Chapter Text
Newt’s last thoughts would be of the precious samples he’d probably left unrefrigerated. His lab—apartment, really, but any apartment with a certain amount of corpses in it became either a lab or a lair—was a gummy, untenable space, where the fryer grease downstairs hung in the air and coated the back of Newt’s throat. And he’d left his samples unrefrigerated. What a waste.
It’s a stupid thing to be upset about when he’s about to die, but Newt supposes you didn’t find yourself at the business end of a lamia's fangs by being particularly smart.
The vampire is not more than five feet away from him. Newt can see the blue tinge of its sclera from here. Hell, he can even smell it—it smells clean, antiseptic, echoes in the juncture behind his eyes the same way chlorine gas would. The mouth opens, revealing blackened gums over sharp teeth that would just love to bury themselves in Newt at the earliest convenience.
Back to the wall, Newt acts on instinct. Piss-yellow coward's instinct.
He runs.
Not for long.
Newt's got enough adrenaline pumping through him to let him outrun even a vampire without one leg dangling limp and useless on stringed muscle but he rounds through the maze into a cramped alleyway—corners, he's thinking, there's no way it can handle corners on that leg—and very nearly runs straight into the second one.
It's looking not at him but through him with eyes that used to be brown but are now cloudy with blue throughout.
Newton Geiszler, you fucking idiot. You never run into a dead end. And corners? What is this, Formula One racing?
Whether it's the fact that Newt is still running on bullet time or simply that the creature's deadened neurons haven't quite registered that Newt is here and defenseless, for a moment the vampire appears suspended. A gelatin silver print.
The print animates.
Newt's heartbeat jitters throughout his body up to his teeth.
A sickly crunching echoes through the streets. A blur appearing from behind the vampire makes contact with its squamous portion and nearly enters. The skull breaks and dents around it. The creature's left eye pushes out so that it bulges and nearly pops out of the socket, still looking at Newt.
The force of the blow knocks the vampire to the side and Newt can see the source of the blur. A man. A very pissed-off man with a cane. A cane currently exiting an eye socket with a hideous scraping.
A world in which the local greengrocer came running to his aid with a ball-peen hammer seems more realistic than this discrepancy in a sweater.
Absurdly, Newt's first thought upon noticing that the guy beating on a vampire with a carbon-fiber cane is wearing a sweater is that, dude, that's going to get stained to hell.
Then the cane makes contact again and nearly wrenches the jawbone off completely with a gruesome crunch, leaving it dislocated and tethered on one side by shining ligaments. Someone—Newt—releases a terrified whimper. And then he thinks, screw the guy's sweater, he is getting out of here.
Ahead of him, a vampire hunter and his prey. Behind him and to the left, an enraged vampire. Run like hell to the right it is.
The street is pitted and hostile and Newt is, unfortunately for him, not known for his athleticism or balance. His ankle crunches on twisted setts and Newton plummets facefirst. Blood and grit invades his mouth. He rolls it between his tongue and teeth, tasting years of pollution in the process. His glasses. Where are his glasses?
He's rubbing frantically at the street hoping for unbroken lenses and listening for movement. Which is really difficult, on account of the fact that there is a vampire getting absolutely pulverised nearby. And if he can hear that, vampire one can hear it. And Newt is getting desperate. And Newt can't see a thing without his glasses.
"Don't get me don't get me don't get me don't get me," he whispers to himself.
A dark smear stumbles out into blue light. Another, waving frantically and looking significantly more human-shaped, joins it. And Newt finds his glasses.
Newt gratefully thrusts the world back into focus in time to watch vampire one approach. He yelps and the hunter turns towards Newt for a second.
"Behind!" Newt shrieks, heedless of any potential language barrier, and points wildly in the universal language.
The man swings behind him in time but the creature is fast and running on a leg that's mostly there. Which is mostly enough for it. The cane catches it on the neck and not on the skull like one would have hoped. The vampire bows its head and the hunter uses his momentum to thrust the two vampires into each other and swing.
Vampire blood, it wasn’t like that of humans. It was an indigo-blue, nearly black, and dripped off of them in a thick, gluttinous manner. Right now, it was raining down on the cobbles like the road was sweating ink. Judging by the stain on his own collar, Newt’s own blood is still, blessedly, red. And flowing with the standard viscosity
Number one finally crumples. The hunter keeps hammering at it. The corpse—vampires looked so human, were human, it's more like a corpse than a carcass—soon resembles stygian blue hamburger meat.
The hunter takes the time to wipe off his cane and tuck his shirt back in, which Newt watches incredulously. Then, still gasping with exertion, he turns to Newt and very pointedly stares as he lifts his left arm and aggressively gestures for Newt to leave.
Newt is not going to sit here and argue with that.
Recording start.
"Oh six hundred hours... or thereabouts.
"Almost got killed trying to get scraps to work with. Had to deal with a hunter. They’re.. ah, they're cool dudes, I respect their whole thing when they’re not trying to just punch their way out of a threat to all humanity, but man."
Newt laughs.
"I don’t need that stress in my life. And this guy is..."
He huffs.
"I mean, the EUDC must have exactly one Jaeger in this city and I have the luck to meet him.
"Anyway, no... ah, new specimens were acquired. The current specimen is still at Park Stage 3, external development largely consistent with Huxley stage two. Based on the composition of humeral bone marrow and my subjective observations I would classify internal development as a Geiszler stage 2 with a score of 5.
"Definitely... uneven development. I don't like that at all. It looks a lot worse on the outside than on the inside. Really prefer that the other way around, you know? Subject remains at early stage of vampirism. Few symptoms. Completed angiogenesis, which is really the important part. I would expect to be getting usable data in about two weeks."
Recording end.
He sees the hunter around a few more times after that, always at night. Purchasing cigarettes, waiting for the lights to change at crosswalks long after everyone else has crossed. On one occasion, seated on a park bench after curfew, watching Newton. Looking away when he's caught.
Well, thinks Newt, if he's watching me, then I'm watching him right back.
"Beni hastaneye götürmen gerekmiyormuydu, Jaeger?"
Newt finally corners him at the grocery. Sneaks a quick look at the pack in the guy's hands: Winston Reds. Doesn't matter, really; Newt can't tell the difference between different brands of cigarettes.
"Er, Almanca? İngilizce?" Okay, yeah. He figured.
