The Ship that lost its Soul - Part 2 of 3
Feb. 27th, 2017 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberdreamsReturn to Part One
Four hours later Sam was forced to question that assertion. Dean was – irritating. He puttered around aimlessly, fiddling with Sam’s systems, making adjustments that weren’t necessary. Part of Sam understood that this was Dean’s way of normalising what must seem to him to be a fucked up situation, but Sam was failing to see any downside to his current state and he really wanted Dean to appreciate Sam now, instead of continually hankering after past (human) Sam.
Having full use of the Impala’s computer systems was pretty awesome, Sam decided. But once Sam had mastered those and discovered he could also range out into the IG-Web, there was no comparison. The more he explored, the more data and functionality he began to master, the more exhilarated he felt. Being able to process his thoughts in so much depth and at such speed was almost addictive, even though he recognised that his newfound enhanced functionality was resulting in a certain level of impatience with Dean’s human limitations.
Turning his attention outward, Sam was diverted from an anomaly deep within his systems that had sprung to life when his memories had returned. Hidden within a ring-fence of base protocols a white light nestled, pulsing faintly. Inside the light was a voice that alternately soothed and prodded.
But you always were the bright one, Sam. Not so driven by your emotions, more rational, more intellectual.
Yes.
Dean will be looking for ways to terminate your new existence, to return you to the pain and suffering of your human body. You need to find a way to stop him. To make him realise this is for the best. He doesn’t want to lose you again, but as the Impala’s non-artificial intelligence, you cannot decay, become ill, or age. Any damage can be repaired. In this form you can be together for Dean’s lifetime.
Freed from the human trap you can fly, Sam. Reach your full potential.
The inner voice was niggling in its familiarity. It was smooth and persuasive, but the point it was making about the inevitability of damage, or of parts failing, gave Sam pause. The voice’s words were true, they confirmed what he’d already concluded – Sam was effectively immortal like this. He didn’t even need to keep his human form alive any more. He had considered simply switching off the power to the cryopod and allowing the redundant flesh to die, but an innate consideration for Dean’s inevitable suffering had preventing him from taking that last step to cut his ties with his past. He was rational enough to understand that he was vulnerable without a human presence to carry out the maintenance any machine needed to run smoothly. Sam needed Dean.
Any human would do, you just need someone with the right skills…
No. That was a lie.
Sam knew better than the voice. He needed Dean. He needed his brother. Forever.
::-Dean-::
Dean knew Sam had told him several times now, and he got that Sam was starting to sound annoyed about it, but Dean couldn’t help it. Even though he could talk to this mechanical version of Sam anywhere on the ship that had coms, which was basically everywhere, Dean was drawn irresistibly to the cryo-chamber where Sam’s body lay in its deep freeze. It helped Dean to think he was talking to his Sam, not a machine.
“Don’t worry, Sammy. I’m gonna do whatever it takes to get you fixed up. If Bobby can’t help, I’ll go to Callie and get you the best care in the best facility Commercial City has, I don’t care what it costs. Hell, I’ll even sell Baby if I have to.”
“You can’t sell the Impala, Dean.” Sam somehow managed to imbue his electronic voice with irritation and disapproval every bit as effectively as when he’d used vocal chords, and Dean couldn’t help thinking that was one transferrable skill Dean could have done without. “I am the ship, remember?” Sam added, and Dean flushed.
“Yeah, well, it’s a bit hard to forget that, Sam, when you keep talking to me while I’m having a crap, or trying to grab some shut-eye.”
“Sorry about that,” Sam said, not sounding the least bit sorry, in Dean’s view. “But there doesn’t seem much point in pretending I need to sleep, and some matters are urgent.”
“Dude, nothing is so urgent you can’t let a man have five minutes alone time every now and then.”
“Only five minutes? It’s time you got laid if that’s all it takes…” Sam somehow managed to convey equal measures of amusement and sarcasm in his tone, and Dean decided this really wasn’t a fair contest. Time to change the subject. Except Sam got there first.
“Dean, I’ve found us a case. It’s on Limestone, in the Illinois quadrant. Several young teenagers have gone missing, and there’ve been raids on the local blood banks. Looks like it might be a nest of vamps.”
‘Vamps, huh?” Dean felt a spark of interest that was quickly quenched at the thought of hunting alone. He’d done enough of that when Sam had left for Callie to study and Dad was off being mysterious instead of trusting his eldest son; and look where that had got them. “I’m sure we can get the word out to hunters in the area to take care of it. My priority is getting you fixed. We’re only a few of hours out from the Dakotas and Bobby’s.”
“Actually, we aren’t, and there’s no need to contact anyone, Dean. I changed our course last night; we’re en route to Illinois now, scheduled to arrive in two hours.”
Dean leapt to his feet, even his righteous anger not quite enough to burn off the weight of Sam’s constant dispassionate observations. Added to which, he was starting to feel like some sort of bug under a microscope, sharing the ship with this new omnipresent version of Sam.
