TEGAN MURPHY.

“Science involves ethics and an IRB. I don’t see any of those here,” he raised an eyebrow, before letting out a snort, “Funny, that’s how the eugenics movement came to be. Look at how all of that turned out.”

“Fine. Take anything you need. I can’t stop you from doing that, now can I? But I’ll tell you nothing. And I’ll do nothing. Because in all seriousness–it’s not any of your business. If I die here, I’ll be the same person as when I walked in. You, however, will be just a little worse.”

“Are you going to torture me, because you’ve done plenty of that already, and I’m not sure you’ve gotten anything,” he lightly taunted her. It was out of pride, out of loyalty. He wouldn’t give his friends or his loved ones up. They could take anything from his body, Stefan couldn’t stop that. But they wouldn’t tap into his mind. He wouldn’t let them.

The idea of drinking blood from her former human brain? Disgusting. But she no longer had a choice in the matter. Her eyes stayed glued on the bag while she brought it to her lips and completed the transition in to this… new life.

Tegan waits until the transition is completed before she steps out of the cell, standing outside of the door as it closes. She doesn’t visit Heidi again until several days later, with a very different mission than what they’ve been attempting these past weeks. They’d been injecting regular doses of Stefan’s blood into Heidi to test if it would work as a cure, but all it seemed to do was weaken the girl. Tegan had no more use for her, but she intended to keep her promise. She wasn’t going to kill the girl, she was going to let her go. After, all, Heidi was beaten, broken, and starving - she would do the rest of the damage all on her own. Without bothering with any preamble she steps inside the cell, which possesses few dissimilarities to the one they’d been holding her at earlier. While she was unconscious Tegan had her moved to the facility closest to Mystic Falls, to ensure she was as close as possible to people she cared about when she was released. “If you attempt to do anything other than leave this facility, my guards will put you down, and I can assure you it will be just as unpleasant as our time together has been. I’d suggest getting home before the sun comes up. If you survive, I’m sure we’ll see each other again.” With that she steps outside of the cell, but leaves the door open.

“Whatever you say, Cheryl.” She shrugged. Her eyes glanced up from the blood bag. “Then get on with it.” Heidi wasn’t going to sit there begging. She didn’t really care for begging now.

“As you wish,” Tegan responds, gesturing one hand towards the blood bag. Nothing would be happening until she completed the transition, otherwise the experiments would be useless.

“If it annoys you, definitely intentional.” She rolled her eyes. “So what next?” Heidi grabbed the blood bag, inspecting it more than anything for the moment.

“Miss Rhodes, you’ve never seen me annoyed. It wouldn’t end well for you.” Tegan lets her take the bag, crossing her arms once it’s removed from her hands. “You drink and complete the transition. Then you’ll get to experience what we do here, some of which Augustine used to perform for us, firsthand.”

He pressed his lips together, he wasn’t going to out his wife. He wasn’t going to out Elena. He wasn’t going to out his brother’s best friend, and Sam Winchester, either. They all had actual lives now. He let out a bitter laugh, before cocking an eyebrow at her, fully not even hiding the fact that he was lying, “I have no idea to what you’re referring to.”

“So if I choose not to drink it, you’re going to force me to drink it anyway. Is that what you’re saying?”

“That is what I said, yes. Do you intentionally avoid retaining information, or is that a design flaw?”

Heidi just let her talk and kept her arms crossed. Although the smell and knowledge of the blood bag on the bed was slowly starting to drive her brain crazy, she just backed up again and walked over to the wall. “Fuck you, Cheryl.”

Tegan watches the blonde’s retreat, not moving from her position. “Drink the blood, Miss Rhodes. This is your last chance to do something quickly and painlessly; I suggest you take it.”

Heidi rolled her eyes. “You know what? Why don’t you just kill me? Let’s skip to the end of the freaking story because that’s what you’d want for me right? To be dead where no one can find me.”

“Killing you outright would not send the desired message.” Tegan smiles, though it’s an unpleasant expression within the context. “You defied me, Miss Rhodes. You did not listen when I warned you to stand down, and you convinced others it was a good idea to do so as well. This isn’t something I can tolerate, nor can I just do away with you. People might get the wrong idea, you see - that you’re some sort of martyr instead of what you truly are. A warning to anyone who would try and imitate your behavior, nothing more, nothing less - letting them know that the benefits of doing so could never outweigh the costs.”

