The Keras Genome

by Kurtis Eckstein

  “How long have you been awake?”

  “Long enough to watch you brood about something.”

  Noah looked away, realizing the time had come. He would have to tell her she’d become a monster.

  “Hey!” Madison’s voice was full of compassion as she sat up in his lap. She slowly cupped his face with her hands, her fingertips brushing across his cheeks. “I love you. Whatever it is, I love you.” Her deep brown eyes revealed a longing desire. She leaned forward and pressed her soft lips to his.

  When he didn’t kiss back, she sighed and leaned back. “Hey mister, I’m trying to kiss you,” she accused.

  “I’m sorry,” was all he could say.

  She looked concerned again. “Noah, I love you. No matter what, I love you. What’s got you so upset?”

  He hesitated briefly before responding. “Gabriella…I mean Dr. Robinson, stayed while you were sleeping. She shared some…unpleasant…theories.”

  Madison appeared more curious than concerned. “What did she say?”

  Noah met her gaze for a few long seconds, deciding to delay the worst part. “Well, she did say it’s possibly Riley might still be in her body, watching helplessly as the Keras control her like a puppet.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh.” She paused, looking down at the bed and then back up at Noah. “Is there anything we can do about it? ”

  Noah shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think we should at least try.”

  Madison nodded in agreement, but then she eyed him suspiciously. “That’s not what you were brooding about though, is it?”

  She knew him too well. She could detect from his tone of voice that Riley had been a diversion. He sighed and then asked the inevitable. “Madison, are you hungry?”

  She looked at him, a confused expression on her face from the seemingly random question. “Um, well no. Why?”

  Noah sighed again, feeling like her answer confirmed what he already knew. “Dr. Robinson shared her theory about what we eat.”

  “And what’s that?” She wondered.

  Noah looked in her deep brown eyes again, hoping her affection wouldn’t leave them when he said it. “She thinks we absorb blood…for food.”

  “Oh.” Madison looked down at the bed to consider his words. “That makes sense.”

  Noah looked at her surprised. “It does?”

  She looked up at him then, more serious, but not upset. “Yeah. I mean we can control our blood with our minds essentially. I guess it just makes sense to me because I’ve seen so many variations of vampires.”

  Noah was shocked again. “Wait. What? I’ve never heard of a vampire controlling its blood.”

  Madison gave him a somber smile. “Well, I have. Pretty much if people can imagine it, then it’s a thing. I read…umm, used to read…a lot of vampire books – like, when I was thirteen.” She seemed embarrassed by that fact, as if maybe she still did and didn’t want to admit it.

  “Oh.” Noah wasn’t sure what to say. “I didn’t know that.” Then after a second, he corrected himself. “Rather, I guess I didn’t remember that.”

  Madison seemed even more embarrassed as she spoke again. “Okay, so I may be in the middle of a book right now that happens to have a vampire character. Or maybe a few vampire characters.” She seemed to interpret his gaze as skepticism. “Okay it’s a book about vampires! Jeez!”

  Noah couldn’t help but smile at her childish behavior. She always had a way of lightening the mood. But he wondered if it was just her way of avoiding reality.

  “So, does that mean you’re okay with being a vampire?”

  She looked down at the bed again, contemplating his question. “I mean, I realize there are probably going to be parts I don’t like…” Her gaze returned to Noah, with her voice sounding more desperate. “But I want to be with you.” Madison realized he didn’t fully believe her, so she continued. “Noah, even now, after knowing that I’ll need other people’s blood to live, I would still choose this over a life without you. I want to be with you. I need you.”

  Noah nodded in agreement to her last statement, echoing her words as a whisper. “I need you too.”

  She leaned up against him again, as he tightened his arms around her. Then she asked, “What else did Dr. Robinson say?”

  “Oh. Well, she did say she thinks we’re immortal now.”

