The fear-spiced air of the Oubliette drove many of the prisoners to madness. Voices called out from behind heavy blast doors, followed by the impotent pounding of fists upon metal. Some of the more reasonable prisoners wanted explanations, wanted simply to know that the ship was still safe and that they hadn’t been abandoned. Others made ludicrous demands, or even toothless threats. When prisoners were informed of what had occurred, many of them continued to act unsettled, as if they could sense the instability of the situation. This nervousness spread outwards, infecting the crew. Captain Wendt heard numerous fights breaking out over the pettiest of disagreements. And with the discovery of Dr. Lloyd’s exsanguinated body, the atmosphere among the crew became a fraying string held taut upon the last few fibers.
Nobody wanted to say the word. The old stories came to mind; half-whispers and spooky tales told to the new crew member, the admonition of a doddering grandmother, the overheard comments at a space-station dive bar. Everyone knew the rumors about an elite core of high-ranking Regata officers who drank blood. It was paradoxically both a fact everyone knew and took for granted, and a murmured conspiracy nobody really believed. People set it aside easily. With as many strange creatures as inhabited the galaxy, it remained a half-joke nobody worried much about. If werewolves existed on Cantoth-9, then sure… The Regata’s gentry could be made up of….
Vampires.
Captain Wendt believed it now. Prisoner 519F wasn’t just an exceptionally dangerous criminal. He was a vampire. But, what did that mean? How could he be defeated? She spent an entire evening pouring over texts from the galactic archive. Anything she could find about vampires, she devoured. Unfortunately, so many sources contradicted one another. One source said they might be defeated by a stake through the heart, and another proclaimed they might be felled by silver bullets. In some tales, they could be driven back by garlic, and in other tales, a priest wielding a relic of holy significance might banish them into the night. However, the most common theme, the one that appeared time and time again, was that vampires would burn to ash if sunlight hit any part of their body.
Because of this revelation, Captain Wendt ordered the Oubliette’s course to be changed. They’d move into the proximity of the nearest star - Anibos. Then, all they’d need to do is lure 519F into the proper spot and then open all the viewing hatches to let the light in. If they did it exactly right, they might even be able to trap 519F between two light beams and re-capture him.
Level 2 was chosen as the best possible area to contain 519F. They believed him to be hiding there most of the time, though they knew he’d sneak out on occasion to kill people on other levels when he couldn’t find a victim on level 2 to feed from. The massive flexwall installed by drones after the magnetic asteroid incident would provide an excellent way to allow sunlight in through a large portion of the level. They only needed to change a setting to switch the flexwall from opaque to transparent once they were close enough to Anibos.
They planned the operation with as much precision as could be mustered. Tiny hidden cameras were set up all around level 2. Even if 519F found and disabled a few of them, they’d still be able to see most of the level. Construction on the level was rearranged, and doors propped open so that light would flow through to every part. Trained security team members were put into construction worker outfits so as not to alert 519F of the scheme. Officer Felix would oversee things from a makeshift control room on the third level. Once he saw 519F, he’d use the control panel for the flexwall to flip to transparent, giving the signal for the security team to capture 519F.
Absolutely nothing went as planned.
When the naked, white-haired creature ran through the halls, drawing attention to itself with a series of grunts and thuds as it smacked against this wall and that, many within the security team found themselves confused. Had part of the flexwall already been set transparent, but the rest perhaps malfunctioned? They emerged from where they’d pretended to be working on construction projects, tranq guns leveled on the wild-eyed creature. Its disheveled hair looked wrong on its head, and many of them wondered at how much shorter and thinner the creature appeared in person.
“Ngghh!” The noise came from the naked man as he flipped his head forward and then back, forcing the cascade of white out of his face. The movement revealed a man with a gag over his mouth, and duct tape holding the hair in place on his head via a makeshift wig of sorts.
It was Officer Felix.
“Oh, shi-!” Before the nearest security officer could even finish his exclamation, every loose item and person on level 2 was in motion. A woosh of air being sucked out of the ship gave way to the silence of space. Many of them were dead before they exited the Oubliette. Limbs and heads sheared off from as security staff impacted against open doors and jagged walls and steel waiting for the upcoming reconstruction of the level. Dozens of bodies ejected into the vast nothingness, rapidly freezing, eyes wide but unseeing.
Above them, on level three, prisoner 519F, also known as Prince Zadrian Vayne, watched the ship vent almost the entire security staff towards the gleaming light of Anibos. It’d been relatively easy to find the correct button to turn off the flexwall now that he knew almost everything Dr. Lloyd had known.
He hated being bald, but his hair would grow back over a few feeding sessions. Now… Now he just needed to deal with Captain Wendt and the creature behind the red door.
