Vax-N
As far back as I could remember, the first memory I held of my childhood was a light. Not a warm light, not the sun the books spoke of, but a raw, white glare that burned my eyelids even before I knew how to open them. And then, there was the cold. A cold so constant it had become my only identity. I knew nothing else. The cold of the floor. The cold of the walls. The cold of men. And the white light.
The laboratory wasn’t a place; it was a permanent hum of machines and rubber soles on linoleum. I had never known anything else. This sterile, glacial atmosphere, far from all emotion. For I was not allowed to feel. I had been created for a precise purpose: to save humanity.
The miracle. The vaccine. The chosen one. The savior. Over the years, I had acquired many nicknames. None reflected any real attachment. Only research.
Yet, amidst this clinical grayness, there had been an anomaly in my memory. A stain of color. Dr. Aegis.
She was the first to place a hand on my cheek without wearing latex gloves. She was the one who whispered a name in my ear one night when the fever of the tests made me delirious. A name far removed from that code, that serial number I had always heard: Vax-N. — I’m going to call you Imunë, little one. You are a child, not just a research subject.
That name became our secret, my anchor. She brought me books, told me stories of wind and forests—things that didn’t exist within these concrete walls. She sang songs to me, brushed my hair, and repeated that I had a soul. That I could have dreams and a purpose other than the one imposed on me between these walls and the glass. The best memories of my existence were tied to Dr. Aegis. I would have loved for it to continue, but of course, the other researchers eventually understood what was happening. And attachment to a research subject was forbidden. The stakes were too high to risk involving real feelings. They had noticed the glow in my young girl’s eyes when she entered the room. They saw that strange smile on my lips whenever she was near. They understood that beneath her lab coat, Dr. Aegis didn’t see a subject, but a daughter.
So, they sent her away. One morning, she vanished. And I was alone again.
Since her departure, I had never seen another woman by my side. Management seemed to believe that maternal instinct was too great a risk for the “purity of the results.” Now, there were only men. Cold, pragmatic masculine shadows who saw in me nothing but an incubator for serum. To them, I had become “The Subject” once more. Vax-N.
These were the first signs of my silent rebellion. In the depths of the soul Dr. Aegis had described to me, I whispered the name she had given me. Imunë. A fierce litany I clung to. It was my tribute to her. My expression of gratitude.
Twenty-five years later, my name remained a protective breath around my soul. The only piece of warmth I possessed. The number on my medical file indicated an age that meant very little. Time had no hold on me. My skin remained a milky white, my hair an immaculate snowy hue, and my eyes… that strange duo of blue and gray that seemed to stare at a horizon they could not see.
Every morning, the routine was the same. They would enter my sterile room, their gray silhouettes moving in my field of vision like ghosts without substance. The passing years had granted me a certain form of comfort. I had a small sofa and a bookshelf overflowing with books I already knew by heart. I had managed to obtain a few markers, pencils, and sheets of paper, allowing me to draw lines my mind imagined. I knew how to read. I had always known, though no one had bothered to teach me. I also spent my days braiding my hair. Complex, tight braids, different every day. Between these few moments of “relaxation,” I was a prisoner to the hungry hands of the researchers. To them, I was just a subject, a guinea pig, a vaccine. I felt nothing. So, they could do whatever they wanted.
That day was no exception. Three of them entered, not bothering to greet me. I did the same. I rarely spoke to them. — We’re doubling the harvest dose today, a technician whispered while preparing his instruments. We need to see the results of the plasma transmission.
Doubling the doses. I was almost lucky. Some days, they quintupled them. But not all the time, because I struggled to recover.
The samplings were becoming more frequent. They no longer settled for a few tubes; they emptied my veins until my vision blurred and my heart struggled to beat. That wasn’t the worst part. There were also the electroshocks. The lumbar punctures without anesthesia, to ensure the results were as “unspoiled” as possible. There were also those rare moments when they led me to the lower floors to confront the faces of damnation. — They are the ones waiting for you up there, they would tell me. Vampires kill humans, torture them, drink their blood. They will hunt you down to subject you to the same fate. Here, you are safe, and you will be the miracle that saves us from them.
Seeing the bloodshot eyes of the vampires, their starved features, and the way they shook their cages to try and break free, I should have been afraid. Yet, a part of me identified with them. I lived in the same prison; I suffered the same abuses. The only difference was that I was allowed to eat.
Sometimes, through my glass, I watched them carry my blood to the lower levels, where the screams of the vampires were muffled behind armored doors. I knew what they were doing. They injected my essence into those monsters to observe the reaction. Occasionally, silence would fall abruptly, and I understood that one of the test subjects had not survived. Other times, I heard shouts of triumph. — Subject 42 has regained basal temperature! It’s working! they would cry through the intercom.
