Alain woke slowly, regaining consciousness in hard-fought steps until he came to realize that he could not move. He didn't open his eyes. He just lay there and breathed. The smell of the air was acrid, like he was downwind from a couple of factories with all smokestacks at full.

Wiggling his fingers, tensing his muscles, he found he wasn't paralyzed. He was restrained, however, strapped to whatever bed he was in. He opened his eyes slowly, letting them adjust to the light without necessarily letting anyone who might be in the room know he was awake yet. He listened for the sound of someone else breathing, but there was nothing.

He was in a hospital room, but different than the infirmary rooms he and the hardcases had been in before... before... His head pounded as he tried to recall what had happened. He let go of that and inspected the room as best he could considering his limitations.

At first glance, the windowless walls seemed to be cream colored, but the unevenness of it made Alain think it might be whitewash that had yellowed in more places than not. Above his bed hung a single bulb without a shade. Its meager glow gave the impression it was waging a valiant struggle to hold on.

There wasn't much else in the room and Alain wasn't sure what there should be. Aside from the infirmary accomodations over the last week, he'd never been in a hospital room and wasn't a big fan of the types of movies that gave you good looks at them. Best he could tell, the room's contents consisted of him, the bed, the lightbulb, a sink, and those infernal straps.

He wasn't quite sure what had happened after the lights went out. There was the metallic sound and the... was it a vampire? It ate the others. It apologized. And then...

To his right he heard the door to his room open and the clunks of plodding footsteps approach. A woman's face hovered over his, a suppurating wound where her left eye should have been, a layer of dried puss around the empty socket. The smell was revolting and when a fly landed on the crust to take a walking tour around the socket, Alain nearly vomited. "Shettle down," she barked, her speech slurred, coming from a mouth that was missing half of its teeth and part of a lip. As her hand moved up, he saw a large syringe, the needle rusted and dull. "Now just shtay shtill," she said, bringing it down toward his throat.

Alain tried to thrash, pinch his leg, avoid the approaching needle while he woke himself from this nightmare. The slow approach of the needle turned into a quick jab, darting down out of his field of vision. It caught him in the neck, just under his jaw, and he could feel the needle sink into his flesh, expelling its contents. He thrashed his head, jerking the needle out of the nurse's hand, and it waved from the point where it lodged in his neck, thrown side to side as he tried to fling it away.

A coldness moved out from his neck, a deep chill hitting each muscle in its path, taking control away from Alain. He raised his hips, throwing the weight of his body against the restraints, his shoulders and head shaking limply, already caught in the grip of the paralysis. The cold worked its way into his stomach and down his legs, each muscle losing its tension and going flaccid as it chilled. Alain couldn't work his jaw to shout for help and eventually his toes gave up the fight, the coldness suffusing his entire body.

The nurse pulled the syringe from his neck, rolling his head to the side, his eyes staring at her midsection. At least from that viewpoint, she looked like a normal nurse - if you could ignore the blood spatters on her apron. "Don't worry," she said, "we'll be done with you shoon and then we'll shend you home."

Done with me? Send me home now!, his mind screamed as a dire sense of claustrophobia settled in. He was trapped in his body, unable to fight, unable to resist. All he could do was lay there and shout silently for release as the nurse walked to the door, opened it, and made a gesture to someone standing outside. She was followed in by two orderlies, pushing a gurney. The orderlies looked normal. There were no open wounds, major sores or rashes, but it was no comfort to Alain.

The fact that they released his restraints was of no comfort to him either. They did it because they didn't need them. He was helpless. No, he protested as they lifted him, limp as a boiled carrot and seeming to weigh as much as one, dumped him on the gurney, and wheeled him into the hallway. Let me go! Let me go! Let me go! He paused for a mental breath and pleaded as loud as he could think. Please!

The gurney was jarred momentarily as he passed through a set of swinging doors. And then it came to a halt. Two pairs of hands grabbed him again, hoisting him from the gurney onto another table, and a bright light was pulled into place over him. "Patient's name," he heard a male voice ask.