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Captain Wendt knew she had few options. Many of the remaining crew were injured, and most of them didn’t have even remotely the kind of training necessary to subdue prisoner 519F. Being a prison guard was one thing, but the creature that had been systematically destroying her crew…? That didn’t call for a prison guard. That required the kind of decisive action that Captain Wendt had been waiting her whole life to enact. She knew she’d be a hero in some stories, a villain in others, but she didn’t care. Saving the lives of what remained of her crew was all that mattered now. If they convicted her for that? Then, she’d go to prison knowing she’d done the right thing.
“C’mon, lean on me.” She’d draped Erika Jones’ arm around her shoulders, and kept a hand on the other woman’s waist as they limped toward the escape shuttle. Around them, other crew members, injured and not, hurried along in the arched passageway. An alarm blared overhead, continuously repeating in a pleasant female voice between shrill warning beeps, “Mandatory evacuation. Please make your way to your assigned evacuation coordinates.”
Since the alarm could be heard all over the ship, the prisoners erupted into a panic. Many were throwing anything they could against the metal doors of their small cells, including their own bodies. Captain Wendt heard their screams, many begging, some threatening. But, she turned a deaf ear to them all. She’d always been told by the Regata that her crew’s lives trumped those of her prisoners. As a last resort, she should always be willing to sacrifice the ship and anyone who could not be safely removed from it. Without the security crew, removing any of the non-stasis prisoners was…too much of a danger.
“Here. Sit,” Captain Wendt helped Erika into the small shuttlecraft. “Will you be able to fly it with your leg injured?”
Erika Jones nodded, and she immediately began to prepare for the journey as others made their way into the cramped shuttle. The Oubliette had a good number of such shuttles. Normally, they’d be used to ferrying prisoners into the prison, or simply doing supply runs to nearby planets and space stations. Today, they’d be used to flee the ship many of them had called home for years.
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After patting Erika on the shoulder, Captain Wendt turned and made her way out of the shuttle. She had a few final things to see done before she could leave. The last shuttle would wait for her for a set amount of time, as it had been ordered, and she’d embark only after she made certain the ship would self-destruct once they’d fled.
Captain Wendt quickly made her way back to the control bridge of the ship, her dart pistol in hand. The fiend might try to attack her, to prevent her from setting the self-destruct mechanism. He’d surely heard the alarm along with everyone else. Every set of doors that parted, every time she turned a corner, every rattle and howl coming from the many cells of aggrieved prisoners, she mentally prepared for the confrontation. If she wasn’t on the final shuttle within half an hour, it’d take off without her, with orders to report back to the Regata that the Oubliette would need to be nuked into oblivion.
When she made it to the final doors into the bridge, Captain Wendt hesitated. That would be where he’d wait for her, surely. She mentally reviewed every single hiding place on the bridge. She knew the layout like the back of her hand. They’d trained on this exact scenario… Well, this exact scenario except the opponent was a human escaped convict who’d taken control of the ship. The Captain moved to one side, just beside the doors which would part when she’d place her hand to the bioscanner. She prepped the dart gun again, checking to make sure all four dart chambers were loaded. Despite hearing the rush of her own blood in her ears, she forced her nerves to calm. One dart. That’s all she’d need. The pink slurry had kept 519F sedated for years. She just needed to hit him once.
Steeling herself, Captain Wendt lifted her left hand to press it to the bioscanner, keeping the dart gun in her right. She watched as a line of light slid up the rectangular panel and down again. A soft discordant tone let her know that her left hand was not accepted. It wanted the right hand. Captain Wendt sighed noisily. Her right hand was the one she needed for the dart gun.
Shaking her head she quickly shifted the gun to her left, hoping she could get scanned and get her gun back to her right hand before the doors opened. The line of light lifted scanning from her wrist up to her fingertips. She knew it’d perform the same scan in reverse. But, before it could do so, a pain shot through her fingers. The dart gun dropped from her left hand in surprise.
A dart was sticking out of the back of her hand. Red liquid in the dart. Not pink. Not the slurry. Captain Wendt spun as the contents of the dart were picked up by her bloodstream and distributed to every part of her body. Her other hand slid downwards as she stumbled, trying to scoop up the dart gun.
But, it was too late. The vampire’s blood had spread from the dart into her heart. Even though she grabbed the gun and lifted it to point at 519F as he approached, a single whisper of “Drop it” caused her hand to open and the weapon to clatter on the floor.
He hadn’t waited for her on the bridge. He’d come in behind her, slipping in so quickly and silently she didn’t even notice.
“Were you really going to kill every single prisoner on this ship simply to save your own hide? Is that heroism in your eyes, Captain Wendt?”
“You…you kill innocents. You slaughtered the entire security crew! The people I’m killing are criminals.”
“That’s true,” he said as he approached, some of his hair having already grown back in, albeit in haphazard patches. He tossed aside the spare dart gun he’d managed to wrangle from one of his victims. “Somewhat true. Mostly true. What is crime, anyway? Someone made an arbitrary decision about the way the world works, and now everyone else has decided to just…go along with it. You know what they say: Is it a crime for a brother to steal to feed his starving sister? Is it a crime for a father to kill the rapist of his daughter? And me… If I murder the servants of a genocidal empire, even if those servants are relatively innocent, am I a criminal? I suppose I might be. But, I’ll live with that guilt. I have to live with that guilt.”
