The Meridian Gamble (56 page)

“I will do as Saga wishes,” Lina
says. “But your actions are unspeakable, Marion. As of this day, I will no
longer be a part of your house.”

“Do what you must,” Marion says,
coldly.

Before they can say anything else,
the vampire militia arrives. Guards covered in body armor, human or otherwise,
show up at the door, at least 10 of them. And now there really is nothing Lina
can do.

What was she thinking? Did she
really believe she could get me out of the tower past this force? It was
foolish, yet touching that she still cares enough after all this time to try to
help me.

Marion motions to one of the
guards, and for a moment, I’m afraid she’s going to shoot me.

“Give it to me,” she says.

And he hands her what looks like a
pen.

“This will help,” she tells me,
grimly.

And before I can react, her hand
flashes out, and she plunges the device into my neck. There’s a stabbing pain
not entirely different from one of Roland’s fangs, and I scream out in pain. As
she pulls it away, I can see that her thumb is on a trigger, and the end of the
pen has a needle. And I’m so sick of these vampires sticking me. I grab the
sore spot on my neck.

And my vision begins to blur.

“Don’t worry,” Marion says. “It’s
just a little something to relax you.”

And the reality of the situation
finally sinks in. My worst nightmare is coming true, Marion is going to put me
in a vat alongside the rest of the Luminos, to drain me. My short life is
effectively over.

A tingling begins to form in my
legs, and it becomes a warmth that spreads through the rest of my body. The
vampire drugs are ridiculous in their speed and efficiency, and the feeling
isn’t entirely unpleasant, except for the fact that I know what it means; my
death.

And the panic sets in.

“Oh, God, no. This was a mistake.
Please …”

My legs start to feel weak, but
before they can give out on me, he’s here. He catches me, taking me in his
arms.

Adam smiles down at me, cradling
me. And he looks just a bit disappointed.

“Oh, Meridian. What have you done?”

Before I can try to speak, Marion
says something, and he looks up to her.

“I understand,” Adam says, back to
her, lowering his head. He lifts me, and we’re suddenly walking down the
corridor. He doesn’t even seem to protest, or fight back.

Adam is carrying me to my fate. We
march down the hallway with the rest of Marion’s soldiers, toward the
elevators.

My head bobs under the effect of
the drugs, and I look around, nervously. I must doze for a moment, because when
I come to, I’m in the basement, in the wretched lab. And I struggle to stay
awake for as long as I can, to fight the effects of the sedatives.

Adam takes me to one of the vats,
an empty one, and it’s strange how the construct works. The glass walls seem to
drop to the floor somehow, and he steps inside, sitting me on a chair that’s
part of the contraption. And vampires are all around me. They’re cutting the
clothes from my body, sticking tubes into my veins, which doesn’t even hurt,
I’m so numb. The technicians attach monitoring devices to my wrists that they
check and recheck with their tablet computers. They connect weird sensors to my
legs, and when they tap some controls on their pads, my limbs twitch. They put
straps around my arms that they attach to bars over my head, and when the
vampires hit more of their controls, they flex and extend. It’s as though I’m a
puppet, and they’re pulling my strings.

Oh God, it finally dawns on me;
this is all so that I don’t atrophy while I’m floating in the tank, so my body
will last as long as possible.

I look around fruitlessly, trying
to see if there’s a way I can somehow correct my stupidity. And I understand
now, why Lina struggled to extract me from this place. I try to say something,
call out to her to please try again, but it’s too late. My throat muscles are
numbed.

Adam stands aside, and he’s
watching me with a sickened expression on his face. And part of me can’t
understand why he’s so complacent, why he’s not fighting this the way Lina did,
even though I would not want him to bring punishment on himself. Marion is next
to him, bearing a guilty expression, but I no longer pity her, even though I’m
complicit in helping her bring about this sad fate. I don’t feel friendship for
her anymore, I feel resentment that she couldn’t try harder to find a better
solution. I feel rage, and the desire to hurt her.

