storm and safe haven {Fic!}

[Tibby ♠]

16 February, 2130

The archaeologist's hands are worn, and bear the evidence of years of exposure to wind, dust, and the earth. The brush, held in his left hand, moves easily across the object emerging from the dirt, and as the dust is moved aside, it reveals a metal box, wrapped in a canvas cloth.

"It's here!" The archaeologist's voice holds a touch of weariness, but it is largely overcome by relief. "It's still here." He rocks back on his heels, beckoning to a trio of individuals - two men and a woman - in military garb, who are standing beside a rusty vehicle, obviously enjoying the shade it casts in the afternoon sun.

"Sure hope this is as good as you think it is, Doctor Thatch," one of the soldiers remarks as the box is lifted out of the ground and carried carefully to the vehicle. The archaeologist says nothing, but his expression and the nod that accompanies his silence make it clear that he hopes the same.

---

17 February, 2130

The strike of the gavel brings silence to the courtroom, hushing the quiet murmuring of the spectators, and the trio of judges take their seats on the raised platform in the center of the room. The courthouse itself is a contradiction, constructed from the remains of the gothic building that stood in the center of the town. The building was gutted after the epidemic in an attempt to keep the pathogen at bay, and since that time, it's been refitted with the more modern poly-glass furnishings. The benches, the floor, the walls, are all coated with the thin anti-bacterial coating that gives most of the world an unnatural shine even in minimal lighting, and the lighting here is far from minimal.

"This court is now in session," the chief justice announces. "Will the agents representing the defense please stand and identify themselves?"

A slender, well-dressed young man with carefully sculpted hair and a single ring through his left ear stands.

"Costin Dracula...representing the defendant, Vlad Dracula, in full legal capacity and with consent of the accused."

"And where is the accused, if I may ask?"

"He is in custody of this court, being transferred from confinement as of sundown," Costin looks to the bailiff, who nods in confirmation of this fact.

"Noted and recorded," the chief justice says, jotting the fact down in the book in front of her. She's a dignified woman, probably beautiful in her younger days, with brown eyes that look as if they could go from gentle to unyielding at any moment. "Will the agents of the prosecution please stand and identify themselves?"

On the opposite side of the bench from the defense, a blue-eyed man with wavy, dark hair rises out of his seat.

"Tulio. Representing the prosecution and the interest of the state, as appointed by the twenty-eighth council of restored Tintagel."

"Thank you." The chief justice writes that down as well, then looks back and forth between the two benches. "Costin, may I ask how it is that the defendant is still not present, despite being given an entire day's leave from these proceedings?"

The young man folds his hands behind his back and ducks his head respectfully...or perhaps in order to conceal the defiant fire that question sparks in his eyes.

"I'm sure you know of my f...my client's aversion to sunlight, your honour."

"I am. Need I remind you, however, that the prosecuting agent suffers from the same condition, and has yet managed to appear here punctually?"

"Objection," Costin says softly, and the chief justice frowns.

"Pardon me?"

"Objection, your honour."

"To what?"

"If this court continues to demonstrate an obvious bias towards the prosecution, I will have no choice but to request another recess, to be followed by a re-evaluation of this trial and the ability of the justice presiding over it to-"

"That will do, thank you." Her eyes have made that transition between gentle and unforgiving, and she folds her hands on top of the book in front of her. "We will allow another twenty minutes' delay prior to questioning the defendant. In the mean time, I believe the prosecution has new evidence to register with this court?"

"That's correct, your honour." Tulio nods.

"Would you care to bring it forward now?"

He nods again, and lifts a hand in the direction of the bailiff, who opens the door to the next room and motions to someone out of sight. An aide emerges from the room with a sealed plastic box, setting it down on the center table.

"And what is this, Tulio?"

"These are recordings, Justice Hermia, retrieved yesterday by a team deployed by this court."

"Recordings of?"

"Of the period of time during which the defendant committed his crimes."

"Allegedly committed," Costin corrects from the other side of the room. Tulio allows him a single nod.

"Allegedly," he corrects.

"Do you have supporting evidence that these are indeed recordings of the time frame you're claiming?"

"I have better than that, your honour. My corroboration should be arriving at any-" He's cut off by the buzz of the door, which signals the impending entrance of a new arrival. The door swings open, and a man steps through. He is slender, and his features are worn. The lines that are deepest on his face are those that would indicate sorrow, and his eyes hold a haunting degree of weariness.

"Identification, please," Hermia says, her eyes scanning the newcomer in some sense of familiarity.

"Doctor Milo Thatch, your honour."

"And what is your expertise, Doctor Thatch?"

"Archaeology, ma'am, but beyond that, I'm the one who took those...er, recorded those." He points to the box of memory disks on the table. For a moment, the archaeologist and the chief justice share a look, one no one else in the courtroom quite knows how to interpret.

