The Sky Was Never Young: Vampire System Apocalypse

The heavy silence of insomnia offered Alissa no rest. Minutes earlier, she had tossed her phone onto the nightstand, thoroughly exhausted by Cassian’s agonizingly late replies. The bitter realization settled in: relying on him for her future studies was a dead end.

"He hates vampires, maybe..." She murmured into the almost dark room, pulling the blanket tight. "Or maybe he was too preoccupied that he took humans’ side". She rolled over, staring at the ceiling. "But he did talk with me nicely. People judge him too quickly just because he says exactly what’s on his mind".

An intrusive wave of doubt shattered her attempt at calm. Unable to fight the sudden urge to check, she snatched her phone back. The screen flared to life, illuminating her anxious face. She unlocked it and tapped directly into Cassian’s chat window.

Last seen: 10 minutes ago.

A heavy sigh escaped her lips. Her thumb hovered over the keyboard, caught in a paralyzing loop- torn between firing off another message or throwing the phone across the room to stop her spiraling thoughts. Frustrated by her own overthinking, she forced herself to lock the device and slide it back onto the wood. She closed her eyes, determined to sleep.

THUD.

The sharp, heavy vibration rattled against the glass of her bedroom window, piercing the quiet night.

Alissa threw off the thin blanket, her heart hammering against her ribs. She bolted out of the bed, her bare feet pressing against the cold floor as she rushed toward the source of noise. Flinging the curtains aside, she unlocked the window and pushed it open, leaning out into the crisp, second-floor air.

On the outer window rack sat a tiny, shattered glass vial. She picked up the fragments carefully. It looked like an empty medicinal syringe shot. Did someone throw this from thestreet? She wondered, tracing the sharp edge of the glass. It had clearly struck the window pane before landing on the metal rack.

As she dropped the glass back onto the rack, movement in the dark street below caught her eye. A police guard was lying completely motionless in the dead center of the intersection outside. Suddenly, a torrential downpour unleashed from the heavens, heavy sheets of rain instantly blurring her vision. Alissa wiped the moisture from her eyes, leaning further out into the storm, her gaze locked onto the police guard.

What she witnessed next defied human anatomy.

The guard, who had been flat on his back facing the stormy sky, suddenly snapped upward. He did not bend his knees. He did not use his hands. His spine simply locked, hoisting his torso straight into a standing position like a mechanical lever. He stood frozen for a second, the rain lashing against his uniform, before he began to walk forward with seamless, unnerving fluidness- as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

Panic seized her throat. It was a terrifying sight, which was deeply unsettling. Before she could pull back, the guard’s neck snapped sharply toward her house. His eyes locked onto her position. With stiff, robotic, yet incredibly rapid strides, he began marching directly toward her front door.

Terror paralyzed her. Alissa dropped to her knees, sliding beneath the windowsill to hide in the shadows, her breath hitching as the rain roared outside. Summoning a desperate burst of strength, she pulled herself up just enough to peer over the ledge.

He was down there.

The police guard stood directly below her window, staring blankly ahead. He was frozen, stiff as a mannequin, completely indifferent to the downpour soaking through his uniform. But it wasn’t his posture that made Alissa’s blood run cold. It was what he held in his hand: a thick, heavy syringe, its long steel needle gleaming under the streetlights.

RING! RING! RING!

The sharp, shrill cry of her phone shattered the silence.

The sound caught the guard instantly. With a sickening, mechanical jerk, his neck snapped back, forcing his face upward. His eyes locked onto her window. Panicking, Alissa yanked herself away from the glass, her heart hammering against her ribs as she buried herself in the heavy folds of the curtains, praying he hadn’t seen her.

Through a tiny gap in the fabric, she forced herself to look again.

The guard’s face remained a blank, expressionless mask, but his hands began to twitch. His hollow gaze never left her window as he began to undergo a terrifying transformation right before her eyes. Whatever was in that syringe took hold instantly, distorting his features into something no longer human.

Alissa gasped, clamping a hand over her mouth.

As the substance took effect, an unnatural darkness seemed to bleed into his skin, and his pupils dilated until his eyes were entirely void of color- nothing but solid, empty black. Then, his lips peeled back into a wide, grotesque smile directed at her.

