Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me,
Is there anyone at home?
------
It was four-thirty in the morning. Nurse Buck was an hour early for work.
This time of the morning, the Institute was as quiet as it ever got. Most creatures eventually fell into the rhythm of sleeping during the lights-out period, and waking during the lights-on one. It was a sleep cycle Buck still struggled with, being naturally nocturnal, and he was not alone: so it was never actually silent in the asylum.
At least, it never used to be silent in the asylum. Now that there were thirteen patients instead of the eighty-nine Buck had once helped care for, it was almost eerily quiet at night… and at times just like his first moments that particular morning. The vacant rooms were starting to fill with a pale, silvery blue pre-dawn light. It leaked dimly into the Institute’s hallways through the undarkened windows, adding an almost ethereal glow to the dim and recessed lighting that made the hallways navigable during lights-out. For just like there was never a time when all the patients slept at once, there was never a time when all the lights were truly out at Osmond’s Institute.
Though he was technically an hour early, Buck was running behind. His petite frame did not lend itself to large strides but he walked faster than much taller men without seeming to hurry. His yellow and black sneakers flashed in silent rhythm across the black and white checkered linoleum of the patient care areas. Clad in all black, the Cainite was little more than a rapid shadow making a beeline for the Central Nurse’s station.
Morgan Osmond had a very bad habit of dumping patients on the nurses with no notice or advance preparation. Buck could only be grateful that his boss had thought to send word last night that another group of the committed would arrive this morning. Buck had not had a chance to look at their files or do any sort of preparation in gearing up for their care. Morgan was fond of making people squirm: both the patients and the staff. It infuriated the little vampire. He hated being ill-prepared for anything.
So he’d meant to get in at three-thirty instead of four-thirty, giving himself a chance to thoroughly review the files. Since he’d been effectively living in his third floor quarters for a year now, it shouldn’t have been difficult… but then there’d been that fight with the alarm clock.
He waved the apparently blank white keycard attached to his shirt pocket in front of an equally blank looking black square on the door to the station. It unlocked with an audible click and Buck proceeded inside. There, on the counter just inside the doorway, was the stack of new patient files.
The vampire opened them all, laid them out on the counter, and began unlocking cabinets as he referenced the sheets of paper. Some species were unfamiliar and some he knew well. For the common species he knew which medications to procure; others required guidance from the files. He was working with frightening speed. Syringes were ripped from their sterile little packets, filled from the assorted vials Buck had pulled from stainless steel cupboards, and the needles then re-capped. As each chemical cocktail was completed, the petite nurse assigned them a carefully written label.
‘Rhorak’, read one. ‘Aniella’, said another. Then, ‘Simone’, ‘Hanneli’, ‘Aleksandrina’, 'Dante' and 'Alice'.
They were just names now, letters and numbers on sheets of paper. Soon enough they’d be faces… voices… sad, cruel stories… heaps of hurts and harms lost in their own shattered psyches. From patient files to patients. Patients he didn’t want to see slip away. Though Morgan had assured Buck -once, long ago- that the comas weren’t a result of anything he was doing wrong, it still left the taste of failure in Buck’s mouth.
Once all the syringes were filled and primed they were neatly arranged into a slim, rectangular, plastic case clearly designed to hold them. All their labels faced up. Having a sedative injection prepped and on hand for each new patient had proved incredibly helpful for him in times past. Even on occasions where he hadn’t needed them, Buck had never felt like he wasted time on the preparation.
As he was putting the last of the vials back in their places, the plastic case in his front right pocket, Buck heard the door to the central nurse’s station click to unlock again. The petite man sighed inwardly. This time of the morning, in this room, it could only be one person.
“Good morning, bloodsucker.”
Buck rolled his eyes and said, “Good of you to show up a whole five minutes early, mortal.”
Jean St. Croix huffed, stuck out her tongue at the back of Buck’s head, then hopped up to take a seat on the counter… planting her ass on the vampire’s neatly organized file array. He heard the sound of paper rustling, turned, and frowned at her.
“Really?” the petite man said, a touch of weariness coloring his voice. “I don’t like you any more than you like me, but I don’t go out of my way to make your life difficult.”
