Deliberate Sabotage

Sera turned back on her chair and yanked open the file cabinets, rummaging through the various files to find what she was looking for before slapping the documents on the table where Vincent picked it up and flipped through a few pages.

She seemed reluctant to hand over her work, running through her hair in an irritated motion but acted as though it would've been more of a headache not to do as Vincent had said than to have had for reasons that Charlotte couldn't quite understand.

"All the information you need should be in those files here," Sera said.

Vincent nodded before firmly grasping the documents. "Do you have any vigilante specimens that you are working on?"

Charlotte was curious too, and she made eye contact with Sera, as Sera took her time to respond. Darion was still in the corner with a smirk permanently attached to his face, not intervening and going along with whatever Sera had chosen.

"Yes," Sera said firmly. "Let me show you."

Darion stood up from his position in the corner of the room and flicked a switch that was beside the cabinet in turn only turning off the light which illuminated the blue wash of color in the room.

Charlotte watched to see where the passageway would be, expecting the ground to give away underneath, but Darion suddenly laughed.

"Did you expect to have a hidden door somewhere?"

Charlotte shrugged with a light smile. "More or less. I was expecting something high-tech."

"Sorry to disappoint," Darion said before pushing another door open with a grin. "Just a regular room with regular people."

Charlotte laughed lightly. "I highly doubt that."

The personality contrast between both Sera and Darion was fun, and Charlotte looked back at Vincent with a smile to which he shook his head lightly his patience wearing thin since they still had other matters that they needed to attend to.

Darion pushed the metal double doors open to the right hand of the room, and Sera straightened her white lab coat as she led the way.

Charlotte stepped foot into the room before Vincent which entailed brightly lit with various types of screens and other scientific equipment on the tables that were extremely high technology strewn around the area that was also impeccably clean.

It was the perfect base, and Charlotte gasped silently to herself, as she saw how the lighting in the floor changed whenever someone walked further into the room, crossing her arms, careful to not touch anything in case she tampered with whatever Sera or Darion was working on.

She shifted her eyes back around the room and focused on the larger-than-life monitors that had images of the view right outside the door for obvious security reasons and other tasks that Charlotte couldn't tell by from the small font from where she was standing.

Sera strode through the room with purpose, and Charlotte watched Sera who went over to an examination table to the right that was buried by a white curtain that surrounded a small area before swinging the curtains aside with a quick swish, the metal rings hitting each other and creating a metallic scratching noise.

Charlotte poked her head past Vincent's shoulder who got in her way, as they went over to the examination table. The vigilante was obviously dead, but it was the fact that Sera had another white clothing that covered the vigilante's body before she pulled it back.

The vigilante's face was pulled into a serene expression, and Charlotte couldn't help but wonder if the man truly died that way. It felt odd to stare at the dead man's face for too long, but she studied the bizarre veining of the vigilante that ran down the side of his neck onto his chest. It looked like poison.

"Did you give the vigilante vampire blood?" Charlotte asked.

"No," Sera answered. "The tracking team brought the vigilante here in this exact state, unresponsive, and they were pondering what was wrong with him."

"We did test to see if there were any vampire blood inside of him, but there wasn't," Darion said.

Charlotte sighed. "I think that you should do the test trials again."

"My thoughts exactly," Vincent muttered.

"Well, we aren't in the position to demand for more resources than what the council gives to us after the last one ended up in an explosion," Darion said sheepishly.

Charlotte's eyes widened. "Wait, seriously?"

Darion laughed. "It was ten years ago when Sera and I were visiting the vampire headquarters and mixed components together that were restricted."

Sera smiled at the memory. "I still think that someone deliberately put it there on the counter."

Darion lifted a shoulder. "It was funny."

Sera shrugged once more when she turned to face Vincent. "There will come a time again when we get the chance. When that happens, I'll be sure to call you."