"I thought you people escorted possible victims to the hospital. It's the law." So is a civilian being out after curfew, but Newton guesses Mr. Sweater Vest is more of a stickler for the rules than he is. Even with that cane. In the light and up close, Newt can see that it's got a sharpened hook and, oddly, wolf carvings. Winston Reds, wolf-carving cane, elbow patches.
"You were clearly uninjured." Oh, and apparently a British accent. What, Queen's English? Sure. Of everything, the British accent is what throws Newt off. Though, at the same time, it's perfectly expected.
"Yeah, hey, thanks to you. Newt Geiszler, happily not lamia food." Newt reaches his right hand out for a handshake.
The man doesn't take it. "Gottlieb."
Less “action hero” cold and more “asshole” cold. Newt revises his opinion of mysterious Mr. Gottlieb.
Still, he really does want to know what a licensed hunter is going here in no man's land. And the whole "life-saving" thing necessitates, he thinks, a little conversation. Even if it is against his best interests. "So. You're a Jaeger. I didn't know they stationed any around here."
Gottlieb pays for his cigarettes, dour. Up close, his eyes are clearly bloodshot from late nights and smoking. "They don't."
"So..."
"So, I think that unless you are somehow EUDC personnel, that you should neither be out after curfew nor asking me to reveal organisational practices." He gives Newt an odd look. "You're not, are you?"
"Yeah, no. I'm kind of... unemployed. Very happily unemployed, I mean. Kind of busy with my own research. I'm kind of a basement biologist, not really a basement, actually, it's six floors up and a real pain to get to, more like an attic biologist, but—"
"You're a researcher?" Gottlieb perked up a bit.
Here it was, Newt's favorite part of any introduction. He drops in his 6 doctorates expecting to stun this guy, as he had so many others. Instead, Gottlieb purses his lips.
A particularly derisive advisor had once informed Newt that he was steeped in the "participation trophy" mentality. That was a laugh. Participation trophies were for people that didn't win.
But he had gotten six PHDs—at MIT, come on—and not getting a response rubbed him the wrong way just a little bit. So maybe he was entitled. Rightfully.
"You think yourself very brilliant for someone who seems to have enjoyed schooling more than research."
"Oh, piss off!" Newt follows Gottlieb out of the store. "I'll have you know I'm a real expert in lamia business! You know, the stuff you happen to make a living off of."
The streets are bustling even though there's only about an hour to curfew. Well, officially an hour. The curfew everyone actually followed would set in in about two hours.
That right there was something amazing about humanity. You could give them any sort of threat to their lives, X number of years to total annihilation, please oh please do these simple things to save yourself and the rest of your species, and they'd still chafe under the rules.
He couldn't stand them. Which was hypocritical. Whatever.
They sit on a park bench. Really, Gottlieb sits and Newt follows. Gottlieb lights a cigarette. Newt thinks, hey, exhibit A. Cancer, much? Secondhand smoke, anyone?
"Am I to presume, Newt, that you are Dr. Newton Geiszler, of 'Tissue regeneration and gene regulation in Mueller's disease'?'
"'Mueller's disease', what a joke. Can you believe they wouldn't let anyone officially call it what it was?"
"I'm sure the widower Mueller would love to hear about what a joke his wife's sacrifice was."
Yeah. That was something. Newton wonders who the hunter that finally killed Dr. Mueller was. Think they even recognised her? Little chance they did. The unfortunate Dr. Mueller, reduced to an obstacle.
Gottlieb takes a long drag off his cigarette. Exhales. "Dr. Geiszler. I thought you'd be older. And..." He looks at Newt's hands. Gottlieb's bottom eyelashes are distinct and segmented like spider's legs. Self-conscious, Newt can't help but ball his hands into fists. "Not quite so tattooed."
He's hardly as tattooed as Gottlieb seems to think. The baroque-elaborate knots of blue sinew and teeth on his forearms don't even reach down to the knuckles. It does look good with his black nails, though. Very striking, in his opinion.
"I have read everything you've published," Gottlieb continues. "You are widely cited."
So he was. "It's always nice to meet a fan," Newt grins. "Want me to sign your chest?"
Gottlieb rolls his eyes.
Recording start.
“Jesus, it looks like it's been through a paper shredder. If I didn’t know better, I’d say these things were self-destructing. Of course, the fact that their insane healing factor turns their organs into mush if they regenerate too much, and the fact that, man, you've got to really pulverise them if you want them to say down explains most of that.
"It's actually pretty genius for a parasite preying on humans. If the lamia is in a situation where it's regenerating that much tissue, it's already pretty much screwed. So why not give yourself the extra five seconds you need to chomp down?
"As a bonus, you don't leave much of use behind.
"On that note, revisit the “bioweapon” theory. Because, wow. Nature makes some crazy shit, but that's insane.
"Just a note for future historians listening to this: science got screwed over. It did! These guys would hear that you needed something to look at so you could, oh I don't know, figure out what this threat to humanity is all about, and so what they do is they bring you what amounts to blue goop because they smashed a lamia to bits with a hammer or something, and regulations say everything has to go through a proper chain of possession, and lamia are already goddamn dead, and so by the time my sample gets to me, it's mush! They might as well scrape roadkill off the side of the road and tell me it's a vampire! What am I supposed to do with this, taste it? Because I sure as hell can't be doing much else!
"It tastes bad. And tasting it doesn't tell me much about what they're like except that they taste bad. And that we can confirm making out with vampires would be largely safe in terms of risk of turning. As long as you didn't have a wound in your mouth or something."
He takes a deep breath and continues speaking in a poor imitation of Gottlieb's accent. "Digression quite over, then. The period of spread should have largely ended, I think I'll be weaning off that inhibitory cocktail. This stuff is horrible."
Recording end.
Newt isn't looking for No-First-Name Gottlieb, exactly. He's torn between doing the smart thing—avoiding him—and finding out exactly what a EUDC Jaeger is doing where he doesn't belong.
Keep your enemies closer, they say.
Which is why they meet again.
They walk along houses painted flatly in neutrals and pastels, with twisted bars like so many ribs on the windows. The stains show worst on these streets.
The first month after Newt came here, he'd hardly go outside. It wasn't a thing like Boston, he didn't know anyone, he didn't want to know anyone. He'd have the distinct feeling that people were staring at him, turning in their seats to see where Newton Geiszler was going.
Remembering that sort of isolation, he can understand why Gottlieb, who seems to consider Newt a nuisance at best, initiates conversation anyway.
