V for Vendetta
When my eyes finally opened, it was nighttime and I’d never been so thirsty in all my life. I groaned low in my chest before sitting up and rubbing my neck, throat dry and sore.
I’d never been sick, but I’d heard all about it from other kids at my school.
Sore throats were apparently what happened when you were sick.
Since my throat was literal fire right now, it was the only thing I could reasonably conclude.
Usually, my body regenerated at a rate that kicked viruses and disease to the curb before it even hit me with symptoms, but stranger things had happened recently.
So was I really sick?
My head was fuzzy, and it took a minute to figure out what happened before I got there.
I panned the room and was confused when nothing looked familiar.
The curtains were drawn, keeping most of the light out, but moonlight peeked through a small section.
We were on a mission, that much I did know. So, how did I end up here?
“Hey you,” someone said, startling me into action.
I was already crouched next to the bed for cover before I realized I’d moved. The speed was unnatural for me. I didn’t move so quickly that even my own brain had trouble figuring out what happened.
“Take it easy,” the voice said softly, a familiar face coming into view as Phillip took a step forward and turned on a light.
And it was instantly blinding.
I shut my eyes and warded off the brilliance with a hand. “Holy shit! What kind of wattage is that damn light bulb? Why is it so fucking bright?”
“Your body is transitioning. Everything is going to seem stronger for a bit. It’ll calm down in a few days. Are you thirsty?”
His tone was soothing, which worried me. Phillip never talked like that, not even when he was being a patronizing asshole.
Wait.
“What do you mean transitioning?” I blinked and finally adjusted to the light in the room after several minutes of trying. “No. You know what, start first with why you kissed me and made me swallow…I don’t even know what that red liquid was.”
Our kiss—the first official act of betrayal to my relationship with Nigel.
Even with things basically over, it still hit me like I cheated.
To me, moving on too fast was on the same level as cheating.
I’d emotionally checked out. And for what, a kiss where the dude took advantage of me?
A kiss shared with some bad boy Austrian who’d no doubt shared saliva with probably half the country’s population?
When had I transitioned to recklessly stupid, I wonder?
Phillip eased closer and gently touched my shoulder. The sensation was beyond anything I’d ever felt. I reacted audibly, breath catching. His palm dragged over the naked skin of my arm, and it was like I’d been hit by a bolt of lightning.
“Sit first,” the Austrian instructed.
Without understanding why, I did. “This better be good. I’m ready to throw a serious bitch fit, Phil.”
His rich laughter reached my ears, louder than I expected. “I promise it is. Rose wanted to wait until your eighteenth birthday, but with Anita’s reappearance and the circumstances surrounding her arrival, I couldn’t risk the wait.”
Confused didn’t even begin to cover what I felt.
Honestly, dealing with a world of new sensations stronger than anything I’d felt before was difficult enough. Now I had to decode what this asshole was trying to say after he rudely kissed me with blood or some kind of red substance in his mouth and made me pass out?
My very first kiss to be specific. I may not covet many things, but that was one of them.
Ridiculous.
Phillip’s piercing blue eyes rose to meet mine, the distinctive coloration easier to make out for some reason.
“I know you’re frustrated and confused, but I’ll explain everything.
First, you and I aren’t just from a long line of Hunters.
I mean, not really. We were genetically created in a lab with vampire blood to have certain genes that give us abilities no human has. ”
With vampire blood? What?!
“You better be joking,” I hissed, not ready to believe him but already knowing in my gut he was telling the truth. “Are you suggesting they created us? But for what purpose?”
“It’s still not clear to me. But what I do know is that you and I were given the same genes, and that’s the entire reason I can activate your blood.
Right now, you’re transitioning. You’ll be able to do way more than before, and you’ll also be immortal.
If my guess is right, you’re the first female to be born with everything that vampires have without any of the weaknesses.
You won’t burn in daylight. Silver won’t hurt you.
Holy water is just another form of water.
You’ll require less sleep than most. You won’t even suffer life-threatening injuries.
Best of all, you won’t need to drink blood the way vampires do. ”
Drink blood.
