Origins of Blood (RE)

Am I doing the right thing? The question surfaces, uninvited, but I crush it instantly. Of course, I am. Why shouldn't I be? I will save millions—no, billions of lives through what I intend to do. That is the truth I cling to.

I lift my head, and the light from the high windows spills across my face. It is warm, though it looks cold as always. So absent, the sun, my color reflected in its unnatural hue. Distinct and distant, created by our god Helios.

"Stretch your arm, boy," Harmon orders, but this time to Eriksson.

He does not move at first; rather, he stands still, almost defiant, for several heartbeats. Then, with the slightest shift of his jaw, he obeys. He pushes up his long sleeves, revealing smooth, pale skin.

Slash.

The scalpel in Harmon's hand cuts deep and clean, his flesh parts, and the blood wells. I hear the faint hiss of it leaving his veins, but before I can even truly process the sight, the wound begins to close. The flesh pulls together, sealing like curtains drawn at dusk. Green blood still oozes out in slow, heavy drops, the wound stubbornly healing even as it bleeds.

Harmon works quickly, one hand steady on the scalpel, the other holding a glass tube to catch the flow. The faint tint of green stains his fingertips as the vessel fills. Not much escapes before the wound finally seals entirely—no more than twenty heartbeats after the cut was made. The tube, half-filled, must hold no more than five or six milliliters.

"No mix with herbs, no rituals, no additives," Harmon says, turning the glass in his hand so the blood catches the light. "This is pure, and one of a kind. Feel honored, boy—Eriksson is one of a kind."

His gaze locks on me as he skillfully assembles the syringe. Then, casually, he lifts his thumb to his mouth and licks off the droplet of green blood clinging to it, swallowing quietly with satisfaction.

Eriksson pulls down his sleeve, his eyes never leaving mine, and without a word, he turns to leave. Harmon makes no move to stop him this time; his attention is fixed entirely on me.

"What? You don't like syringes?" His voice has a rough, growling edge, but my stomach twists at the sight of the needle all the same.

He laughs—a deep, coarse sound. "You could always do it the old way. Drink it." His eyes gleam with a mixture of mockery and warning. "But trust me, boy… nothing good comes from that."

I shake my head. No way I'm drinking that stuff. Harmon's smile deepens, the wrinkles at the corners of his mouth folding into themselves, genuine in their mockery.

"But it really tastes good," he says, voice almost playful. I shake my head again, sharper this time. "No. No." My voice cuts the air, and with it comes a deeper, twisting pain in my stomach, but I don't flinch. I don't give him the satisfaction. Instead, I grip the syringe, clamp off the blood flow with a knot in my shirt and my teeth, and grit through the pain as every fiber of my body protests.

The needle hovers for a moment above my vein, the point catching the light, before I press it in. A sharp pang stabs through me—then it's gone, replaced by something entirely other. A feeling no human language could hold. Unmeasurable. This is the fifth time I've felt it.

It's like my blood itself becomes my fingertips, threading through every inch of me, alive, aware, moving. It rushes through me like the first hit of an exquisite, lethal drug. My eyes widen as the world tilts and bleeds into a muted shade of blue.

That didn't happen the first time. It started with the third dose—this strange veil over reality, this sharpening of senses to a blade's edge.