To them, I was an inert resource, a vial of blood on legs that could be emptied and refilled at will.
Once they finished, the three technicians left the room with their precious vials, leaving me alone with the silence and the familiar hum of the machines. The feeling of emptiness in my veins was habitual. A slight nausea, a veil over my eyes that would take a few hours to dissipate. They had given me back my freedom until their next need.
I dragged myself to my sofa. My fingers, white and thin, mechanically sought my hair. It was a survival reflex. Braiding was the only thing they couldn’t steal from me—a complex geometry I created in my own head to prove to myself that I still possessed this body. My hands set to work, crossing the snowy strands with rigorous precision, a fishtail braid falling over my shoulder.
Then, I reached toward my bookshelf. My fingers brushed the worn spines. I didn’t need to read the titles; I knew the location of every word, every comma. I grabbed a collection of ancient legends, the one Dr. Aegis had given me before she was erased from my life.
I lay down, legs tucked in, and opened to page 142. The story of a queen who turned into a bird to escape a forced marriage. I was reading it for the hundredth time, letting the words flow through my mind to drown out the memory of the needles. I knew this story by heart. I had the ability to retain everything I read in a single pass. Yet another biological trait from all the experiments my body had endured.
I turned the page, no longer knowing if I was reading or reciting. This story screamed within me like a call to freedom. If only I could escape this imprisonment, this life I hadn’t chosen. Nothing in me was real. I only existed to save a desperate cause.
Suddenly, the silence of the lab was shattered.
It wasn’t the beep of a monitor or the sound of a sole. It was a dull crack, distant, that made the very structure of the building vibrate. Then, something I had never heard in twenty-five years rang out: the scream of a man. A real scream of terror, not a barked instruction. I jumped to my feet, senses alert, the book clutched to my heart. This sudden movement made me dizzy, but I managed to steady myself.
A breach in the routine of my life. Something was happening.
The white lights on the ceiling flickered. Once, twice. Then they went out, plunging my cell into total darkness, troubled only by the red glow of the emergency generators kicking in down the hall.
A wild hope. No. Could it be?
A crash of breaking glass echoed closer, followed by the heavy sound of an armored door being forced open.
I remained motionless on my sofa, the book still pressed against my chest. My heart, usually so slow, began to pound against my ribs. Something was changing. The air, usually so filtered, so neutral, began to fill with a metallic scent. The electronic lock on my door emitted a short-circuit hiss. The hope grew even stronger. My door—that door, closed for twenty-five years—had just opened. If I were to seize an opportunity, this was it.
In the hallway, a vision of hell awaited me. The kind I had read about in books and often imagined. Red neons flashed, revealing bodies sprawled on the once-immaculate linoleum. Researchers, guards… gray shadows that would never move again. In the distance, gunshots cracked, muffled by savage howls and the sound of tearing. An attack. The vampires in the cages had broken free, or their kind had come for them.
I slipped along the wall, my heart racing. Near a body, I saw a long dark leather coat abandoned—a type of protective cloak used by transporters. I grabbed it, throwing it over my shoulders to hide my white guinea-pig clothes and my hair. Heart pounding, I slid silently through the corridor, blinded by the dark. I felt the wall, using its support to move forward. I had never been out like this. I didn’t even know where the exit was. So, I trusted my instinct, following the cold.
Then, at a turn in the corridor, I crossed paths with a vampire. A real one. At liberty. He was right there, three meters from me, leaning over a victim. I stopped, not knowing how to react. Run? Go toward him? There was something strange about him, something I had never seen. A kind of black illumination around him, glowing intensely. I had seen something like it on the others, but it was very faint. Almost extinguished. Here, this glow encircling him possessed a strange vivacity. Like a fire. It even warmed me, like a brazier in this glacial immensity.
He straightened up, abandoning his victim to their fate. I thought he was going to lunge at me, but he continued on his way without even looking at me. He sniffed the air, his nostrils flaring violently, seeking prey, a scent, a trace of human life. His eyes passed over me without stopping, as if I were just furniture, a spot in the scenery. To him, I was the void. I didn’t exist. Was that it? I existed for no one. Men tortured me. They gave me no consideration. And vampires didn’t see me. I was nothing to anyone.
I continued my way, running on tiptoe through the smoke and the screams. I managed to find evacuation signs and followed them, climbing stairs I had never ascended, until I reached an armored door held ajar by a corpse.
