Re-Vamped! (10 page)

Mr.
Daniels continued to the end of the hall, where a glistening sign read V-GEN PHARMACEUTICALS.
He turned left and stopped outside a stainless steel door.

He
opened the door and led the way into a huge laboratory, filled with blinking
consoles and mysterious equipment. A group of people in white lab coats were
hunched around a table, arguing in low voices over some papers.

“But
how could she have survived the hemoglobic transition?” Olivia heard one say.

Mr.
Daniels cleared his throat loudly, and the conversation stopped abruptly. One
of the group, a woman with her hair in a bun, tried to subtly turn over the
sheets of paper on the table.

“Lab
technicians, this is Ivy Vega,” Mr. Daniels announced as they all got to their
feet. “And this is her identical twin sister, Olivia Abbott.”

For a
moment, the scientists just stared at them. Then one started clapping, and they
all erupted into applause.

Olivia
grinned while Ivy shifted in her boots, uncomfortable with the attention as
usual.

“What
am I, garlic hummus?” Brendan whispered sarcastically as the applause died
down.

“The
occurrence of identical twins is a unique genetic phenomenon, and there is much
we stand to learn from it,” Mr. Daniels said. “These young ladies have
generously agreed to allow themselves to be subject to our experimentation.”

Experimentation?
Olivia thought uneasily.

The
lab technicians all whispered to one another excitedly.

“Ms.
Voxen, will you please prepare the VMG?” Mr. Daniels asked, and the woman with
the bun gave a businesslike nod before disappearing. “Everyone else to your
workstations.” The technicians scurried off in all directions.

Mr.
Daniels led the girls past a bank of flickering screens, where two of the
technicians sat in swivel chairs, frantically turning dials. As Olivia walked
past, the technicians abruptly stood up to face her. “Welcome, welcome,” they
said nervously, weaving back and forth.

They’re
trying to hide the screens!
thought Olivia.

Mr.
Daniels stopped in the corner, where a thick, blocky wooden chair stood on a
small pedestal. Across from it, Ms. Voxen stood behind a console. Wires extended
from the chair in all directions, and a metal circle hung above it, waiting to
be lowered onto someone’s head.

“Olivia,
you can sit there,” Mr. Daniels said nonchalantly, gesturing with his pen.

“You
mean the electric chair?” Olivia croaked.

“The
what?” Mr. Daniels said. Then he laughed. “Oh, no, that’s just the VMG.”

Olivia
looked at Ivy and Brendan desperately, but they just shrugged.

She
tried to put on a brave face as she sat down. Ms. Voxen came and fastened
electrodes to Olivia’s temples, her neck, and each of her fingers, then secured
the metal band around Olivia’s head.

“This
isn’t going to hurt, right?” Olivia quavered.

“Just
relax,” responded Ms. Voxen.

You
didn’t answer the question,
Olivia thought nervously as she watched Ms. Voxen return to her console and put
on chunky sunglasses. Suddenly, Mr. Daniels and Brendan and Ivy were wearing
sunglasses, too. They looked like some sort of deranged rap group.

“Commence
VMG?” Ms. Voxen asked.

“Commence,”
Mr. Daniels answered, and Olivia thought she was going to hyperventilate as Ms.
Voxen reached behind her and pulled a huge red lever.

As far
as Olivia could tell, nothing happened. But Mr. Daniels and Ms. Voxen started
to lean over the console, whispering excitedly and pointing at the screen.

“Is
this thing even on?” Olivia asked.

Mr.
Daniels looked up briefly. “That’s a very interesting question, Olivia.”

Olivia
thought that was a strange response until it was Ivy’s turn. The moment they
turned the machine on with Ivy in the hot seat, Ivy’s eyelids closed and
started fluttering.

“Is
she okay?” Olivia asked anxiously from the side.

“Of
course. She’s simply dreaming,” Mr. Daniels explained.

Ivy
and I really
are
different,
thought Olivia, impressed that a machine which had no effect on
her could immediately put her sister to sleep.