“You could have left the vials out for me,” she observed coolly, leaning back on her left palm… and twisting it a little, to wrinkle up the paper.
Buck shut the cabinet firmly, locked it, and then turned to look at Jean. Though she knew better, for a moment the female nurse really did forget who she was dealing with. She met his stare, and found that she couldn’t break it when the moment drew out. Jean couldn’t turn her head as Buck approached. He stopped about three feet from where she was sitting on his stack of files, and Jean could do nothing but stare down into his luminous golden eyes.
“Move.”
It was a small word, soft and not at all threatening, but Jean found her body moving before the syllable had even finished leaving the vampire’s lips. She hopped lightly off the counter and took two steps to the right. Then Jean stood motionless as Buck smoothed out his mussed files, closed them, stacked them neatly, and gathered them to his chest. He waved his badge in front of the black key box and it popped open, allowing him to return the medication cabinet key to its place inside. He knew as well as Jean did that if he didn’t log the key back in that way, any shortages or a missing key would be his fault. He shut the box, then pushed open the door. Jean couldn’t see Buck at all, but she could hear the smile in his voice.
“You now have twenty-four minutes to gather your injections and get your team prepped for the new arrivals before lights-on. Good luck.”
The thrall broke when the nurses’ station door clicked shut. Jean’s legs buckled and she collapsed into a shaking heap on the floor. She was dizzy from the momentary spell and quivering not with fear… but anger. It would take another minute for her to regain the ability to walk.
“You’ll pay for that, little man,” the woman growled through gritted teeth.
Come on now,
I hear you're feeling down:
I can ease your pain,
And get you on your feet again!
------
Buck and his team were gathered near the gymnasium end of the hall. Although he’d prepped injections for all the new patients, he and Jean divided the new arrivals into two groups their first day. She watched over half, and he watched over half. Much as he disliked the woman, she did a passable job and managed to be less bitchy to everyone else than she was to him. She and her team of three male nurses would see to the first three new patients, while Buck and his team of two female nurses would see to the second three patients.
The two women who stood facing their ancient vampiric supervisor had the same face. That was to say that their facial features were exactly the same; they were painted, however, with different colors. Farrah was blonde and had eyes that were a subtly unnatural navy blue. They didn’t glow or anything, but who had blue eyes so dark they were almost black? Her skin was medium toned and tanned on top of that. She was five foot eight or so, taller than he was, and built like a gymnast. Clara had the same nose, eye and brow shape, lips, jawline, and ears that Farrah did. But her hair was like liquid copper, eyes a light though entirely natural shade of green. Clara’s skin was milky white, limbs slender and graceful, and she was petite in stature, at least three inches shorter than his own five-six. Not at all athletic like Farrah was.
He could find neither of them attractive because of that face. It was the face that told him the bone structure was the same. While the body type, eye color, hair color, and height could change, their faces did not. It was subtle enough that it had taken a while for even Buck to notice that all the new nurses were actually somehow the same woman. And not just the same woman, the same man on the flip side of the coin. The male version was more attractive than the female, with a square jaw and fine, sharp facial features. He wore different beards and shades of stubble, different heights and hairs like the women, but he had that same faintly handsome, somewhat reserved face. It had been disturbing, to say the least. Some of the patients (especially those who hallucinated frequently) never noticed it at all.
Buck wasn’t the sort who talked about personal matters with his co-workers, so he’d never really asked about their families or pasts. By the time most of the other nurses had been replaced with these same-face supernaturals, the vampire was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear the answers he might get.
Clara was mildly gifted as a magical healer, and like all the Sibling nurses, much stronger and faster than a normal human. She was soft-spoken, and with her small stature it was sort of deceiving. She could be rather brutal physically, and had a bad habit of strangling her patients… until she had killed one by mistake six years ago, and had come to work the next day almost a different person. Since then, Clara had sometimes struggled to do the things Morgan asked of her. Farrah was a very weak telepath, and had somehow managed to develop that talent into a super-effective psychic block. Her particular brand of cruelty was more in the channels of psychological torture instead of physical methods.
