Chapter 25

Honestly, Frank didn’t know what to expect when he heard that he would be going to facility number three. In his mind he pictured what had to be the third best healing facility on campus, which in a way would be correct in that assessment. For nothing about Facility three denoted that healing would be a priority for this facility.

The moment he entered, there were walls upon walls of guards wearing top tier combat equipment, each person seemingly ready to fight at a moment’s notice.

Each guard unit had multiple different caster types with their ranks, and each sported many different values.

Frank couldn’t help but feel slightly intimidated as he made his way past the armed guards, many of whom gave him a sidelong glance as he entered. Then they all appeared to relax slightly upon seeing that he was being escorted by Dr. Evans.

“Good afternoon, General,” the officer on duty stated, snapping to attention as he gave a salute to Dr. Evans.

“Good afternoon, Colonel, I trust that there were no disturbances?” Dr. Evans asked, instantly returning the salute and letting the Colonel relax slightly.

Hearing that, Frank couldn’t help but feel a bit flustered at the apparent rank of Dr. Evans. Though considering the position and her pedigree the fact that she was a general wasn’t too surprising. Especially when considering the fact that Dr. Evans being promoted to the rank of General likely gave her more leeway when dealing with problem patients or unruly officers who would not listen to her commands.

“No disturbances, no major outbreaks, and all facilities were personally observed eleven minutes ago.” The Colonel said, as he read off from a report that was pulled up from his wrist system.

“Very good, have the technicians on testing bay seven prep a sample.” Dr. Evans stated, her tone sounding like she was calm and confident.

By contrast, the look on the Colonel’s face was anything but calm or confident. “Testing bay seven? I take it you mean a living sample?”

“Well, as living as possible, but one that is still capable of independent thought and actions would be preferable.” Dr. Evans stated.

“Okay,” the Colonel said as he made a few notes and sent a warning to other parts of the facility.

Seeing it all, the whole thing looked surreal. Again, Frank had known that Dr. Evans was a big deal in the medical field, and was apparently the department head for the medical staff. But for her to make an A-Rank Colonel jump and flinch at her every command showed that she was clearly in a league of her own.

“I take it, you will be taking this Cadet with you?” The Colonel asked.

“Yes, and Major Demoniker should also be arriving shortly. I don’t know if he will join us in our class time, but do let him join us if he arrives.”

“Major Demoniker as well? Duly noted.” The Colonel responded before looking somewhat pale at the seemingly strange turn of events. Then pausing, a flash of an idea apparently came to the Colonel’s face as he seemed to put together all of the pieces for what was happening. “I take it that this cadet here is also…”

“Like the Major, no.” Dr. Evans said.

Phew.

Hearing that the Colonel let out a slightly relieved sigh.

“No, this here cadet is also a healer.” Dr. Evans said.

“Also a healer?” The Colonel asked.

Then as he spoke, Frank paused as he realized that there was a slight trace of dark energy that seemed to radiate from the Colonel.

“I’m sorry, but were you ever exposed to dark energy?” Frank found himself asking.

Suddenly the look on Dr. Evans’ face changed as she stared at Frank, with a slight smile cresting on her lips.

The Colonel on the other hand just paused, “yes that is correct, but it has remained dormant to this point.”

Hearing him talk, Frank realized that the Colonel was being defensive with his wording.

Frank for his part just shook his head, not quite realizing why the Colonel was so evasive. Turning to Dr. Evans for advice she just smiled.

“See if you can find it on him.”

Frank didn’t really need the guidance, but found his mind instantly reaching out and identifying a few speckles of condensed dark energy that were lodged under the Colonel’s skin on his left arm.

Looking at the markings they were odd, as there were two deep puncture wounds about two inches apart on the top of his arm, followed by two additional puncture spots on the bottom as well.

Pausing for a moment, Frank tried to understand what could cause such a wound. Then he realized what happened.

“You were bitten?” Frank asked, pointing to the Colone’s left arm.

Shock.

Hearing the nearly instant diagnosis of Frank, the Colonel could only turn to the doctor, “did you tell him?”

“No,” Dr. Evans said, then turning to Frank she looked both shocked and slightly hopeful while watching Frank. “He noticed all of that on his own, apparently.”

With that the Colonel could only look on in shock. Then feeling his wrist vibrate he looked down to see that a response had been made. “It appears that the subject in bay seven has been prepped and is ready for you, the two of you.”

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“Thank you Colonel,” Dr. Evans began, but even as she spoke, the Colonel never took his eyes off of Frank.

Frank for his part couldn’t help but feel slightly out of place by the constant stares that were being given to him by the officer. Yet, before he could make anything from the looks of the Colonel and his subordinate guard members who were around, Dr. Evans spoke again. “Now, I know I don’t need to tell you that everything here is of the highest of secrecy, right?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” The Colonel said, rendering a salute as the Doctor made her way through the opening blast doors that seemed like they were meant to be the last line of defense to keep things inside the facility.