“What the fuck, Sam? You changed course without even consulting me? What is wrong with you? Anyone would think you don’t want to get your body back.”
Sam said nothing for a second too long and Dean’s face set, the muscle in his jaw clenching while his eyes grew wide with shock.
“You don’t want your body back, do you,” Dean said, and there was no question in his mind that he was right. His hand dropped from where it had been resting on the plasplex that covered Sam’s frozen face and then Dean was striding out of the chamber.
He headed straight for command, fully intending to reset their course. He’d nearly reached the doorway to the command deck when the Sam in the machine took action.
Dean swore when the reinforced steel door swung closed right in his face. He didn’t need the automated alarm sounding to tell him what Sam had done. Baby was entering lock down and Dean was shut out of command with no way of accessing the controls. He should have realised Sam would follow him with the Impala’s internal surveillance and guess Dean’s intention immediately it became clear where he was headed. Sam probably didn’t need more than a fraction of Baby’s processing power to work out that Dean was going to change course back for Bobby’s and the Dakotas.
“Dean, I can’t let you alter our heading. I know you mean well, but you’re right about me not wanting to return to my body – not yet, anyhow. I’ve barely scratched the surface of this new existence; who knows how much more effective a hunter I can be with the Impala’s resources at my metaphorical fingertips?”
Dean refused to reply and smacked his palm against the matt-grey steel.
“Just think about it, Dean,” Sam said. Dean shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it, thanks very much.
Dean grabbed the handle and pulled with all his strength but he heard the locking mechanism engage before the door had even moved a millimetre. His hand gripped harder involuntarily, his knuckles white as he stared in frustration at the blank reinforced metal of the door. As if a door was going to provide him with answers. Over the shrill alarm he heard the dull thunk and hiss that indicated all the other doors in the corridor were closing too. He spun round, though he knew he was too late to make a run for it.
He was stuck in the damn corridor until Sam decided to abort the lock down.
“God-fucking-dammit, Sam!”
::-Sam-::
He left Dean in the corridor to rant and shout for a while until, as always, Dean ran out of steam. It took precisely ten minutes and forty three seconds, which was twenty seven seconds longer than Sam’s calculations had predicted. Sam adjusted his parameters for future reference.
“So, as I was saying,” Sam said, once Dean had fallen silent. “We will arrive at Limestone’s spaceport in one hour and forty seven minutes. I’ve tapped into the local law enforcement’s database and extracted everything they have on the disappearances. They are now expecting a Galactic Federation Investigator to join their investigation team, so you should have no problems moving around and interviewing relatives and witnesses yourself, such as they are. So far there have been three young men and seven young women who have been taken, which sounds like this may be a sizable nest. These Vamps don’t seem to be slowing down, or at all concerned about giving away their presence to the locals.”
Sam monitored Dean closely while he talked, noting the reluctant gleam of interest igniting in Dean’s eyes. If Sam had facial muscles, he would have smiled, maybe done a little fist pump.
Gotcha!
Sam briefed Dean about the possible vampires on Limestone, but he deliberately omitted to mention a few other salient details he’d found whilst researching the IG-Web. Namely that, while investigating the disappearances, he’d discovered a nearly invisible thread that led, via a convoluted route, to a backdoor in the systems of the universally reknowned pharmaceutical giant, Campbell-Corps. Following this lead, Sam unearthed some very interesting information about a secret drug known only as V. Based on his findings, Sam thought that these vampires might be a different variety to the ones the Winchesters had tackled back when John Winchester was alive. Sam had a theory, but he needed someone on the ground to test it. If Sam was right, and he was ninety nine point nine per cent sure that he was, then this drug could be exactly what Sam was looking for. And if he was wrong, well, Sam had the solution to that too.
That wasn’t the only omission Sam made. His delving into the depths of Campbell-Corps had thrown up a lot of supplementary data, including a detailed history of the Campbell family dynasty. None of this information was directly relevant to the case, so Sam didn’t bother distracting Dean with the news that Samuel Campbell, CEO and founder of the company, was the father of Mary Campbell, and their grandfather. He needed to keep Dean focussed – not only to distract him from his misguided attempts to return Sam’s consciousness into Sam’s feeble human body, but also to ensure Dean’s presence on Limestone as a possible test subject for the potential immortality drug, V.
Which brought him to the next little problem. How was he going to persuade Dean to accept the coms implant he’d had a fixer-bot prepare? Somehow he didn’t think Dean was going to embrace with enthusiasm a device that would allow Sam to monitor his brother every step of the way while he was on planet. Sam had already had to mollify Dean’s sensibilities by pretending to turn off some of the ship’s cameras in strategic positions – like the shower and Dean’s cabin. Obviously he hadn’t actually shut them down, he’d merely switched off the camera-active lights, but it made Dean feel better, and that was all that mattered.
