Grist followed Mac and the listless vampire up the stairs, into the control room, and back out the passage they had come in. Mac distantly remembered the stairs being easier coming the other way.

  “Grist think Shock Leader not like most girls,” the troll commented as they passed the now empty room at the top of the stairs.

  “Well yes,” Safety Ed agreed, but only half-heartedly. Without Tiera around to hear it, there was no joy to be derived from being openly or even covertly hostile. “That’s why she’s the Shock Leader.”

  “She is much cute…” the troll seemed to be wondering aloud, “but odd. She hate fun and does not take risks. All train on point. No goof, no miss. Hit me each time.”

  “I’ve known her… a long time,” Safety Ed explained as he led the tiered pilots out of the same warehouse they had entered earlier that day… no, two days before. “She doesn’t hate fun per se. She’s just never been very good at it. I think it goes back to… Are you all hungry, or do you just want to go back to your quarters?” Safety Ed re-angled the conversation before he said something he might regret later. The walls had ears. He knew. He had signed for them.

  Mac’s stomach rumbled aloud despite the intravenous feeds from the suit. “Room. Want sleep,” Grist voiced the thoughts of the others perhaps more articulately than they might have been able to just then, so they simply nodded in agreement… Or maybe that was just Natalia’s head bobbing with the motion of his shoulder. Her brown eyes were closed.

  Grist was dropped off first at the oversized troll barracks with instructions to show up at the training “field” just outside the building with all the classrooms after breakfast. They were also told to go recover their clothes from the locker room as well, which left Mac carting the vampire along on his shoulder as she sleep-limped beside him. Safety Ed helped him ease the unconscious lady into and out of the elevator before arriving at the door to her room.

  “Uhm, should we wake her up so she can get into her room?” Mac asked softly.

  “No need,” Safety Ed replied as he put his hand on the palm scanner to her room thus opening the door like it was perfectly normal.

  “How did you…?” Mac started to ask.

  “If someone has a medical emergency or a serious issue requiring intervention,” Safety Ed explained as he led Mac inside and kicked a weathered yoga mat to the side, “then someones need to have the ability to get into that room. Now, set her down on her bed... make sure you support her head.”

  Safety Ed pulled back the covers so Mac could lay the vampire still wearing her deep red, form-fitting pilot suit on her back. “You need to loosen that suit for her, or she’ll wake up feeling like she’s bathed in slime,” the instructor explained. “Take her right hand and touch her thumb here… and her finger here…” The suit let out a hiss as air entered it and the slack slipped down to the bed making it look almost like some massive troll had dropped a building on her. Mac carefully crossed her arms over each other like he had seen in the ads in the magazines left on the coffee tables. Then, Safety Ed pulled up the covers to her neck. She looked so peaceful. There was even a tinge of color in her cheeks peeking through the pale make-up and smudged eyeshadow she usually wore. She might have been attractive in the ordinary way… if she hadn’t been a vampire. He reached back and felt his neck, checking for holes as he stared at her sleeping face for a long moment.

  “Staring at a sleeping girl like a werewolf. You know that’s all kinds of creepy, right?” Safety Ed observed as he opened her dresser drawers and peered inside.

  “What are you...?”

  “Can’t be too careful,” Safety Ed replied. “There might be some communication device or locator beacon hidden in her belongings. I warned the CEO, but… oh, Venetian lace… or maybe a cheap knock off. Hard to tell these days.”

  “Seriously?!” Mac whispered harshly.

  “Oh absolutely. With that kind of underwear, she could definitely be a spy,” the safety instructor closed the drawer and opened another. “Hmmm… more red and black. I think deep purple might have been a better offset for her eyes… With such a harsh adherence to style, maybe she really is who she claims to be. I mean some of these leggings have seen better days.”

  “Would you, please, get out of her stuff!” Mac took a step towards the grey-eyed instructor as he opened another drawer. “If anything gets moved, she’ll blame me.”

  “Exactly. I’ll be perfectly safe.”

  “Unless I tell her first.”

  “You’d do that? I don’t think so. Too much risk in it for you.”

