The Bitten
By Elena Snowfield
Published by Publications Circulations LLC.
SmashWords Edition
All contents copyright (C) 2014 by Publications Circulations LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, companies and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
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Chapter One
Luke
A GLOW IN the dusk. A perfect square that emanated light, warmth. Things that used to have meaning.
The creature felt compelled by it, drawn closer, head tingling with something that used to be a memory. Perhaps. A bright square glowing from within, set in the flat wall of a dark building surrounded by dark trees. All around the darkness deepened, cut by the rectangle of light.
The creature was surprised to realize the tingle of something like a feeling in its-no, his-head. Then he was surprised to recognize what the sensation of being surprised was like. He remembered having a head. Looking down, he noticed his hands, his elbows, his knees, and could suddenly feel them all again.
Mostly it was all a dull ache, a cold sting, but it was an actual feeling. Looking up again, he stared at the soft aura of the square until the burst of a word sparked through his brain like a delayed firework.
Window.
Following that was a parade of sporadic language, long unused. House. Lamp. Night. Forest. Remembering these words sent a spasm down the forgotten muscles of his cramped back.
As he marveled in a daze at his flood of memories, a hand appeared in the and tugged down the pane of glass until it clicked faintly in the still breath of sleeping trees.
A face appeared in the window, just for a fleeting moment. The word woman crackled across his brain. Eyes roasted dark against pale skin, hair moving like finely spun chestnut threads, the woman looked out.
Miranda.
When the other words had been small static shocks through his brain, this word stunned like a bolt of pure lightning.
Miranda.
Head aching, shoulders trembling, he realized he was not just any creature-he was a human.
A man.
A man with a name, and body, and memories of touching...
Pain stabbed the base of his skull with an intensity that called forth much less welcome memories. Memories of needles and thrashing. Shrieking, he clutched his head and pressed his grimy, cold fingers into the back of his neck as if trying to claw out whatever was jabbing his brain.
His mind started numbing again, retreating from the flow of awakened words and memories. As the dull haze scattered his thoughts, it also quieted the pain.
No! he screamed in his mind, trying to cling to the departing memories despite the horrific agony. But it was like trying to grab the thin light in his fingers. What little feeling there was ebbed from his limbs. Words escaped into the tidal flow.
He forgot who he was again, what he was.
As the last clinging word-Miranda-slowly dissolved into blankness, the creature looked back up at the square of light. Framed by dark wisps of hair and a faintly glowing face, a pair of burning stared directly at him.
The creature could feel a final, vague tinge that this might be important, but he could not remember why.
Miranda
"MIRANDA?"
With a slight jump, Miranda tilted her head partially towards where the voice came from. It was her father, Dr. Donald Miller.
"Are you all right?" he asked, his soft tone backed by a stubborn solidness.
Without even looking at him directly, Miranda could see the deep creases between his eyes that she had long ago learned not to argue against. Her fingers still resting on the cool window frame, she nodded once. "Yes, I-I think so. I just thought I saw something."
"Oh, 'something' then?" Her father's voice tilted into his familiar sarcasm. "Well, that certainly must be a concern. Those 'somethings' are really something."
Puffing out a small sigh, Miranda smiled, but still kept her head turned towards the window. Behind her reflection in the amber lamplight was the dimmest shadow among the night's gathering shadows, and she did not dare risk losing sight of it by glancing away.
She tried to strangle the cruel hope that started twining its fingers through her throat. All she could manage was a gasp.
"Em?" Coming up to the window, Miranda's father laid a hand on her shoulder and squinted at his reflection. When he spoke again, his voice dropped to a soft murmur. "There's one of them outside, is there?"
She nodded. "I think... I think it might be Luke."
His only response was a hissing intake of air.
Reaching her hand out as slowly as if she were approaching a nervous rabbit, Miranda clicked off the lamp by her side. For a moment, she and her father stared at the stunning blackness, until their pupils started dilating and pulling in details from the faint moonlight.
Across the dirt clearing between her house and the forest's edge, outside the cleanly chopped line of pine trees, hunched a gaunt figure. Though he stooped with crooked back and limbs twisted like mangled branches, the figure still maintained a hint of a stature that was once tall and dignified. The distance and darkness distorted his features, but Miranda could instantly recognize the shape of his face. She had been searching a year for this face, subconsciously scanning each person in every crowd. Though he knew he would never be there.
