#draybreakers

The vans that transported the day people had tough prohibitions, they could not leave specific areas or take alternate routes to the established ones, and the time for them to circulate was limited. Humanity was on the rise again, and the cost had been relatively cheap: just their absolute freedom.

But they were better off, thought those in one of the vans, drumming their fingers nervously on their legs or baggage, they were privileged compared to others. They were alive, and with some fortune, their children would live too, always in the sunlight and afraid of the dark, as their ancestors had done for thousands of years.

"Delaware Cross!" the driver announced, and the sliding door of the van opened. Two people descended from the vehicle and saw the red in the sky that heralded sunset. From that stretch they were to continue standing, and they measured their time as best they could because neither wanted to remain outdoors when night came.

"Were you able to finish your notes, (Y/N)?" asked Jim, adjusting his glasses. His partner sighed.

"The clerk couldn't locate a file, so I'll have to follow up on it tomorrow" she explained "My gloves have already turned yellow, I hate that pharmacies are only open in the afternoon."

"Human supplements, some consider them luxuries."

"Yeah, I love spending half my paycheck on crap to get more money" (Y/N) spat. The pair passed by the side of an alley, where a red light announced that it had been fitted out for what was known as a service point; outside, two or three scantily clad women scented with poppy oil were waiting for customers, although the truth was that the service points were mixed. Jim looked away from a female worker, she must still be young, but her body was scarred from the blood draw, and her skin had begun to split in a process of premature aging.

"How bad must you be to fall into a place like this?" the boy muttered. (Y/N) noticed the woman's fierce look and ducked her head.

"For every time of prosperity, there's a time of lack. It happens to every people in the world, you know that."

"Five years ago rights for humans were enacted" Jim snorted "As if we were cows."

"We think and feel, just like they do."

"No, (Y/N), we're not cattle, we're people, I won't let myself be led by the good to a... farm" the boy shuddered "And you wouldn't either, would you?"

"And if the gathering army came and told you that you or, I don't know, your neighbor's newborn baby must, what would you do?"

"That kind of thinking is what's got us in this hellhole." 

They walked two more blocks together, in silence. Jim said goodbye, his friend should still walk a little further, and the Sun was disappearing faster than it should through the storm clouds; (Y/N) unfolded her umbrella and, out of sheer precaution, reached into her purse with her free hand. It was always good to carry something to defend herself, it had been that way since the first predator and the first prey had met, and it would be that way until the end.

A car was gliding through the streets, for him, night was the time to really live, and like a large part of the world's population, night was also the eternal memory of all that changed. They called it evolution but to him, though he had been unwittingly benefited, it seemed like yet another gap, an unfair break between him and those who were as he once was.

The car's hypersensitive sensors announced the movement of foreign bodies a few meters ahead. As he looked to his side, he saw a tumult of screaming and shouting beings, chasing another, and if his heart hadn't already been stopped for over thirty years, he would have felt a small heart attack, because he knew what they were, and he knew what they were doing.

Not thinking twice, he abruptly turned the steering wheel and the headlights illuminated the small space between a mini supermarket and an office building. Three men raised their heads, startled by the light, and he could see the rabid yellow eyes and grayish, haggard skins. They were called Scavengers, not because they consumed corpses, but because they deliberately hunted free humans, often for amusement rather than to satiate their hunger, and although some politicians fought to implement regulations against them, it was difficult to stop their advance.

But he couldn't care less about a bunch of lunatic supremacists, and he sounded his horn. The men milled around, curious, squinting to see who was heckling them, and it was then that he made up his mind to get out of the car.

"What the hell do you want?" a Scavenger shrieked, threatening him with his fangs. 

"You have ten seconds to get out of here" replied the man of the car. As he expected, there was laughter from the group.

"You think you're the big deal with your fancy suit and your fancy car, you're not a real predator, you're a coward" shouted another, receiving cheers from his companions.

"Now it's only five seconds."

"You'd better beat it!" the first to speak to him went to meet him, ready to shove him, but a hand closed around his clothes and, as if he weighed no more than a cat, the man of the car sent him flying, the collision of the falling body unheard. The Scavenger's companions grew cowed, looking at each other.

"What are you waiting for?" jumped the man "Go get your friend."

Without ceasing to give him hateful glances, the rest of them left at last. He could tell there was no blood on their faces, though one looked like he had been wounded with something, and only then did he approach the alley.

Again, the startled sensation that was not physically possible appeared like an echo of lost humanity: lying between two dumpsters, a figure huddled, shivering and whimpering almost voicelessly, he could not measure the damage she had sustained but clearly, she was injured, and possibly dying from the way her body convulsed.

