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Enzo didn't know what day it was.
There had been a time when he'd kept track. Scratches on the wall at the back of his cage, a habit from those first years when he still thought like a man who might leave this place. The marks had climbed past a thousand before the fire, before Damon, before the cage bars had glowed orange and his skin had bubbled and he'd screamed his throat raw while his only friend walked away.
After that, he stopped counting.
The fluorescent lights in the basement of Whitmore House never turned off. They hummed at a frequency that burrowed into the soft tissue behind his eyes. Sometimes Enzo spent hours, or days, or weeks, with his face pressed into the cold floor just to escape the relentless white glare. The scientists didn't care. They weren't paying attention to his comfort.
Today, if it was today, if the word even meant anything anymore, the door at the top of the stairs opened with its familiar groan. Footsteps. Two sets. One heavy and deliberate, one lighter, faster. A student, probably. They liked bringing students down here. Educational opportunities.
"Good morning, 12144."
The original Dr. Whitmore had died years ago. Decades ago. The man standing at Enzo's cage now was younger, with wire-rimmed glasses and the particular blank expression of someone who had trained himself not to see a person when he looked at a vampire.
"Is it morning?" Enzo asked. His voice came out rough, scraped thin. He hadn't spoken in a while. "Hard to tell down here. No windows. Very rude of you, really."
The doctor didn't answer. He consulted his clipboard, made a note, then unlocked the cage door. Two assistants in white coats appeared from somewhere behind him, these people always traveled in packs, and before Enzo could muster the energy to resist, they had him by the arms and were dragging him toward the table.
The. Table.
It was bolted to the floor in the center of the room. Stainless steel. The surface was etched with shallow grooves that ran to drains at the corners, designed to channel fluid away efficiently. The straps were leather reinforced with metal, soaked in vervain solution that had to be reapplied weekly. Enzo knew this because he'd once heard a lab assistant complaining about the expense.
They threw him down. His back hit the cold steel and the vervain bit immediately, sizzling against his skin through his thin shirt. He didn't scream. He'd stopped screaming whenver they put him on the table at some point.
"Today we're testing regeneration rates under sustained blood loss," the doctor announced, presumably for the benefit of the student hovering nervously near the wall. A girl, young, with brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was clutching a notebook like a shield. "The subject has been on a reduced feeding schedule for the past three weeks in preparation."
Three weeks. Enzo filed that away. It was a piece of time, at least. Something to hold onto.
The doctor picked up a scalpel from the tray beside the table. The blade caught the fluorescent light.
"Standard procedure is to create an incision along the forearm, severing the artery. We'll measure the blood flow and time the healing process at various intervals."
He said it the way someone might describe fixing a broken typewriter.
The first cut was always the worst. Not because of the pain, Enzo had learned to divorce himself from pain, but because of the anticupation. The half-second between seeing the blade touch his skin and feeling it part the flesh. His body still flinched, after all these years. Still reacted like prey.
The scalpel sliced deep. Blood welled immediately, dark and thick from dehydration, spilling down his arm and into the grooves of the table. Enzo watched it flow toward the drain. A little river of himself, escaping in the only way he couldn't.
"Note the inital flow rate," the doctor said. "Slower than baseline, consistent with the reduced feeding protocol." The student's pen scratched against paper. Her heartbeat was rapid, rabbit-fast. She was afraid. Good. She should be. "The healing process should begin within thirty seconds. Watch the wound edges."
Enzo felt it, the tug of his body trying to knit itself back together, the cells scrambling to close the gap. But he was so hungry, so empty, that the process stuttered and stalled. The wound gaped. More blood slipped free.
"Interesting. Make a note. Healing significantly impaired at this feeding level. Let's see how long we can extend the bleed before the subject loses consciousness."
They always talked about him like he wasn't there. Like he was furniture that happened to leak.
"Doctor." The student's voice wavered. "Should we... there's quite a lot of blood."
"That's the point. Don't be squeamish, Miss Chen. You'll never advance in this field if you can't stomach the basics."
The blood had reached the drain now. Enzo could hear it dripping somewhere below, into whatever reservoir they'd installed to collect it.
They used the blood too, he knew. Tested it. Stored it. Sold it, possibly, to whoever wanted to pay for the privilege of studying vampire biology.
He let his head fall to the side, away from the sight of his own arm. The movement made his vision blur at the edges, gray creeping in. The hunger was a living thing inside him, clawing at his ribs, and the blood loss was making it worse. His body screamed for sustenance while the table drained him dry.
The blood trail on the steel was a darker path now, oxidizing in the air. He followed it with his eyes to the drain, then past, to where some had dripped onto the floor. A small puddle forming beneath the table. They'd mop it up later. They were always very thorough about cleanup.
"Subject is showing signs of syncope. Heart rate decreasing. Note the time."
The gray at the edges of Enzo's vision grew thicker. He briefly thought about Damon, an indulgence he rarely allowed himself. Thought about the escape plan they'd made, the year of blood rations Enzo had sacrificed so Damon would be strong enough to break free.
Thought about the fire, and Damon's face as he'd made the calculation to save his friend, or save himself.
Enzo had long since repressed his anger about it. Anger required energy he didn't have. These days he mostly just felt tired.
"Remarkable," the doctor was saying, somewhere far away. "Even at this level of depletion, some healing is occurring. Slow, but present. The vampire physiilogy is extraordinarily resilient."
Resilient. That was one word for it. Enzo had others.
They stitched him up eventually, after the second incision and the third, after they'd mapped the blood trail across the table like cartographers of suffering. The doctor had been particularly interested in the way the wounds on Enzo's left arm healed fractionally faster than the right. He'd made the student write it down three times, as if repetition would reveal some hidden truth.
Before theu moved him, they gave him blood. A single unit, cold from refrigeration, squeezed from a medical bag into his mouth while the assistants held his jaw open. It was barely enough to keep him functional. Just enough to ensure he'd sustain until the next session.
They'd learned the balance years ago, how much they could take, how little they could give back, to keep Subject 12144 alive and useful without ever letting him regain his strength.
They dragged him back to his cage and locked the door and left him there in the unchanging white light, his arm wrapped in gauze that was already spotting red.
The student lingered. He could feel her eyes on him through the bars.
"Are you..." She stopped. Swallowed. "Does it hurt?"
Enzo laughed bitterly. It came out as more of a wheeze.
"Everything hurts, love. All the time. You get used to it." He lifted his head enough to meet her eyes. Brown eyes. Ordinary. She probably had a family who loved her. Friends. A life outside this basement. "But you won't remember asking me that. By next week, you'll stop seeing me as someone who can answer questions at all. That's how it works. That's how everyone here learns to sleep at night."
She looked away. Her pem had left ink stains on her fingers. Enzo could smell the fresh blood pumping beneath her skin, so close and so impossibly far.
"Goodnight, 12144," the doctor called from the doorway.
"Is it night?" Enzo asked again. But they were already climbing the stairs, and the door was groaning shut, and he was alone with the hum of the lights and the blood drying stiff on his arm.
Somewhere above him, the world kept turning.
People were living their lives, falling in love, growing old. Maggie had probably long found someone else. Time was passing for everyone but him.
Down here, in the basement of Whitmore House, Enzo closed his eyes and waited for the next time they would open his cage for an experiment.