My breath came faster, but something told me I didn’t even need to breathe.
I couldn’t ignore the feeling inside my body, the changes.
Even if I wanted to pretend he was spouting lies, it was clearly true.
My senses were sharper. My arm was healed and scar-less.
A thirst unlike I’d ever felt before overwhelmed everything else, and without knowing how, I knew I needed blood.
Phillip sat on the bed next to me, a blood bag balanced on top of his palm.
“I transitioned two-hundred and forty years ago. I was one of the first to survive this particular set of genes. Since then, I don’t know how many, but there’s been a couple more Hunters made with that genetic set.
The genetic makeup of these genes kills embryos 99.
99% of the time. And if the embryo survives the initial process, very few make it to a viable gestation.
Even less to the age of two. To my knowledge, there have been no other females.
When the Y chromosome interacts with the genes, it changes the genetic makeup, making it less potent.
Female embryos are the only ones who don’t change in the interaction.
So, understandably, females keep all the genetic attributes unlike their male counterparts. ”
Bitterness sat in my throat, ready to taint my words, but I stayed quiet out of fear of what I might say.
Genetically created. A lab experiment with the very same blood as the creatures I was sent to eliminate. A life built on a lie. Created for the purpose of becoming a weapon.
“Did my parents know?”
Phillip quieted and then took my hand. “Not many know about this. Mostly top-brass. The Organization uses Hunter infertility as a gateway for experimentation. Female Hunters have their eggs frozen from early on. The embryos are then manipulated with the genes before sperm introduction. Female Hunters can’t get pregnant without intervention.
Most are aware that the genetic disposition of our bodies makes intervention necessary, but not that the Organization is experimenting with their bodies and the embryos. ”
I shouldn’t be surprised.
The Organization essentially militarized children. But gene manipulation and playing with us like we were theirs and not living, breathing things was beyond angering and a whole new level of what the fuck. It made me wonder what lengths they’d go to in order to employ Hunters, and for what reason.
I’d never hated the fact that I was born a Hunter so much until this moment.
“Rose never explained how she knew about you, but she did before I said anything. She’s clever, so I don’t doubt she figured it out somehow without anyone outright telling her. After your parents were killed, she contacted me. It was her idea for me to train you.”
“Train me, then what?” I asked, voice softened by grief. “I become the weapon the Organization wants me to be?”
Phillip’s sigh hit my face, then he tilted my chin up with a finger. “What do you want?”
I struggled to answer. “I don’t even know anymore.”
I’d never been given a choice to want anything.
His thumb brushed my lower lip, the sensation almost too much.
“You can succumb to their fabricated fate for you, or you can fight with me and overthrow them from within. It’s your choice.
” His stern voice startled me for a second.
“The girl I’ve gotten to know over the last week and a half doesn’t strike me as a do-as-they-say sort.
But I don’t know. I’ve been wrong before. ”
I lifted my gaze to his, glaring. “Do you think they had anything to do with my parents’ deaths or why I’m being tailed right now?”
“Hard to know for sure. They’re very good at covering their tracks.
I’m well respected and trusted, so I doubt they’d send someone when it was them who sent me to you.
But Anita was a several-witness death, as noted by higher level Hunters.
Her death was documented so well no one would ever question it. That makes me wonder.”
Stealing the blood bag out of his hand, I felt my incisors lengthen. I didn’t have the headspace to deal with all the crazy ironies that came from a Hunter munching down on a blood bag, but the thirst was painful and getting worse by the second.
I trusted Grams. I trusted that she brought Phillip to me for a reason and that she wouldn’t leave me in the hands of a sociopath. I also couldn’t deny that everything he said made sense.
In the scheme of things, I never really got how we somehow ended up with vampire-like abilities.
But I did have questions. Questions like, how did they develop genetic technology over two centuries ago when it wasn’t anywhere in the human world?
Or how did they get the vampire blood? Or when had someone thought it’d be a great idea to use it to make genetic copies of vampires without all the weakness, just to then turn around and kill them?
But I mostly wanted to know for what reason they did any of this. Why did they create us? What did they need someone like me for?