"What do you do out at night?" Gottlieb had asked, appearing suddenly behind him. "While I understand the value of studying their behavior, I thought from your previous work that you considered yourself a molecular biologist."
"Well, that and a biochemist, neuroscientist, physiologist, general freaky body shit researcher... Anyway, I'm blowing them up."
"Yes, I do suppose all of that needless graduate school had to go—Excuse me?"
"No, no, okay, that was worded kind of badly. See, I need tissue samples from lamia, but I don't do the 'fighting vampires' thing, and they aren't exactly rushing to cut off parts of their bodies to throw them at desperate scientists, so," Newt continues despite the fact that he can see Gottlieb working out the location of the nearest psych ward, "so, see, what I do is I plant bombs—small bombs, tiny bombs—after curfew, and then I wait for lamia to step on them, and I collect whatever they leave behind." This was definitely sounding horrible and suspicious even to people that don't speak English, as evidenced by the number of people giving them strange looks as they passed.
Or maybe he and Gottlieb were just taking up the sidewalk and yelling at each other.
"You are insane."
"That's not fair, though! The samples I get this way are just as useful, that is to say, nearly not at all, as what I used to get in the lab, and at least fresher, if I pick them up immediately." Which was something that he'd have to retire. He is not looking forward to any repeat of his last excursion.
Gottlieb takes several deep breaths, each punctuated by aborted syllables and strained hand movements. "That is—I—What you are doing is not only an enormous hazard to public safety—"
"I do mark them," Newton helpfully interrupts. He continues loudly over Gottlieb's ranting. "Turkish and English. It's not like lamia can read. Bright orange. Like 'danger get the fuck out of here' orange. And!" He raises his voice once again because, wow, Gottlieb was really insistent. "I clean them back up at night. Nobody has stepped on one! That I know of." People are definitely staring now.
Gottlieb leans in close and hisses at Newt. "Am I to understand that you plant bombs on the street, an act that I, were I in the Turkish parliament, would consider an act of German-American terrorism—" Newt lets the image of Gottlieb in the Turkish parliament linger for a bit. At this point, it couldn't hurt. "—spend the night lurking around where any monster could snatch you so you can run after something you've almost certainly enraged and collect its fluids, and worse, much worse, you have absolutely no regrets—"
"None, thanks."
Gottlieb mutters something indistinct that doesn't sound quite complimentary towards Newt or his intelligence. "Why," he finally starts evenly, "why are you not simply submitting a research proposal and getting your vampire blood through the proper channels?"
"Well, they're not giving it to me, because my research is, quote: 'off the rails and dominated by a perverse obsession with the worst examples of science fiction', is one thing."
"Hardly surprising, considering your second move was to begin planting bombs." Gottlieb stops, which means Newt stops in turn. Gottlieb grimaces, fishlike, and finally says, more to the ailing sidewalk than Newt, "I will take care of them for you, if you stop."
Take care of, that wording kills Newt. The Jeager training handbook has an entire section on how to interact with "civilians", including such condescending material as using euphemisms to refer to hunting. Newton knows this because pirate copies of these books are about as virulent as the vampires themselves.
"Wait, no kidding?" It's risky. It's a bad idea, it's the worst idea. It's exactly what Newt needs.
Gottlieb shrugs. "Vampires need to die, you need to study them. I think it's best for everyone." Glares at Newt. "No more threats to public safety."
"None."
This time he does manage to maneuver Gottlieb into shaking on it, and asks—insists, considering, hey, we're kind of partners now?—on Gottlieb's first name.
"My name is Hermann Gottlieb, but please do call me Dr. Gottlieb," Hermann replies unenthusiastically. "Gottlieb, if you must."
"You got it, Hermann."
Hermann's only moved here recently, Newt can tell that much, but it's only when they meet again at a grimy coffee-shop-slash-internet-cafe does Newt manage to chisel even a hint of what Hermann is doing here out of him. Because the Turkish government is bullheaded and cagey to the point of actively working against its population's best interests, and despite their proximity to ground zero of the end of the world they've never worked with the EUDC on anything. Terrible, absolutely terrible. Also, the best possible place for Newt to continue his work.
"I've been working on a model of infection rates, and it just so happens that Istanbul has a relatively high proportion of uncontrolled vampires. My presence here is not," Hermann admits, "official EUDC business. Do you think I can smoke here?" They're surrounded on all sides by men smoking and playing okey. The air here would be more accurately described as translucent than transparent.
"I would assume, yeah."
Hermann lights up, adding to the smog. "Wait," Newt asks, "how are you getting the infection and sighting data? They don't share that with anyone, and the databases are locked down tighter than my freshman year pants."
The question is completely ignored. Newt usually takes this to mean something illegal was done in the process. Which he approves of. Especially if he can worm his way into taking a look at those sighting reports. Hermann continues. "In terms of my 'day job', I'm a physicist. I'm currently working on a paper on potential applications of lattice gauge theory on lepton flavor physics, it's remarkably engaging." Yeah, Newt thinks. Sure sounds like it is. "Hunting is more akin to a passion project."
Every layer on this guy was a different lepton flavor of disorienting. Actually, never mind, Newt gets it. He would also want to spend his nights swinging a cane around if he spent his days holed up in his room writing about particle physics. It's not often that a Jeager can manage to hold down a day job. Newt tells him so.
"I adhere to a biphasic sleep schedule," Hermann responds. "Two hours in the afternoon, and two in the morning. It's more than enough for my needs." He motions for his fourth cup of tea. "I'd recommend it to you, but I take it you're completely nocturnal."
Newt shrugs. "It's just easier." Someone turns their board; the tiles are washed again.
They agree on tomorrow night, then, for their first collaboration.
They never do set up a place to meet. Hermann just says something about finding Newt wherever he is and he does. Which, Newt supposes, is kind of a hunter's job.
"It's not... Dude, it's not going to jump out at us."
Right now, if anyone was to look out of their window, they would see two men kneeling in gristle and giblets. Newt is pointing out any surviving interesting bits of the vampire to Hermann who sits, nauseous, cane at the ready. Without the haze of panic, Newt can see how Hermann kneads into his leg after every fight, leans harder on his cane. He wonders what kind of strings this guy pulled to get into the program. And why he works alone.
Newt is of two minds about Hermann. On one hand, kind of a godsend for his research, and already interesting to boot. On the other hand, Newt can just tell he's going to be a nightmare.