"This evidence has been registered and accepted by this court, in so much as it remains germane to the trial at hand and is considered accurate." Hermia announces, finally.

The door, which has only just finished closing in Thatch's wake, swings open once again, and as the archaeologist takes his seat on one of the benches allocated for witnesses, yet another individual enters the courtroom, flanked by the two guards who escort him. He is tall, and carries himself proudly, seeming to disregard the shackles, clear and filled with transparent liquid, that bind his wrists. He has blue eyes that do not hold the slightest hint of trepidation or remorse, even as he is led to the solitary seat set aside for those who are accused of a crime.

"Count Dracula," Hermia remarks. "How good of you to join us."

Dracula does not speak, but inclines his head in the slightest of nods. Costin clears his throat and makes an attempt at a confident smile towards his client (who is also his father - this is common knowledge, and even if it weren't, the young lawyer's near slip-up earlier wouldn't have escaped the notice of the highly attentive spectators).

"We're ready to proceed, your honour," Costin tells Hermia. She leans back, lifting her hands off of the book in front of her, and looks to the two judges at her sides.

"This, the thirty-first assembly of the court of restored Tintagel, assembled at the courthouse of Triton, is now in session. Judges Hermia, Door, and Cazaril presiding over these procedings, we will now begin. The prosecution may call its first witness."

Tulio stands back up, his hands resting on the smooth glass surface of the rail in front of him.

"The prosecution calls Doctor Milo Thatch, your honour."

No one is surprised by this, and it only takes a moment before Thatch is seated comfortably in the witnesses' ring, second only in height to the judges themselves.

"Before we begin, Doctor Thatch," Tulio starts, "could you remind the court, please, how it was that you had the opportunity to make the recordings we're about to view?"

Thatch considers that for a moment, rubbing at the bridge of his nose with two fingers before he takes his glasses off and begins to polish them with the edge of his shirt.

"I suppose it started, as most stories these days do, with the beginning of the epidemic. That's where the fourth tape begins. The first few are my own recordings, from my work, they won't be of much use to you."

"Could you tell us a little about what we'll be seeing here?"

Thatch struggles with that question for a moment.

"I think it'd probably be best if you just watch them. I can't think of any way that I could tell you without..."

Tulio nods, and moves for the box, removing the first bundle of memory disks.

"If the court permits it, I'll begin with the fourth recording, as recommended by Doctor Thatch."

Hermia nods, but before she can agree verbally, Costin is on his feet.

"Objection."

"On what grounds?"

"This evidence is unreliable. There's no proof that it's even-" He's cut off by the grasp of Dracula's hand on his sleeve. He looks down, and Dracula shakes his head once. Costin takes his seat slowly. "Withdrawn."

"Thank you." Hermia nods at Tulio. "You may proceed."

Tulio places a memory disk in the disk port of the projection system. It's old, and has obviously been through a lot, but after taking a moment to load, the image flickers into life on the screen that is layered on the one wall everyone in the courtroom can see at least part of.

The camera is focused on Thatch himself, albeit a much younger version of him, from the chest up. He's sitting in some sort of laboratory and appears to be in distress. He doesn't speak at first, but when he does, his voice is hoarse and he seems to be struggling.

"Entry six-two-one, thirtieth of March, twenty-one-oh-three," he begins. "Everyone is dead."

[Tibby ♠]

2130

The courtroom is quiet now, a hush having fallen over the spectators. They can sympathize. Everyone in this room over the age of twenty had a moment like that at some point, a moment when they realized that everything they had known and loved was really and truly gone.

Thatch himself does not seem unaffected by the words spoken by his younger self. The lines on his face seem deeper, the sadness in his eyes a touch sharper to anyone who knows what to look for. Tulio reaches over and pauses the recording, watching the archaeologist in concern.

"Do we need to take this slowly?" he asks. Thatch shakes his head.

"No," he says, firmly. "Play them all. Don't stop."

So Tulio presses the button to play the recording, and the picture on the wall flickers back into life.

---
March, 2103

"I don't know what's happening. I don't think anyone knows yet, how this started. But...everything's changed. I'm going to keep recording as long as I can, as long as I have disks. Maybe someday someone will want to know what happens here...if there's anyone left besides me."

The timestamp on the recording shows that about an hour passes between that and the next point at which Thatch picks up the camera.

"I'm going to rig up a headset, then I'm out of here," he says, to whoever will eventually be watching. This is followed by another blip, marking a period of about another thirty minutes in which he apparently does exactly that. When the camera's turned back on, it's facing the wall, and Thatch's breath can be heard from below the frame of view. He swings his head around, taking in the room one last time as he backs away, opening the door before he pauses. The room is everything one would expect of a scientist's office, a small, rectangular space, lined with bookshelves. There is a table in the center of it, with a single chair beside it. There are a number of old, dusty objects on the table, tagged with little paper labels on strings.

