Reece continued to hear the screams of men, roars of monsters, gunfire, and the occasional explosion slowly dissipate until they completely stopped. It probably wasn’t more than ten minutes before Karina came strolling back down the cellblock towards the cage which she had left him in. She was still dressed the same and didn’t have any blood or gore on her clothes.

“Did you avoid the fighting?” Reece asked her in confusion.

“Oh, no. I did not,” she answered him. “I borrowed a poncho from a guard shack for the really messy parts. My boots didn’t fare so well.

It was then that Reece noticed her boots and lower legs were covered in blood up to just below her knees. Karina noticed him looking at her lower legs.

“Yeah, I know,” she pouted. “I gotta get cleaned up again. Well, let’s go.”

She yanked the cell door open to let Reece out. Reece stood there for a moment glaring at the small platinum-blonde girl.

“You and I need to work on our communication,” Reece chastised, quickly pointing back and forth between the two of them.

“Are you angry that I locked you up?” she asked innocently. “I was just trying to keep you safe. Tell you what...if you think I’ve been bad, you can spank my bare bottom until you feel that I’ve been sufficiently punished.”

Reece rolled his eyes. As he exited the cage, he hung his head, shaking it back and forth slowly at the incorrigible girl. Seeming satisfied that her subtle torture was working, she led him out to where most of the fighting had taken place. As they stepped out of the building, Reece’s jaw dropped. She had taken him back to the area where they had first entered the prison complex. The whole area was barely recognizable. It looked more like a battleground than a garden and prison yard. There were several corpses of the mutated zombie wolves, dozens of regular undead strewn about, and a few giant heaps of “mutated fleshy monster” so pulverized that he couldn’t even tell what they once were.

As for the cannibals, he only made out the occasional body part here and there. They must have been torn apart, down to the last man. He located his katana over by the destroyed gate. Several smoking craters were spread throughout the yard and the katana was lying near one of them. Carefully looking around for any hiding enemies, he walked over to the weapon and collected it. It took a minute to avoid all the dismembered body parts and pools of blood everywhere. Finding their bags took longer, but he managed to find them inside the prison’s guard shack. He was glad to get out of the nightmarish landscape outside.

Within the shack, he found a few spare clips and accessories that would fit the old Beretta 92FS’s he had acquired. He grabbed a dual holster for the weapons and a couple of empty canteens. He considered pilfering a heavy weapon from the dead but didn’t want to carry it with them. Taking a deep breath, he exited the shack back into the prison yard. He did a check of the garden and grabbed a few carrots, green beans, and radishes that had managed to remain free of blood and viscera.

While he collecting things, he forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. Not just to do it quickly and efficiently, but also to ignore the horrific aftermath of the gruesome battle that had just taken place. Meanwhile, Karina had leaped to the top of the prison complex to get their bearings and scout out any incoming zombies or other dangers that might be about to present themselves. She jumped down from the building to land near Reece just as he was finishing up.

“I hate being the bearer of bad news, but we’ve got incoming,” she stated.

“From where?”

“Well, from the west, south, and northwest as best as I can tell.”

“Jupiter’s cock! Well, I guess we’d better get out of here and keep heading east,” responded Reece as anxiety gripped him.

Karina grabbed her spear and the two left the way they had come. They skirted around the prison to the north and continued heading to the east. The two of them were gone long before whatever had been attracted to the prison made it there in search of blood and death. After they had walked a while, Karina stopped abruptly.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Shhhh...”

Reece waited as Karina closed her eyes and cocked her head.

“I can hear running water,” she said, pointing off to the left. “It’s this way. Let’s go!”

They headed the way she had indicated and within minutes, they came across a river snaking its way through the woodlands. Karina wasted no time wading out into the fast-flowing water to clean off her boots and legs. A trail of red snaked its way downstream from her as the flowing water did its work on the drying blood covering her lower body. Turning to face upstream, she bent down and sniffed the water. Nodding to herself, she tasted it and spit it out.

“Good. This water is safe to drink if anyone’s thirsty,” Karina spoke out loud to no one in particular.

Reece took the hint and rinsed out the canteens he had procured from the prison complex before filling them up again. Downing one completely, he refilled it before standing back up. He considered the girl smiling hip deep in the flowing river before him. Now that Karina was back on relatively good speaking terms with him and they had a moment to think, something had been bugging Reece for a while and he needed to get it off his chest.

“Look...Karina,” Reece began as he searched for his words. “I have something to tell you. Full disclosure. The serum that the Order injects themselves with...well...sometimes it is injected in several doses, becoming more transformative with each dose. Well...when I was still on the station...they injected me with the first dose, and I let them. It was either that, or they were going to kill me. However, another crewmate slipped me a partial antidote...a small yellow pill. Honestly, I’m not sure exactly what it all did to me. I’m not sure that drinking my blood is the healthiest thing for you.”

