Becoming (Core Series Book 1)

by Ronnie Barnard

  Young Police Officer Murdered in Style of Vampire Victim

  The gruesomely tortured body of a young police officer, Jenifer O’Connell, was discovered late yesterday afternoon at an abandoned warehouse in Sumner Park. The discovery was made by a security guard who noticed an opened door to the warehouse during a routine patrol. According to Captain Smith, the deceased was found tied to a torture device with her legs spread, and had been repeatedly raped. Several torture machines were found at the scene. Two puncture wounds were found on the wrists of the deceased, and her body had been drained of blood.

  No blood was found at the scene, and at this stage the police suspect that the murder was the work of ritual sadist. Police are still investigating the murder and have no suspects or clues at this time. Captain Smith has passed his condolences to the O’Connell family.

  Jenifer recently graduated from the academy and will be dearly missed by her colleagues. The memorial service is to be held at 10 a.m. Friday in St. Stephen’s Cathedral.

  The photo that accompanied the article showed a beautiful young woman with long, straight brown hair that draped over her shoulders. She had brown eyes, and an honest complexion. Sumner Park was not too far from where he stood now. Jason felt a tinge of remorse for the poor soul who had lost her life in such a gruesome manner. He filed the article in his memory.

  The temperature had remained steady throughout the evening. Jason idly watched the sparse night life crawl by through the fog. He was grateful that it had finally stop raining. As if on cue, fat droplets of water began to smash into the street around him. It was not long before the rain poured down in buckets and he was soaked to the skin.

  He took a chance and crossed to the middle of the road, waiting for a couple of cars to drive past. They appeared like two-headed beasts out of the fog and disappeared in a red haze. Then he crossed all the way to the other side. He ran under the awning that hung over the hospital’s front door. He looked back at the dark night, which was blotted out as big rain drops were smashed into finer droplets, and those were further refined into a white mist that mixed with the fog. The storm gutters were filling fast as the storm hit in all its fury. Jason switched to radar view, and saw the cloud cover rising to forty-thousand feet. He thought of floods coming down the Brisbane River, and a devastation that this city had not seen in a very long time. He shook his head and ducked into the hospital reception area.

  “Can I give you a towel, mister? It looks like you’re soaked to the bone.... Funny weather, this,” an old, black nurse offered, chuckling kindly. She was almost as round as she was tall, and waddled like a duck as she walked towards him. She handed him a large towel and smiled from ear to ear, revealing a set of brilliant white teeth that contrasted sharply against her African complexion. “Look here, you are dripping all over the floor!” She pointed at the puddle around his feet and laughter erupted from deep within her chest. “Don’t you worry, sir! I will get Sammy the janitor to come and dry that up. Not your fault, this rain,” she said, waddling back to the reception desk.

  “Thank you, Dolores.” He had read her name from her name tag before she turned and walked away. “It is a waterfall out there, and this fog is giving me the creeps,” he said, faking a shiver.

  “Nothing good can come from this! We humans have been messing with our home planet for far too long,” she stood, waving her hands as if the hospital reception symbolised the whole world. “Uh uh! We are gonna pay for breaking nature and all,” she said.

  Every once in a while you get to meet a great soul, Jason thought. Delores was such a one—she made you feel right at home in a place where suffering was commonplace.

  “I agree, Dolores,” he said. He watched as a young female doctor came into the reception area from a side door to the right. Before it closed, he recognized the hallway he escaped from during his previous visit. The emergency escape door had been fixed and the fire extinguisher replaced.

  The doctor had blond hair hanging down to the middle of her back, green eyes and a very light complexion. She must prefer to stay indoors, he thought. She was one meter sixty-seven tall and had an average build. He automatically catalogued her features and added her profile to the growing list of disguises. She walked past him with a smile, leaving behind her a trail of the perfume that Core had worn. A spark of recognition pierced his mind when he connected the different colours he associated with Core’s scent to the female doctor. His insides began to slowly twist with agony; a soft groan escaped his mouth and he held his chest, taking deep breaths.