"Luke," she whispered.
"How can you be sure?" Her father leaned so far forward that his wrinkled forehead touched the glass. "At this... stage, they are hard to distinguish. This could be any man."
Miranda could only shake her head while viciously gulping down a sob. "No. It's him."
Her father hesitated, lifted his hand from her shoulder, then gently patted her back. "I know how much you've wanted to find him, Em, but I'm not so sure if..." Stopping himself, he licked his thin lips and scratched the back of his neck with his other hand. "We're close to the Sanctuary, and we've seen several of them wandering around before. Even if that is Luke, it's almost certainly a coincidence that he's here."
Miranda did not answer. For several minutes, she could only stare out the window as the emaciated man shuffled his wiry legs aimlessly around the jagged stumps in the clearing. At some point, he stumbled into the invisible electric wires that surrounded the forest and jolted back-not with the pained shock of a conscious being, but under the forced autonomy of his muscles, like a toy car hitting a barrier.
As she watched the man lurch into the wire several more times, his arms twitching like spiders, Miranda could only keep down the scream careening around her lungs by pressing both palms tight against her mouth. Her father gripped her shoulder tightly, trying to turn her away from the scene, but she would not let him.
Eventually, the man's body finally turned him dumbly back towards the trees. Soon, he was lost amid the absolute gloom.
Finally, Miranda father was able to turn her away from the window and enveloped her in his withered but sturdy arms. Clenching her eyes closed to the dreaded stream of tears, she hid her face against his wrinkly plaid collar. Neither of them spoke as her body shuddered under the effort of controlling her agony.
Finally, after clearing his throat a few times, her father managed to mutter, "I'm sorry you had to see him like this. I-I know how hard it is."
A
memory of her father's brother flashed across the front of Miranda's thoughts. The blinking but vacant gaze in her uncle's bulging eyes, the thread of saliva dangling from his snarling mouth as he was dragged away by the gray-armored Agents.
As difficult as it had been for her to lose her uncle, she knew her father grieved over his brother severely-much more than he admitted. Pulling away from his shoulder, Miranda gulped down her sobs.
"I know," she whispered. "At least I know he's still alive."
Though she did not lift her head to look at him, she could hear the rustle of her father's nod. "We're going to find it, Em. There's a cure for everything."
The motto of their workplace, Icarus Labs. Unlike most of the other scientists, who dismissed the saying as an overly optimistic platitude, Miranda's father repeated it often, and with sincerity.
"I know," she repeated. After running her fingers through the fine wisps of her short shock of hair, Miranda clicked the lamp back on. Its normally comforting glow felt faint and worthless against the heavy darkness outside, which suddenly focused all its weight through the fragile square of her living room window.
"Maybe..." she coughed around the idea that she wanted so desperately to believe. "Maybe we were right? That... that they can respond to familiar people? Or places? Maybe Luke came back because he remembered...?" She could not bring herself to say "remembered me," as if saying the words out loud might shatter their every possibility.
Her father raised his hands, and then flopped them to his side. "That's... well, we can't... um, I don't know, Em."
She sighed and shook her head. "It's okay, I know what you want to say. That we can't introduce our personal bias into our research, that our results were inconclusive, that wishful thinking does not produce a realistic cure, blah blah blah. I know, I know."
"You know I wish that as much as you do."
With a curt nod, Miranda pressed her forehead against her fingertips. "I just miss him so much, Dad," she whispered against her wrist.
He wrapped her in another hug, but looser this time, more delicate, as if she was a toothpick structure that might collapse under too much pressure. "I need to get back to your mother before she starts to worry. Are you going to be okay tonight?" Releasing her, he crouched slightly to look at her downturned face.
When Miranda only nodded again, he added, "We still have the guest room set up if you want to come over, all right?"
"I'll be fine." Though she could not completely steady the croak in her voice, she shook her head. "Really, Dad, I'm okay. I'll see you tomorrow."
Studying her with the same intensity he gave their research subjects, he finally nodded. "Okay, then. Tomorrow at the lab."
After her father left, Miranda recalled the moment before she closed her window and glimpsed the figure standing in the field. Her eyes met his eyes just as the glass slid a reflective barrier between them, and they were not the eyes of a Taken.
For the briefest instant, her fiance had emerged from somewhere within that lost body, and looked at her from a place beyond even the mystery of death itself.