The horror was too much. Alissa recoiled, tripping over her own feet as she scrambled backward into the shadows of her bedroom. She fell hard, her palms scraping against the floorboards. Sobbing silently, she dragged herself across the ground, her chest heaving as she desperately searched the floor for her buzzing phone.

The screen illuminated her trembling hands. She saw: one missed call from Cassian.

With fumbling, sweat-slicked fingers, she hit redial and pressed the phone to her ear.

RING... RI-

He picked up. "Hello, hello- Cass?!", she choked out, her voice cracking with pure panic. "I- I- saw a... a police guard, he-"

"ALISSA." Cassian’s voice cut her off, sharp and trembling with an unfamiliar, ragged edge. "Something wrong is happening with me!"

She froze. The sheer terror in his tone was unmistakable, stripping away any sense of safety she had left.

"As you were the one I was talking with earlier, you may understand what I will speak", Cassian whispered, his words halting but terribly clear. "I don’t remember what exactly happened to me, but I just woke up lying on the ground of my terrace. And Alissa? The most shocking part... is that I am holding a needle, and a shot of-"

The network was cutting, but they were able to communicate for now.

Alissa’s breath hitched. A cold weight settled in her chest, forcing her eyes wide as a stinging warmth blurred her vision. Tears spilled over, tracking hot lines down her pale cheeks.

"Are you there? Alissa?"

Cassian’s voice broke the silence- not with his usual indifferent, calculated brevity, but with a sharp, uncharacteristic edge of panic. It was the first time she had ever heard him speak more than a handful of words at once. The contrast froze her. She swallowed hard, her throat tight and dry, desperately trying to stifle the ragged gasps that threatened to betray her weakness.

But Cassian noticed. "I can hear you sniffling, Alissa. I’m right here; don’t cry. Just tell me what happened. Whatever it is, I can handle it. Trust me".

She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing the heels of her palms against her throbbing temples. The floor beneath her felt icy, anchoring her to the cramped space beside her bed where she had collapsed.

"A police guard... he was acting completely insane," She rushed out, the words tumbling over each other as she drew in shallow, desperate gulps of air. "Someone threw the exact same vial on my window. The glass shattered everywhere. Then the guard- he had a syringe. He just injected it straight into his neck. The whole thing... Cassian, what’s going on? Are you actually talking to me right now? You don’t sound like yourself. Does this mean you’re safe? You are okay, right?" said Alissa in one go, breathing heavily with her palms on her forehead.

"I can’t understand you properly, Alissa." Cassian interrupted, his voice dropping into a forced, deliberate calm meant to anchor her. "Calm down. Take a deep breath. Take... breathe in... now slowly out. You are talking about the syringe and medicine I warned you about, right?" asked Cassian after making her feel a bit more comfortable.

Alissa didn’t answer right away. The skin beneath her palms felt unnaturally hot; a sudden, aggressive fear was beginning to bloom across her forehead. She leaned heavily against the side of her mattress, her voice dropping into a fragile, strained whisper.

"It’s something worse, Cass... throw that syringe away. Destroy it before-"

"Alissa? I can barely hear you. The audio is cutting out- it must be this damn storm," Cassian shouted over a wave of digital static. "Listen to me, I’m already on my way. I’m on the terrace now. Just hold on, don’t be scared, okay?"

He had called her the moment he regained consciousness. His first instinct upon waking had been to find his parents, shouting their names through a house that felt chillingly, inexplicably vacant. When the silence offered no answers, his immediate reflex was to dial her number.

"Hello, Alissa? Hello-", Cassiam’s composed facade finally shattered, his voice echoing loudly against the rain- slicked walls of the terrace.

A sharp, triple-tone beep cut him off. Call disconnected.

Inside the room, Alissa’s grip loosened. The phone slipped from her fingers, clattering uselessly against the floorboards. The fever had completely overtaken her, consuming her thoughts in a suffocating, white-hot haze. Her eyelids fluttered shut, and her body went limp, sinking into the shadows beside her bed onto the floorboard.

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