  “Why don’t we get her set up for success tomorrow and get out of here before she wakes up?”

  “One more drawer. Could you set her alarm? We’ll be at field one tomorrow after breakfast.”

  “Will you… Fine… just…”

  “This is an interesting pendant. I wonder how she came by it.”

  “Out!” Mac whispered as loud as he dared and pointed for the door.

  “I’m leaving, I’m leaving,” Safety Ed closed the drawer and carefully set a small feather back between the side of the drawer and the dresser. “I’ll wait for you outside. And put that yoga mat back in place.”

  After setting the vampire’s alarm and writing a quick note for where she needed to be tomorrow, Mac closed the door quietly, then padded silently down the hall to the room he and Zach shared. Oh, Zach. Being so close to the cute vampire must have addled his brain. They could do that. He needed to get his son…

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Don’t worry about the boy,” Safety Ed said, almost reading his mind as Mac opened his own door. He was still here, wasn’t he? “The future center is always prepared for days like today... and yesterday. Shall I have him meet you for breakfast?”

  “Please,” Mac replied as he closed his door and very intentionally locked it with that little chain before finally collapsing onto his bed. Would that really stop Ed? Mac reluctantly set his alarm for twelve hours later. Then he forced himself to climb out his sweat slick pilot suit and crawl under his covers. The exhausted human didn’t know if his head hit his pillow before or after he fell asleep.

  XXXXX

  Mac was pleased to find his son, Zach, waiting with a group of other children from the future center outside the cafeteria. They were being watched over by an ageless looking lady with golden curls and a young human male in the obligatory argyle sweater. The wild-eyed young man reminded him of one of those kids that regularly got eaten by a dragon on the television shows he used to watch with Zach not too long ago. Good thing dragons weren’t real.

  His young boy waved at him excitedly and dashed off to meet him, “Daddy!” Zach jumped up and grabbed his dad around the waist. “I saw you! You were in the big robot!”

  “You did, didn’t you?” Mac replied as he lifted his son up off the ground and held him in his arms.

  “Yes,” Zach replied affirmatively with a strong nod of his head. “You went flying through the air and landed, boom on the ground. Soooo, cool! Did it hurt?”

  Good question. Mac couldn’t really remember so he bluffed, “Just a little.” Zach’s eyes got wide as saucers and his mouth widened in delight. He then turned his head back to the group of five other kids still waiting, Janessa in particular, and boasted, “See, my daddy can take a hit.”

  Janessa looked Mac straight in the eyes and with a shrug of her shoulders said, “Not your time… yet.”

  That was one creepy, pint-sized trollip. Hopefully Zach wouldn’t get too attached to her or life might be a bit more interesting than was fair for a human. Mac’s stomach chose that moment to rumble. Though the battle suit might have provided nutrients directly into his bloodstream, his stomach had been empty for almost two days and a mob with dinner forks was forming.

  Zach giggled and poked his stomach to see if he could get it to rumble again. Mac’s stomach graciously complied, eliciting another pleasant laugh from his son.

  They went inside the cafeteria to stand in line while Mac explained what piloting the suit was like to his son. Natalia stepped behind them so silently that Mac wouldn’t have noticed had Janessa not sneezed. Why had she attached herself to Natalia?

  “Hey, Natalia,” Mac nodded to the vampire who, aside from the bruises peeking out from her long sleeves and high neckline, once again had her make-up and hair done nicely if not a bit simply.

  Hey, yourself,” Natalia replied then took a ginger step forward that made her wince. “Just kill me, now,” she half whispered to herself.

  “Not yet,” Janessa replied half-heartedly to the half-hearted spoken wish without even looking away from her intense scan of the cafeteria.

  “I’m surprised to see you standing,” Mac offered graciously.

  Natalia offered the faintest smile, “I’ll live… regretfully. Were you the one who dropped me off in my room last night? I think I fell asleep on my feet between the training area and there.”

  “Safety Ed helped,” Mac made sure he placed the creep in the vicinity. “You were kind of… dead on your feet for lack of a better way of putting it.”