“Again, still touchy for someone who didn’t care about fucking Augustine.” She crossed her arms. “And what about all the innocent vampires that you have harmed or turned in to monsters because of your experiments? What about the psychological torture you put them through? What about those you killed to learn? Did they deserve it? Did any of them deserve it?”

“I still do not care about Augustine, though I am beginning to think you are incapable of long-term retention.” Tegan laughs at Heidi’s attempts to be righteous - it’s a strange sound, almost foreign coming from her. “Deserve? Are you so naive to think that science possesses a guilty conscience? The only things about subjects that I care about are what I can learn from them. If they serve that purpose better dead than alive, then that is what they become.”

“I don’t understand!” She stopped, not too close to her but still closer than she was. “You’re a vampire but you want to harm other vampires to see how they work. Do you hate humans too because that’s what I was. I don’t get what your end goal is here.”

“My desire is not to harm, Miss Rhodes - though you pose an exception to that, but it is of no fault but your own.” Tegan stands, taking a step closer to Heidi. “I am here - this company is here - to understand the intricacies of the supernatural world. What strengthens one group, what threatens others, and what can be profited from. I want knowledge. That is not synonymous with power, as some might have you believe, but the two are closely linked - knowledge is not power, but it does breed power. And that is my ‘end goal,’ as you say. Power. It’s all quite simple, really.”

Heidi stayed quiet when Tegan came in. She didn’t want to give her the satisfaction but all those heightened emotions were pushing every inch of her body to attack. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” She stood up and stalked closer. 

“I’m not quite sure what you mean,” Tegan says, undaunted by Heidi moving closer to her. Even if she was about to become a vampire, Tegan had almost a thousand years on this child. She would be easy to dispatch if necessary.

Before Heidi even had time to try and stop her, everything went black. So that was death… perhaps more a temporary sleep when you become the undead but it was death all the same. Darkness. Cold. And then you wake up. The anger was high and much higher than it was as a human. The fear she was burying deep down was getting harder to hold down. And then there was that. That thirst. Her stomach was yearning for a taste and she felt like she had no choice in whether she would transition or not. That was up to Tegan. She moved to the corner of her cell and just looked around. All of these new sensations she couldn’t quite explore.

Tegan had other matters to take care of, so instead of sitting around and waiting for Heidi to wake up she had tasked one of her employees with notifying her once the transition had begun. She appeared outside the blonde’s cell a moment later, blood bag in hand as the door opened and closed for her. “A strange experience, no? You’re still yourself, except for the parts that... aren’t.” Setting the blood bag on the single table in the cell she takes the seat next to it, curious as to what the girl will do when given a choice.

“So you care about how I’m doing? Thanks, I clearly need it,” he knit his brows together, before letting out a heavy breath. He knew that this might be a possibility, but he had lived his public life just as he did before. He was wondering why they decided to take him now. He’s frustrated, he just wants to get back home. He wanted to live his life, finally. He wanted to be a good husband, to be a good brother.

“Fucking shit!” She gasped out in a yelp as the needle hit right on the broken bone but as the liquid was released, she did feel it working which caused her to scrunch her eyebrows. Why would she heal her? But then it clicked. This was a woman who did experiments on vampires and she had read about how vampire blood could heal. She also knew that dying with vampire blood in your system would lead to you being a vampire. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Even a woman as detached from her emotions as Tegan took a little bit of pleasure from the shifting of expressions on Heidi’s face. The pain, the dawning of understanding, the fear: it all brings a small but self-satisfied smirk to the vampire’s face. “Good night, fledgling,” she says, reaching out with both hands and snapping the girl’s neck. It wasn’t as painful as she could have made it, but then, there was plenty more pain in store for the girl.

Heidi didn’t say anything but the smile made her trust her even less than she did before if that was possible. “Fuck off, Cheryl.” She watched her carefully waiting for her to break her other leg to be honest.

“You really should learn some manners,” Tegan lectures her, before jamming the syringe full of her own blood into Heidi’s thigh - the same one with the femur she’d broken just a few days before. She pushed down on the plunger, pulling the needle out once she’d deposited all the blood before standing up and watching the healing begin.