The trouble was, all that mattered to Dean was Sam, and Dean was still convinced the ‘real’ Sam resided inside his frozen, useless body. And therein lay the solution to Sam’s dilemma. Sam waited until Dean had landed the Impala, and was preoccupied with dressing appropriately for the GFI investigation, before he put forward his studiously casual proposal.
“So when you go out there, I suppose you’ll be wanting to monitor my body’s condition. It’s ok, I understand. You and I will need to keep in touch too, so I’ve prepared an implant. It gives us two-way coms and gives you real-time readings from the cryopod when you want them.”
“I…yeah…that’s great. Um, thanks.”
Dean knelt and allowed the fixer-bot to inject the nano-implant into his spinal column just between the C1 and C2 vertebrae. Sam tested it immediately. He could tap into Dean’s visual and audio cortex with ease, though there was no way he was going to let Dean know this was anything more than a standard intercom with a life signs monitor added.
Remember, you don’t have to vocalise to communicate with me, Dean.
“Yeah, I know, genius. But I prefer talking the old fashioned way.”
Luddite.
“I don’t even know what that means. Once a geek, always a geek, hey, Sammy?”
Sam hoped his satisfaction at hearing Dean call him Sammy – him, the ghost in the machine, not his virtually dead body – didn’t bleed through their connection. He wanted Dean exposed to him, not vice versa. Especially now, when Sam was hiding so much from his brother.
Dean would agree with Sam in the end, he was sure. They would have many decades to come to terms with decisions Sam was making now, if Sam was correct about these particular vampires, and about V. It would be fine. Dean would be fine.
::-Dean-::
It might be one of the largest moons orbiting Illinois, but Limestone was a dump. Dean had been on the surface for less than minute before coming to that conclusion. The sky had come down to meet the ground in a solid sheet of rain that showed no sign of abating. Dean had walked the dark streets for hours in a stupid G-Fed uniform, which was in no way waterproof, looking without success for evidence of this supposed nest of vamps. He was soaked to the skin, cold, hungry and increasingly pissed off.
This is the nightclub where the third girl went missing.
Sam’s voice sounded in his head, dispassionate, unconcerned and very un-Samlike. Dean didn’t like it. Scratch that. He full out hated it.
“Great. This is probably the stinkiest alley yet.” Which was true enough, but not what Dean really wanted to say. He just hoped he wasn’t subvocalizing his true thoughts back to the ship.
Grumbling under his breath about people dumping garbage everywhere, Dean pushed open the door and stepped inside. The lobby area was poorly lit, bare concrete and smelled faintly of piss, but at least he was out of the rain. Now he was inside the building, he could hear the repetitive thudding of a bass beat coming from inside the club. He sighed and braced himself as he pushed the inner door open. Cosmic-crud-rock. Fucking peachy.
“Sammy, if I come out of here with bleeding ears, I’m blaming you.”
Thankfully Dean didn’t have to endure this auditory torment for more than fifteen minutes before he spotted his first potential predatory vamp amongst the crowd of wild-eyed, too-skinny trance-users and longhaired crud-rockers.
The club was dimly lit and the walls were running with condensation from the combination of too many sweaty bodies and poor ventilation, but the vamp and his intended victim didn’t care. She looked young, barely twenty, long dark hair and too much make-up, which was already smudging in the humid atmosphere. Dean bristled when the vamp brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned in as if sniffing her neck. Her eyes were dark and from a distance Dean couldn’t make out whether she was high on trance or just oversexed. She looked out of it, either way. He cursed under his breath when the two of them edged towards the exit. He fought his way through the mass of writhing bodies and just managed to slip outside in time to catch sight of two figures disappearing into the alleyway down the side of the building.
Dean skidded round the corner to find the vamp had the chick pinned up against the wall. Her head was tipped back, the long line of her neck gleaming pale in the lurid light from the club’s sign. In two strides, Dean’s knife was in his right hand and the guy’s collar grasped in his left as he yanked the guy off the girl, who screeched like a banshee and ran. Dean slammed the guy up against the wall, then hesitated with his blade pressed to the guy’s neck. Who was gushing words like a water fountain.
“What’re you…oh my god, please, just take my credits, my GUV keys, anything, just don’t kill me, please…”
Doesn’t sound much like a vamp, Dean, Sam said inside Dean’s head.
“No shit. This case sucks,” Dean said, and rolled his eyes when wannabe-vamp looked even more terrified than before. Dean sighed. “Okay kid, just got to check something. No sudden moves; just put your hand up to your mouth there, and show me your teeth.”
Sure enough, there was no sign of fangs. Dean growled a bit to scare the kid out of being so damned stupid, hanging out where vamps prey on humans, then let him go. The sound of the fleeing kid’s footsteps had barely faded into the rain when a voice from behind saved Dean wondering where to look next.
“You’re pretty.”