"Guess nobody's going to need pottery fragments," Thatch remarks, and switches off the light. The room is plunged into darkness as he turns and heads out into the rectangle of light that marks the door.

Outside is a scene straight out of a science fiction film. There is a sign to the right of the frame, marking the building he's just exited as the Museum of Magical and Supernatural History. A large, ornate stone staircase sweeps down from the terrace on which Thatch is standing, down to the street, and that's where the chaos begins.

There is refuse everywhere, torn papers, wrecked automobiles, dead plants, broken street lamps, overturned waste bins, and odd objects here and there that don't belong out in a street at all. That's all unsettling in itself, but what really marks this as the end of the world are the bodies. They are everywhere - most of them curled into the fetal position, doubled over in pain even in death. They are on the street, on the sidewalk, on the hoods of cars here and there. Thatch doesn't stop; he walks down the center of the street, weaving slightly, undoubtedly to avoid the corpses he passes by.

"I'm never going to get used to this," he murmurs.

It takes an hour before Thatch clears the outer limits of the city, and not long after that, he enters an abandoned stretch of land whose only virtue is the fact that, because it was uninhabited, there are no bodies. The terrain isn't bad, very hilly, but the rocks that were once covered with green moss, are now coated with a layer of dead brown vegetation. Everything is wilted, everything is dead. There is an eerie silence over the world, not a bird sings, not a single insect buzzes in the dead grass. The only sound is the harsh echo of Thatch's breath and the impact of his footfalls as he keeps walking.

Three days of walking - as marked by the time stamps, not by actual passage of time on film, bring him to a massive rocky hill, and he climbs to the top of it. The ocean spreads out away from the cliff below him, and what would be a beautiful sight is marred by a thousand little white flecks in the water. A quick zoom in on the camera reveals that they are fish, hundreds of them, dead and floating on the surface of the water.

Thatch makes a noise of either dismay or disgust, perhaps both, and turns away from the cliff.

"Day five," he says, "Second of April, 2103. The ocean is...just as dead as the rest of the world. I'm heading north, going to try to get to the port. Maybe I can get a ride off of this-"

"Don't move." The voice comes from off to the right of the camera, and Thatch turns slowly, panning over to face the origin of the words. It's a girl, probably about sixteen, with braids that come down past her waist. Her hair isn't what one really notices, though, as she's wielding a crossbow.

"Not moving," Thatch agrees. "Could you...not point that at me?"

"She'll point it at you until you tell us why you're here." A new voice comes from behind Thatch, and although he doesn't turn, the speaker eventually circles around within view of the camera. It's a young man, jet black hair, hazel eyes, with what looks to be an axe strapped over one shoulder. "You a raider?"

"Do I look like a raider?" Thatch hasn't been on screen since the first recording, but one can assume from his tone of voice that he probably doesn't. The young man gives him a once over.

"No. Sunny." He gestures to the girl, who lowers the crossbow slowly. "Where did you come from?"

"Trenale City." Thatch answers. "Almost four days ago."

"Anything left?"

"Nothing I want to see again. I couldn't find anyone else alive, though, if that's what you mean."

The dark-haired young man nods.

"If you'd like, we'll take you back to the village. Aren't a lot of us left anymore, we ought to stick together."

"Right," Thatch agrees. The now-trio start off in a course parallel to the coast, along the top of the ridge that overlooks the ocean. There isn't a lot of talking - none, in fact - until they come to the edge of a forest. The trees there, one can't help but notice, are alive and green, in stark contrast to the dead grass that seems to come to an abrupt halt exactly at the boundary of the woods.

The girl runs ahead, letting out some kind of unearthly sound that is returned, almost like an echo, from somewhere deep in the trees. Thatch looks to the young man, who motions for him to follow.

They move on through the trees, branches brushing over the lens of the camera here and there, pine needles, oak leaves, any number of different plants, alive and thriving. And finally, they come through the edge of the woods, and into a clearing. In the clearing, there are tents, surrounded by the beginnings of what looks to be a fortified barrier of wooden pikes. There are people - probably about thirty of them, moving around here and there, most of them working on the fence, some of them putting together tents...all of them alive.

"My gosh," Thatch breathes.

"Welcome to the refugee camp," says the young man, swinging the axe over his shoulder and letting it down gently onto the ground, propping it up against a tree.

"Is this...all that's left?" Thatch asks.

"Don't know. For now. We have a guy on radio, but so far he hasn't been able to raise anything other than static." He has moved now from where he left the axe to a nearby tent, which he ducks inside of for a moment as Thatch waits, the camera lingering on the door of the tent. A moment later, the man emerges, carrying a notebook and a pen.