  Madison sat up abruptly, her tone flat. “What? ”

  Noah elaborated. “She said something about aging being just a symptom of DNA damage, and how the Keras genome can’t be damaged, or something like that. Anyway, basically she said we probably won’t die…or even age I guess.”

  “Umm…yeah, I think I can deal with the blood thing. I get to be with you forever .” Madison started unconsciously twisting the ring on her finger, that Noah had given her.

  Her response surprised him. “You want to live forever?”

  Madison was quick with her reply. “Don’t you?”

  He hadn’t really thought about it, although he realized it was possible he just didn’t remember having thought about it. He wondered what kind of topics his pre-amnesia self had contemplated. He just shrugged in response to her question.

  She looked at him curiously then. “How does Dr. Robinson even know we need blood for food?”

  Noah sighed. “Because when I was injured outside of the base where you had been held hostage, I apparently drained all the blood from one of the people who had been in the car with me.”

  Madison still seemed more curious than concerned. “Was he alive when it happened?”

  He found her lack of empathy strange. She normally seemed very caring for others. Had she really accepted her new reality so easily? “No, I strongly doubt that. And it was a she. Her name was Laura. She had been killed by a Keras just before it got me.”

  “How did you do it?”

  Now Noah was really concerned. Was she okay? How could see talk about this so easily? He just stared at her instead of answering her question, trying to understand from her expression why she seemed so accepting of it all.

  “Are you okay?” He asked.

  She looked surprised. “Yeah, why?”

  “You just seem so…composed. Like it’s no big deal.”

  She seemed embarrassed again. “It’s not that. I just figured it’s better to know than not know.”

  He waited to see if she would continue, but she didn’t. He decided to answer her question. “Well, I don’t know exactly how I did it then, but I know how I did it in the operating room.” Madison looked back up at him, curiosity in her eyes. “I had been shot when my blood started killing everyone, and afterwards I felt cold…oh, and that’s how we can tell if we are hungry apparently, if we feel cold…and then I stepped on blood and I guess just absorbed it through my skin. So maybe we just have to touch it? I probably absorbed Laura’s blood through a tendril of my blood.”

  Noah realized Madison had stopped breathing, holding her breath as if shocked by something he had said. When she didn’t say anything, he questioned her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She hesitated. “Umm…Noah…I feel a little chilly now .”

  “Oh.” His first instinct was to hold her tighter to try to warm her up, but then he immediately realized that probably wouldn’t help. Thinking frantically, he tried to come up with a solution. “Well, we need to do something, because Dr. Robinson said our bodies would get blood without our permission if we waited too long. ”

  Madison nodded in response. Then a smirk appeared on her face. “Shall we go hunt?”

  Noah’s jaw dropped. Was she kidding?

  Madison pinched his cheek. “Not people silly! This place is built like a hospital. I’m sure they have blood here, especially since they have probably been testing to see how our blood interacts with normal human blood.”

  “Oh.” He felt stupid for assuming she wanted to hunt people. He realized she was just trying to be cute. He tried to recover, smiling at her. “Umm, okay, let’s go hunt for some
blood then.”

  Chapter 22: The Hunt

  Deciding to go search for some blood to cure Madison’s chill, they slid off the foldout bed and opened the door to peer into the hall. No one was in sight in either direction. Madison began creeping down the hall when Noah laughed at her.

  She looked back at him. “What?”

  “You just seem so serious. And stealthy. I figured we would just go up to them and ask for it.”

  “Oh.” She stood straight up. “I guess we could do that. Do you think they would actually give it to us?”

  Noah shrugged. “I’ll just tell them you need blood, and that if they don’t give you a bag of it then you might just use one of them as a blood bag.”

  A smile lit up her face. “It could be fun to tease them! I could be all like ‘I vant to suck ya blood!’ or something.”

  Madison seemed very amused at her own joke. Noah scoffed at her. “You really think you’re funny don’t you.”

  Her smile got larger. “Noah, I’m hilarious! You just don’t know good humor.”