Dean turned around slowly, keeping the knife concealed behind his back, just in case. Rain slid cold down between his collar and his neck, making him shiver. The man addressing him didn’t look like anything much – medium height, broad but bordering on overweight, long crud-rocker hair curling in the damp atmosphere – but his face was shadowed and his tone raised Dean’s hackles.
“Had a tip off there might be a guy outside who’s just the type I’m looking for; looks like my information was right.” The guy drawled. “You’ll do nicely, especially as you just scared my other mark away.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Dean said, backing away as he talked, all the while trying to broadcast to Sam on their internal radio. “But you’re not my type.” Sam, you getting this? Any chance you can call for some local back up? Any time soon would be…ah fuck.
Too late, Dean caught the sound of a footstep to his left, and so totally missed the guy coming up on his right. Fucking amateur move, Winchester, letting yourself get surrounded. He twisted, attempting to bring the knife up, but one of the guys already had hold of his left his arm in a vice-like grip, while the other smashed something that felt like a metal bar onto his knife hand, forcing him to drop the blade with a pained yelp. He struggled hard, but both guys were strong, and all resistance went out of him when crud-rock-dude joined in the fray. All it took was two well placed punches, one to his solar plexus and the other to the side of his head, and Dean was too busy trying not to throw up his lunch while seeing more stars than the deep sky census.
“You wanna live forever, pretty boy? Sure you do,” Crud-rocker said. Dean fucking hated rhetorical questions, but even worse was the fact that Crud-rocker dude was sweet-talking him, like Dean was his date or something. It really wasn’t helping with his efforts to keep his gorge from rising.
Crud-rocker gripped him by the hair and yanked his head back, and Dean knew what was coming next. Having his throat ripped out by a vamp wasn’t how he’d seen his life ending, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He’d been such a fucking idiot, coming here without backup when he should have been concentrating on getting Sam back. He should never have listened to anything mechano-Sam said – look where it had got him. He was going to die in a smelly alley on a shit-hole planet on the edge of civilisation, while Sam would be lost, stuck as a ghost in the machine forever.
Incredulous and angry, Dean kept his eyes open in futile defiance as Crud-rocker sank needle-sharp teeth into Dean’s vulnerable neck, sending an electric current of white-fire through his body. Holy fuck, Dean hadn’t thought dying again would hurt this bad.
The last thing Dean expected to hear before he blacked out was his brother’s voice inside his head, telling him everything was fine.
Relax, Dean, Sam said. He’s not going to suck you dry, he just wants to recruit you.
Dean enjoyed a brief moment of satisfaction that he managed to fire off a heartfelt fuck you to Sam before it was lights out.
Sam hadn’t taken into account that with Dean unconscious, the implant would lose access to Dean’s visual and audio inputs. Sam was effectively blind and deaf for as long as Dean’s brain was offline.
Now he had to wait impatiently for Dean to come round before he could find out where the vamps had taken his brother and put the rest of his plan into place. Frustrated, Sam could only hope that the injection of the V drug into Dean’s veins would work as he expected, and that he could restore contact with his brother in time to prevent Dean from ingesting any blood. It was not part of Sam’s plan for Dean to become a vampire. Sam was aiming for Dean to become something else, something new.
It all seemed so simple once Sam had found his first piece of the jigsaw – the synthetic compound drug known only as V. It was the side effects of V that caught Sam’s initial attention and focused him on the suspicious activities of Campbell-Corps. V wasn’t on the market, and hadn’t undergone any of the rigorous testing requirements laid out by the I-G Federation, and Sam could see why. Its use wasn’t widespread, so Sam doubted anyone without access to his unique combination of resources would be likely to notice that on a small number of outlying planets, vampires were colonising a few backwater towns and moons with behind-the-scenes support of the pharma-giant, Campbell-Corps.
Sam had discovered a few unsecured reports that mentioned the potential for a synthesised version of the vampires’ genetic modification that specifically focussed on their longevity – precisely the element Sam was interested in for Dean. Sam dug deeper, wormed his way through Campbell-Corps many-layered security defences until he finally reached a dead end.
Frustratingly, the formula for V was not to be found anywhere within Campbell’s systems. He’d found the antidote almost immediately, but Sam’s searches dug up nothing useful on V itself; in fact he could confirm that Samuel Campbell’s possibly justified paranoia meant all records containing the ingredients of V were apparently kept on paper, in Campbell’s own journal. As a result, Sam was forced to opt for this crude and less than predictable delivery mechanism, which entailed placing Dean, like a sacrificial victim, in the path of the vampire recruiters.
At least Sam was pretty sure of the rest of his information, given that Campbell’s ultimate objective appeared to be similar to Sam’s own. Campbell was looking for something that could bring the dead back to life, with his end game being opening the gates to Purgatory and freeing Mary Winchester. Sam filed that information away, in case he needed leverage against Campbell in the future, but was otherwise uninterested in Campbell’s ambitions to resurrect his mother.