"What's your name?" he asks.

"Milo Thatch."

"And what do you do?"

"I'm a PhD student, studying anthropology of enchantment-based cultures. Er...I guess I was..."

"Anthropologist..." The young man jots that down. "Don't know what kind of use we'll have for that, but no one's-"

"And historian." Thatch adds. Hazel eyes flicker upward from the page to settle just below the camera, presumably meeting Thatch's own glance.

"That might come in handy." He shuts the notebook and returns it to the tent.

"Who are you? I mean, what do you do?" Thatch asks, once the guy comes back out of the tent.

"I'm Beowulf," he replies. "I keep these people alive."

[Tibby ♠]

2130

The recording ends after Thatch and Beowulf have exchanged introductions, and Tulio reaches for the next memory disk, removing the first one after the player spits it out.

"Your honour," Costin speaks up, and Hermia turns to look in his direction.

"Yes, counsel?"

"I fail to see how this is...germane, as you said, to the trial at hand. We've seen nothing of my client. So far, this seems completely irrelevant."

Hermia does not sigh, but she looks as though she probably wants to. She turns to Tulio.

"Is there some way to skip to the parts involving Count Dracula directly?"

"Just because he's not on screen doesn't mean it doesn't involve him!" This comes not from Tulio, but from the spectators' seating, where a man has risen out of his chair. He's about the same age as most of the survivors in this courtroom - somewhere between forty and fifty, and has piercing blue eyes that are turned on Dracula, accusation written across his features. "You can't understand what he did unless you see exactly what it was he took away."

"Sir," Hermia interjects, "I appreciate that you've suffered losses, we all have, but this trial is only open for viewing, not for community input. Please sit down."

There is a very tense moment in which it's not clear whether the man's going to do as he's told, or keep talking. After several long seconds, he finally sits back down, his fists clenched at his sides so tightly his knuckles are white.

"That's exactly what I was going to say, your honour," Tulio speaks up. "In order to appreciate the severity of this man's crimes, I think it's important to establish the value of the things he destroyed."

"I'll allow it." Hermia agrees. "Proceed."

Costin does not look pleased, but Tulio pushes the next disk into the reader, and presses the play button before the young lawyer has the chance to object again.

2103

At first, it seems like the cover's been left on the camera, because all that's visible is darkness. Then the frame shifts, catching the light of flames off to the right, and as the camera struggles to focus, it becomes clear that Thatch is seated on one side of a circle of people who surround a fire pit. There is a large metal pot hung over the fire, and the people seated around it are holding bowls and other containers. Some of them are still eating, but most of them seem to be finished.

Beowulf is sitting on a large chunk of tree, his face golden in the glow of the fire. He is directly across from Thatch, and the girl, Sunny, is on the ground, cross-legged, beside him to his left. To his right is a man, slightly older than either Thatch or Beowulf, solemn-faced and seemingly of Asian descent.

"So where are you all from?" Thatch asks, his voice seeming unnaturally loud over the quiet crackle of the fire and the scrape of spoons on dishes. He shifts, and the camera zooms in on Beowulf first.

"West. Avalon." Beowulf answers, his eyes serious.

"Me too," Sunny agrees, as Thatch slides the camera over to her next. "School, and then..."

"Then everything died." Beowulf finishes for her. Silence, heavy with sadness, hangs over the group again for a moment.

"What do we know about that?" Thatch asks, and for a moment, it almost sounds like he's conducting an interview. Beowulf clearly thinks so as well, because he glances directly at the camera.

"This is for history?"

"Yeah." Thatch confirms.

"Merlin," Beowulf motions to someone else in the circle. "Tell us what you know."

"I don't really..."

The camera pans over in time to see the boy hesitate. He's young as well - most of the people in the circle are, but despite that, his eyes hold a spark of intelligence that makes him seem a little wise for his years.

"For history," Thatch adds quietly, "Where are you from...Merlin, is it?"

"Yeah," the boy confirms. "Merlin Emrys. I'm from Camelot. I was a wizard in the medical ward there when the epidemic broke out a week ago."

"A week?" Thatch echoes. "We didn't hear anything about it in Trenale until about four days ago."

"You wouldn't," Merlin says softly. "It has a ninety-eight percent mortality rate."

Thatch sucks in his breath audibly.

"There wasn't anybody left, really, to raise an alarm or send out any warning. Anyone who wasn't killed was either...turned, or ran...taking the disease with them to wherever they went next." Merlin doesn't look at the camera as he speaks; he stares into the fire, his eyes on some distant point far beyond the flames or any other part of the location.

"Turned?" Thatch isn't familiar with the term, and that's made clear in his tone.

"Monsters." Sunny says, quietly, from out of frame.