“I’m going to handle the Ragdoll, Aniella, this morning. Her native language is Italian, which I speak, but according to her file she has an aversion to males. If she panics at the sight of me, I’ll have to send one of you for Regianne.”
The two women nodded in unison.
“Farrah,” Buck continued, “You’re going to be dealing with Hanneli this morning. She’s a non-Earth patient, so be sure your translator is on in case she can’t speak English. She’s also a powerful psychic talent, and her gifts are directly involved with her illness. Be very careful, and make sure you read her file thoroughly. She’s the only one in the group who’s a transfer from downstairs.”
Farrah nodded, took the file Buck offered, and continued listening as he handed off the next file to Clara. “You’ve drawn Aleksandrina today. She’s a witch, but without the light of a full moon she shouldn’t be too difficult to manage…”
…Relax…
I'll need some information first.
Just the basic facts:
Can you show me where it hurts?
------
It was five forty-eight AM, and Jean was handing out files to her team of nurses in the Central Station. She was sitting on the counter again.
Her Siblings were three males, absolutely identical except for their facial hair. Six feet tall, broad-shouldered, with deep chests and heavy bone structure. Their hair was jet black, their eyes dark violet. One was clean-shaven, one had a goatee, and one had a full, thick, well-trimmed beard.
“Okay, so, first off we have Rhorak the Shadowborn,” Jean said, and offered the manila folder to the goatee wearing nurse. “He’s all yours. Got your new flashlight?”
The man took the file with one hand and pulled the overpowered penlight out of his breast pocket with the other. “Yes ma’am,” he replied.
Jean smiled, and nodded.
“Then we have Simone,” she intoned, offering the file to her clean-shaven Sibling nurse. “Tony, you’ll be dealing with her. She’s some sort of wolf…vampire… bat… thing. Wait, why did I not give this one to the bloodsucker, then? Anyway, be careful.”
Tony nodded, taking the file and skimming over it.
“Last but not least, we have Dante the Magician.” Jean handed the file to her bearded subordinate. “He’s an illusionist, but he can’t cast without an incantation. If he starts acting up, show him how real magic is done, okay?”
The bearded man nodded… and grinned.
“So, we all know the deal, right?” Jean asked, meeting each of their indigo gazes in turn. “For the first twenty-four hours, we have to play nice which means no marks and nothing out-of-control verbally, unless the patients act up. I’ll let you know when we revert to standard operating procedure.”
Just as Buck’s two Sibling nurses had done, Jean’s three nodded at exactly the same time. Since they were so physically similar, it looked particularly eerie on them… in a way that the female nurse rather liked.
Okay.
Just a little pin prick,
There'll be no more AAAAAAAH!
…But you may feel a little sick.
------
It was ten minutes before dawn when the lights came on at Osmond’s Institute. That was just the lights in the main hallways and all the rooms downstairs, however, and the moment at six o’clock sharp when all the patients’ doors unlocked at once. Buck, Jean, and their crews of Sibling nurses stood at the ready. Buck’s duo simply re-locked the doors to the new patient rooms, while Jean’s three went right into their new charges’ quarters.
Buck and his team cared for the existing patients first. Existing patients weren’t expected to get up until eight, but it was practice to check on them all through the windows in their doors at lights-on. Though most of the doors he peeked through were into darkened rooms where he could see patients still sleeping in their beds, at one door he was greeted with a bright light and a pair of black wings.
“Good morning, Jax. How are you feeling today?” the petite vampire asked, reaching into the inky black feathers to Velcro the Corvinian’s scrub top together around his unusual anatomy.
“Better than. Yesterday,” the raven-man replied. Though he understood English perfectly, it was still difficult for him to actually make the proper sounds to speak it. “Not. As good as. TomarRAAH!”
The last part of ‘tomorrow’ actually sounded more like the call of a raven, but Buck understood. It also sounded like something Jax might have been trained to say to his superiors wherever it was he was schooled.
“I suppose that’s one way to look at things,” was Buck’s only reply. He patted the last bit of Velcro in place and stepped back out into the hallway. “There you are.”