When
they were done with the VMG, Mr. Daniels led them through the laboratory on
their way to another test. Near the center of the lab, Olivia passed a tall
glass box displayed proudly on a pedestal. Squinting, Olivia could just make
out two vertical hairs, stretched taut across a metal frame. The strands were
labeled OLIVIA and IVY.
It’s the hair Mr. Daniels collected at his house!
she
thought.
How cool is that?

Over
the next hour, she and her sister underwent one test after another. Neither of
them had ever had an MRI before—they had to change into drafty gray gowns and
lie totally still inside a huge aluminium tube that made ominous clanking
noises. Olivia could just hear Camilla’s voice in her head, saying, “It’s the
year 2030 and you are suspended in a cryogenic pod for your journey.”

They
were given X-rays, too. Then there were exercise tests, which were so
not
fair. Olivia must have sprinted like two miles on her treadmill before she
collapsed. Ivy hadn’t even broken a sweat.

Finally,
Mr. Daniels led the girls back to where Brendan was sitting, waiting with their
bags underneath a faded public health sign.

“I
can’t thank the two of you enough,” Mr. Daniels said to Olivia and Ivy. “The
results of today’s experiments could change the way we think about identical
twins.” He winked at the girls. Around the lab, technicians were buzzing
excitedly, comparing notes.

“Can
you tell us the results?” Olivia asked eagerly.

Mr.
Daniels shrugged. “It could take months, or even years, before we complete our
analyses. In genetics, there are often more questions than answers. We’d like
to have you back for more tests in one year.”

A
year?
Olivia
thought incredulously.
Ivy’s leaving in like three weeks!

She
could tell Ivy was disappointed, too. Brendan just gave a little cough.

“Allow
me to show you out,” Mr. Daniels said.

As
Brendan stood up with their bags, he started to hack.

“Are
you all right, Brendan?” his father asked.

Brendan
nodded. “Just a little nauseous and dizzy,” he croaked. Then he staggered, and
Olivia saw that his cheeks were pink.

Vampires
only redden when they’re about to faint!
she remembered.

The
girls’ bags fell to the ground. Mr. Daniels lunged for his son as Brendan’s
legs folded.

“Ms.
Voxen! Mr. Azure!” he called, struggling to hold Brendan up. The technicians
rushed over. Seeing Brendan, their eyes filled with fear.

“He
must have been exposed to the V-rus!” Mr. Azure cried.

“He’s
displaying all the symptoms,” Ms. Voxen agreed, her voice filled with panic.

“What’s
the V-rus?” Olivia asked.

“It
doesn’t concern your kind!” Mr. Azure cried, but Ms. Voxen poked him in the
ribs. “I m-mean,” he stuttered, “those who never had . . . er . . . chicken pox
as children.”

“Brendan,
can you hear me?” his father asked desperately.

“Father,”
Brendan replied in a dreamy voice. “Is that you?”

“Mr.
Spackle,” Mr. Daniels called urgently to another technician, “get the V-rus
treatment kit at once!”

As
Brendan lay sprawled on the laboratory floor, Ivy stood staring at the sign
that hung above where he’d been sitting: V-RUS PREVENTION AND

DETECTION.
SYMPTOMS: COUGHING, DIZZINESS, PINKNESS, FAINTNESS, AND NAUSEA, it read
in 

huge
faded red letters. She looked back down at Brendan, who was now surrounded by
lab technicians. Between their legs she caught his eye—and he winked!

“Ooooohhhh,”
Brendan moaned, shutting his eyes again. Next to his foot, the corner of a pink
compact peeked out of Olivia’s open bag where he’d dropped it.
He used blush
to make himself look pink!
Ivy thought.

She
grabbed Olivia’s hand. “Let’s go,” she whispered, heading for the door.

“We
can’t—” Olivia began, but Ivy threw her a meaningful look and then she caught
on. “Oh, right . . .” she murmured, falling in behind her sister.

Olivia
shut the door behind them and the commotion of Brendan’s “emergency”
disappeared. Ivy crept up and peeked around the hallway corner.

