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and wait. The table glows with soft, cryptic symbols that would be of no earthly interest to you even if you could understand them, even if they contained the very secret of the vampires themselves. Some small part of you wonders if this latest development might be cause for hope; the rest of you doesn't dare believe it. You hate yourself for caring about your own survival when chunks of your friends and allies are still warm on the other side of the wall.
A stocky Amerind woman appears in the room with you, clad in nondescript military weave. Her hair is buzzed short, her throat veined with the faint mesh of a sub-q antennae. Your brain stem sees that she is ten meters tall, even though some impertinent gelatinous overlay insists that she is of only average height.
The name tag on her left breast says Bates. You see no sign of rank.
Bates extracts a weapon from its sheath on her thigh. You flinch, but she does not point it at you. She sets it on the desk, easily within your reach, and sits across from you.
A microwave pistol. Fully charged, unlocked. On its lowest setting it causes sunburn and nausea. On its highest it flash-boils brains in the skull. At any setting between, it inflicts pain and injury in increments as fine as your imagination.
Your imagination has been retooled for great sensitivity along such scales. You stare numbly at the gun, trying to figure the trick.
"Two of your friends are dead," Bates says, as though you haven't just watched them die. "Irrecoverably so."
Irrecoverably dead. Good one.
"We could reconstitute the bodies, but the brain damage..." Bates clears her throat as if uncomfortable, as if embarrassed. It's a surprisingly human gesture for a monster. "We're trying to save the other one. No promises.
"We need information," she says, cutting to the chase.
Of course. What came before was psychology, softening-up. Bates is the good cop.
"I've got nothing to tell you," you manage. It's ten pe