"How does the procedure work?" Caleb asked as they drove on the endless expanse of the Biafran Expressway that connected Enugu to Nsukka
"Sorry, what?" He asked as he brought his mind back from the multiple scenarios he had been playing in his head for the past hour. He couldn't help himself, his mind was that cruel as it brought up many ways the mission could go wrong.
What if the Vampires were expecting them, what if they had an accident on the road, what if the very humans they were sworn to protect attacked them out of fear, what if the procedure failed? So many what ifs with no reassuring answer kept swimming freely in his head until he was asked the question by Caleb.
"The procedure, how does it work?" Caleb asked again without any hint of impatience in his voice.
"Oh, uhh… well we will need the blood of a Vampire that is still alive. I will extract the blood into my machine which I built with my own hands and the machine will do the simple job of separating the Vampire virus from the dead man blood. Now this virus will be mixed intimately with a heart protector which ensures the virus never gets to the heart and fully make you a Vampire." He finished as he looked at Caleb through the rear view mirror. "I will then put the serum in pints that would be injected into the blood via a syringe everyday to maintain the cover of being a Vampire."
There was silence after his summary of what he would do, but he was not in the mood to dwell on those silent moments, he had far more important things to wrap his head around like trying to think of what he would do should their plan fail. What would the world dominated by Vampires be like, because he and everyone in Biafra knew that the Princess was well informed about the locations of every Bunker in the World?
"So from what you have just said, you mean that he would become a Vampire, and not just seem like one?" Davina asked as she turned around to look at him. "You must have forgotten to leave that in your theory which the King read and had thought was a grand idea."
Alexander gulped as he noticed her face grow even darker and the fists that Caleb had on the steering wheel grow more tense. He was treading on a very dangerous path now, even the Hunter by his side seemed to have placed his hand on a knife that he would stab into Alexander should the call be made. Of course he had neglected to mention the fact that they became a Vampire, not just seemed like one. They would have the strength of a Vampire, the speed, the eye sight and the hunger for blood. He knew that for a fact because he had been patient zero.
"I may have forgotten a few unimportant facts there, but surely how else would he be able to fit amongst the Vampires if he didn't drink blood without throwing up?" He asked carefully as he eyed the knife slowly moving and the glare darkening further.
Was this it, was this how he was going to go, a knife in the belly by a fellow Hunter? Due to his career path, he had thought that if he was going to go early, it would be due to a Vampire Fang and not a Hunter knife. His eyes immediately reverted to Caleb's own that were staring back at him through the rear view mirror.
"Kid is right, if I don't act and behave like a vampire, I will be ousted in minutes and the mission will fail. Good thing he didn't state that I would become a Vampire in his theory, or we would never be doing this. All the old men and women in that room would keep arguing amongst themselves about the pros and cons of me becoming a Vampire."
"But what if it does something to you?" Davina asked.
"Nothing will happen to him, I assure you."
""Oh really, that's because you have already tried out your little procedure with someone; who was it Alexander, who's life did you put on the line for your little science project?" She asked.
"Mine." He said as he returned to observing the landscapes that they sped past while also watching the civilians move about the country unbeknownst to them that their world would end at any moment should they fail in their mission.
"How arrogant did you have to be to want to do something that dangerous to yourself." Davina asked.
He had the truth on the back of his mind and at the tip of his tongue, but the truth, the real reason why he had been so focused on making a human a Vampire on a temporary basis was going to live and die with him. No one would know the real reason, instead they would know only a very plausible and logical reason. "Because I had thought that it would be very advantageous for us if we were able to send Hunters undercover before we wiped out an entire Vampire Legion. We could do so much good if we could live amongst them unbeknownst to them and destroy them before they knew what hit them." He replied as kept looking out the window.
There was another moment of silence, but this time the silence was more comfortable than the silence before which had been very tense and uncomfortable. Out of curiosity, he looked at his seat mate and noticed he no longer had his hand on the knife and looking at Davina he noticed she was no longer prepared to kill him in the backseat of the car.
"I guess you didn't have much friends while in the Academy." Caleb said as he relaxed his hands on the wheel. "What are the side effects?"
"There are no side effects as long as you take only a pint of the serum every morning." He said as he went back to resting his head on the window as the sped past the road.
After what felt like forever, they finally arrived at Nsukka and moments later were only twenty minutes away from Fort Crag.
"We will need a live Vampire." He said as they got out of the cars into the darkening environment.
"Yeah we got that from our little conversation in the car. The good-news is that we know exactly how to get a Vampire." Caleb said as the closed the car doors and stood beside the cars, staring at the distant Fort Crag that if they didn't know of its location, would have gone completely unnoticed courtesy of the spell shrouding it; a spell that had been placed on it many centuries ago when Vampires and Witches lived together in harmony.
"The bad news though is that we would need a live vulnerable bait to attract one of those blood sucker." Davina said as she look at him and kept her eyes on him.
"Why are you looking at me? I am not going to be your bait, I am the rains of this operation without me your boyfriend would never get within a mile of that fortress without being killed." He protested as he looked at Caleb.
"Good thing we are good at our jobs then. We will do everything within our power to keep you safe Alexander, I promise." She replied with a smile that did not calm him down, but instead raised his panic even further.
"You must be crazy if you think I am doing this."