At the
other end, the lone, giant security guard stood with his arms crossed
impassively beside the entrance to ASHH. The office’s doors slid open with a
mechanical hiss, and Ivy quickly drew back. Slowly, carefully, she peeked out
again.

A
short bald guy in a black tie and trench coat had come out of ASHH. “Have a
good night, Frankie,” the man said in a nasal voice. “Everything’s turned off.
I’m the last one.”

Ivy
heard the security guard grunt in acknowledgment as the man made for the
elevators.

Ivy
turned to Olivia. “The office is empty,” she whispered. “I don’t see a keypad
or card slot or anything. We just have to get past the security guard.”

“Who’s
only, like, the size of the Washington Monument!” replied Olivia.

“And
we have to hurry,” Ivy added, knowing that Brendan couldn’t keep up his act
forever. She stuck her head around the corner again to survey the situation.

About
a third of the way down, opposite the elevators, was a fire exit with a sign
that said:

OPEN
ONLY IN EMERGENCY. MANAGEMENT WILL BE NOTIFIED . And on the floor next to the
elevators was an enormous potted plant.

“I
have an idea,” Ivy whispered. “Stay here.”

She
crawled along the carpet as fast as her vampiric speed would allow, her
shoulder tight to the wall. She stopped behind the plant. Her knees ached
momentarily from rug burn, but then they instantly healed. Through the plant’s
leaves, Ivy kept an eye on the guard, who had started pacing back and forth.

Ivy
set her feet and took a deep breath. When the guard’s back was turned, she
pushed off into a front handspring, tapping open the fire exit with the soles
of her boots. When the alarm began blaring from the stairwell, she was already
tumbling back on the other side of the plant.
And I thought I’d never use my
cheerleading skills,
she thought proudly.

The
security guard came charging down the hall. He raced through the fire door to
investigate and the heavy door slowly clanked shut behind him. Moments later,
the door shook as the guard realized his mistake and tried to open it from the
other side, but it was locked.

Olivia
ran up, beaming. Together, she and Ivy dashed to the end of the hall. The ASHH
doors whispered open obligingly, and they disappeared inside.

Olivia
stood beside her sister inside the darkened office. She could make out rows of
desks, each one topped by an ancient-looking computer. Hulking filing cabinets
lined the walls.

Ivy
fingered a stack of papers on a nearby desk. “Look how much paper there is in
this place,” she said in a discouraged voice. “We might as well be looking for
a corpse in a graveyard.”

Olivia’s
eyes focused on the only closed-off room she could see: a huge partitioned cube
in the center of the office, its smoked glass walls glowing slightly in the
darkness.
If I were an important file,
she thought,
that’s where I’d
be.
“Come on,” she said.

Luckily,
the door was open. Olivia flipped the light switch, and then had to squint
because of all the reflected light bouncing around the room. Stainless steel
filing cabinets lined the walls, except in the corners, where there were
gleaming glass display cabinets filled with strange-looking artifacts. In the
center of the room was a huge stainless steel slab of a table—without, oddly,
any chairs around it.

They
each took a filing cabinet and started thumbing through folders. Olivia scanned
the typed labels: Kulter ...Kunz ...Kuzin.

“Everything’s
filed by last name,” she and Ivy announced at the same time.

“What
name should we be looking for?” Ivy asked.

“How
about Vega?” Olivia tried.

Ivy
pulled open another cabinet. “Nope,” she said after a moment.

Olivia
glanced back down at her cabinet, and a label caught her eye, one that was
flagged with a red dot: LAZAR.
That’s the name the Daniels mentioned,
she remembered. Curious, she pulled out the file, which was nearly two inches
thick, and opened it.

ASHH
CASE ABSTRACT

CASE
#: 6765475888-102923 NAME:KARL LAZAR

P
ROVENANCE:ELDEST SON OF COUNT AND COUNTESS LAZAR OF COVASNA PROVINCE, TRANSYLVANIA