"I mean, look at this, look at this right here! Well, you can't see it so much, let me try this..." Flesh squelches at Newt pulls the muscles of the upper arm aside to expose the humerus. It's too dark to tell, but New thinks Hermann's gone a little green. "Come on, aren't you the one killing these things? You have Lamia Blue on you right now."
Hermann fusses with his sweater, the same one he was wearing the night they met. Either he has a closet filled with identical grey sweaters or Hermann has a godly laundry routine. Newt had to start wearing black just to avoid strange looks on the street. "I do not generally make a habit of playing with their insides."
Newt can't help it, he laughs a little bit. "Okay, whatever, but I'm not playing. Look." He exposes what he was looking for, a section of tubes crisscrossing each other on the bone. Most destroyed. Some intact. "Look at this vascularity! That's not the lymphatic or cardiovascular system, dude, that's a whole separate thing! This is what lets them do that crazy regenerative shit that makes your life a whole lot harder." Vasculogenic mimicry: terrifying, fascinating, oddly copasetic. The things Newt would have done to study the actual formation of the lamialvascular system would have landed him on death row three times over.
Hermann is still reticent, so Newt grabs him by the collar and pulls him closer. Shows him what he's fighting. "Look," he's saying, and the air of nonchalance Newt cloaks mania with is gone because he's irritated, irritated, damn it, by ignorance. Here is a man who risks his life going against creatures of legends and comic books and slightly, just slightly, trashy romance novels and he's sitting there, uninterested.
"I am looking!" Hermann spits back. "Forgive me, but this is not exactly my area of expertise!"
"Just look." Newton points out what he can on the brutalised remains. The twitching muscle, the cracks in bone where new marrow burst through, the way the third circulatory system delicately mingled with the former human ones, choking them out in some areas, and running alongside them in others. "This is it, dude, this is the stuff! Do you know anything about the transformation process? It's remarkable! It affects the host's behavior to keep it safe while it finishes spreading, and the development itself, it's crazy, there's an entire separate vein system in here, the body is basically torn down and rebuilt in such a short amount of time! You could write books on the secondary metabolites alone...
"How do you know these things?" Hermann is staring at him intensely. Perhaps appropriate, considering Newt still has a death grip on his collar.
He forces his hand to release Hermann. "I found a newly-turned one," Newt says. "I had the opportunity to take a few samples."
"That's—"
"Rare, I know, it's all their hormones going out of whack, they get all paranoid, reclusive... It's why we only ever seem to see Huxley 3's walking around, you know?"
Newt's messed up, he let too much slip. But it doesn't mean anything, only that Newt takes risks. He's always taken risks. Slowly, he pulls his right hand out of where it was buried in blue.
"I'd be more cautious, Dr. Geiszler," Hermann murmurs uncomfortably close to Newt's face. "Or you may soon find yourself joining Dr. Mueller."
The sticky summer air turns into cold sweat dripping down Newt's spine.
Recording start.
“The pain was… I can’t describe it. I mean, you figure you know why it’s happening, right? You think that because you get it, that you know that, on a really basic level, it’s just your cells dying while a tumor grows to replace them, no biggie, you think you can avoid the pain? Work with it?
Newt laughs
"Yeah, no. I just.. man.
"Second brain theory—newly termed “superorganism” theory. See notes on Taksim, Yenitepe, and initial Pieschen encounters. Parts moving after separation, though stopping after a significant period of removal from the part of the lamia that's currently housing the 'head'. Everybody assumes it's just reflex until the arm or whatever finally dies but... I don't know. I just get the feeling they're waiting. On edge. I mean, it's just a little bit out there, but I think every part of them is independent. Call it a funny feeling in my bones.
"I figure the EUDC's got, oh, I don't know, rooms full of little vampire parts begging to come back together. Cool. Slightly terrifying, but mostly cool if true.”
Recording end.
On the nights they meet the gutter swallows around them so that Newt, who should leave, can't. He listens to Hermann breathe. Wonders what's going on in there.
Newt isn’t as careful anymore. Though, could it really be said that he was ever careful? For himself or others? Either way, he runs headlong into the blue-black night and doesn’t look back.
His hunter behind him, always ahead of him. Everywhere.
There's something odd about Hermann. Newt can't put a finger on it but he keeps looking over at him when they're working and Hermann looks back and there's something there that upsets a part of him and wakes the other part up. Sometimes Newt wants to grind his bones into matrix. He wants to be closer to him than his body.
The road is empty.
The nearby pharmacy floods the street in neon red. Silhouetted against it, even Hermann looks suitably menacing. Newton’s flesh runs faster than him. His hand seizes up; fingers curl away from Hermann which a part of his brain has designated a threat.
Eyes closed against the blue splatter cutting a river across his face he hears Hermann’s cane hit cobble once, twice, three times. Why do you take on so many, he wants to ask but the question dries Egyptian to Phthalocyanine blue on his forehead. Hermann's cane hooks into desiccated innards and pulls them out jerking the creature along by its own connective tissue. It's no grislier than it usually is but tonight Newton is frenzied like he's never been before. He's worked with jerking and gesturing extremities, blown the legs off vampires himself, and felt nothing but interest.
The vampire, bless its dead and unbeating heart, is still moving, still squirming against the wall when Hermann delivers the killing blow.
"Every night," he murmurs to himself. The mass trembles and keens, healing fast but healing wrong. In some places it just builds up volumes of muscle that don't connect to anything, have nothing to move.
"Every night I come out here and I do what I can, I do everything I can, and it doesn't matter. I tell myself anything is better than nothing, but it isn't. Because every night no matter how many I get rid of, if even one gets away I can see ten, twenty, thirty stream out in the next month."
He turns to Newt.
The surrounding buildings lean in, transfixed, heaving. Their metal ribs clattering until the sound is bouncing off of Newt's skull.
"Seven years. If we keep going the way we are now, it'll take seven years for them to wipe us out entirely. Ten, maybe eleven, factoring in probable advances in technology and technique. If I turn forty, it will be nothing short of a miracle." He lights a cigarette.
There's a thudding going down to Newt's knees. His ears are ringing or maybe it's just that the houses won't let up, the inhabitants and the inhabited pinning them down.
It's a thousand times worse because nothing is happening.
"I'm sorry," Newt says lamely. Almost whistles, his voice is so dry.