"Beaudreaux," the nurse replied. Alain could feel his soul shivering, as if the cold from the shot had not only worked its way through his muscles, but through every part of him. He had never wanted anything worse in his life than to be out of there, to be somewhere safe.

"Yes," the male voice said. "Vampire. Five in a day. Well, let's get cracking. I have to get back to torturing the wife." Two other voices laughed in response.

Alain concentrated all his effort on moving. He had to get up, get out of there. And as he felt the cold metallic touch of a knife against the skin of his upper abdomen, his panic kicked into overdrive. He could almost feel his brain hurt as he desperately tried to get some message from it to his muscles.

The knife dug in. Starting just at the very bottom of his rib cage, the knife dug deep and Alain felt it all, the intense pain leaving no doubt in his mind that this was absolutely real and there would be no waking up from it. Though he showed no outward sign, he redoubled the struggling within his mind, frantic to stop this.

Sawing through muscle, skin, and whatever else got in its way, the knife cut slowly downward. Alain couldn't scream, couldn't even grit his teeth as he looked up into the light. But through the haze of pain and fear, something screamed for his attention. What the doctor was sawing through had to contain some veins, some arteries. But, oddly enough, though Alain felt the pain, he didn't feel the blood. It should have pooled out onto his skin, run down the sides of his stomach, pooled under his back. But there was no dampness, just the pain.

When the incision had been cut to about five inches long, the knife was withdrawn and metallic clamps were attached to the sides of the incision, stretching it open. Prayer was no use, he couldn't scream, he couldn't even cry in frustration. He could just lie there and be hurt.

The light dimmed for a moment and Alain felt a surge of relief. If he couldn't escape, the least his brain could do for him now was make him pass out. Sadly, the surgery continued, the pain continued, and the light came back.

Then it dimmed again. The dimming had come from a blink. His muscles were frozen, but Alain realized he was still breathing, he still unconsciously blinked. That meant some signals were getting through from his brain. Concentrating, he tried to take control of his autonomic nervous system.

As a hand entered the hole in his stomach, going in at an angle up under his ribcage, near the diaphragm, Alain tried to tune out the pain and slow his breathing, exerting all his effort in taking a deep breath. Slowly he inhaled and when his body wanted to exhale, he applied his mind to making the lungs take in more air. His breathing paused and then a small gasp of air was taken in before his lungs pushed the air out.

His concentration was disrupted by the hand inside him. It had found what it was groping around for. The pain was intense as the hand gripped it and started pulling. It felt like Alain was being turned inside out. He wanted to grit his teeth against the pain, but he couldn't. All he could do was concentrate on taking in another slow, deep breath, trying to blink his eyes while he did. He achieved both.

Yeah, he shouted in his mind. It wasn't much, breathing and blinking when he wanted to, but it was a start.

Whatever the hand had gripped was slowly being pulled out of Alain, being forcibly uncoiled from within him and dragged into the open air. The progress was slow, a man's voice grunting slightly. Whatever it was inside him that they were trying to remove didn't want to come out.

Breathing deeply again, Alain could feel his muscles warming. Tentatively, he tried to move a finger. The finger jerked, then slowly curled up under his palm. He brought up two at once next, then made a fist, rotating it ever so slightly at the wrist.

The doctor lost his grip on whatever he'd been pulling and a length of it shot back inside Alain, making a shlorp noise. "Son of a bitch," the doctor cursed, catching it with a grunt.

Now that Alain had gained some control of his body, the pain was more intense, but he wasn't frightened and he was breathing deeply. That made all the difference, the cold in his muscles dissipating. He gradually gained control, concentrating on each major muscle, gently clenching and unclenching it a couple times before moving onto the next. He left his mouth open, resisting the impulse to grit his teeth.

With a final grunt, the doctor yanked on whatever they had been pulling out of him. "Cut it," he said.

The strand was snipped near the incision and the remainder of it retracted into Alain's body like a rubber band that had been snapped. With all the energy and control Alain could muster, he brought his legs back quickly and kicked out against the operating table, sending himself sliding off backwards.

He didn't have as much control as he thought and an attempt to swing himself so he could land on his feet ended up with him rolling off and falling onto the floor with a body-quaking thud, but Alain was back on his feet quickly.