The smell of blood reached his nose, but he ignored it, as he had done for a very, very long time. He reached out his hand and rested it on the girl's shoulder, her clothes had been torn in several places and blood was gushing out in trickles, so he deduced that it had not been these that had her in this state. Her eyes were wide open and she gasped, struggling for breath, a future bruise was forming on the right side of her face, and more blood trickled down her lips.

He felt her carefully, searching for broken bones, when a word burst from her mouth, so softly that he barely perceived it:

"Please..."

The eyes were flooded with tears and looked up at him, with fear, with anguish. 

"Don't be afraid" he whispered "My name is Edward, I'm not going to hurt you."

"I don't want to die..." stammered the young girl. Edward nodded. 

"It's okay, I'm going to help you, okay? You'll be fine, I promise."

He searched with his eyes and came upon a purse that he assumed was hers. He put it on his shoulder and then gently took her in his arms, he noticed the shiver that ran through her but even more, he noticed the warmth still coming off her body. How strange it felt, an unusual temperature from a time he could no longer remember.

"What's your name?" he asked her. The girl's eyes narrowed, unfocusing "No, no, stay with me, don't fall asleep...what's your name?"

He advanced back to his car, shaking her slightly each time her eyelids twitched, the first drops of rain beginning to fall. It wasn't good to let a human being lose consciousness, they might not wake up again, they said, and Edward kept trying hard to avoid that as he placed the young woman in the passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt.

"You're going to be okay, do you hear me?" he continued, the human struggling to keep her head up "Come on, tell me something, what's your name, do you remember? Do you remember how you got here?"

Her chest heaved up and down with difficulty, he watched her lick her lips and wince at the taste of her own blood.

"(Y/N)..." she murmured at last "My name is... (Y/N)..."

"(Y/N), all right, all right! Don't go to sleep, (Y/N), stay with me" Edward had put the vehicle in gear "What do you do for a living, are you a student?"

"I'm... I'm a..." (Y/N)'s head cocked again, her lips moved but she made no sound.

"No, no, (Y/N), don't go to sleep, stay awake! Stay-!" 

It was no use, the eyelids closed and (Y/N) hung, limp, by the seatbelt. Edward pushed on the accelerator, later, perhaps, he would call work to excuse himself with anything for missing. He couldn't take her to a hospital, it would have been a death sentence in her condition, but maybe he could save her, he was a doctor after all, he had been a doctor, he had studied to save lives....

The car skidded in front of the garage, and Edward rushed out with (Y/N) in his arms, still unconscious. He had not only medical instruments suitable for humans, but also some bags of blood, all he needed was to suture the wounds, treat the trauma and, if necessary, give her a transfusion. By law, free humans were required to carry the specific type of blood they had on their ID, he would just have to take a look in his bag.

He laid (Y/N) down on a couch, taking care to keep her head up; he could hear her heartbeat, slowed but still present, and he knew well that if he concentrated hard enough, he could even hear the blood rushing through her torrent. It was evolution, the survivors of the 2019 famine said, first and second generation vampires saw their senses sharpened and their strength doubled as some time passed, and it was beginning to be theorized that, as time passed, vampires grew stronger as in a case of rejuvenation that humans, poor little tender humans, would never experience.

Man is man's wolf, Edward thought, going through (Y/N)'s body to disinfect and close her wounds. In a way vampirism had brought with it enormous advances in technology that would not have been dreamed of under other conditions, but in return, humans were almost driven to extinction; now, they were granted the opportunity to live, to grow, to go about their business, limited to the hours of the sun and in confined spaces, so that they would not escape from sight; but their main function was still to feed the dominant species, and for that reason there were patented farms, and squads that collected (kidnapped, Edward said) humans during certain seasons to study them and, if they were considered fit, they were delivered to the milking centers.

Milking, the vampire thought as he painfully watched the bruise turn from red to purple on the girl's face. What a nice way of saying that they were hooked up to monstrous machines where, permanently sedated, they were drained of their blood at intervals until their bodies could no longer reestablish themselves, until they became a horrible parody of dried fruit.

An impulse led him to reach out and, with the obverse of his forefinger, caressed the girl's healthy cheek. It burned as if she had a fever, but Edward knew it was not, it was the warmth of true life, of a heart that beat, of skin that flushed under the touch of the sun or, perhaps, of a loved one, of an ephemeral body and that, ephemeral as it was, was much more haunting, much more beautiful than the body that prevails.