The pressure doesn't lift until Hermann looks away. "Nothing to be sorry for, Newton. I consider you one of our best chances at a probable advance in technology." It's ridiculously high praise coming from Hermann. He begins prodding at the vampire with his cane, examining it. "This one's not too damaged, it may be of good use to you."
Newt watches Hermann’s head bend down, fixates on the first thoracic vertebrae. He wants to lick it. He wants to bite down. He wants to feel it shatter in his mouth. No side effects. Few side effects.
Disturbed, he shifts his gaze to the vampire. The only undamaged part of its arm, all indigoed muscle and blackened nails. A finger lifted as if to say aha.
The vampire is perfect. It moves. Not fast, not well. Hermann bludgeons it.
It's puddled by the time he's done with it.
“I’m sorry,” Hermann gasps. “They’re too difficult to keep down.”
“I know.”
“And too dangerous to keep alive.”
Newt’s nails dig into his hand. “I know.”
He knows a Hermann in the early afternoon that he’s never met at night.
At night, Hermann is a killing floor, a massacre, calculating sacrifices and best guesses and who to kill, when, where, and why. But when they sit down and just talk he’s a man and Newt is a man and water flows downhill and that’s when life is good.
Recording start.
“I’m not getting anywhere, am I?”
Glass breaks. It’s a childish tantrum. He doesn’t care.
More glass.
Recording end.
It’s when Newt completely butchers his imaging scan because he neglected to calibrate properly and he thinks that Hermann would have caught that in an instant does he recognise it. Because the hunter that became Mr. that became Dr. Gottlieb has become Hermann, and Hermann would hate that.
And Newt knows that he’d hate that.
And Newt really likes that Hermann would hate that, and the fact that he knows that Hermann would hate that.
Very typical of him. Newt just couldn’t resist the neurotic ones, could he? So he writes both his results and the feelings off and restarts his calculations because both of those things are what Hermann would do. But Newt continues to refer to Hermann as such and even adds a mental footnote to each mention of his name—and it’s either exponential growth or the Gottlieb-Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon that makes it seem like they’re so frequent now—that Hermann would prefer to be Dr. Gottlieb, thank you. Just between Newt and Newton.
Recording start.
“Scratch about half of what I said about my murderous impulses. What I’m experiencing is probably attraction. Which, wow, been a while, hasn't it? Dad would be telling me to go outside and go to, I don't know, the discotheque or something.
"Nothing to be concerned about. It’s only monstrous in the most mundane of ways. So, nice going, Newt. You’ve managed to mistake attraction for corruption. There’s that paranoia you were so worried about!
"Then again, it would make a lot of sense for a parasite to hijack the host’s reproductive drive to propagate itself. Toxoplasmosis is associated with increased and risky sexual behavior… Note to self: check dopamine levels when possible.”
He laughs.
“Maybe I’m losing fear of predators.”
Maybe Hermann is.
Recording end.
Stacker Pentecost stares up at Newt from a discarded newspaper. Man, that guy was cool. And Newt seriously respected anyone that could reference Blade in an official capacity.
The headline is about funding for the Jaeger program and that certainly interests Newt so he picks it up. It looks like Hermann is going to be a little late to their dinner-date-that's-not-a-date-Newton-we're-just-lonely-foreign-nerds-hanging-out, anyway. He almost skips through the slog of introduction; If you didn't know that the Lars Gottlieb had named the Jaeger Training Program then you were really living under a—
Gottlieb.
No way. Gottlieb is an insanely common name. Newt flips to the rest of the article just to check because there is no way Lars Gottlieb's son became a Jaeger and no one reported on it and there! A small picture.
A group of men at some kind of conference. Newt doesn't have context, for all he knows they're probably standing around high-fiving each other about how good they are at quashing independent and necessary research. Not that he's bitter. Anyway. To the left: Lars Gottlieb.
Huh. They do kind of look alike. Especially in the eyes.
"Terribly sorry I'm late!" Hermann bustles in. "I overslept, I think my alarm clock broke!"
Oh no, Hermann, you might get three hours a night. Imagine that, Newt thinks. And says. Simultaneously, really, to Hermann's annoyance.
They finally get to order. The place is packed; It's Ramazan, the days are long, and almost everybody is eating at night. He and Hermann fit right in.
Newt orders three desserts because, recommended protein intake be damned, there aren't many places to eat that nail not just one dessert, but every dessert. Hermann orders soup and coffee. A lot of coffee. Continuously. The waiter brings progressively more cups of Turkish coffee. Each time, he stares at Newt, as if to say please drink at least one. Newt just keeps pointing him back to Hermann, who shows no signs of stopping. Even as people turn to watch them, Hermann is completely unaffected. Newt would like to say the same.
Conversation lulls. Newt is on his third dessert. Hermann, in brazen defiance of the image of a cool-and-not-totally-insane madman Newt is forming in his head, looks down at the dregs of his thirteen coffees and muses that it seems like an awful waste of coffee. He then grabs his knife, looks up, and draws a clean line across his throat without breaking eye contact.
That rattles Newt. What was that about? Swinging his spoon around, he desperately casts for a subject to fill in the silence. "So, hah, got any family around here? Not.. Not around here. Like, in Germany?" He lingers on the last syllable, pulling out a prolonged eeeeeeee sound. Newton Geiszler, thy name is tinnitus.
Hermann's face drops completely. "You're asking about my father?"
"Um. Maybe. Lars?"
From unsmiling to a full-on frown. "He's not going to grant you funding for anything. You'd only be wasting your time."
"No! No. Not that. I just found it interesting, you know. That you're the Jaeger dude's son and you're a Jaeger and I've never, you know, heard of you? Ever? And you're here instead of out doing press releases back home?"
"My father, though he is loath to admit it, did not create the Jaeger program. And I am not a Jaeger." What. "I am..." he sighs. "I am an independent hunter outside of the EUDC's jurisdiction."
"In other words, you are breaking the law. And untrained. And so, hey, 'a hazard to public safety?'" Newton's Hermann voice is getting better by the way. Hermann doesn't seem to agree.
"I am hardly at that level, Newton, I've been through all the training, I'm an excellent combatist. I am qualified! I am simply.... missing a license." Hermann's lips pucker in that strange way they do when he's chewing at his cheek. He looks humiliated. Newt regrets ever bringing this up when things were going so well. "I hope you don't feel that I've lied to you." At this rate, he'll have a hole in his mouth and his lungs by December. "It's not the easiest thing to admit."
