[Invite] Serendipity

[Bjorn]

CHEMICAL PLANT
6:43 PM

Rigorous training made it easier to fend off the fatigue of physical exertion, but no amount of training helped evade the iron wall-like exhaustion that descended upon him at dawn. To his own detriment, Bjorn too often ignored the aura that preceded the onset of torpor. As a consequence, he found himself in compromising situations upon waking on many occasions. To counter this he’d programmed a wrist watch to alert him of a thirty minute curfew, but it spent more time on his crafting bench than on his wrist. It seemed that no matter how often he paid for his oversight with blood, it wasn’t enough to keep him from repeating his mistakes. Slumped against the wall in a secluded corner of the plant’s basement, the vampire remained still as a statue with his arms crossed over his chest, unaware of the growing red stain across his thigh.

[Dhara]

She’d come across the plant in her frequent wanderings around the city. Because three jobs didn’t keep her busy enough. Inside the plant were vampires, which wasn’t a surprise, but the terrifying paramilitary type people inhabiting the place was. She did her best to sneak around and avoid detection, hiding in nooks, shadows and corners. It was hard to keep track of time down here, but she didn’t fall into a dead sleep like most of her kind, so it never really bothered her. The items she found while here helped to pad her bank account nicely, and when she got sleepy, she’d simply find a corner to curl up in. It worked out better that way, too, since she didn't exactly sleep a whole lot.

Which is why she was awake and wandering before the sun had set, though she could 'feel' it hanging low on the horizon. She passed a nook and thought she caught the scent of blood. She kept going, but then back tracked, a frown on her lips as she stared into the nook, trying to see if any one was in there. The lighting was dim, but the scent of blood was thick on the air. She inched closer and noted a man asleep. He had to be a vampire, simply because a wound like that would kill a human. Her frown deepened and she reached out to gently shake him, trying to get him to wake up. She had enough supplies in her little first aid kit that she carried, that she could treat his wound. But she wasn’t about to try it when he was asleep, lest he wake up and try to remove her head from her body. “Hey…” She whispered as she jostled him lightly. “Hey, wake up… you are bleeding all over.”

[Bjorn]

The discomfort made itself known. It seeped through the thick veil of torpor that had descended upon him hours prior, yet remained tolerable enough to be ignored. Still bleeding, the wound presented a hazard to his wellbeing, one masked by the numbness that’d settled in. It was only the jostling, unwelcome and unattributed to a familiar source, that sprung him from his unconscious state.

Habit —born from PTSD— reigned in his moment of weakness. Fuzzy-minded and disorientated, Bjørn reached into his canvas jacket for the weapon tucked against his ribcage. Without disengaging the safety, he pointed the handgun towards the source of his premature awakening.

The sun must still be lingering in the sky, else the haze that clung to him would dissipate much faster. Unbeknownst to him, the amount of blood he’d lost was far likelier the source of his sluggishness.

Blinking into focus the silhouette, his eyes adjusted until he could make sense of the superficial details pertaining to the person hovering too closely to his liking.

“****’s goin’ on”

As he straightened his back along the wall behind him, the pain along his leg surged through his nervous system, jolting him further out of his muddled state. “The **** happened? The **** are you?”

Unaware of how much time had passed since the attack, and unable to determine how much blood he'd lost, he disengaged the safety and tightened his grip on the gun. Practice had made him a good shot, and he would need a damn good reason not to shoot first and get answers later.