"The disease kills ninety eight percent of people who come in contact with it. Less than one percent...about a half percent...seem to be immune." Merlin explains.

"And the other one and half percent?"

"Monsters." Beowulf this time, echoing Sunny's assessment.

"They become something else." Merlin still hasn't looked up at the camera once since he's been talking. "Something that feeds on those of us who survive. I had less than two days to experiment, try to find a cure."

"Did you?"

Merlin looks up for the first time.

"I wouldn't be sitting here if I had a cure. I'd be out there inoculating anyone I could."

"Would that do any good?"

"I don't know. I hope so." Merlin considers that for a moment. "The research I had time to do seemed to indicate that people who didn't succumb to the airborne strain of the disease are either immune to it or are just resistant."

"What's the difference?" Thatch obviously wants to get all the facts clear here.

"Those who are immune are really immune, at least on the cellular level. Doesn't matter if you inject the cell with the virus directly, organisms that carry the immunity can fight it off. The ones who are resistant to the airborne strain, though, can be vulnerable to the contact strain, so if the virus winds up in their blood stream, they contract it. And once they do...they don't die like the people who die from the airborne strain. They change, they mutate. They get faster, stronger, more aggressive..."

"Vampires." This comes from the man seated to Beowulf's right, and Thatch pans over to zoom in on him. "Tai Lung," he adds, obviously anticipating Thatch's next question.

"From?"

"From here." Tai Lung replies, and doesn't appear to be planning to say anything more, as he returns to polishing the long blade that's laid across his lap.

"We've seen them do horrible things," says another voice, a woman. The movement of the camera reveals a couple - a redheaded woman and a dark-haired man with his arms around her. In the light of the fire, it is readily apparent that she's pregnant. "Dimitri's best friend tried to fight them so we could escape the city...he..."

"He saved our lives," says the man holding her, presumably Dimitri. "We worked in Camelot, the three of us, next door to the medical ward. Anya - that's my wife," (and here he tightens his hold on her just slightly), "was working with the children at the school, and I handled the transfer of funds between offices."

"But you got out, thanks to your friend," Thatch says, trying to stay on topic. "What was his name?"

"Arthur." The answer comes not from Dimitri or Anya, but from Merlin, and Thatch pans back over just in time to see him walking away from the fire. There is a moment of awkward silence before Dimitri speaks again.

"Arthur was taken by the vampires," he explains. "We saw them...feeding off of him, all of them, it was..."

"Do we have to talk about this?" This comes from a girl sitting to Dimitri and Anya's right, close enough to Thatch that he has to twist to move the camera, jolting it slightly as he focuses on her. "We've all seen it. Now we have to live with it." Her dark hair is cut short, giving her an edgy sort of look even without her straight-up approach to the situation.

"I haven't seen it." Thatch remarks, quietly. "I saw deaths. I saw no vampires."

"You will," she predicts. "Believe me, you will."

"Door," Beowulf speaks up, "this is for history. For the people who will come after us. We aren't speaking of it only to speak of it."

She appears to consider that, then nods reluctantly.

"What did we expect to happen?" she asks. "Ask the history books that - what was supposed to happen? Civilizations better and brighter than ours were lost to time...what makes us any different? Log that for posterity - everything ends. You don't survive because you're bigger, or because you have the most money...you survive because you're lucky, and because you're smart."

She stands up, drawing her sweater around her shoulders as Thatch follows her with the camera.

"We've been the lucky ones," she says. "Now we have to do our part to survive."

She walks away from the rapidly dwindling circle, and Sunny sighs loudly.

"Catastrophe," she mutters, and scrambles to her feet, stretching her arms over her head before she, too, heads off to her tent.

Thatch turns the camera back to Beowulf.

"What's our plan, fearless leader?" he asks. Beowulf does not appear amused.

"We survive," he answers simply. "Merlin is still trying to formulate a cure. In the meantime, we are teaching anyone who comes here how to fight the evil. It is hoped that someday we may cure them. Until then, we must protect ourselves. Tomorrow, I will show you."

"Great." Thatch is obviously a little unsure about that, but he doesn't mention it. "Tomorrow." He reaches up, and switches the camera off.

[Tibby ♠]

There is far more footage of Thatch learning how to wield a flamethrower than anyone really wants to watch, but it is tolerated. This is probably because it's a lot better than the footage that came before it, which was primarily of Thatch consistently failing to learn how to wield a sword.

Over the course of the next week, Thatch manages to get at least a short statement from each of the survivors on camera as they try to gain the skills necessary to survive. No one seems to know exactly what the "vampires" are, but Beowulf seems certain of how to kill them. The legends, it seems, are somewhat accurate. Wooden arrows seem to serve the equivalent of wooden stakes, and Beowulf himself wields an axe because beheading also seems to work. There is no supply of holy water, he explains one day as Thatch is walking the perimeter of the camp with him, but there is a hope that maybe a priest or some sort of religious officer can be located on the radio.