No idea, dude. You have no idea. The waiter is staring holes in him from across the room.
"Was it because of your leg?"
Hermann scowls. "No. That was..." He traces the rim of his cup. "After my rejection from the program. I continued on my own and got over my head." Flips it over. "That's all I have to say about that."
"Bitten?"
"Never. I would never be so foolhardy."
"Why? If not your leg, then why would they reject you?"
"They had enough 'why's on my psychiatric evaluation to reject five candidates." Newt imagines Hermann garrotting a vampire with his glasses chain. And then remembers the fact that he does have a very real combat cane. Yeah, he could see the licensing board take issue with that. "What didn't they write down? Avoidance, repression, obsession, it was all there." He thoughtfully sips his coffee. "I could have retaken my physical and it would hardly have mattered, but that sort of evaluation leaves a black mark." Chewing on his cheek again. "Especially after my father's testimony."
Why was Hermann telling him this? Newt had asked, but in the way that Newt asked just for the experience of being refused. By all accounts, he didn't deserve to hear this.
Hermann continues. "And to think I used to be his favorite."
It looks like Hermann is finally done inducing fibrillation until he takes a spoon and gathers all the coffee grounds together in one cup. He motions towards Newt's sütlaç and Newt acquiesces because, frankly, he’s losing his appetite thinking of someone eating those grounds. Hermann seems to have no such issue. The resulting slurry is something even Newton wouldn't put in his body but Hermann tips it back and sighs.
Caffeine used to have an effect on me is all he says.
His dinner companion is in danger of drowning his sorrows and ability to regulate his heartbeat in caffeine. Newt scrambles to ease the mood. “Hey, bet it feels good to get that off your chest." Hermann just shrugs in response. "My dad used to say something… an honest man is the ninth world wonder. Though if you'd met the guys my dad hung out with you'd know why he thought that.” Exaggerated laughter.
“Traditionally, there are only seven,” Hermann says. Smiling, eyes and spit bloodied. He has a really great smile. “And only the pyramids survived.”
Newt laughs again. “Well, I was obviously the eighth.”
And only the pyramids will survive.
“This was our waiter.”
“No. It’s his body.” Hermann’s gaze drifts over the body just long enough to ensure it isn’t going anywhere, and then begins its surveilling sweep over the looming rooftops. It would be better if he looked away in disgust. It would be better if he stared in horror. Anything is better than nothing.
Somewhere, there should be people dancing.
“Don’t you wish we could turn them back? Fix them?”
“It’s impossible,” Hermann says flatly. He shakes clots of blue off his cane. Spits into a handkerchief. His face is misted blue down to his teeth. The mist shudders.
Newt stares at the corpse. It had only been a week. Was he hiding an infection then? How had Newt missed it?
“Or,” he counters, “is it terrifying because that being possible would mean you killed him?”
“If I killed him, I killed him by not doing my duty. By not killing enough of these before they got to him. Keeping them around to try to cure them would only give them the opportunity to kill more people.”
Hermann looks back down.
Did Hermann ever feel like a monster? He had to, Newt supposes. Obliterating what at least looked human. What used to be human.
Newt felt like a monster. Newt was a monster. The difference between him and Hermann was that he had the arm to prove it.
There was always something violent about science. It was a dissection of the universe itself.
Oh, gross, what was that? Kill him if he ever started talking about the handwriting of God.
He ducks next to the body. The former waiter is recognisable, which bodes well for taking his head home, but the lower body is worthless. It’s completely pulped, Hermann evidently having bashed it enough to integrate flesh into cobblestone. Newt isn’t even sure this could be peeled off. You’d want to dissolve it, though that’d probably damage the street…
There’s a kid staring at them. From what Newt can see in the near-dark, he’s young, real young. Wearing a jacket entirely too large for him and waving around something that shines in the moonlight.
He yells something in Turkish that Newt can’t quite catch but he hears “my brother” and he thinks oh no and he raises his hands, nudges Hermann to—
Thunder.
Ah.
A lightning bolt claps through Newt’s left hand.
Something wrenches backwards and away.
“Hermann…” Newt’s other hand grips Hermann’s jacket. Then relaxes. Or the other way around. It’s all a bit unclear.
Hermann yells after the fleeing hunter—he’s just a kid, aw man he’s just a kid—calls him reckless and an idiot and a danger to society besides. Newt is trying to talk or breathe or do something other than thinking Oh man. Oh man. Oh man.
“He’s human!” Hermann is still shouting as blue begins spurting out of where a hand once was. Not quite human. The kid was better at shooting monsters than he knew.
Half of Newt’s fingers are completely blown off. For a moment there’s no pain, only a heavy lack-of-presence felt when he tries to move them. Like when he'd tried to move pencils with his mind in middle school. His head and stomach turn inside out and a chilly membrane slithers onto his back.
Shock. It’s shock.
Then God or the universe or the all-seeing-all-fucks-given of the world or whatever looks down at Newt and says Yeah. You should be so lucky.
The pain doesn’t blossom so much as skitter.
It vibrates up and out of his arm and Newt can feel where bone has become shard where bullet made contact and it pulses out of him. His world tips sideways. This can’t possibly be going on inside his body. It’s too big and terrible for that. Newton can’t breathe and his head is floating up into nothingness to match the all-too-much coming from his hand.
My fingers, he tries to shriek. Those are mine! His middle and ring finger are lying ragged like discarded cigarettes on the cobblestone street. Middle finger propped up, twitching, on the curb. The universe itself flipping Newt off.
It’s chanting his name and it is here and now that Newt has to contend with the fact that the universe wants him, personally, to suffer and that he got shot and that, oh God, that mangled thing attached to his arm that looks like if Spiderman’s web shooters fucked up in a massive way is his hand, oh God!
“Newton! Newt, please! Newt, O Gott, Newton Geiszler!”
Oh. That’s Hermann.
Newt tears his eyes away from his hand to see Hermann clutching at him. They’re on the floor. Hermann is crying. His lips are ragged and bleeding where he's been teething. And now Hermann is looking directly at—grabbing—Newt's hand.
Some base part of Newt’s mind that isn’t occupied with the pain and the lack of fingers recognises that this is bad. This is all wrong. The word incongruous comes to mind.
Hermann’s fingers are coated in blue. He’s holding onto Newt’s Spiderman salute for dear life. As if he himself had been shot.