I pushed the door with all my strength. I lunged into the immensity, but the first step outside the concrete was sensory agony.
The air didn’t just enter my lungs; it assaulted them. It was a moving mass, thick, charged with particles and life, suffocating me more surely than the sterile vacuum of my cell. My lungs, accustomed to an atmosphere filtered to the millimeter, burned under the bite of pure oxygen. I clutched my throat, seized by a coughing fit, my knees hitting the uneven ground.
The world was too big. The absence of walls gave me a vertigo so violent I had to close my eyes to keep from vomiting. There were no more landmarks, no more straight lines, no more ceiling to contain my fears. The night sky weighed on my shoulders like a velvet shroud too heavy, crushing me with its infinity. Every rustle of a leaf, every whistle of the wind in the laboratory’s metal structures behind me echoed like a clap of thunder.
Terror paralyzed me. For a moment, just one moment, the urge to turn back gripped my heart. I wanted my glass window back, my library, my cold but predictable certainties. Back there, I knew who I was. Here, under this dome of mute stars, I was but a speck of dust ready to be swept away. My fingers clenched on the rough fabric of the leather coat, my eyes desperately seeking the armored door I had just crossed.
So this was the outside? This implacable gravity? This powerful force? Savage? This was the life I had read about from the cold walls of my room… I wasn’t going to give up. Not now. Even if I was terrified.
I forced my legs to unfold. Every muscle in my body, atrophied by years of forced sedentary life, screamed in pain. I took one step, then two, moving away from the glowing red of the fire beginning to consume the complex. I didn’t look back. The darkness swallowed me, but I didn’t care.
Suddenly, my right foot sank into something different. It wasn’t the hardness of rock or the sharp edge of rubble. It was supple. Damp. Almost alive. I froze, breath short, and dared to look down. Under the pale light of the moon, thousands of fine, dark stalks bent under my weight before straightening with a silken shimmer. I crouched slowly, reaching a trembling hand toward the ground. My fingers brushed the cool, slightly prickly texture, covered in a dew that seemed to me the most precious thing I had ever touched. — Grass… I whispered, my voice but a dry crack in the night.
That was it. Life wasn’t a medical concept. It was this sensation of damp cold against my palm, this tender resistance of the soil. I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply despite the burn.
Freedom was here. It was vast, terrifying, and glacial. It would demand a price my glass body wasn’t yet ready to pay, but as the first shiver of real cold ran down my spine, I knew I would never return to the raw light of men.
The journey was beginning, and the world, in all its fury, was waiting for me. So, I ran, letting the night envelop me, a nearly hysterical laugh scattering behind me, like the mists of the life I was leaving to burn.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCENTS
OLFACTORY FILE N°05: THE NIGHT
Technical Designation: Nocturnal Infinity | Category: Atmospheric / Identity
“Humans believe the night is uniform. They ignore that it sheds its skin depending on where it settles. Between the asphalt breathing back its heat and the humus drinking the moon, the night is a territory of a thousand borders I have paced for twenty centuries.”
SENSORY PROFILE
TOP NOTE (The Urban): A metallic and electric acidity. It is the taste of neon, iron dust, and cooling asphalt. In the city, the night smells of inert mineral and oil; a “gray” scent that saturates the senses and masks prey.
HEART NOTE (The Savage): A scent of damp moss, black earth, and pine resin. This is the smell of forests. A living, deep fragrance, where the perfume of lichen mingles with the fur of awakening beasts.
BASE NOTE (The Essence): A note of absolute cold. It is not a smell, but a sensation of purity, like crushed ice. It is the scent of the void between the stars, the moment when the air becomes so crystalline it seems to shatter with every breath.
TACTICAL ANALYSIS
Ash adapts his hunt according to the texture of the night:
Urban Blurring: In the city, scents stagnate. One must filter the pollution to isolate the trail of a carotid. The urban night is a labyrinth of synthetic perfumes that assaults his millennial senses.
Sylvan Clarity: In the forest, the night is a perfect conductor. The air is richer, more carrying. One can smell a stag’s passage miles away or the shimmer of a leaf heavy with dew. There, it is not merely about tracking; it is about breathing with the world.
✍️ TRACKING NOTE
“I have known nights that smelled of woodsmoke and battle-blood on high grass, long before concrete came to choke the earth. Today, the night of certain cities smells of soot and metal, a sterile perfume trying to hide the living. But above all, I find the scent of the ancient forest: that mix of loam and rising sap. That is where I feel most formidable. In the city, I am a shadow among shadows. In the forest, beneath the vault of trees, I am the original predator. The night is not my cloak; it is my blood.”