At that revelation, the facility finally made sense. The facility wasn’t made as a last bastion to run to in times of battle and strife. Instead, the facility was built backwards, with the last lines of defense being the highly trained guards and automatic turret systems that were designed to fire at anything that attempted to leave without authorization.

As they made their way further into the facility, Frank felt more and more pools of dark energy all around.

There seemed to be a gradient scale, with the deeper into the facility they went, the more condensed the different pools of dark energy would be.

Finally, they reached a door marked with a big numeral seven in large red print. By now Frank estimated that they were at least three floors beneath the surface of the earth, with at least one more floor below, at least that is what Frank felt from the dense pool of dark energy below him.

Being this close to so much power, Frank couldn’t help but feel his body and mind coming to life. It almost reminded him the way he would get when walking into the school office and smelling freshly roasted coffee. Such a delicacy was meant only for staff, but it still had a fragrant aroma that caused Frank’s mind to awaken with possibilities first thing in the morning.

Now his mind felt a similar form of energy, though entirely different. This was the energy of Qi, the energy of death that called out to him and beckoned for him to claim the energy as his own, if he all but dared.

“You okay?” Dr. Evans asked, staring at Frank, as she apparently saw something in Frank’s face that caused some concern.

“Yeah, it’s just this place, it is filled with so much death energy that it is hard to focus.” Frank admitted.

“Hard to focus? How?” Dr. Evans pressed.

With that Frank could only shrug, “I don’t know, it’s just that there is so much energy here that I can feel my body calling out for it.”

Hearing that, Dr. Evans realized that she might need to give a refresher. “All right, make sure that you don’t surpass your limits on Death energy, unless you want to swap focuses. Though from our conversations I don’t think that you want this to happen.”

“Switch focuses?” Frank asked.

“Yes, that’s right, you might not have covered this. Okay, so you have awoken your second affinity.” Dr. Evans began, at which point Frank just nodded. “Okay, you also just finished completing your ninth stage of body cultivation.”

Frank again nodded.

“What you might not be aware of is that you can switch primary affinities either going into the Blood Cultivation stage, or at the Skeletal Cultivation stage. Neither of which I would recommend for you, as you seem to need the effects of healing energy to keep the adverse side effects of death energy at bay within your own skin. This means that you need to be careful. Go ahead and fill up your reserves of energy for both life and death energy, but do not try to push through to the next layer without me there to guide you.” Dr. Evans noted.

Hearing that, Frank could only nod his head in understanding.

While he knew he was already close to having a full pool of energy for both life and death energy thanks to his work this morning, the amount and quality of death energy that was now available put that other energy to shame.

Realizing that Frank nodded.

“Say it.”

“It.”

Slow exhale.

With that Dr. Evans just stared at Frank, while fighting to keep the smile from forming on her lips. “Say you understand and will not attempt to break through without my supervision.”

Hearing that Frank just rolled his eyes, “okay, I understand.”

Dr. Evans just stared at him for a moment, then finally nodded. “Don’t come crying to me when everything burns from a wrong decision you made.”

Hearing that, Frank blurted out, “let me guess this is an issue you have had to treat multiple times in your life as a healer, and not just related to irradiated energy particles.”

At that, Dr. Evans just paused and stared at Frank. In that stare, it almost felt like Dr. Evans finally saw the true intelligent Frank. “You’ve got a mouth on you, don’t you.”

Frank, knowing that he might have overstepped a line just stared back, realizing that saying anything would only increase any punishments he might receive. Finally, after a long second a giant smirk broke out on Dr. Evans’s face. “I swear one of these days I will get you to break. But no, realize that in the medical profession having a sense of humor like that is encouraged. Especially if you can give lip and results at the same time.”

With that, Frank just nodded his head, figuring that he had read the Doctor’s temperament correctly.

“Come on, now I am going to show you how someone like you can get results.”

With that Frank followed Dr. Evans as she scanned a badge, her retina and her hand on three different readers that all needed to be unlocked at the same time, in order for the door to open.

As the doors opened, Frank couldn’t help but see the barrels of what appeared to be flamethrowers mounted on both sides of the door, accessible only via small slits. Then looking up, he noticed another slit directly overhead, in the roof that also showed the wide barrel of another flamethrower. Basically, there were a lot of safety measures in place to keep whatever was here inside this room.

The room was a wide open surgical room, complete with a gallery overhead, where observers could watch. As it stood, two soldiers in uniform were watching the scene below. What they saw was a man in a white lab coat, standing over a metal reinforced gurney that had a clearly restrained female. Or at least what used to be a female, as the body was all but radiating death energy, with absolutely no sign of life. This was both similar and completely different from the zombies he had been destroying and ripping apart just this morning.