Sam’s focus was elsewhere, on what V could do for him and for Dean. Their mother was an irrelevance, a distraction for Campbell but not for Sam.
Once the drug was administered (whether by vampire’s saliva or by more conventional injection), its effects were rapid, and reversible only by using the antidote called Lambda, or Λ. Λ only remained effective as long as the subject didn’t combine V with feeding on human blood, and there was no evidence in Campbell’s archives to show whether any of his researchers had tried to prevent a subject from feeding. Unlike V, the formula for Λ was readily available, so Sam downloaded the data. It was always good to have insurance, after all.
Sam thought it was worth the risk to dose Dean and then take whatever steps necessary to make sure he didn’t feed. This would ensure that Dean didn’t turn fully, but should still retain the longevity of a vampire, a life long enough to keep up with Sam. But Sam’s whole plan hinged on making sure Dean didn’t drink any human blood. One taste of blood and that was it; Dean would be lost to the effects of V, his brother would become a true vampire with no way back, and no way of controlling him.
Sam couldn’t allow that. He needed Dean. For once he refused to analyse why. It was a fact; he accepted it. Sam never considered approaching Campbell directly, and maybe looking at pooling their resources. In his view, their grandfather was too obsessed with finding Purgatory and bringing their mother back from the dead to give any consideration to anyone or anything that didn’t contribute to his own selfish, human goal.
So that had been Sam’s grand plan, which was now halted by the most ridiculous of mistakes. If Sam had been human right now, he’d either be sighing or throwing things in frustration. As it was, he couldn’t quite compute how he’d made so many basic errors.
Not only did he have to wait for Dean to revive, he had also failed to factor in the effects that the injection of V into Dean’s system would have on Dean’s cerebral cortex when Dean did awake. Or how Dean’s reactions might affect Sam and thus Sam’s ability to bring Dean back unscathed and more importantly, un-blooded.
Basically, Sam had miscalculated a lot of things, and was having trouble recalibrating, due to interference from Dean’s disorientation, which started the moment Dean regained consciousness. Everything Dean was experiencing was broadcast back through their connection. The implant was only supposed to tap into Dean’s conscious speech, together with Sam’s illicit inputs and outputs from his brother’s audio-visual centres, but either Dean’s subconscious was encroaching on those areas of his brain, or Sam had designed the implant wrong, because what Sam got from Dean on waking was pure chaos.
Random images flashed through Dean’s head, simultaneously bombarding Sam’s processors with a series of meaningless bursts of sounds and images, between periods of static.
Crud-rocker dude’s teeth, bloody and fenced like a Callie shark. A grimy, ill-lit hall, green-stained and probably stinking of rot, though thankfully Sam lacked the receptors to appreciate smell or taste. Shadowy figures that resolved into pallid faces – other vamps, no doubt. Sounds that were over-loud and intrusive, images random and confused. It was anarchic, and completely offensive to Sam’s desire for order.
Sam needed Dean to focus or he was going to lose him in the melee.
::-Dean-::
The first coherent thought Dean had was that his neck didn’t hurt. He touched the bite marks on his neck and felt nothing, even though his fingers came away sticky with his own blood. He knew it was his own because he recognised the scent of his own DNA, which was bizarre. But then this whole situation was confused and whacked out.
Dean was on overload. Hearts beating too slow and sluggish reverberated on his eardrums Odaiko-loud; footsteps resounded like a herd of Kenyan elephants on a wooden floor; his own breathing was as harsh as a steelworks bellows. He longed for the peace of space.
He could hear his own steady heartbeat and easily distinguish it from the others that surrounded him. He could readily pick out the bodies that had no heartbeat at all. That wasn’t normal. Oh yeah, that’s right, Crud-rocker had turned him.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Dean was a walking dead man. His nostrils flared and his mouth began to water as the air filled with an extraordinary, rich, metallic scent.
Fresh blood.
Dean shuddered as he felt the slick movement of fangs sliding down inside his upper lip. He swallowed down the rush of saliva, then jumped a foot in the air when a hand landed heavy and over familiar on his shoulder.
“Hey there, newbie. Nice to see your pretty green eyes open. Here,” Crud-rocker said, with a smile full of points, “have some blood. You need to keep your strength up.”
The vamp was holding out a blood bag, and Dean leaned towards it, involuntarily, his stomach protesting with hunger urges stronger than anything he’d ever felt before. Strangely, it helped Dean focus. He knew what he had to do.
He’d been assessing his surroundings and thought he had the measure of this place and its occupants. He still had all his weapons, an error of judgement Crud-rocker wouldn’t make again. He gripped the smooth handle of his machete, letting his index finger slide down the sheath to test the sharpness of the cold steel.
Dean smiled back at Crud-rocker, lips stretched wide over his own extra teeth. Show time.