"Are we having a lot of luck with the radio?" Thatch asks. Beowulf doesn't answer right away, as he's inspecting a bit of the palisade which looks a little loose.

"Some," he answers finally. "Some people have answered. Most are trapped. Can't risk a rescue mission for only one or two people."

"No," Thatch admits, "I guess not." They are halfway around the full circle of the fortress when there is a piercing cry of agony from one of the tents. Beowulf takes off running, and Thatch does his best to keep up. The camera is jostled considerably, but they reach the door of the tent in no time, and duck inside.

It is Merlin's research tent, that much is clear as soon as they're inside it. There are petri dishes here and there, syringes in little racks, and it's obvious that Merlin managed to carry quite a lot with him from the medical lab in Camelot. All of that, however, seems unimportant in comparison to the screams coming from the woman lying on the ground. Merlin is bent over her, concern written across his features.

"Door," he says, "Door, please, hold on." He has one hand tightly wrapped around hers, even as her body contorts with the pain.

"Merlin, what's happening?" Thatch asks, not out of journalistic curiosity, but in a voice of near-panic.

"She's contracted the disease." Merlin mumbles, fumbling about with his free hand for a syringe. Door is convulsing, and Beowulf drops to his knees beside her, grasping her shoulders and holding her still while Merlin goes for the syringe. Her eyes open momentarily, and the camera catches Thatch's gasp as well as the solid black of her pupils, dilated so fully that they seem to have swallowed up her irises. She lets out another scream, the kind of scream that seems to twist at the stomach and send chills down the spine, and there is a flash of white fangs in the shaft of light that shines in through the partially open door flap of the tent.

Then Merlin lifts the syringe to his his mouth and yanks the cover off with his teeth, feeling with his other hand for a vein in Door's neck. Then he presses the needle into her skin, just below her left ear. He depresses the plunger, forcing the clear green liquid inside the syringe into her bloodstream, and within a matter of seconds, she is still. At first, it seems as though she might be dead, but her breathing, while slow, is still there. Her eyes close, and when they open again, they have returned to their normal coloration.

She takes a deep, gasping breath, and her teeth are ordinary, perfectly normal human teeth. Beowulf lets go of her and rocks back on his heels as she looks around, regaining her composure. Thatch is silent, although the camera trembles slightly. Merlin stays beside Door, watching anxiously.

"Back with us?" he asks, finally, gently.

"What happened?" she wants to know.

"What's the last thing you remember?" Beowulf wonders aloud.

"I remember...I was gathering wood, and..." She looks down at her wrist, where there are two faint red marks, looking now like healing scar tissue. "That's...that's all I know."

"She came in hardly able to walk," Merlin explains, inspecting her wrist. "She was bleeding."

"I don't understand," Thatch says, finally speaking up. "Did something attack her in the woods?"

"Yes," Beowulf nods. "It is worse than that, though. If the attack was random, a vampire could have killed her. This was done intentionally."

"Someone was trying to infect her?" Thatch is horrified.

"And they knew she was susceptible to the contact strain of the disease," Merlin adds.

"What makes you so sure of that?"

"Because," Beowulf answers, obviously understanding what Thatch does not. "No vampire would take the risk of letting her escape otherwise. They'd kill her. Make no mistake, she was allowed to escape."

Merlin nods.

"I have to agree. Once you've seen them fight, you'll understand. One on one, none of us would stand a chance. They wanted her infected, and they wanted her to come back here."

"But they didn't count on...Merlin, what did you do?"

Merlin looks down at the syringe in his hand.

"I didn't know if it would work," he says, his features suddenly awash with guilt. "It could have killed her."

"Better that than letting me turn into one of them." Door says, obviously regaining her fire rather quickly.

"Agreed." Beowulf says. "And it didn't kill her."

"Is this...is this a cure?" Thatch sounds almost afraid to say the word out loud.

Merlin shakes his head.

"No. It won't cure the ones who are already vampires. It counteracts an enzyme that's present in massive amounts when cells are first infected. Once the damage is done, I can't reverse it. It has to be caught during the earliest stages."

"Still," Beowulf says, "this is very good."

Thatch makes a sound of agreement, although he seems to have learned not to nod his head when he's got the camera on.

It's at that moment that Sunny bursts through the door of the tent.

"Radio," she says, and Beowulf is up and out the door in a split second, followed closely by Thatch with the camera. Sunny's footsteps can be heard close behind as they rush toward the radio tent.

"What is it?" Beowulf asks, pushing inside the tent. Dimitri is seated at the radio, his ear pressed to the speaker.