  “Thanks,” Natalia pushed a stray venturesome tress back behind an ear. “It was nice of you both to tuck me in like you did and to depressurize my suit for me.”

  “You’d do the same for me,” Mac gave her a thumbs up and a genuine smile as Janessa and Zach started playing some reflex-based hand slapping game beside them. The blissful boy had yet to learn he had no chance.

  “You didn’t… uhmm... notice anything did you?” Natalia prodded carefully.

  “Nope. Your room looked really plain, actually. I couldn’t even tell anyone lived there,” Mac stuck with a limited truth. Vampires were notorious for all or nothing living conditions that were either incredibly spartan, or super posh. As far as he knew, there wasn’t much in between.

  “I mean about me in particular,” Natalia probed gently.

  Mac was not about to take his life in his hands to comment on her light weight, her rather stunning physique in the red pilot suit, and certainly not the Venetian lace Safety Ed had discovered. No, he valued his life, at least until Zach was old enough to go it alone. “No, nothing out of the ordinary.” That drew a pained grimace from the vampire he didn’t expect. Or maybe she had just twitched wrong.

  “Thank you,” Natalia Pardova expressed softly, if for no other reason than it hurt to breathe deeply.

  XXXXX

  John set his tray down beside Mac’s on the white tablecloth, and launched into a friendly interrogation “Hi, Mac, how was your day, yesterday? What did you do? Was it fun?”

  “Hey John,” Mac was pleased to remember the older man’s name even if he was a bit annoying.

  “Well?” John asked expectantly.

  “It was interesting. We learned to pilot battle suits,” Mac explained.

  “Delightful. How did that go?”

  “The tech left Natalia’s haptics cranked too high, so she’s still a bit sore this morning,” Mac replied with the understatement of the year.

  “Really, how high was it set?” John turned to question the vampire.

  “Ninety-eight percent or something like that,” Natalia replied as John’s eyes went wide and his mouth dropped.

  “You were out there how long like that?” John quizzed in amazement.

  “I think the shock leader said something close to thirty hours. It’s kind of a blur,” Natalia replied.

  “And you’re still walking?”

  “Walking’s probably a strong term for how I get around. It’s more of a cautious shuffle,” Natalia explained good-naturedly before taking a bite of the delicious omelet still left on her plate.

  “Will you marry me?” John asked softly in total awe.

  “That’s not very nice,” said a faint, yet oddly familiar electronic voice from under the table. At least that’s what Mac thought he heard. His ears must have been playing tricks on him.

  “Wait, what?” Natalia hadn’t been paying attention to the middle-aged man.

  “I said, ‘well, you’d bury me,’” John replied awkwardly, “I mean if we were fighting, you’d absolutely destroy me.”

  “Of course, I would, I’m a vampire,” Natalia insisted nonchalantly after finishing her morsel. If she hadn’t involuntarily twitched erratically from the pain at the end, it would have been completely believable.

  “So, what about you?” John focused on Mac again. “How did your day go?”

  “Well, I got thrown all over the countryside,” Mac began listing off the “high points” on his fingers. “I learned how to aim while cartwheeling through the air, I know where all the emergency switches are, I threw up in the helmet, and I made that cute, red-haired mechanic cry,” Mac did feel genuinely bad about that, but what could he have done?

  “Amethyst…” John seemed a bit confused then added a bit belatedly, “She eats down the table from me sometimes… in the cafeteria. Anything else?” John tried to get Mac talking again.

  “Oh, I saw the future center class out there,” Mac added. “I’m surprised HeHeHe thinks it’s safe to have kids around that kind of thing?”

  “I’m sure we do that for the same reason they still keep stables beside the weapon ranges,” John reasoned.

  “Wait, we treat our children like horses?” Mac tried to confirm.

  “Of course not,” John replied with a smile and a dismissive wave. “We at HeHeHe treat our horses like children.”

  Natalia and Mac both glanced down at the two kids beside them then exchanged brief eye contact.

  “Boom!” Zach imagined as he crashed his nibbled pancake vigorously into the syrup puddle on his plate, splashing it on the other half-eaten items still clinging to the edges for dear life. Their time would come.