A solution presents itself when Newt remembers why Hermann could never see his hand.
“Hermann,” he wheezes. “I need my fingers.”
“You need an ambulance,” Hermann gasps out.
“No, Hermann. Please.” He grits his teeth. Pretty sure some enamel cracked there. “My fingers. They’ll heal.”
Hermann stops cold. The world goes dizzy at the edges.
“What?”
Newt wants to explain but Hermann is already looking at his own hands and recognising, through the darkness, that that is not the right color to have on your hands after a person gets shot.
Slowly, Newt finds himself fully on the floor. Hermann drops him, gets up, and walks over, like he’s never walked before, over to where Newt’s fingers lie.
There’s a moment where they’re both staring at the digits. Then it’s over.
Hermann bends over, picks them up—won’t look at them. He silently brings them over to Newton. His tear-streaked face is ashen. He might vomit at any second.
His hands are shaking more than Newt’s when Hermann presses the cooling fingers to the stumps in their place. As he holds them there, Newt’s flesh crawls. Blue meets blue and brothers embrace, fibrous ligaments extending and weaving into each other, forcing out splinters of bone through newly-healed skin. Cartilage squeaking the names of the body parts squeezing and slipping against it: proximal, middle, distal creak into place. Bone melds, new nerve connections form, the incurably severed pruned.
It’s what makes vampires so hard to kill.
Newt screams throughout. Hermann only stares.
When it’s over, Newt is left whole and alone, Hermann’s vomit on his shirt taking the place of any goodbyes.
Recording start.
“My hand is doing great, at least. The fact that my kind-of partner looked at me like I ate puppies sucked but hey man, what are you going to do? If they don’t get it, I can’t explain it to them. Nobody… nobody wants to understand anything anymore! They just want to beat it! And you can't beat it without understanding it but apparently, making one tiny sacrifice is just too much compared to, I don't know, winning the war? Not me though! I made the sacrifice! I did what you couldn't! Me and Mueller and every idiot out on the streets while you just cut finding and shut down labs and think you can punch a pandemic into submission! You just...”
Clattering. The recorder chips on cheap tile.
"I need to see what's going on in there. In my brain. Problem: I don't exactly have the equipment for that. Solution: I'll have to appropriate it from local hospitals. Think that counts as medical tourism? On one hand, I can't get it at home so I do it here. On the other hand, I live here, and I wouldn't choose to have surgery here if you paid me.
"Note to any authorities that may be listening to this after I do that, I'm super-duper sorry I borrowed your truly subpar equipment to get maybe an inkling of what's happening to me. It's not like you were using it, okay?"
Recording end.
He restarts rounds of inhibators and hopes again to delay the inevitable. What feel like cisterns of medications settle into his arm, each dripping with a different name: lisinopril, leuprorelin, etanercept, lenanomide, clonodine. He takes numerous antibiotics to combat the opportunists eyeing his razed immune system. Thinks of what threats to the human race he could be evolving in there. Besides the obvious.
It's started again, without his noticing. He doesn't know why; the period of spread should be over but it's only been sleeping—not even that, it's been lurking—under his skin until... what? What inciting incident?
Precocious puberty, chimes the porcelain bowl his head finds itself in so often. Yeah, I know, replies Newt, I'm not stupid. Decreased FSH was kind of the idea. Downregulation. Upregulation. But it's not a process or a tumor and Newt already suspected but it's just a little too late, isn't it? Fuck him.
You’re changing, Newton Geiszler, the toilet insists, you're dying.
Six floors up and to the left is where Hermann waits for him. He's sitting on the stoop when Newt arrives home exhausted, carrying only groceries that will probably be left to rot. He's always telling himself he'll be better to himself this week. He's constantly throwing out produce.
It's as much a threat as it is a check-in. This is exactly why Newt never gave his address out.
Hermann's bloodshot eyes meet his as soon as he turns the corner. His cane is tucked behind his legs. Stupid move. "Newton?" he asks blearily.
"No one else." Newt resists the urge to ramble. Brute-force attacks rarely work on people, he's learned. He's sweating. They're both sweating. They look like shit and feel like shit and it's too hot in here by far, the air between them is like gelatin and restricts their movement just as effectively. Newt is trapped on the last step of the stairs and Hermann's blocking his way to the door but he won't even look at him.
"It's just my arm."
That at least does something. Hermann's eyes snap up quicker than Newt would have thought possible. His gaze flints into Newt. "For now."
"How could you?" Hermann bursts. He spreads out his arms to cover Newt's door like a spiderweb, as if he's afraid Newt is going to step over him. "How could you, knowing what we know? How could you do this to yourself, how could you let me trust you, work with you? How could you not tell me?"
Newt's voice is getting higher as it gets louder. He's practically shrieking. "I had to! I had to! I couldn't get a grant, I couldn't get any access to a bite victim, I needed to know! We need this, Hermann!"
He's not listening. They're ineffectually yelling at each other in a public space. Newt is oddly reminded of their first meetings. "Thirty! The average vampire turns thirty people a year! And those vampires turn thirty a year, and those turn thirty a year, it's basic math! Children can work this out! You know this! And you would run the risk of allowing even one more to exist?" The lady in the other apartment bangs on the door and yells at them to shut the hell up. Hermann chokes. His face and eyes are bright red. "And you would allow it to be you?"
Newt doesn't know what to say to that. Couldn't possibly. He can hardly navigate anyone else, why should he be able to decode Hermann? Why would Hermann even expect that of him?
Silence again. Newt's breath is gathering around his face like a mask. Hermann seems unaffected by the heat or his outburst. He's still with his head in his hands.
Briefly raises it. “Have you been—" Shakes his head again, evidently aborting that line of questioning. "Have there been any mental effects?”
“Of course not,” Newton bristles.
“And how would you be sure?”
Pause.
“Newton. Have you suffered post-infection delirium?”
Anyone would, after doing what he's done. Made themselves a target. But he can’t quite say it. Because it was unusual. Cortisol off the charts. And Hermann doesn't say anything to Newt not saying anything, and after an extended quiet during which Newt thinks maybe he's ready to die on his doorstep Hermann gets up and leaves. Just like that.
The first few times Newt saw Hermann after that, Hermann gripped his cane tighter and bored into Newt’s eyes. Examining him for signs of vampirism, no doubt.
Afterwards, Hermann avoided looking at him altogether. If he had, he would have seen Newt’s sclera teeter into blue tint.