"It's a pre-recorded call for help. Seven alive in Sylvania, barricaded inside a church."

"Pre-recorded," Beowulf repeats, disappointment in his voice.

"What's happened?" Merlin puts his head into the tent from outside, curiously.

"Pre-recorded distress call," Thatch explains. Dimitri shakes his head.

"No, listen, Beowulf, guys, this was recorded yesterday. They could still be alive."

Thatch turns the camera on Beowulf, who suddenly looks slightly hopeful. He turns to Merlin.

"How much of that drug can you make before sunrise?" he asks.

"It's quite simple, really," Merlin shrugs. "I've already synthesized enough for most of us. If I work quickly, I can have enough for...probably fifteen more, by morning."

"We only need seven. Do it." Beowulf says, and Merlin nods, heading back out immediately.

"Crossfire," says Sunny, and Beowulf nods.

"Yes. We're going in. I'm going to speak with the others about a coordinated rescue mission. Tai Lung is from Sylvania originally, he may have a good idea of how to get around the city. Whoever's coming, prepare to leave at dawn."

[Tibby ♠]

Beowulf and Tai Lung sit by the fire for the remainder of the day, the sun falling towards the horizon and casting lengthening shadows across the camp as the two of them go over pieces of paper and parchment with pens and charcoal. There are no maps in the camp, but it turns out that Tai Lung has an excellent memory, and through the next few hours, they sketch out two or three rough estimations of the region surrounding Sylvania.

"The survivors are here," Tai Lung says, pointing to part of the sketch of the city on the large piece of paper in front of them. "From a defensive perspective, it is an excellent location. Very hard to get to, very hard to get in."

"Especially if you're a vampire," Thatch remarks, at which point both Tai Lung and Beowulf glance up at the camera.

"Yes," says Beowulf. "They are in the church, or were yesterday."

"Do they have a priest with them?" Thatch asks.

"One can hope." Tai Lung shrugs.

"How do we get in?" Beowulf pulls the conversation back to the technicalities.

"There is an open road here." Tai Lung points. "It's the widest road in the city. If there isn't too much debris, there should be very few places along the way for vampires to conceal themselves from the sun."

Beowulf nods.

"We go in at dawn."

"And we leave by noon. Two at the very latest," Tai Lung recommends. "They will know we are there. They will be waiting to follow us, and we must put enough distance between us before nightfall."

"How many are going?" Thatch asks.

Beowulf considers that briefly. He doesn't need to check the roster, he knows who lives in his camp now, and he knows who is capable of the task at hand. He also knows who is needed.

"The camera," he says, "If you do not wish to carry it, someone else can."

"I'll go," Thatch agrees. "Who else? People who can fight, anyway."

"Sunny," says Sunny, from where she's been silently sitting behind them.

"Sunny," Beowulf repeats, although there is a hesitation in his eyes he does his best to conceal. "Merlin, as there will be injured. Myself, Tai Lung, Dimitri. Door would come, in an ideal situation, but..."

"But not now," Tai Lung agrees. "It would be foolish to expect so much of her, physically speaking, after what she has just been through."

"Seven of us," Thatch says, obviously not thinking much of the odds.

"Seven of them," Beowulf points out, and it is settled.

--

In the early morning, when mist is still hovering a few inches above the ground, swirling around their feet, the small party of rescuers sets off from the camp for the first time since Thatch arrived. They don't speak as they move out, Sunny and Beowulf leading the way forming an eerie silhouette in the mist - his axe clearly outlined in the rosy glow of the morning, her smaller frame moving along beside him, the arch of her bow and quiver at her right shoulder.

"Day thirteen," Thatch says, quietly, "Tenth of April, 2103." It says it right there on the time stamp, but it's always possible that the footage might be damaged if the camera and its contents are left to posterity in some disaster.

The sun rises, chasing away the mist and most of the cloud cover, and it is apparent that they couldn't have chosen a better day to try to elude vampires. Dimitri has concerns, though, which he voices as they walk on.

"What if they follow us back?" he asks, as the little band of warriors is passing over a bridge across a small brook. "What if they find out where we're staying?"

"They already know where we're staying," Beowulf says calmly. There is a moment of shocked silence before Dimitri speaks again.

"How do you know that?" he demands, his voice edgy with worry.

"Door was attacked." Merlin explains. "You probably heard. But none of us think it was random. If it were random, she'd be dead."

Thatch has the camera on Dimitri as understanding spreads across his features, then slowly turns to horror. He stops short.

"My wife is back there! My pregnant wife! You can't think this is a good idea, leaving our most vulnerable and defenseless back there to fend for themselves when the vampires know where they are!"

"We'll be back before dark." Tai Lung points out. "The vampires won't attempt an assault in broad daylight."

