survive."