  He returned her grin. “I know you’re adorable. Like a little kid. But funny is a different story. ”

  Madison stuck her tongue out at him, as if to prove his point. He couldn’t help but feel amused. “Okay, let’s go get you some dinner.”

  Down the hall, they found a map on the wall that indicated where the fire exits were located. Madison used what she knew about hospitals to narrow down where the lab might be with all the scientists.

  She explained her reasoning. “If they do have blood here, it could be anywhere, so we need to find someone who would know.”

  Despite what Dr. Robinson had said about there being a lot of people in the building, even at this hour, they didn’t come across anyone as they searched. Finally, they found a hallway that led to a large double door with two armed guards standing in front. Noah almost expected them to yell ‘Freeze’ and point their guns at them as they approached, but the guards didn’t react.

  Noah stopped about ten feet away, not wanting to appear hostile. Madison took his lead, stopping at his side. He didn’t want to explain all the details to them, so he simply said, “We need to talk to one of the scientists. It’s urgent.”

  The two soldiers glanced at each other. One of them grabbed his radio, and spoke into it. “Dr. Cross, you have some visitors. Noah Reid and Madison Ross.”

  Both Noah and Madison looked at each other, surprised the soldiers knew who they were by name. But then Noah realized that probably everyone here knew about them. In fact, it occurred to him that they probably knew more about him than he knew about himself .

  After a few seconds, the soldier repeated the message when Dr. Cross didn’t answer. The two soldiers then exchanged a look again, before the guy repeated the message a third time.

  An annoyed staticky voice crackled on the radio. “I heard you the first time! I’ll be there in a minute!”

  Noah and Madison waited patiently for the annoyed voice to make an appearance. Finally, after a few minutes, one of the doors behind the soldiers opened up. The sound of over twenty scientists moving around, rustling papers, typing, and adjusting slides filled the hallway. The room behind the doors was strikingly white inside, and everyone looked extremely consumed in their work. A grumpy looking old man stood at the door. He was tall, but his age was undeniable, having white hair and deep wrinkles. He looked like he was either well past retirement, or else the stress of the job had just aged him prematurely.

  He didn’t seem happy to see them. “What do you want? I’ve got a lot of work to do. I don’t have time for distractions.”

  Noah was direct. “She needs blood.”

  He didn’t appear surprised, only more annoyed. “Is that all? Then go get some! You don’t need me for that!”

  Now Noah was annoyed. “And how do you suppose we do that exactly?” Did this old man want them to get it from a person?

  Dr. Cross eyed one of the soldiers. “Well?! Take them to the blood bank already! I don’t have time for this! ”

  The solider abruptly saluted Dr. Cross, loudly saying, “Sir!” Then the peculiar scientist abruptly slammed the door closed. The sudden decrease in noise from the closed door made it evident it must be sound-proof.

  Madison giggled. “Wow.”

  The soldier who had been yelled at didn’t seem amused. He didn’t say anything as he started walking down the hall, passing them without even gesturing for them to follow. Noah and Madison looked at each other again, before trailing after him.

  The soldier led them down the hallway until they reached a large door that required a code to enter. The radio on the guy’s shoulder suddenly came to life, speaking only a brief number and letter. It was their current location. Noah realized that Dr. Robinson was serious when she had said that whoever was watching them on the security cameras was regularly updating all the soldiers of their current location. After the door opened, their escort led them down another hallway, putting in a different code into one of the doors. The radio crackled again, with another brief description of their location.

  The room inside had a white granite floor, instead of the dull concrete floors everywhere else. There was a black countertop with a sink to the side of the room, and against the back wall were six large coolers with glass doors, like what would hold milk in a grocery store. Hundreds of bags of blood hung from hooks inside the coolers, packed in as tightly as possible .

  For the first time, the soldier spoke. “I’ll be waiting in the hallway. I can’t leave you in this section of the building unattended.”