And Lina, my poor Lina is crying,
real tears, not the drops of blood you see in the movies that supposedly come
from a vampire’s eyes. She cries big, gooey globs of water that roll down her
cheeks. And I hate myself too, for failing her, for not finding a way to spend
more time with her in this life.

The vampire attendants put a thick
tube into my mouth, no doubt to help me breathe, or to feed me. And the way it
slides down my throat is the most disgusting sensation I’ve ever felt. They all
step away, as the glass walls rise around me, and I panic. The fluid that will
encapsulate me begins to bubble up from the floor through hidden tubes, making
big, glopping sounds. And I dread what it will feel like when it rises above my
head.

But before I’m covered completely
and my vision is blurred, it happens, what I had been waiting for. There is a
commotion in the hallway, and I can see a blur through the glass. It’s Roland,
and he expresses the kind of rage I thought would come from Adam. I can hear
him yelling within the lab.

“Marion, I forbid you from doing
this!”

And I can hear her muffled pleas.
Lina goes to his side, yelling too, and I can see Roland becoming more angry.
And the vampire soldiers are on him, trying to pull him from the room. And
suddenly, glass shatters, and fighting breaks out.

For some reason, Adam appears
before my face, pressed up against the glass, blocking my view. He’s ignoring
the fighting, saying something to me. Not with words, I realize; he’s saying it
in my mind.

“Meridian, go to our place. Go to
our place.”

And it doesn’t seem like such a bad
idea. I don’t want to be in this dungeon anymore. I don’t want to feel the
sickening fluid that’s creeping around my body.

I close my eyes, and somehow, I’m
instantly there, a much better environment. I’m on the hill that’s covered with
flowers, on the path that leads to our cottage. The journey is quicker this
time, perhaps because of my altered state, or my burgeoning talent for skipping
through dimensions. And I see Adam standing near me.

He’s wearing the same clothes he
had on, though they glow here, ever so slightly. I’m wearing my jeans and
T-shirt, even though I was stripped naked for the tanks. And Adam doesn’t seem
like his same cool and collected self. He puts his hands on my shoulders with
urgency.

“Meridian, we don’t have long,” he
says, earnestly. “I’m going to get you out of here. I promise I will not leave
you in this place. I’m going to save you.”

But I’m not really interested in
his words anymore. I turn away, and look up to the top of the hill. Beyond the
canyon, I can see the clouds beginning to separate, opening the doorway to
paradise. And I realize I have one last chance.

My Luminos skills are still at my
disposal, just as they were when I battled with Lina, and I kick Adam, once to
the groin and another to his chest. I have no delusion that I can hurt him, nor
would I want to, but my blows stun him, knocking him back. Before he can
realize what’s happening, I run.

I charge up the hill to set this
right, to do what Marion said, what I should have done before. I can hear him
behind me, coming after me, but maybe the Astral Plane makes us equals, maybe
it gives me just an extra burst of speed. Or maybe it’s my determination that
allows me to outpace him.

As I near the top, I can see it,
the green grass of paradise floats before me, off in the clouds, just a leap
away. The gates of the city within it are opening, and the two little girls who
called to me before come skipping out. But the ground beneath me begins to
quake, and I look back over my shoulder, past Adam, who chases after me. And I
see a black energy come seeping out of the forest, one that races after us, up
the hill. And it moves at a terrifying pace.

Adam calls out, but I can’t really
hear him. I near the edge of the cliff, but the sky turns grey as the gooey
blackness gets closer. I keep running anyway, and I can see the girls watching
me expectantly from their world. But they say nothing this time.

I jump, but as I’m in the air, the
shadowy energy lashes out at me. It’s tendrils cling to me, like the fingers of
a living thing. And I watch the gates of paradise shut and the clouds close, as
the energy around my feet.

And it pulls me downward, dragging
me toward a much darker fate.

Sirens are ringing in my ear. No,
not sirens. The weird, low beeping alarm of the vampire tower is going off,
though it’s louder this time, and the beeps are more frequent than the ones
I’ve heard before. They rouse me from my slumber, and when I open my eyes, a
wave of panic hits me, because I’m underwater. My first instinct is that I
won’t be able to breathe, and I do the worst thing possible, which is to begin
choking in great gasps of air. But I soon realize I can inhale and exhale
perfectly, because I have a gigantic tube down my throat. And this makes me
panic even worse.

