“LOOKS BETTER, MUCH BETTER,” THE DOCTOR CONgratulates himself as he leads Logan through a series of movements testing range of motion. “You won’t be running a marathon this month, but you heal quite quickly, my boy. Quite quickly.”

He offers Logan a hand off the examining table. As Logan’s feet make contact with the stark white tile floor, a woman in a white coat like Doctor Larkin’s comes in from an adjoining room. Separating the two, a large observation window which has been darkened to allow for privacy.

“The girl is all ready to be moved. She looks great, but I’ve recommended she take it easy for a while as her body adjusts to—” she stops herself short as she notices Logan.

Doctor Larkin waves as if to give her permission to continue. “We’re surrounded by vampires, Doctor Amel. Details about our gun-slinging medical marvel won’t startle the boy. And I’d say she’s fit to run that marathon that this one can’t,” he jokes, slapping Logan on the back. “Besides, I know you like to hear your own voice.”

The woman eyes Logan a moment before continuing, seemingly unaware of Doctor Larkin’s jab. “We don’t know the long-term ramifications of the partial blood transfusion. She appears quite healthy, but we haven’t yet done adequate research into the genetic makeup of vampires, nor into what changes the body undergoes when made into one. Her arrival threw our research timeline out the window since her case was critical and required immediate attention.”

“Partial blood transfusion? I thought you guys were just giving her a taste of the stuff to help her heal?” Logan asks.

“That was our intention, yes—but when she started hemorrhaging we had no choice but to act quickly,” the woman explains, grinning as though she’d won the lottery. “Obviously we didn’t have her blood on hand, so the transfusion needed to be allogeneic—blood from another donor. Processing the supply from the tanks takes too long and the only blood we had readily available and prepped was that which we were already giving her—vampire blood.”

“Why did she hemorrhage?”

The woman shrugs. “Perhaps a reaction to the blood, perhaps a consequence of surgery. In any major surgery it’s a possibility, so that’s not entirely surprising.”

“But something was?”

She looks again to Doctor Larkin, who shrugs and returns to scribbling on Logan’s chart.

“How should I explain this? Without getting technical, as soon as the transfusion hit ‘critical mass’—as soon as the amount of donor blood exceeded the patient’s—her body began repairing itself so quickly that we weren’t even able to remove the catheters or stitch her up. Her body ejected all foreign objects and within moments her surgical wounds were healed. Charlotte doesn’t have a single scar from the procedure, only from the initial injury where we were treating her with smaller quantities of donor blood.” She smiles at Logan. “My daughter is about her age and very sick. What we’ve done here could really help a lot of people,” she offers, looking on Charlotte with pride. “I think your friend—girlfriend?” She pauses expectantly.

“Uh, friend,” Logan lies about the girl he’s never even met, surprised the doctor doesn’t know more about the circumstances surrounding their arrival at the ranch, that they didn’t know one another prior to arriving and that Charlotte, for all intents and purposes, was just a stranger on a surgical table to him, Kiley, and Hunter—though they did all seem to feel a certain attachment to or protectiveness towards both her and one another as a result of their unconventional situation. They may be the blind leading the blind, but no way were they were going to be the dead leading the dead.

“Well, I think she’s going to be fine—better than fine, actually. But just in case, we’ll check in on her regularly,” the woman promises.

“Check in? She won’t be staying here anymore?”

“I see no reason to keep her under such close monitoring. You can access the medical staff via the tablet twenty-four-seven should something happen and we’re just minutes away, faster than an ambulance were we on the outside. If you and your friends don’t mind helping her take it easy, I see no reason you can’t be reunited.”

“We will! It’ll be nice to, uh, have her back,” he promises.

“A bunch of thugs, that pack,” the woman offers apologetically. “Most of them here aren’t like that, or aren’t for long. Victor never intended them to hurt her—or any of you—but some vampires find it difficult to overcome their more, shall we say, violent urges. With that pack dealt with, I think I can finally bring my daughter in for her first treatment. If Doctor Larkin thinks we’re ready?” She casts this last question his direction and it’s met with his trademark shrug.

“What happened to them?” Logan explores, dodging the question he really wants to ask: who would bring someone they love here? Does Doctor Amel really think her daughter would be better off here, amongst monsters, than in treatment on the outside?

“Victor had them escorted to the tanks to become involuntary donors. Has he given you the spiel on Project Harvest?”

Logan shakes his head no.

“I’m surprised. This is his baby—actually, all of us involved feel passionately about the cause. You see, most of the donors are just people, like you and me, who volunteered, but a few are other Praedari he’s made an example of. I won’t ruin his sales pitch, but you asked about that pack. This punishment won’t kill them, of course—that’s not Victor’s leadership style—but while they’re left to contemplate the error of their ways, they can at least be useful to the cause,” she smiles. “It might be hard to see it now, but he’s an innovator, not a monster.”

The jury’s still out on that one, Logan thinks. He offers a nod of understanding to appease the woman who then busies herself with Charlotte’s chart and preparations for her release.

“You’re smart,” Doctor Larkin says, jarring Logan from his thoughts.

“Huh?”

“You got a lot of information out of her just now, but what are you going to do with it?”

Logan shrugs. “I’m curious, that’s all.”

“You act as if covert interrogation is the only way to get the answers that you seek. Have you tried just talking to Victor? Or the others? He’s not lying when he says that you’re guests here. Most of the security measures and isolation are for your own safety.”

Logan blinks hard at the doctor, unaccustomed to such a moment of clarity in his few interactions with him. His fondness for Victor might be touching were the circumstances different. A sharp knock on the glass interrupts their chat. Made two-way again, a perky girl on a hospital bed waves at Logan and Doctor Larkin through the glass while Doctor Amel talks to her. She’s dressed in jeans and an autumn-hued flannel with the sleeves rolled part of the way up, the scar Doctor Amel spoke of probably hidden underneath. Most people look small and frail and helpless after such an ordeal, dwarfed by a hospital gown and decorated in bandages, but Charlotte looks to Logan as rested as if she just returned from a beach retreat far away from this place. How much does she remember about what happened the night she was brought here?

Maybe more importantly, what does she remember about being here?