Newt thinks he sees him again. He hopes he sees him again.
He hopes Hermann didn’t see what he just did to that stray cat.
Recording start.
“Does vampirism progress faster in the presence of other vampires? That could explain the discrepancies in Hermann’s data, what's happened to me. Are vampires meant to integrate until they reach a critical mass, enough to make attacking en masse advantageous? That doesn’t make any sense. It doesn't! They're doing better than fine coming at us one by one, why would they need to turn in groups?
"On a more personal note: I think it is affecting my thinking. My actions. I don’t think I have very much time. So, you know what, Hermann, if you’ve broken into my apartment after killing me because I turned into some kind of monster, you were right. You and everyone else were right and Newton Geiszler was wrong, if that’s what you want to hear so badly.
"The truth is I don’t think I did it to help people. I mean, ha, never a downside, but I just had to know what it would do, what I could do. I couldn’t stand not knowing.
"Did I think it was a good idea? No. Clearly wasn’t.
"God damn it!
"I was so fucking close!”
Recording stop.
So what if Newt just happened to think about Hermann during his autobiopsy? He thought about Hermann because Hermann was a danger to him. He thought about Hermann because Hermann wanted him dead. He thought about Hermann because he missed him.
Newt's hand puckers and bulges where it shouldn't. Sometimes, he thinks he can hear it squirming. Just growing pains.
Hermann had held his hand.
This hand.
I'm sorry, Hermann, he thinks, it's everywhere.
Flesh knits itself together before his eyes. It’s all foreign to him.
There’s blood on the stairs. There was blood in the entrance and the sidewalk in front of his apartment. The rest had been washed away by the rain.
It wasn’t red blood, which may have been a comfort to anyone but Newt.
He should probably have moved the first time Hermann showed up unannounced.
Newt follows the trail up six flights of stairs. The building is old, and the stairwell is cramped and oppressive, the steps steep and spiraling in a tight circle. Six flights up these stairs gets Newt out of breath at the best of times. As it is now, the air around him is sweltering despite the rain outside, and the deeper he pulls the air in the more it feels like attempting to eat pudding with a straw.
He notes with interest where someone had nearly fallen, leaving blue handprints on the wall and steps. The handprints are thin and long. Newt rests his hand on the clearest one on the wall. That’s Hermann. He’d bet anything on it.
This time, he finds Hermann completely drenched in rain and sweat. His sweater and his uptight-professor-with-a-cup-of-tea image are stained with blue blood. And there’s a dead vampire behind him. With him, actually.
“Uh…”
“Newton,” Hermann groans, “would you please help me here?”
Hermann has a white-knuckle grip on its leg. Newton can’t help but appreciate what a wonderful specimen it is. Head intact, torso nearly undamaged, arms and legs clearly bashed to hell by a neurotic man with a cane, but still there and not paste. This is kind of the ideal. And Hermann had only managed it without Newton there. That kind of stung.
Actually, Hermann had brought a corpse up here—dragged it up six flights of stairs, and no one had stopped him? No one had any questions?
Hermann echoes his thoughts. “This is a terrible neighborhood, by the way.” Newton pushes past him and unlocks the door. If this is an attempt on his life, it’s oddly casual. What else could he do?
Despite the fact that Hermann is the one lugging the biohazard around, he still makes a face when he sees the apartment. Which is, frankly, offensive and unfair.
It’s a nice place, really. The growing expanse of his makeshift lab space aside, he’s got his guitar on its stand for once, his books are where they should be, and you can’t even tell the couch isn’t supposed to be that color. Hermann isn’t looking at the couch, though, Hermann is focused on—ah. Lamia tissue samples Newt left out on the counter weeks ago. They’re completely putrid and seeping fluids three feet away from the sink Newt really wishes he’d put them in so long ago.
Hermann says “You’re going to get yourself killed” at the same time that Newt attempts to explain that it’s been a rough month and he doesn’t have air conditioning and it’s not like he cooks for himself all that much and lamia hardly smells compared to regular rotting meat and—
“What?”
“You are going to get yourself killed.”
“Alright!” Newt nearly shouts. “I really get it, Hermann. You’re good at killing vampires, I’m a baby vampire, you’re going to kill me. I really get it, dude!” He doesn’t know why he ever expected anything else from Hermann.
“No. This is… for you.” Hermann gestures to the vampire, which is really very intact in the right places. “I did not mean to react to your hand in such a manner. I was… rather afraid. Of how I’d missed it. How you’d lied to me. How I—“ He anxiously rubs the bridge of his nose. “I let you in and at any time you could have attacked me!”
“Same goes for you.” Newt keeps his voice low but light and clears off a space on the dissection table. They’re both kind of messed up, aren’t they?
“I never lied.” Hermann grabs the specimen’s shoulders, Newt goes for the legs. Together they hoist it up on the table.
He hadn’t. And Newt can’t lie to himself anymore. “You weren’t wrong, Hermann. I can’t hold it off forever.” Were that he could get shot in the fingers again rather than admit that.
“I know.” Hermann sighs. “But neither were you. I’ve run the numbers. If we keep containing instead of countering, we’ll lose.”
Silence aches over the apartment. They both occupy themselves. Hermann looks up at Newt’s posters like he knows what a Gundam is. Newt gets to work. The specimen was formerly female. Newt estimates early 20s. In the earliest stage of vampirism.
Look what I did for you. Look what I did to get back to you.
Hermann looks back down and he reaches across the table and takes Newt’s hand—the cold, mottled-grey one—and stiffly tells Newt to please do his best not to die or lose his mind or kill Hermann.
“I don’t think I can let you do this alone,” he says. “I don’t think I can watch you die.”
Hermann the incongruous. This foreign thing. His cheeks are slightly flushed and his lips are pink in a manner that Newt reminds himself is charming and not delicious.
Either way, something seems to snap in the wiring holding him together.
They’re probably not the prettiest sight—Newt and Hermann on opposite ends of his kitchen-table-and-part-time-dissection-area, Hermann leaning over the entire table, his neck craned and arms bent at strange angles to avoid touching the corpse between them. The corpse between them. There is a smear of blood on Hermann’s face which is quickly approaching Newt’s and when Hermann kisses him it’s probably one of the best things in the world. The seven world wonders and Newt kissing Hermann.
Later, they look over at the assorted viscera, Hermann’s ruined outfit, their implements of bashing and cutting and removal. It reeks of blood in here.