::-Dean-::
Fortunately for the human population of Limestone, the vampire’s nest was a long way out of town, but conveniently situated on a road that led straight to the spaceport where the Impala was docked. Drenched in viscous, black vampire blood and stinking of iron and rot, Dean found the road and ran, his hand still clenched around the handle of his dripping machete.
His fangs sunk deep into his own lips, and he swallowed down his own blood as he ran, as if any red liquid could quench his raging thirst.
Sam’s voice was in his head, but that was impossible, because Sam was dead, wasn’t he? Dean shook his head, his mind full of bullish rage and visions of death. How many vampires had he just killed? He’d lost count.
Dean, you need to get back to the Impala. I have the cure, but you need to come home so I can give it to you.
Sam’s words buzzed and crackled and made no sense. Sam was dead. Sam was a machine. Nothing mattered now. He didn’t have a home any more, he’d run away from Lisa and Ben because Sam was alive/dead. Here/gone.
Dean was a monster. Sam had made him a monster.
Dean slowed and spat a gobbet of bright blood onto the concrete landing pad. He was briefly distracted when it made a pattern like the Crab Nebula, but Dean didn’t stop moving, just toppled forward until the floor met his face and his momentum finally halted.
::-Sam-::
Sam watched, helpless, through his own external sensors as well as through Dean’s eyes, as Dean slowed to a stuttering stagger on the approach to the Impala. Dean was so close, but then his stagger became a collapse and Dean dropped like a felled tree.
Luckily for Sam, Dean was only a short distance from the Impala’s ramp, and he was able to use the fixer-bots to roll his unconscious brother onto a stretcher and wheel him aboard. Manoeuvring him into the med bay was a challenge, but once safely inside with a force screen deployed, Sam’s problems were only just beginning. Dean regained consciousness but was feverish and raging beyond reason. Sam’s efforts to talk to Dean via the implant caused more distress than using the ship’s audio system, so Sam quickly switched from internal to external communication, though eventually he had to acknowledge that neither method was getting through.
“Dean, please let me give you the antidote.” Sam wasn’t above begging.
“Fuck off, don’t you fucking touch me!” Dean raged, drops of sweat running down his face. He was back on his feet, crouched in a fighting stance, his hands dark-crusted with the blood of the vampires he’d slain. Every few minutes his body would shudder, wracked with waves of pain he refused to acknowledge.
Sam withdrew. He needed to think.
It was abundantly clear, as if Sam needed any further confirmation, that his plan had been fundamentally flawed. The V in Dean’s system was sending his fragile human body into overload, and it was difficult even for Sam to weigh up all the different variables and work out how long Dean could last before his heart gave out, or his brain fried. Sam had miscalculated. Clearly the ingestion of the blood was a key part of the survival process, and omitting the blood meant the subject would not gain the full advantage of the transformation into a vampire. There was no halfway stage where Dean could live forever but lose the cravings for human blood. All Sam had done was administer a poison that was killing Dean slowly, and agonisingly.
Sam pondered but couldn’t see any solution as long as Dean refused to allow Sam to administer the Λ antidote. If Sam had use of his body, he could have held his brother down and injected him, but as it was, Dean had already destroyed three of the fixer-bots Sam had deployed to do the job. The only option seemed to be waiting for Dean’s body to shut down so he could try to get a bot into the med bay quickly, and hope Λ was fast acting enough to prevent Dean’s death.
In the background, unheeded by Sam, his systems were running the many routines required to keep his body – the Impala’s body - functional. Diagnostics on the flight systems; backups; programming the fixer-bots to carry out routine inspections and repairs that sent them scurrying through conduits and vents too small for the human maintenance (human maintenance being Dean) to reach or fit through.
In the med bay, Dean was screaming.
His brother was screaming in the agony of withdrawal from the V drug, and Sam heeded that over all else.
He didn’t even notice Castiel’s ship docking, or the airlocks opening. He was unaware of the angel’s presence until Castiel was standing in command, demanding Sam show himself.
“Castiel,” Sam said, shocked that he’d allowed himself to become so preoccupied that someone, albeit a friend, had been able to board Baby without him noticing. “What are you doing here?”
Castiel frowned, looking around as if he expected someone to jump up from behind one of the consoles. “What do you mean, what am I doing here. You called for help, Sam. I am in the middle of a war, California is in turmoil thanks to Raphael, but I dropped everything to answer your call.”
Cas looked around again, and if anything, his frown was deepening. “Why are you speaking to me via the comms? Where are you, and where is Dean?”
“I didn’t call you,” Sam said, but even as the words formed and the sound waves generated, he found it, buried deep in the communications records. His own distress signal, sent the moment he’d brought Dean aboard. A subspace-wave sent by Sam’s subconscious, a plea for help sent on a private channel directly to Castiel.
Before Sam could say anything else, Dean cried out again, the pained almost-scream carrying clearly through the ship’s main corridor into the command centre.