I’m still here. I’m still in the
tank in the vampire dungeon.

It’s weird, I can see through the
thick goop I’m immersed in, which doesn’t seem possible. It will probably
damage my eyes to open them in the chemicals of the fluid, but I don’t have any
other choice, I can’t afford not to see what’s going on. A red line bobs about
in my peripheral vision, and I realize it’s the tube coming from my arm, where
the blood is being drained, and I’m almost lucky I’m too weak to retch. I look
about the lab, and get a glimpse of the other tanks. The blurry shapes of the
other victims are unmoving, they all seem to be still asleep.

I’m the only one who’s awake. This
is my chance, my one hope to escape.

My arms are still attached with
straps to the bars that extend from the top of the chair I’m sitting in, and I
try to yank them away. It’s difficult to do, because I can barely flex my
elbows. I try to kick my legs, to get the blood flowing, but those limbs won’t
move either, and I only hope there isn’t permanent damage, that I haven’t been
floating here for too long.

Who knows what the date is. Years
may have passed since the vampires tanked me, but I can’t think about that
right now.

As I struggle to twitch my limbs, a
strange thing happens. A loud clanging noise echoes from somewhere beneath me,
and the fluid begins to drain from the tank. Something is going on, and I
realize I have to move now. There won’t be another chance. A rush of adrenaline
comes over me, and I manage to pull one of my arms free. I rip the needle from
my other arm, relieved that the vampires won’t be getting any more of my bodily
fluids. I tear the disgusting tube from my mouth, which may have been a
mistake. I’m not sure how much air will be left in the sealed tank for me to
breathe.

With the fluid gone from the vat I
can get a better view of the lab, and I wipe away what remains of the creepy
liquid from my face. I can see them, the other victims who are floating here,
though maybe they’re not all victims. Maybe some of them chose this fate in
exchange for a quick cash infusion. There’s a large black man floating in the
tank next to mine, some women and several older people, and I say a silent
prayer, hoping they didn’t become aged as they've been bled dry in this place.

The ringing in my ears gets worse,
and I have to blink several times to make sure what I’m seeing is real; the
water in the other tanks begins to change color. A green liquid seeps into the
fluid that fills the other tanks, and the bodies inside them begin to twitch
and shake. I watch in horror, as they start to dissolve.

They’re destroying the evidence.
The tower is under attack, and the vampires are killing off their herd of
cattle. And for some reason, I'm the one cow who's been spared.

But I'm not safe yet. Now more than
ever I have to move. I twist my body and manage to pull myself from the chair,
but I fall to the ground, painfully. I raise my left arm with much effort, and
smack it against the glass. I’m not sure what I’m trying to do, break it,
maybe. Or signal to the vampire technicians, who don’t seem to be around.

Suddenly, there’s a thudding noise
at the doors of the lab, and their glass shatters. Men come piling into the
room, soldiers dressed in armor. But it’s not the same dark grey gear that the
vampire guards wear. They’re in camouflage, running around, checking the
contents of the tanks. And through the masks they wear, I can see the look of horror
in their eyes as they see the half-dissolved bodies. I hear the sound of alarm
in their voices over what’s too disgusting for me to even look at.

One of them is filming it.

Luckily, I’m near the door, and I
pound on the glass once again. They finally spot me.

“Here! We’ve got a live one over
here!”

The pull out some sort of hammer
with which they pound on the glass of the tank. It shatters, raining down
around me, and they lift my nude form from the container.

The soldiers have me on a blanket,
and they’re tearing the devices and monitors from my body, which I’m so
grateful for. They're checking my vital signs.

“Miss, can you hear me? Can you
hear me?”

A young man is hunched over me, and
his voice emits from a speaker in his mask with a tinny sound. I can barely
speak, but I make sure to flutter my eyes as much as possible, to indicate I’m
still here.