Fragment 18

Victoria had described what she knew of the new virus that had swept out of the orient and overwhelmed hospitals across europe. How the Americas had been slow to believe in its severity, and given it a firm toehold among their populations, before panicking.

The things that surprised the mermaid about her tale were… different than she expected. The mermaid's indifference to the number of deaths wasn't too surprising, after all, they weren't members of her species. Her incredulity over the speed at which the virus had swept clear across the globe, and her disbelief that it had been spread from an animal seemed so… scientific somehow.

Victoria watched her spit out a frozen blueberry and had to restrain the urge to smack the dangerous sea monster that could sink her little ship.

"These are already dead," the mermaid complained, as she pushed the bowl away. "And even the fastest winds do not traverse the world swiftly enough to account for the speed of the spread of this disease. I do not think this theory of transmission by airship is valid, it has to be enemy action."

Victoria snatched up the bowl and carried it over to the little refrigerator. She wasn't going to waste precious berries, even if there might be a bit of mermaid spit on them. She could cook them, that would sterilize most foods well enough.

"I told you, they have tracked it to people who flew. On jets. They can circle the globe in a single day," Victoria insisted.

"Describe how these jets fly then," the mermaid challenged, as she bit into Victoria's last lemon with teeth as sharp as knives.

"Let me just google that for you," Victoria grumbled.

The mermaid seemed to forget about the half eaten lemon, which she hadn't puckered up at in the slightest, as Victoria pulled her phone out again. The simplified explanation on the wiki page looked like the best place to start. She had only read the first paragraph, when the mermaid interrupted.

"Let me look into that device," she demanded.

There was a strange resonance to the words, as though something much larger was speaking, and Victoria froze. She couldn't have resisted if she'd tried, when the mermaid reached out and snatched her phone from her hand. She was still slightly relieved to see the almost delicate way the creature held the phone.

The mermaid gazed at the text on the screen, and actually sounded out the words. It was like watching someone fluent in English who could read a bit of French, but she got faster and faster at it, until by the end of the page, she was reading aloud at a normal speaking speed.

It was even more of a shock, when she looked up and asked, "Jet engines? Mach? Humans have measured the exact speed of sound? No, nevermind those things, how did you ask this device to show an excerpt from a book that would answer my question?"

Victoria looked away from the mermaid's frighteningly intense and curious gaze, and let her eyes focus on the scatter of stars overhead. Weariness seemed to be seeping out of her bones. The day had been very long already, and this was obviously going to take awhile.

"Maybe the easiest way to answer that is to show you how to search for information and look it up yourself," Victoria suggested after a moment. She couldn't help adding, "But please don't break it or get it wet, okay?"

"It has a distaste for water?" the mermaid asked, with a glance at the dark water that surrounded them on all sides. "Is it because it holds lightning in its belly?"

"Uh…" Victoria stumbled over the last question. "It runs on electricity, so… kind of yes? And yeah, I guess a distaste for water is close enough. It'll stop working if its insides get wet."

"I have seen how the sparks can be raised with silk and amber," the mermaid confided. "But I have never seen so much of it held within anything so small before."

--

"Are you planning to walk all the way?" was what Chris T'andy wanted to ask. He wished he had a phone so that he could look up translations.

Following a stranger that he could barely communicate with through the city just because he seemed to be the same species, if he'd had a mother he was certain that she would have been throwing a fit. He couldn't not follow though. He couldn't miss this opportunity.

Some of his initial excitement was wearing off now, and he noticed that Dragon was avoiding the streetlights as much as possible. He also seemed to know exactly what direction he wanted to go, but not which streets to take. Chris was actually quite familiar with this pattern of behavior. It belonged to tourists.

He was not so familiar with the behavior Dragon displayed next. The other vampire came to a halt suddenly and sniffed air, before making a beeline toward a small import market that was currently closed. A heavy chain with a padlock was twined through the handles, as though to make that very clear.

Dragon ignored the obvious and examined the doors closely, even running his hands over the chains.

"Hey," Chris objected nervously. It wasn't that he never broke one of the ever changing laws, but he broke them very selectively. Sometimes it was unavoidable, like faking his deaths and births because humans simply didn't live as long. Sometimes it was because following the letter of the law would attract more notice than breaking one.

Dragon replied simply, "Hungry."

There was a soft noise like a click, and Chris stared as the chain fell off the door handles in pieces, and landed at Dragon's feet with a clank. "No, no, no, this is bad!" he protested with a suppressed exclamation. "Est malum, c'est mauvais, es malo," he hissed as many latin like variants as he could come up with.

His head turned as he searched for the camera lenses that he knew would be watching. At the same time, he really wanted to know how the other vampire had done that. He couldn't cut through steel with his nails, there was no sign of heat, and there had been only that one soft sound. Thieves with diamond bladed hacksaws couldn't have cut through the fat links that fast.

Dragon growled at the door and pushed hard enough that the whole wall seemed to shake. Chris gave in to the inevitable and stepped forward. Dragon took a step back as Chris took hold of one of the handles. This was going to be embarrassing if Dragon had bent the frame.

He hauled the door sideways with all of his strength, and the automatic door grudgingly slid into its pocket, with a grinding noise that sounded as loud as a cement truck to the nervous vampire's ears.