  Noah nodded and proceeded into the room with Madison right behind him. The door closed automatically, leaving them alone in the blood bank. As Noah went up to one of the coolers and opened it, Madison spoke.

  “Do you think blood type matters?”

  Noah looked at her, uncertain about her mood. “I doubt it.” He grabbed a bag of blood out of the cooler and handed it to her. It was cool to the touch, but it didn’t make him feel cold. He still felt as warm as always.

  Madison tentatively accepted the bag of blood and then looked at Noah. “How do you think I should do it?”

  “Well, I don’t think you actually need to drink it. And it will be messy if you try to open it up. So maybe use your blood? I still haven’t even seen you do it.”

  “Oh.” She looked down at the bag in her hand. “I guess I’ve been afraid to show you. I’m afraid you’ll think differently of me.”

  “Madison, you’ve watched me create a sword with my blood. Why would you think that?”

  She just shrugged, so he grabbed her face with his hands and kissed her. She leaned into him as she returned the kiss, the bag of blood pressed between them. He then pulled away and looked at her with a grin. “For all you know, I might think it’s hot.”

  She sighed. “Okay. I’ll do it. ”

  Holding the bag in her hand, a small drop of blood broke through the skin on her wrist, strikingly dark against her pale complexion. It then turned into a thin tendril as it rose into the air. She looked at Noah to see his reaction. “Well?”

  He grinned at her sudden self-consciousness. “Definitely hot.”

  “Oh whatever!”

  She acted like she didn’t believe him, but Noah saw a small smile appear at the corner of her mouth. At Madison’s direction, the blood from her wrist curled in the air and stabbed into the bag of blood.

  “Oh wow!” Madison seemed legitimately surprised. “That feels great.” The bag of blood was rapidly disappearing, gone in seconds. There was a watery liquid left behind in the bag. He wondered if it was the anticoagulated they used to keep the blood from clotting. If it was, then she had been able to absorb just the blood, leaving behind the unnecessary pollutants.

  “Feel better?” Noah asked.

  “Yeah! I feel amazing! Even though the blood is cold, I felt warmer immediately.”

  Noah was relieved. “Well that’s good. I guess you didn’t need that much. Maybe
we only need a lot if we get injured.”

  “That sounds reasonable, although I think I need another bag.” She handed Noah the empty bag and walked over to grab another one. The blood inside disappeared in seconds. Madison was suddenly pensive. “Hmm… ”

  “What is it?” He walked over to her to look at the bag she was holding.

  She looked up at him. “Well, when I absorbed the last bag, it just happened. Like it was automatic. But about halfway through this bag, I had to actually concentrate to absorb it.”

  He considered her words, and then looked up at the blood hanging in the cooler. He grabbed one for himself and tried to absorb it. Sure enough, he had to concentrate, rather than it just happening passively. He knew he hadn’t needed to choose to absorb blood previously. “Maybe it is like eating in a way. If you’re really hungry, then food finds its way into your stomach easily. But it takes a lot of effort to force yourself to eat more food when you’re already full. This is the first time it hasn’t happened passively for me.”

  “Oh, well then I guess that means I’m full. Although I don’t feel full exactly, just warm again.”

  He smiled at her. “Well that’s good. So, what’s the verdict?”

  She grinned back. “Being a vampire isn’t so bad!”

  Noah was suddenly serious. “That’s what worries me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He could tell she wasn’t sure if he was worried about the fact that she thought it wasn’t bad, or if he was worried that it didn’t appear to have significant drawbacks. He decided to clarify. “Well, supposedly we’re now indestructible and immortal, not to mention the fact that we basically have the ultimate weapon at our disposal, and, assuming we don’t get hurt, we only occasionally need a bag of blood to fill us up. That seems a little too good to be true.”

  Madison thought for a second before answering. “It’s possible that there may be other negative aspects to this, but it is what it is.” She held up her hands as she spoke.

  “If anything, a negative aspect is that we have to be the ones to try to get rid of the Keras.”