“Thank. You,” the birdman said.
“Of course.”
Then Buck was off again, peeking into all the occupied rooms to ensure that everyone was still sleeping. Jax made his way over to Cadie’s door just after the vampire passed, and peered inside. Buck frowned a little, but kept walking. That was a problem for another day.
Today, he had to finish checking on all the established patients, and then… he got to go deal with Aniella. He was genuinely curious about the Ragdoll: he’d heard of them during medical school, but had never actually seen one as they were quite rare. He was hoping that for once his unimposing physical stature would work to his benefit… although it had been a long time since someone had been terrified of him at first glance, and that might be a refreshing change.
In the night ahead, there’s a light
Upon this house on a hill;
Living, living still.
Their intention is to kill,
And they will, they will.
Soft, warm sunlight was filtering down through the windows over the kitchen table as Cadence thoughtfully chewed a mouthful of scrambled eggs. She didn’t turn when her younger brothers came crashing down the stairs: the two of them sounded like a herd of elephants wherever they went. Chase went streaking by, spilling a glass of orange juice as he attempted to snag a piece of toast on the run. Her father leapt up from the table, and her mother turned from the stove to yell at the boy. Cadie rose from her place and stepped over to the fridge, grabbing the towel that hung from the handle. She found her mother’s hand on her wrist, and when she looked up at the older woman, the lined face was sad.
“Cadence, it’s time to wake up.”
It didn’t sound like her mother’s voice, and then someone knocked loudly on a steel door.
“What?”
Somehow, the word was lost in the darkness between dreaming and waking. Cadence tried to open her eyes and immediately cried out. While the right one came open, the left one only sent a stab of pain into the back of her skull and stayed defiantly dark.
“What…” she licked her lips, raising a hand to her face. “What happened?”
Her naturally soft voice was furthermore cracked and hoarse from all the screaming she’d done the previous afternoon. Cadie’s nurse probably didn’t even actually hear her so much as guess at what the mutant had said.
“Don’t touch it,” a cruel female voice replied. It was one of the two red-haired nurses, whose name Cadie had never bothered to learn. “You ripped the brackets off your therapy chair again, and this time you cut your eyelid. Then you had a seizure and bashed up your face.”
For a moment, Cadence wanted to sob. What had her life come to, that she’d torn her own eyelid open when her telekinetic powers desperately reached out to end the torture Osmond’s liked to call ‘desensitization therapy’? It was a cruel device that propped her eyelids open, making her unable to look away from the display screen. She’d broken it (and hurt herself breaking it) many times before… but that was part of the therapy, she supposed. She only had to learn how to tolerate it and not hurt herself. Of course, some guidance would have been appreciated… but they just strapped her to the chair, time and again saying nothing as they left the room.
“Oh,” was the only thing she uttered aloud, little more than an exhaled breath. She licked her lips.
Then bony fingers found their ginger, flinching way across her face. A heavy pad was laid from her left cheekbone to her eyebrow, the sensation beneath a tangled mess of pain. She could feel how swollen it was. A gauze wrap was wound around her head to keep the pad in place. The young woman felt cold, suddenly, and realized that she was wearing nothing more than a paper gown.
“So,” the nurse said after a moment, “you don’t get your morning sedative because you had a shot late last night. Instead, you get pain medicine. You’re not supposed to wear a scrub top, you can use this tie-gown as a top instead. Wear it with normal pants.”
She dropped the pink gown onto Cadie’s knees. The young woman was still laying on her side in bed, looking up at the nurse.
“Well, come on,” the nurse prodded, grabbing the younger woman’s bicep and jerking her upright. “I haven’t got all day.”
The swift movement sent a jolt of pain through Cadie’s head, and a low moan escaped her lips. She felt nauseous, the edges of her vision turning grey. The nurse gripped her elbow and twisted her arm, forcing the telekinetic to expose the vein on the inside of the bend.
“Quit your whining. You’ll feel fine in just a second.”
Between that second and the promised one, a needle tore an expertly brutal hole. Cadie ground her teeth to keep from crying out again before the momentary burn of medicine dissipated into pleasant warmth throughout her body. Bitchy as the nurse was…
“…you’re right.” Again, they were words so soft they would not have been heard except in the silence of Cadie’s room. She licked her lips twice.