  “Good night Dolores!” the doctor said as she passed the reception desk.

  “Good night, Betty, be safe—it’s wet out there.” Dolores pointed to the rain and made a face at the weather, reminding Jason somewhat of a cartoon character.

  The doctor and Jason giggled together at the sight. Then the doctor opened the door. “I will see you tomorrow,” she replied and walked out, disappearing into the fog. The rain bounced off her head and shoulders; she was soaking wet by the time she disappeared into the swirling fog.

  “Ah, these young people of today, they think they are invincible. Look at Doctor Summers there, she is going to get herself sick!” Dolores waved her arms and pointed to the door.

  “That’s so true. If I tried that, I would be lying in one of the beds upstairs.” Jason remembered that he had in fact just come out of that rain. He laughed and looked out the front window, where it poured down now even harder. He had not even believed that it could rain any harder, but he was proven wrong as the flood gates of heaven opened on Brisbane. Lightning struck somewhere in the distance and rumbled across the city, announcing some ominous presence.

  “Me and my big body won’t make it past the front door!” Dolores cried with laughter. Jason, meanwhile, had finished drying himself and used the damp towel to mop up the floor where he had left a big puddle. The towel was almost dripping wet by the time he finished.

  “What do I do with this?” he asked with a frown on the face, holding up the wet towel.

  “Just leave it next to the door, sweetie. Sammy will be around in a minute to come pick it up. You all right there?” she asked, still giggling.

  “Yes, thank you. Is there a way to get to the other side of the building without going outside?” Jason asked, pointing towards the waterfall running down the windows. One corner of his mouth turned up in a smirking smile and he uttered a guffaw. Delores stood up and waddled out from behind the big reception desk.

  “Sure sweetie!” She swayed over to the door where Doctor Betty Summers had exited. “Go down this hallway—you will find a corridor going to your left. Follow that till you come to a flight of stairs. Go up, take the first exit and turn left. Go across the walking bridge, which will take you to the other side of the road, and there you will find a door that comes out on the street over there somewhere.” She pointed to a door that should be on the other side of the road. “You should be fine from there?” she asked. He looked up at the walkway, which was hazy against the fog. He did not really want to cross the bridge, but rather wanted to find out if they had a neural care unit.

  “Yes, thank you Dolores.” He made his face twist in sadness. “This hospital reminds me of my wife, when her brain stopped working right... intracranial solid neoplasm...and then she went brain-dead,” he said, lowering his shoulders.

  “Oh! That is awful, I am sorry to hear. Are you ok?” she asked, her face contorted in a sad expression that mimicked his own.

  “Yes I am fine.... Thank you for asking, it was ten years ago.” He gave a fake smile. “We buried her in a nice plot near our house. I still visit every weekend.” He looked into the distance, making up the story as he went along.

  “Well, you moved on. Good for you. There are still people here that refuse to let go, hoping on hope that maybe their loved ones will someday wake up from the sleep,” she said in a mysterious sounding voice, wiggling her fingers in the air and smiling. “And also those that have no one left, but still s
leep on. Poor souls!” She walked back to the reception desk as a bus shimmered into existence outside. He appeared like the ferry man on his trip to the underworld, carrying the souls of the dead to their final destination.

  “Here?” he raised his voice to a shrill sound. “What a shame....” He looked at her and pinched his brow. “Who makes the decision to switch off the machines for those who have none left?” he asked.

  “The government dictates that we have to keep them on machines for a period of twenty-four months. If no one comes to collect, the hospital gets a court order to stop their suffering.” She shook her head, looking sad at the thought.

  “How many people are here?” He raised his brow.

  “The last time I was in that ward, there were four individuals.” She pointed to the far end of the hospital, opposite the direction she had pointed him earlier. So that’s where they are, he thought, relieved. “Two of those had no family left,” she said.

  Jason turned towards the door and looked back at her.

