2. How She Got There in the First Place

“Please… Please…”

The room was dark and Olivia could smell blood with each shallow breath she took. It wasn’t her blood she was smelling. Despite how incoherent she was from blood loss, not a drop of hers was wasted in the cold room she lay in.

The vampires made sure not to spare an ounce. Each time they drank from her she felt herself get fainter and fainter.

It could have been days, but she had such a bad measure of time. The world spun if she opened her eyes for a long time. 

“It’s going to be okay…” 

She wasn’t speaking to an empty room–at least that’s what she had convinced herself. Q was still alive, wasn’t he?

Sweeping her hand across the dust covered floor, she grabbed her partner’s arm. 

“Q?” she whispered. “I’ll get us out of here. I just… Need to rest first.” 

She was in and out of consciousness from there. 

The vampires occasionally gave them sips of water which was their only sustenance for God knows how long. Of course, the vampires kept their den dark. Most had evolved to withstand the sun's UV rays, but there were still many more who hadn’t. Considering their immortal nature, they had to keep the old comfortable. 

Her meager hydration was lost to hot tears that occasionally leaked out of her eyes. She felt at fault for their failure. 

The SIA operated through knowledge but her insistence to strike the iron while it was hot would be her downfall. They could have told her no, but they relented under her insistence. 

It was all her fault. All her fault. 

Olivia didn’t know when she fell asleep again, but the next time she woke up, she felt Q’s arm leave her hand. Her eyes snapped open in response, thinking he was awake. 

To her horror, one of the vampires was dragging him away while another stood at the door.

She tried to crawl forward and stop them but, despite her years of training, she was useless if she couldn’t stand on stable feet. 

“No!” she cried, but it didn’t have much behind it. “Please.”

“Dispose of him correctly,” one of the older vampires who seemed to call the shots ordered the other. 

“He’s still alive,” she sobbed.

The older vampire took a few slow steps into the room and he crouched in front of Olivia. His cold hand grasped her face and he smirked down at her. 

“My dear, he’s been dead for days,” he whispered. “You’ve been hanging onto a corpse all this time. How pitiful you–”

Mustering up the last of her energy, Olivia intended to spring forward and attack him even if it was fueled by her final breath. 

Except the building they were in caved in as a cold bomb went off, sending beautiful sparkles all over the place. It was a cold bomb so that humans would survive, but the microscopic flecks of silver would burn the vampires as if it were hot. 

Olivia simply covered her head with her arms and lay face down. Backup was there. 

She was buried under rubble but she knew they would find her. The microchip buried underneath her left breast still told them that she was alive even if her physical state was bad. They likely found where she was because of such a device as well.

She tried to call out when she heard more SIA agents enter the destroyed building, but her voice was no longer. It wouldn’t be loud enough to carry through all the noise.

SIA agents went through, neutralizing the vampires with shots full of poison that would neutralize their supernatural abilities and make them as good as humans. 

However, that meant vampires years past their natural life expectancy started to turn to dust just as the world intended for them. Beings weren’t meant to be immortal. Death was part of life. To live in the world meant you had to follow the laws if you didn’t want to be a supernatural being forced to live in the shadows and commit crimes to survive. 

The world was fair and just as long as the playing field was even. Humans no longer had to be afraid of the supernatural because they had ways to even the score. 

Olivia knew what was happening with the vampires being neutralized when she felt the man who once grabbed her face fall over her in fragments and cover her like ash. She didn’t want to breathe in knowing she would breathe in the remains of some old vampire bastard who had been tormenting her for who knows how long. 

The rubble around her began to move and a voice she was familiar with spoke from above. 

“Lilac, it’s time to get out of here,” he said, speaking a name that would ensure her safety and identity.

“Eagle,” she whispered his mission name, relieved to hear his warm voice. 

“Keep your eyes closed,” he said. “The sunlight will hurt. You’ve been here for nearly a week.”

She nodded obediently, something unusual for her. He lifted her easily and she settled into his arms, relishing in the first warm body she had felt in what felt like eons. 

The movement of being lifted made her head throb and she put her hands on either side of her temples, horrified at the feeling.

“I think I lost a lot of blood,” she whispered. 

“You’re as white as a sheet,” Eagle responded and clenched his jaw. 

His hatred of vampires wasn’t unfounded especially not when he was mere backup and finding one of their best agents in such a state. He wondered what the hell the agency was thinking, going into a den that was known to be volatile for humans. There was no way to tell what was inside. 

Risking themselves felt like a suicide mission and, from what he saw of Q’s remains, they were suffering a lot of losses. 

“What about Q?” Olivia asked, continuing her whispering since she didn’t have the energy to push her voice harder than that.

“I-I don’t know,” he lied. “I’m not speaking in absolutes, right now. We have a lot of men sweeping through to assess the damage.” 

Olivia’s heart clenched. Eagle's voice never usually wavered and it seemed much more extreme since she couldn’t open her eyes.

“Please, be honest,” she pleaded.

“Liv…” he slipped out her real name under his breath.

Eagle didn’t want to see her cry. Based on the dried tear tracks on her face, she must have been doing a lot of that. His words only made more tears leak out. He could tell she was already dehydrated and he felt awful.

It was taking everything in him not to run deeper into the nest and make some of those bastards pay for what they had done.

Without the needed space for an airplane in the area, Olivia was placed inside a helicopter and lifted to an airplane where she would receive medical care until they could get her to a more permanent facility. 

She was unconscious for most of her moving. 

Only when she saw blood bags hanging over her, swaying as the airplane evened itself out in the air did she wake up again. She looked around and didn’t see a single face she recognized. 

Such was life as an agent. There were so many within the organization that she hadn’t even scratched the surface of working with more than field agents like herself and Eagle. 

However, Eagle decided to be ‘selfish’ and start a family. He was only on emergency retainer as backup in case something happened like the failure at the vampire den in the middle of the forests of northern Europe. 

A nurse wearing a medical mask saw that Olivia was awake and approached the agent. 

“We are an hour from our destination where you will be able to settle down in a hospital for a while,” she explained. “You’ve had one blood transfusion so far. You will receive iron once you reach the hospital.”

The woman spoke with an accent and Olivia imagined they were headed towards the SIA’s Asian headquarters. Taipei was their largest location and where most agents were trained and given missions. It was also where Q was from. 

“O-okay,” Olivia whispered and was out once again.

While she did feel better than before, there was still an overwhelming heaviness. She wanted to eat something but sleep felt more important. 

At least if she was asleep, she wouldn’t have to think about Q.

The sleep she had was dreamless

Waking up again in a hospital room, Olivia smelled something delicious at her bedside and her growling stomach made her sit up quickly, not caring how much her head throbbed with such sudden movements.

Except there was an interruption during her meal that made her lose much of her appetite. 

A heavy manila folder full of documents was dropped on her legs after a strict-looking woman walked into the room and made her presence known. 

“You’ve been out for a week,” the womansaid. “It’s time to prove yourself once more.”

With shaking hands, Olivia opened up the folder, eager to get out of the hospital and move around. She couldn’t afford to lose her sharpness as a tool for the SIA.