American Blood: A Vampire's Story Read Online Free

eyes away from the glass. “What? I’d remember designing an incubating chamber—a vampire incubating chamber that injects blood into a big ball of human plasma.”
    “And yet it’s true all the same,” a voice from behind them said.
    Ryan turned as the Director emerged from the air lock. “Explain!” he demanded.
    The Director walked up to the glass and tapped at the window. The closest technician looked up and gave a quick wave. The Director appeared pleased with himself. He had an invariably wonkish personality, but he now seemed almost friendly.
    “Oh, what was it called?” the Director seemed to ask himself. “The—the fish bowl. Yes, that’s it, the fish bowl. Your colleagues called it that, isn’t that so? Ryan’s fish bowl.”
    Ryan looked back at the sphere and realized it had been staring him in the face the entire time. Eleven years ago during his post doctorate work at MIT, he had designed a small acrylic chamber to synthesize genetic materials for research purposes. The department chairman had derisively called it “Ryan’s fish bowl” at the informal meeting to cancel the project’s university funding.
    It really did look like a large goldfish bowl being attacked by a dozen snakes made of glass and steel. The controlling software had been a nightmare to write and finally debug to the point where it ran without the operating system crashing every few minutes. It might have actually worked, but the project only achieved the prototype stage when a financial review recommended pulling the funds. Ryan recalled that his original chamber had been the size of a basketball.
    “Where did you get such a large sphere?” he asked. “That’s not a stock item. It would take weeks to mold it and let it cool, not to mention getting the damned thing polished.”
    “But it is a stock item,” Siri said. “What do you think those small undersea submersibles use as pressure chambers for their occupants? We even used the same locations for the fittings.”
    Ryan tried to get a handle on the moment, but even his hardened analytical abilities had reached overload. Death, blood, vampires, horror chambers, his own—albeit partially innocent—duplicity in the events of the day rattled his understanding of the known world. And now the door to a New World opened before him and it felt menacing, ready to swallow him if he dared to enter. He looked at the sphere again.
    “Is she going to live?” he asked.
    “If we can keep up the supply of human blood during the healing process we expect her to make a full recovery,” Siri replied. “Of course this is terribly expensive. We’ve already used up our primary source for the plasma and she’s all but consumed our type O whole blood.”
    “We’re arranging for other sources,” the Director said, reentering the discussion.
    “You’re having issues with antigen binding because you’re injecting blood directly into the plasma,” Ryan said, ignoring the Director. “You shouldn’t be using the gamma globulin fraction at all, I’d guess.”
    “We didn’t have time to get this fully thought out,” Siri replied, casting an awkward glance at the Director who raised an eyebrow. “There aren’t many sources with a thousand plus gallons of fractionated plasma sitting around—besides, it seems to do much better regenerating with type O. She seems to prefer it.”
    “What about when she finally wakes up and discovers she’s a captive?” Ryan asked. “What about when she needs to feed? Do you think she’s going to just sit still while you give her an IV drip?”
    “That, Doctor Ryan is why you’re here,” the Director said. “Your first task is to figure a way to feed her, without killing anyone, or at least without her killing anyone, if possible. The agency already has enough explaining to do . . . we don’t need any additional scrutiny right now.”
    “And how long do we have until she’s healed and wakes up?” Ryan asked.
    “At her current rate of