  “That is sad.... But I better get going, Dolores, I have far to go and much to do before I get there. You take care of yourself...and thank you again for the towel,” he said, genuine gratitude in his voice and a soft smile lighting his eyes. He felt enriched by having met her; her generosity and demeanour were invigorating, and left him with a feeling of peace and joy. He waved with one hand and pushed the door open with the other.

  “Goodbye sweetie. Take care, and hope to see you again someday.” She waved as he walked through the door.

  The hallway had a couple of empty medicine tables and gurneys along the walls, and Jason recognized the door to the laundry room. The scents of bleach and disinfectant hung in the hallway, prickling his nose. He did not see or hear anyone nearby, and his senses reported no activity in the laundry or storage rooms. He rounded the corner and dropped the profile of Doctor Betty Summers on himself. Two steps later, the transformation was complete.

  He now had to contend with breasts. They felt heavy, like a big graphing calculator in your top pocket, but they jiggled and...he could feel them. He felt the urge to stare down his dress, but dismissed the feeling immediately. He adjusted them as he headed towards the stairwell.

  He took the stairs two at a time and stepped out on the very next floor. But he did not cross the air bridge. To his right was the entrance to a ward displaying a sign that read “Cardio Unit” in bright red letters.

  He brought up the hospital map that was in Core’s knowledge base from his previous escape. He saw the route that she led him down, highlighted as a faint red trail. He searched the entries on the map for the neural care unit, and found it tucked away at the end of this wing. The red path changed to show him the route that would take him there.

  Jason listened for footsteps or voices in the cardio ward and peeked through the small windows in the door. The nurse’s station, midway down the ward, appeared to be abandoned.

  He pushed the doors open and walked swiftly down the passage. A light was shining into the darkened hall from a room a couple of doors down from the nurse’s station. He needed to pass the open door. His heart started racing and he felt butterflies turn in his stomach. He heard panic-filled voices inside the room. One of the nurses ran into the hall, and saw him.

  “Ah! Doctor Summers...we have a heart attack!” a nurse shouted down the hall when she saw him approach.

  “Is it a male or female?” Jason asked as he sped up. He did not have a clue what to do and felt panic rise in him. His heart beat like conga drums. Core always handled these types of situations with speed and efficiency. How did she do it?

  She would have consulted the vast ocean of knowledge out on the internet. Then, Jason felt the tiny tinge in the back of his mind. It felt like his brain had expanded automatically. Heart attack information streamed in: studies, doctor’s white papers, treatments, and so much more. For a moment, he was disoriented by the assault of information.

  “A male patient. The heart attack started less than a minute ago. No allergies and in his late sixties,” she said.

  “Give him fifteen milligrams of Metoprolol immediately,” he said in a calm voice as he walked into the room. The nurses injected the patient intravenously with the drugs. “Charge the defibrillator, one hundred and fifty joules,” he said. One of the nurses responded to his command immediately.

  “Charged!” the nurse replied.

  “Clear!” he said, and brought the paddles down on the patient’s chest, one in the middle and the other close to the side. This would force the electrical jolt through his heart. When everyone stood clear of the body, Jason pressed the buttons on the paddles. The electricity discharged, causing the patient’s body to contract under the current.

  “No pulse!” the nurse shouted.

  “Charge two hundred!” he shouted, waiting for the charge light to illuminate. “Clear!” he said, and pressed the button again. The electricity discharged, and this time there was a small jump in the heart monitor.

  The nurse checked the man’s pulse. “I felt a faint pulse, but it stopped again.”

  “Charge three hundred...come on!” he shouted. “Give me twenty milligrams of adrenaline and the second dose of Metoprolol,” he commanded. He noticed the nurse injecting the clear liquid into the drip as he waited for the defibrillator to charge. “Clear!” He pressed the buttons again. This time, the body almost jumped from the electricity. As soon as it relaxed, the nurse felt for a pulse again. Another was busy breathing for the patient with a ventilator bag.

