Chapter 18

Yes, here is another chapter already.  Another long one with many answers!

"Alright, so you can't keep living like this, TJ.  We have to figure out what 'point' Brianna is talking about."
I gulped.  We would never figure it out.  "What point?"
"I'm not sure yet, but we'll figure it out."
"How so?"
He glared at me.  "What do you think I can't do?"
I shivered at his implications and nodded.  How could I think he wouldn't figure it out?  Somehow, he took us to this 'inter dimensional space' and into the past and put us (or was it just me?) in the body of my sister and my mom.  Shouldn't figuring out something like this be a lot easier to do?

"Okay, so how are we going to start this out?"   But it was too late for me to ask.  His eyes were going back into his head again.  I cringed.  It was so disturbing.

I wasn't expecting to be able to figure it out this way again.  But, I guess, how else would we figure it out?  I must just not have a good imagination, because if these things are possible surely other means could help as well?

Then, I felt myself melting away and starting to see a new scene, just like when you fall asleep.  Except, I remembered the whole thing from the beginning, I remember entering 'the dream' from start as I had before. Just like a WILD!  Here I go again with Rachelle's lessons...

[A WILD stands for Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming, which means you instantly know in your dream that you're dreaming with no waiting period.  You kind of remember the point where you fell asleep and see black for a little bit!  It's true, since I've had a few before.  Usually these occur for naps.  Enough of me blabbing...]

I open my eyes, and see right away that I wasn't at the bar anymore.  I look around, stunned.  I am in some sort of strange, historical home.  There were no overhead doors, holographs, or anything... The floors were some ancient stone, and the walls were old fashioned wood, not high grade plastic!

I touched my face and massaged it for a second.  Then I look in front of me.  That.... that lady was with me!  I saw her making eyes at me at the bar, but I just thought she was a lesbian.  And somehow, she's here with me.

My anger built up in me and I started to scream.  "You brought me here, bitch!  Why the hell did you do that?  I didn't do anything to you!"

I knew exactly what she was!  She was one of those legendary vampires that... our health professionals created!  A few years ago, a breakthrough treatment was made that promised to make humans live longer and look better.  No longer did we have to be fat and ugly!  The secrets of our minds would be unlocked as well.  That was the gist of it, though I may have missed some things.

But, you see, this procedure went haywire on all the patients, and made their skin off colored, and took the pigments out of their eyes.  Of course, this was stopped pronto after we discovered what we had created.  Now, one can get genetic modifications without the side effects and minus the change of the human life span (because it was decided that that could be a very, very bad thing), but few people can afford it.  I wish I could!

At my outburst, she shriveled back.  But I knew it was just an act, as her outward appearance is.  She doesn't look like a vampire, I know it.  But these genetic modifications gave them abilities as well as the health change aspects.  They are able to take the form of other bodies.  The scary thing is, with vampires, they either have to get new DNA from the person they're posing as every 24 hours, or kill them so they can change forms whenever they want.  I had no idea what she had done, but I didn't doubt the latter was a possibility.

Along with transforming into other people, they can travel in time simply through... I'm not sure how they are able to do it, but it doesn't take much.  I've heard that it just takes a deep glance from a vampire for them to be able to take you with them, but I never thought it was true.  I didn't even think we had vampires still around!  Most of them went into the past to cause havoc, and special people went into the past to get them and bring them back to the future and take their genetic modifications away from them, so taking away their being vampire.  I thought we had cured them all, but here I was, standing face to face with one.  She looked so innocent with her preppy girl attire and long side braid.  But it was all just a mask to cover her true, horrible self.

And then, by the time I noticed she was giving me a long, hard stare again, I was in another room in the dark.  She glared at me evilly, with her eyes squinted and an evil smile blossoming on her face.

 And then, right before my eyes, she transformed into her true self. Now she was wearing a black, low cut dress. She wasn't glaring at me with squinted eyes and a smiling face anymore.  She looked at me evenly with no expression.  Her fangs weren't showing, but it still made me jump up in alarm.  Her red eyes pierced through my very being, and somehow lit up the whole black room.  I shrieked, and started to panic.  I'm alone with a vampire in an unknown place.  It's a well known fact that vampires have no blood and drink the blood of humans.  But, since they transform into humans a lot of the times (at least, that's what I've heard), they usually just eat regular human food when they are humans, because most vampires choose to be human a lot of the times.  Of course, this is because their skin cannot see the light of day, or it will sear on contact and become black and wrinkly.  So having the ability to become human during the day makes them extremely powerful beings.

There is something I haven't mentioned about them: their brains seem to be messed up.  That is, all of the ones that have been retrieved and tested.  Obviously, the promise of unlocking the potentials of the brain didn't go as planned!  They become animalistic and do violent things just for the sake of violence.  That is part of the reason why they're so dangerous.  They are quite unpredictable and will do anything- and yet, they are smart in their evil, cunning ways.

I thought quickly, I had to do something.  I reached into my pocket for my special sack that holds anything up to fifteen feet by fifteen feet.  I don't understand the science behind it, but somehow some scientist figured out how to dig into the space time thing, and made small storage units implanted into small fabric.  I don't understand it at all, but it's quite a cool science.  I have loads of emergency stuff in there!  I reached in, and when I touched something, a yellow light was triggered in the bag.  I sighed, and touched something else.  This time, it blinked blue and I smiled.  Just what I was looking for: my flashlight!

I took it out and turned it on, pointing it at her.  I could clearly see her roll her eyes in the pitch black.