The redhead grinned wolfishly. “Yeah, enjoy that shit. And go get yourself some breakfast. You’re authorized for the elevator today.”
The nurse released Cadence, and the girl sank back down into her bed. She had no idea what sort of pain medicine that was; it made her feel disconnected, dizzy and… light. Her body and face were comfortably numb but chemicals couldn’t dull the hurt in her soul. If this was a proper hospital, they would have had brought her something to eat in her room. Unfortunately, this was Osmond’s. Even though she was hurt and now doped up, she was on her own to get breakfast.
And Cadie needed her breakfast.
Luckily for the young woman, a black beak -and the feathery head attached to it- was peeking around the edge of her door.
In this house on a hill,
The dead are living still!
Their intention is to kill,
And they will, they will.
------
Jax had waited patiently outside as Cadie struggled into her clothing for the day. Her gown was tied under where her breasts should have been and again around her bony, boyish hips. The medicine coupled with her slight stature made her cold so she had the blanket from her bed folded up and draped around her shoulders. She’d chosen dark purple pants and black slippers to complete her ugly outfit. The mutant hung on to her Corvinian friend’s arm for balance as she shuffled through the main hallway. Jax had offered to carry her, but being cradled in his arms was more than Cadence could handle.
Her palm opened the door to the elevator, which had no buttons and only went down one level. Still, it meant she didn’t have to tackle stairs today… that was good, because with one eye bandaged her depth perception was definitely off. This time of the morning, the cafeteria wasn’t crowded. She was pretty sure that she saw one new face, but she wasn’t interested in talking to anybody. She didn’t need to talk to Jax: he knew what should be done, and did it.
After depositing the wobbly telekinetic at a table, the raven-man went to the steam lines. It took him three trips to bring all the food Cadie would eat for breakfast. Heaping plates of scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, bagels with cream cheese, a chocolate chocolate-chip muffin, oatmeal with butter and honey, a bowl of fruit salad, coffee, orange juice and milk. Jax took one more trip for himself, returning with a tray of assorted gruels he poured down his beak.
Cadie supposed that having a bird mouth and a human stomach posed some issues.
It also wasn’t like she could judge anyone on anything about eating, ever. Wings included, Jax was easily three times her weight and ate half of what she did. Though she tried not to cram too much into her mouth at once, it disappeared with frightening rapidity. Generally she’d make a trip to the lines, eat what she’d got, then return to the lines… but since she wasn’t capable of that today, she just had to try to eat the warm things before they got cold. Back home, she’d eaten in her room, alone: she couldn’t handle the stares she’d gotten from the other patients upon seeing the content of her meals. Here in Osmond’s Institute, a boyish waif of a mutant consuming enough food for three grown men hardly even registered as unusual.
So, it meant there were bright sides to be found, if one looked for them. She wasn’t a freak for her eating habits here, and she’d somehow managed to acquire a bodyguard/personal assistant to help her out on rough days. And even though Cadie couldn’t count Jax as a friend…
“Thank you,” she murmured, pausing with a spoon halfway to her mouth. Soft green eyes found his familiar, feathered face. “For helping me today.” She licked her lips twice.
Cadie suspected that ravens heard better than humans, because Jax never seemed to miss her barely-uttered words. He couldn’t smile with his hard beak, but the faint puffing of his feathers at the base of his neck could easily be translated into something like pride or affection.
“Welcome.” Jax croaked, turning one of his black eyes at Cadie. “You. Woulddo. Same.”
“I would,” the mutant whispered, nodding and licking her lips. Inwardly, cringingly, she couldn’t help but think that she actually wasn’t able to take care of Jax the way he took care of her. Without her telekinesis, she couldn’t have supported his weight down the hallway. In making her too weak to do damage, the Institute had also rendered her incapable of helping if she wanted to.
And the brightness she’d found moments earlier… faded.
Somewhere in the end we’re all insane,
To think the light ahead
Will save us from this pain!
------