  “Still no pulse!” he dropped the paddles and started the compressions. The nurse breathing for the patient timed the CPR with her deflation.

  “I have a pulse. It’s weak, but I feel it.” The nurse who fetched him from the hallway said, and then the heart monitor picked up on the beat. It was very erratic, but steadily growing stronger.

  “There we go!” he said as relief washed over him. His smile was reciprocated by the nurses standing around the bed. “Great work, everyone.” Jason walked to the bottom end of the bed and picked up the patient’s chart. “Put him on two liters of oxygen per minute for the next half-hour, and administer Metoprolol, five milligrams every four hours for the next twelve hours.” He wrote the instructions on the patient chart and signed it before walking to the other side of the bed to listen to the patient’s heart.

  Before he could leave the room, one of the nurses looked up just before she fixed on the oxygen mask. “Thank you Doctor. But I thought you went home already?”

  Jason’s mind raced. “Yes...I made it as far as the front door and remembered I forgot to check on another patient.” He smiled, and then left them to complete the task. Phew! he thought. It could have gone worse. And he had saved a life. A feeling of excitement mixed with joy ran through him, sending adrenaline coursing through his veins. At least one good thing would come from his abilities tonight.

  He brought up the hospital map again, and walked further down the hall towards the neural care unit.

  Once he turned left into the short corridor connecting the two wards, he sighed a long, deep sigh of relief. Stress dropped off his shoulders and he felt his neck muscles relax as he saw the double door with the words “Neuro Ward” written on a plaque above them.

  He opened the door to the neural care unit. It was a small ward, with eight beds in total—four on either side of the room. The three beds in the far corner to his right each had an occupant. The others were neatly made in royal red bed linen.

  Jason closed the door behind him and peered through the window before quickly walking to the first bed. He picked up the chart and flipped it open. It was a male, aged sixty-four, who had been brain dead for two weeks. He had family in Brisbane, who visited often. Jason felt a disappointed twinge as he replaced the chart and walked to the second patient. It was a female, thirty-seven, sole survivor of a gruesome motor vehicle accident. Her husband and child died on the spot—this sent a shiver down his spine. She had suffered severe head injuries
and was declared brain-dead after arriving at the hospital. She was the only living child of deceased parents. He felt sorry for the woman, but a pinch of joy ran through him and he could not help but smile. He imagined that he looked a bit like Victor Frankenstein before he had brought the monster to life.

  He did a quick search for any cameras or surveillance equipment and found none. Apparently, the hospital did not expect any trouble from these patients. He snuffed, and suspected that the vital signs monitors were connected to alarms that would go off at the nurses’ station should any condition change.

  He walked to the supply room and retrieved several syringes and bed straps. On his return, he locked the doors to the room and closed the curtains around the woman’s bed. He took the bed straps and secured her hands and feet to the bed rails, and then put straps over her knees to stop them from contracting before strapping her torso down in several places. He removed two syringes from their plastic coverings, discarding the plastic into the bin next to the bed. He sat down on the bed beside her, pinched his lips, and found a vein in his left arm. It would take two full syringes of his own blood to start the process.

  Jason wished that Core had given him more information about this procedure, as he had been somewhere in dreamland when she did it to him. He remembered the experiment that Core had performed with the rat, of course, to show him the effects of the conversion. He would follow that process and see if it worked...he hoped that he did not kill the patient in the process.

  He shivered at the thought. What had he become!

  Jason did not stop to think about it further; he hated needles, but looked away as he plunged the needle into his artery and pulled the silvery red liquid from his arm. The tinge of pain sent shivers through his back. It did not resemble blood, but more a silver metallic liquid with a reddish shine. It looked nothing like what Core had in the syringe a couple of weeks ago.

  He noted the time on the wall clock and the doors before he stood up. He let a deep breath out and pushed the needle into the drip in the woman’s arm. A thought hit him just before the blood was loose: he needed to disconnect the monitors from the patient. But they would need to keep on working, or else a nurse would come running to the ward.