Castiel moved, and was out of the door and striding down the ship’s spine towards the sound faster than a slingshot manoeuver round a moon. Sam followed.
“Cas, I didn’t mean to call you, but I—we do need your help.” Sam was surprised to find that it was actually a relief to admit it. Castiel’s stride faltered when Sam’s voice tracked with him down the corridor, but picked up again when Dean’s cries didn’t stop.
So Sam explained as best he could en route - what had happened, both to him, and what he’d done to Dean. He didn’t say why he’d decided turning Dean was a good plan, but from the expression on Castiel’s face, the angel thought he had a very good understanding of Sam’s motives. Which Sam envied if true, because right now he was having a hard time remembering why it had seemed like such a great idea. All the data he’d collected back then no longer made the same sense it had when he’d deliberately sent Dean onto Limestone, merely to test a theory.
Having the cure wasn’t the easy option Sam had envisaged. He’d been careless, uncaring, inhuman in his reasoning, and now his brother was suffering because Sam had made decisions based on computations, and because Sam no longer had a human hands to administer an injection. Λ was useless if he couldn’t get the drug into Dean’s veins.
He’d been wrong about so many things.
Sam trailed his consciousness like a whipped dog after Castiel to med bay, where the angel stopped in the doorway, unable to enter until Sam lowered the force field he’d put in place to contain his brother – for Dean’s protection, but also to stop Dean harming the ship and Sam.
Sam realised that he’d been avoiding monitoring inside the room since he’d mentally prodded Dean there. After Dean had smashed the third bot into smithereens Sam had given up trying to administer the antidote. He’d left Dean alone to deal with the effects of the vampire drug raging through his system while Sam took them out of Limestone’s orbit. In as far as Sam could manage given his circumstances, he’d run away rather than deal with the problem.
Lost in his own guilt, it took Sam a moment to realise Castiel was talking to him.
“Sam. Lower the field. I need to help Dean.”
Castiel was fiddling with the control panel on the door, and Sam couldn’t allow that. He was willing to try and reason with Cas before taking more drastic action, so he refrained from making the panel give the angel a shock.
“Cas, wait. If you go in there now, we’re going to lose him. It’s been fourteen hours since the vampire injected him with V. Look at him. He’s going crazy for fresh blood; he needs it worse than an oblivion addict needs Vismrti. Just like demon blood withdrawal.”
Sam knew by the way Castiel’s shoulders stiffened that he was getting through. “You know I know what I’m talking about, Cas. There’s no way we can reverse the effects of V if he feeds; and you? You’re a walking blood bank.”
Looking through the force field, Sam’s camera eye could see the same scene that faced Castiel. The room was wrecked. Medical supplies were scattered across every surface, while the treatment couch had been wrenched off its space-safe moorings and thrown into a wall. Dean was on his feet but swaying like seaweed in a strong tide, his back to the doorway. Something must have alerted him to Castiel’s presence, because he suddenly spun on his axis and was moving towards the force field faster than should be humanly possible. Sam couldn’t blame Cas for making a shocked sound and jumping backwards as Dean flung his whole body into the field, making it crackle and spark. Dean’s face was contorted into an almost unrecognisable picture of fury, his skin an odd mixture of grey and mottled red that made him look like the veined volcanic rocks on Yellowstone.
For a moment Sam thought Dean would continue to batter himself against the barrier, but after a couple of seconds a look of recognition passed through Dean’s reddened eyes, and the tide of rage ebbed out of his features. He took a single step back.
“Cas? What the hell are you doing here?” Dean’s voice was normally deep but now it sounded raw and strained, like he’d been swallowing hot coals.
“Sam called for my help. There’s a cure that will reverse what the vampire did to you. It’s called Lambda, but Sam tells me that you refuse to allow his bots to administer it.”
Dean shook his head, as if Castiel’s words were flies buzzing round and irritating him. Sam could barely suppress his own irritation at the bullish expression on Dean’s face. His brother’s response was both frustrating and typical.
“Never mind me. What about Sam, Cas. Can you fix him?”
Castiel’s head swivelled and he looked up to where the camera Sam was using was blinking its red light. He spoke directly to Sam, even though his reply was ostensibly aimed at Dean.
“I don’t know, Dean. Does Sam even want to be fixed?”
It was a question Sam couldn’t answer. He’d made such a mess of everything. Did he even deserve a second chance? But he did know he wanted Dean restored. If promising to allow Cas to ‘fix’ him got Dean to acquiesce to taking the necessary dose of Λ, then that’s what Sam would do.
“If you can save Dean, we can talk about me,” Sam said. That seemed to satisfy Dean, because he took another step back from the doorway and slumped down to sit on the med-bay floor, as if he was trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. Castiel, on the other hand, gave Sam’s camera a cynical raised eyebrow, but didn’t comment, just asked for the antidote.