"If they were ready to kill us, we'd all be dead already," Beowulf says, still without a lot of emotion in his voice.

"Oh," Dimitri scoffs, "That's great. That's just great. How can you be sure?" He's walking again, but a little slower, back behind the rest of the group.

Beowulf turns around for the first time, walking backwards to address Dimitri as he keeps walking.

"I can't. Can't be sure of anything. But we have to survive."

"Humanity," says Sunny, as if she's trying to help elaborate on what Beowulf's talking about. He nods.

"As a species. We need these survivors as much as they need us. Risks are acceptable."

Dimitri throws up his hands in frustration. No one is angry with him; everyone knows he's got a lot to lose, that Anya is his world and she and their child are back at the camp with minimal protection.

"Maybe to you," he says, pain in his eyes, "because the only person you care about is out here with you."

Sunny lets out a little sound that's somewhere between a sigh of frustration and a whimper of hurt.

"Dimitri, that's not fair..." Merlin interjects. Beowulf stops completely, facing Dimitri.

"Caring is not the issue here," he says. "If this were about Sunny, she and I would not be here. Wouldn't be helping you. Any of you. I am helping you because I have a duty to do so. You are all the remnants of humanity. If I can protect you, any of you, I will. And you are wrong. I care about everyone the disease and the vampires have killed. I care about the people we are rescuing. I even care about you. And your wife. I will do all I know how to protect as many as I can. But I am only man, I am not a god, and there will be losses. I am sorry for yours. You would do well to remember that you have much yet to lose, and much yet to fight for."

The tension between them is thick enough to choke a person, then Dimitri nods reluctantly.

"If you feel like you need to go back," Tai Lung tells him, "None of us will think less of you. But we do need you."

"The fire moat will be operational when we return," Beowulf adds. "We will light it as soon as we are inside the camp with the survivors."

"Survivors," echoes Sunny, who's now farther ahead than anyone, and it's clear she's reminding them that they're in the middle of a mission.

"Let's save some lives, then." Dimitri strikes forward with renewed resolve, and Beowulf turns to catch up with Sunny. The group continues on, quickening their pace as they enter the wild lands outside of Sylvania.

The terrain here is not friendly; it is rough and littered with rocks and scraggly brush. The earth is hard, and there is no give in the soil beneath their feet as they press on into the outskirts of the city.

Beowulf puts up a hand, and takes the point position, motioning for everyone to follow slowly. They all know already to be quiet, he doesn't have to tell them. Thatch's flame thrower is barely visible in frame for a second before he pulls it closer to him, out of sight of the camera.

The only sound as they move on is the quiet noise of their breathing, caught on camera as the empty streets pass by. Tai Lung moves up to the head of the group next to Sunny and Beowulf, directing the group through his home turf efficiently. There is no sign of vampires, not even as the group ascends the stairs at the front of the cathedral. For the moment, it's beginning to look like they may be able to walk in and back out, retrieve the survivors and leave before noon.

Beowulf tries the cathedral door, which is either locked or barricaded from the inside. He lifts a fist and pounds on it, and from somewhere inside of the church comes the sound of feet on hard wood floors. There is a clatter, several clanging noises, like heavy locks being undone, and the door is opened. A young man with dark hair and alarming blue eyes peers out through the crack, then apparently judges that they aren't vampires and opens it a little further.

"We don't have any supplies," he says firmly, but there's definitely regret in his voice. "We're stuck here. Hurry up, come inside. Come on, come on." He holds the door open and waves frantically for them to come in.

"Daylight," says Sunny, clearly not understanding why he's so frantic. If there is any time at all that can be considered safe these days, it is in the middle of the day in a church.

There is a great clap of thunder from somewhere in the distance, a powerful boom that cannot possibly be natural.

"Not for long," says the man.

"Beowulf," says Merlin, pointing. Off in the center of the city, near the highest point of the highest building, a cloud is spreading. No ordinary cloud, either, it is black as ink and spreading through the air like blood through water. And as it spirals towards them, black tendrils clawing through the air and forming a canopy of night over the city, the camera reveals that within each little spike of darkness, there is a body in flight.

Without further delay, Beowulf's people rush into the church, slamming the door shut behind them. The young man who greeted them works quickly, fastening all the locks, and ushers them into the sanctuary. There are four other people there, a tiny blonde woman, a solemn-faced man in a brown robe, a man with curly dark hair and blue eyes, and another young woman with copper hair.

"Who are these?" asks the man in the robe.

"Well," begins the guy who let them in, but he doesn't get a chance to finish.

"Rescue," Sunny interrupts, and that's when the darkness hits, descending over the church, covering the windows and every little ray of light that previously shined into the sanctuary.

"You're gonna have to wait a while," says the red-headed girl, just before everything is plunged into darkness.