As if I was playing a joke on her, she said, "yeah, artificial light isn't going to make me burn."

Then I started to move the flashlight around, and I saw a door.  I smiled with glee.  I was almost thinking this was some room she lured prey into to drink from, but with the door, it made it seem more like a real... room, if you know what I mean.

And then, I found myself back in the white room of nothingness, staring at Merlin again.  Now, he was beginning to seem normal!

"Um... what the hell?!"

"Yes, 'what the hell'."  He repeated my words without the emphasis I used, so him saying it made it seem especially humorous.  It doesn't seem like he has an amusing bone in his body.

"So... what's the answer?  What point is Brianna talking about?"
"I don't know yet."
"What?... How are we going to find out, then?"

"It will happen, don't worry.  Remember, we have all the time in the world."

"Right... So, I don't see how Brianna could be behind this.  When I was seeing her memories in her point of view, she seemed sweet and innocent.... Is the thing about vampires true?"
He simply nodded.  It had to be the truth, Brianna surely made it sound convincing.

"Yes I agree, and the thing about the vampires is indeed true."
"What about you?  How did you acquire your abilities?"

He looked at me blankly.
"Tell me about you!  How could you take us here?  How were you able to have me see these people's memories as they happened?"

"My abilities are none of your concern."
I rolled my eyes, but he didn't see me, as his eyes were already rolling into his head again.

I opened my eyes, and the first thing I noticed was that I was in a purely white room with bright florescent lights beating down on me.  Then I noticed my attire.  I was wearing an ugly, cheap hospital gown of some kind.  It had a tacky pattern of ducks and sailboats on it.

Through my peripheral vision, I noticed that my head was encompassed in a strange machine of some sort.  I was laying on a crude, uncomfortable 'bed', if it could even be called that.  I had no idea why I was here.  I didn't feel sick at all.

And then, an attractive lady was walking toward me.  She was wearing orange scrubs which made me giggle.  She looked like she was from a jail.

She made no response to my giggle, but shut the machine over my head.  Then, she said to me, "well, since you'll never remember I told you this: "have a nice life serving Leonora, bitch!  You will no longer have a life for yourself, you'll just be doing Leonora's bidding!"

I had no time to process what she was saying, and then I went into dream land.

******************************************

(Back to TJ's point of view)

The woman was standing there, watching Brianna in her sleep.  She started tapping on the metal and smiled to herself.

Then I opened my eyes, and I was back into the other white room, the one I was truly in.  It was strange, my mind drifted above Brianna and the woman in scrubs a brief moment before I came back.  It was as if I had just eyes looking at it, but not a mind to comprehend it.

"Wow... that was weird.  What even happened?"
Merlin sighed.  "Wow, so it is true..."
"What's true?!"
"I am pretty sure that the place we just saw through Brianna's eyes was in one of the underground hospitals in Pulver.  Pulver is... well, it's this island in the middle of the ocean in your present day.  Before man even started to search for land in the ocean, the people of the future were occupying the island for... research, and important government projects.  They were able to put up a barrier, a shield, to deter anyone from the area. Sometimes things go wrong, but you will never find it without teleporting there.  It's in the Bermuda triangle."
I simply smiled slightly, it still felt like I was dreaming.

"So... why would the hospital be underground?  What could they have done to her?"
"There are some vampires and their... let's say 'minions' that have been able to set up these hospitals for their own... needs."
"I don't get it.  Why couldn't someone rat them out, then?"

"Because there are limits to teleportation.  We have to know precisely where we want to teleport in order for it to work.  The problem is- if you were to teleport into something solid, just by a few milimeters- then you'd die.  Teleportation isn't something to mess around with, the moving of atoms is a very delicate thing.  And no trace of these hospitals has ever been found..."

I nodded.  I was so listening to a storyteller right now.

I put my hand to my heart, and breathed in deeply.  "So, what do you think happened to Brianna?"
He looked at the ground.  "I have no doubt from hearing what the woman in scrubs said that her mind was tampered with."
I gasped.  "How the fuck is that possible?"
"Oh, it is.  If we can change humans to become vampires- if only on accident, certainly it's possible to tamper with their minds.

"So... she is a minion for Leonora."
"You could call her that I suppose, yes."

"So... what does this mean for me?"  I crossed my fingers, though I had no idea what I was hoping for.

He almost sighed, "I believe Leonora tampered with your mind as well.  She must have changed your looks and something with your mind."
"But what?  I feel fine."
"I believe it has to do with you not caring how others feel.  You only care about yourself, TJ.  You never cared about Alicia when she said her ex wouldn't take her back.  You did try to comfort her, I'll give you that.  But you only did it because you had underlying sexual desires for her."
"Psh", I said in response to that.  No I didn't.
"You did, TJ, I have no doubts about that.  You also didn't want to help her out to get back with her ex by pretending to be her girlfriend.  In no way am I saying you should have done that, but you weren't willing to at all until it affected you directly."

I shrugged.  "Yeah, so?  I hate pretending I'm someone I'm not."
"Yes, that's true.  But you left your family with hardly a guilty bone in your body.  You were too worried that you'd get your secret out and that you'd be dead meat.  You didn't even think about how they would feel!"
I shrugged.  Seemed to me like he wanted me to be dead meat!

"Okay, look.  The bottom line: once you stop caring about everyone but yourself, this may become irreversible."
"What will?  My albinism?  Gee, I hope so!"