Karina studied Reece for a moment. “Now, that is interesting. I don’t know why your blood tastes so good, but there’s nothing unnatural in it at all. Whatever they put in you, your body either got rid of it completely or absorbed it at the cellular level. I’d know otherwise. Whatever’s going on with your blood, it is completely a part of you now. And I’ll be honest, I feel better than I’ve felt in centuries since I’ve consumed it. Still, we need to know everything we can about what’s been done to you. What do you know about the dose that you were given?”

“Not much. It was blue. The commander said it would give me longevity and was also a vaccination against something called the haze, a poison gas released across the planet that renders all men infertile. The last thing it did was connect my mind with a network of other minds...I think it was the minds of all the people who belonged to this group, the Order of Purifiers. It was supposed to align my will with theirs. Basically, it sounded like brainwashing. I did start to hear voices in my head shortly before Sora gave me the antidote. She told me it would counter some of the negative effects of the dose I’d been given. I think it worked, because I stopped hearing voices and the nightmares stopped, which I believe were another side-effect,” chronicled Reece before taking a deep breath.

He had recounted everything he knew about the serum and antidote that together may have changed his basic human physiology into something else. He hoped it was enough to give the girl some ideas. She seemed to have a great deal of knowledge on the subject and Reece really wanted to know what had been done to him.

“That may actually be helpful. Is there more on the hard drive about it?” asked the newly curious lilitu.

“Maybe, Pasha had only studied some of the information on the drive. It holds numerous files that we haven’t even touched yet. There may even be files with the formulas for the serum doses on it. I did forget to mention that the serum was partially derived from the black stone. They called it the nightcore.”

“Hmmm, interesting,” said Karina, pondering his words. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it. Anyways, we need to get moving.”

They resumed walking along the river. The roving hunting parties were most likely closing in. Hastening their journey, they continued to discuss things while Reece frequently looked over his shoulder. He half expected another group of zombie wolves to jump out at any moment.

“So, from what you’ve told me, this serum did three things to you. Now, one of which was potentially neutralized by a fourth agent.”

“Fourth agent?”

“Yes, each change in your physiology was caused by a chemical or alchemical agent. Until we can examine the chemical make up of the serum’s constituent parts, we’ll need to make some assumptions. First, let’s assume that the fourth agent completely counteracted the mind-meld agent. Since it’s highly likely that the antidote was developed by the same mind that came up with the serum, any chemist worth their degree would have created an antidote that perfectly cancels out the effects of whatever it was designed to counteract, without adding any undesirable side effects or additional features."

"That should leave just two more effects, vaccination to the poison gas," she continued. "... and longevity. So, the inoculation they gave you of the vaccination probably cancels out this haze you mentioned if you encounter it. Since vaccines are biological in nature, that means that whatever this infertility gas contains, it must also be biological in nature. Otherwise, the vaccine wouldn’t work. So, that means you probably have specific inert surface proteins in your body. All humans who receive vaccines these days have them and they are harmless. It’s different from several decades ago when they used to cause both various physical and mental maladies in the people that were inoculated with the vaccines. So, that just leaves the longevity solution. May I taste you?”

“What?” asked Reece, suddenly worried.

“I promise it’ll just be a taste,” she explained. “Now that I have an idea about the serum, if I take my time and analyze your taste, I may begin to understand what they did to increase your longevity. I’ve already got a couple of ideas in mind. I just need to verify a few things first.”

“Okay. Fine,” Reece replied tentatively as he dropped to one knee.

He tilted his head to the side, offering up his neck to the smiling lilitu. She approached him gingerly and as gently as she could, nipped his neck slightly, and took a sip. She rubbed his wound and the slight twinge of pain he felt instantly disappeared. Then she stood there, looking inward as she sloshed the sip of blood around her mouth. She did this for over a minute before swallowing the blood in a small gulp.

“Mm-hmm, yummy...”

She seemed to be deep in thought as she considered what the myriad tastes must mean.

“Well, I’m confident I’ve figured it out. Please let me explain. After tasting so many types of blood over so many centuries, I can discern much from a simple taste. The Purifiers must have figured out how to stop cell deterioration. You see, as humans age, their cells change. They increase in size and have trouble multiplying as pigments and lipids build up in them. After that, they sometimes cease to function or begin functioning abnormally. There’s been research suggesting that this degeneration isn’t inevitable, and your bodies may be able to become ageless."

"After all," she explained. "... your bodies continue to produce fresh new cells for reproductive purposes, so why not produce them to replace the rest of your aging cells. And I’m confident that is exactly what is happening. You taste like fresh new cells, which is partly why you taste so good to me. They’ve found a way to activate your own body’s ability to completely replenish your cells with fresh new ones. This means that you are essentially immortal. Well, as long as you don’t die from some accident, murder, disease, or the like. And not only that, but you probably won’t age either. Lucky you.”