Captain Wendt tried to flee, to scream, but her body no longer obeyed her commands. All she could do was tremble as the vampire slowly approached, carefully took her hand and lifted it, and sunk his teeth into her wrist. As her life flowed into his mouth, she watched through the viewscreen as one by one escape shuttles fled the Oubliette. At least some got away. And they’d inform the Regatta. He might have killed her, but the Regatta would never rest once they knew what he’d done. They’d find the Oubliette and destroy it.
Later, largely exsanguinated, as she lay on the floor dying, she watched as Prisoner 516F flicked the switches to lock down the last remaining shuttle.
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The creature behind the red door on level 5 grit his teeth and snarled. His distress had less to do with the fact that he’d plunged a knife into his right wrist, and more with the loud and piercingly shrill sound of the alarm. His sensitive hearing caused the noise to echo in his head like a hammer. It made him nauseated, and the nausea interfered with his ability to dig around in his arm with the knife. Sure, there was pain. But he was a warrior. He could deal with a great deal of pain. The alarm, however… That was unnatural, and not something he’d trained to withstand. These humans… These humans and their machines. Only a machine could make a noise so hideous.
As his green blood slid down his forearm and dripped onto the bones at the bottom of his cell, it hissed. The bones became pitted within seconds as the acidic fluid ate through the surface. His blood could break down almost anything organic. It was just another reason none of the Oublette’s crew wanted to get anywhere near him. A bit of blood in their eyes and they’d be blinded, nigh helpless against the alien creature’s metal-hard claws and teeth.
Finally, with a growl, he managed to pop the tracker out. It clattered onto the ground, a metal-coated object that looked like a pill with antennas. When had they put it into him? Must have been years ago, when he was captured.
The alarm stopped suddenly, and instead a relatively quieter voice came over the intercom. “Ah, you got it out. If you would, please don’t destroy it. I believe that would cause this ship to immediately explode.”
The creature looked up, gaze drawn to a camera towards the top of the pit. They’d used it to watch him. The voice coming from the intercom had a silken smoothness to it. It reminded him of the green waters of his homeland, the way it slid over you with comforting coolness. It drew you in, making you yearn to hear a few more words, a few more syllables. Not only that, the slow cadence felt like the approach of a yawn, but the word choice tended to be formal – a strange juxtaposition. He’d heard that kind of voice, that kind of accent before. The guards and officers of the Oubliette didn’t speak like that. But, the creature knew exactly who did. “You’re Regatta,” he ground out, his own voice more like the crunch of gravel in a fist.
“If you could convince the Regatta of that, I’d be most pleased. They determined otherwise when I was imprisoned here.”
The creature lifted his chin, his interest piqued. The Regatta imprisoned one of their own? That didn’t make sense. If you were Regatta and you crossed the Regatta, they killed you. No hesitation. No exceptions. But, for some reason, this person’s life was spared. Why? Why would the Regatta keep a liability? “What do you want from me?”
“The Regatta destroyed your homeworld, didn’t they? That must anger you. Unless you disliked your homeworld. Did you dislike your homeworld?”
“No.” The creature answered truthfully. He wasn’t much for lying. Humans lied and he tried to be as unlike humans as he possibly could.
“Well, you have a vendetta against the Regatta, and I have a vendetta against the Regatta. I just thought that perhaps together, me being so clever and beautiful, and you being so terrifying and deadly, we could destroy them and everything they stand for and ultimately upend the status quo of the entire galaxy, bringing justice and freedom to thousands of planets.”
The creature became bone still, neither blinking or breathing. He couldn’t tell if this person was an idiot, or insane, or the bravest soul he’d met since he was captured. In the end, he decided it might be a portion of all three. The faintest twitch of amusement graced the corner of his mouth. He lowered his head, watching his green blood congeal into a sticky gel on his arm as ribbons of long black hair pooled around his body. “Your name?”
“Is that a yes?” Excitement poured from the intercom. “I’m Prince Zadrian Vayne. And you? What should I call you? I can’t keep calling you The Horror From Behind The Red Door.”
What was his name? It had been so long since anyone had used it, he’d almost forgotten that he had one. He found it eventually, tucked away in the recesses of his mind. “Nevastri.”
“Hmm?” The door that had been shut for dozens of years, the one that had been painted red to warn others of the danger of opening it, began to rise. The metal scraped and creaked, the mechanism to even open it having rusted into position. The light poured in, causing him to wince against the brightness, unable to fix his vision on the silhouette standing there. When he finally could see the strange, white-haired being with rose-gold eyes, the backlit man clapped his hands together once, the sound reverberating through the deserted hallways. “I think I’ll call you Vast.”