For starters, there was no life energy, none. Which seemed to go against exactly what Frank had come up in his mind as being necessary for death energy to exist, that of a steady stream of life energy available to be corrupted, and slowly turned into more death energy.

Here the body of the monster, and she was a monster, there was no doubt about that, was radiating condensed death energy that also poured around the core of the monster.

There was also something that was glaringly different from this female monster, and the zombies that Frank faced off against earlier this morning, namely the fact that this monster was clearly sentient. At least that was the impression that Frank got from the creature as its eyes seemed to track first the Doctor, and then once Frank entered the room, she never lost her gaze on Frank.

As he stared, Frank felt a sort of connection to the female, yes she had been pretty before the transformation, that much was apparent from the way her muscular body and heart shaped face all but glowed with a sense of seductive vitality. Added to that was the fact that her eyes all but glowed a light violet color that spoke of a form of control over death energy and Frank couldn’t help but feel a sense of gravity as he stared into those eyes. Then he felt himself get pulled into those eyes by their power.

“Snap out of it,” Dr. Evans said, having her hands in front of Frank, thereby breaking the spell and hold that those eyes seemed to have over him.

Turning his head, Frank felt his lungs involuntarily take in two deep breaths as he had apparently been holding his breath the whole time he stared at her.

“Who is she?” Frank asked.

Shaking her head, Dr. Evans could only correct him. “Not who, but rather what is she. As you can no doubt tell by now, she is far from human.”

At that Frank could only nod.

“She is one of the first changelings, or zombies that made the transition all the way through to becoming sentient once more.”

“So this is the stage after the yellow eyed stalkers?” Frank asked.

“Yellow eyed? When did you see them?” Dr. Evans asked, surprise in her voice.

“This morning when you and Demoniker locked me in the tunnels.” Frank answered.

At that, Dr. Evans’s eyes went wide, as she realized. “They have already gone through the second stage of evolution there? This is…” She trailed off as she then tried to go back to the subject at hand. “You should have told me that earlier, but for now, no. All you need to know is that there are at least two stages after the yellow-eyed stage before you get here. This is what we have loosely referred to as a vampire elder. One who is capable of turning a civilian directly into a vampire.”

Hearing that, Frank could only pause, then thinking back to the Colonel and his bite mark on his arm, he had to ask. “Was she the one?”

“The one what?”

“The one that bit the Colonel?” Frank asked.

Hearing that, Dr. Evans paused but seemed to look at Frank with a bit more respect. “Good question, but no. The vampire that bit the Colonel is dead. This is the one that bit and turned the vampire that then bit the Colonel.”

“You aren’t afraid of her activating the energy within the Colonel?” Frank asked.

Hearing that, Dr. Evans paused and stared at Frank. “We weren’t, though can you tell me why we should?”

“I don’t know, it just seems like there might be some link from an elder vampire to the progeny.”

“There is, which is why we killed off the direct ancestors, but there is now a gap between the two.” Dr. Evans pressed.

Hearing that, Frank had a bad feeling about what he was hearing, but in the end he realized it wasn’t really his place to say anything, but he still didn’t like the idea of an elder vampire being looked after by a warrior who had traces of their degraded energy within his arm.

Forced cough.

After a moment of silence, Dr. Evans was about to speak, when the male in a lab coat who had apparently prepared the elder vampire coughed loudly to get Dr. Evans’s attention. Hearing him, Dr. Evans stopped what she was about to say and instead came closer to the technician.

“Hello Dr. Evans.”

“Hello Dr. Jansen, how is the patient today?”

“The patient is still good, she last ate a month ago and still has faint traces of the feeding within her system.”

“Feeding?” Frank asked, peering at the female who now that he was closer Frank saw that there was an industrial ball gag and mask over the lower part of her face. Frank wondered how he missed that part, but then looking at her once again saw the glowing purple eyes and realized that he had missed most other features of the creature.

“Yes, she has been fed on the blood of the dead. While there are still traces of life energy within a recently killed animal, there are enough life particles to keep an elder vampire like this alive for up to three months. They are truly remarkable creatures.” The creepy Dr. Jansen said almost admiringly as he turned to look at the elder vampire.

Hiss.

Upon receiving Dr. Jansen’s gaze, the vampire elder actively hissed, and seemed to glare menacingly at the technician. For his part the technician just smiled back with a sick form of love covering his face and features that only caused Frank to truly wonder about the mentality of such a person.

“Can I ask what brought you two here?” Dr. Jansen finally asked Dr. Evans, but only after having a staring contest with the vampire elder and apparently winning.

“Yes, today I will be allowing my new apprentice here to operate on old Constance here.”

And like that Frank felt no less than five sets of eyes turn to him and truly take in his measure.