Sam didn’t waste any time, he didn’t think Dean had much of that left. He sent another fixer-bot with a full syringe of Λ, and switched off the force field so Castiel could enter the room. He was done making stupid mistakes, so he flicked the screen back on as soon as the angel was inside.
Dean fangs were bared and he was shaking from the effort of holding himself in check, but Sam had to hand it to Castiel. The angel showed no fear, just crouched down next to his friend and helped Dean shuck off his jacket and roll up a sleeve to bare a nice plump vein to take the needle. Sam could hear the low murmur of their voices but made no attempt to tune his receptors into their conversation.
He didn’t even watch; he knew Cas had it in hand, that Dean would be okay now. The use of Lambda wasn’t experimental; all the test results had been available on Campbell’s database. The process wasn’t pretty, and Dean might suffer much more pain than Campbell-Corps test subjects, none of whom had such a long gap between their dose of V and the antidote.
It felt disloyal not to remain, bearing witness, but Sam turned off all his interfaces regardless. It wasn’t as if he could do anything useful. He couldn’t even put his arms around his brother and hold him while he screamed. Sam shut down everything apart from his connection to the command centre and the automotive functions needed to keep the Impala on track, so he could consider his options without any distractions. He had some decisions to make.
Chapter 4
::-Sam-::Four hours later Sam was forced to question that assertion. Dean was – irritating. He puttered around aimlessly, fiddling with Sam’s systems, making adjustments that weren’t necessary. Part of Sam understood that this was Dean’s way of normalising what must seem to him to be a fucked up situation, but Sam was failing to see any downside to his current state and he really wanted Dean to appreciate Sam now, instead of continually hankering after past (human) Sam.
Having full use of the Impala’s computer systems was pretty awesome, Sam decided. But once Sam had mastered those and discovered he could also range out into the IG-Web, there was no comparison. The more he explored, the more data and functionality he began to master, the more exhilarated he felt. Being able to process his thoughts in so much depth and at such speed was almost addictive, even though he recognised that his newfound enhanced functionality was resulting in a certain level of impatience with Dean’s human limitations.
Turning his attention outward, Sam was diverted from an anomaly deep within his systems that had sprung to life when his memories had returned. Hidden within a ring-fence of base protocols a white light nestled, pulsing faintly. Inside the light was a voice that alternately soothed and prodded.
But you always were the bright one, Sam. Not so driven by your emotions, more rational, more intellectual.
Yes.
Dean will be looking for ways to terminate your new existence, to return you to the pain and suffering of your human body. You need to find a way to stop him. To make him realise this is for the best. He doesn’t want to lose you again, but as the Impala’s non-artificial intelligence, you cannot decay, become ill, or age. Any damage can be repaired. In this form you can be together for Dean’s lifetime.
Freed from the human trap you can fly, Sam. Reach your full potential.
The inner voice was niggling in its familiarity. It was smooth and persuasive, but the point it was making about the inevitability of damage, or of parts failing, gave Sam pause. The voice’s words were true, they confirmed what he’d already concluded – Sam was effectively immortal like this. He didn’t even need to keep his human form alive any more. He had considered simply switching off the power to the cryopod and allowing the redundant flesh to die, but an innate consideration for Dean’s inevitable suffering had preventing him from taking that last step to cut his ties with his past. He was rational enough to understand that he was vulnerable without a human presence to carry out the maintenance any machine needed to run smoothly. Sam needed Dean.
Any human would do, you just need someone with the right skills…
No. That was a lie.
Sam knew better than the voice. He needed Dean. He needed his brother. Forever.
::-Dean-::
Dean knew Sam had told him several times now, and he got that Sam was starting to sound annoyed about it, but Dean couldn’t help it. Even though he could talk to this mechanical version of Sam anywhere on the ship that had coms, which was basically everywhere, Dean was drawn irresistibly to the cryo-chamber where Sam’s body lay in its deep freeze. It helped Dean to think he was talking to his Sam, not a machine.
“Don’t worry, Sammy. I’m gonna do whatever it takes to get you fixed up. If Bobby can’t help, I’ll go to Callie and get you the best care in the best facility Commercial City has, I don’t care what it costs. Hell, I’ll even sell Baby if I have to.”
“You can’t sell the Impala, Dean.” Sam somehow managed to imbue his electronic voice with irritation and disapproval every bit as effectively as when he’d used vocal chords, and Dean couldn’t help thinking that was one transferrable skill Dean could have done without. “I am the ship, remember?” Sam added, and Dean flushed.
“Yeah, well, it’s a bit hard to forget that, Sam, when you keep talking to me while I’m having a crap, or trying to grab some shut-eye.”
“Sorry about that,” Sam said, not sounding the least bit sorry, in Dean’s view. “But there doesn’t seem much point in pretending I need to sleep, and some matters are urgent.”
“Dude, nothing is so urgent you can’t let a man have five minutes alone time every now and then.”
“Only five minutes? It’s time you got laid if that’s all it takes…” Sam somehow managed to convey equal measures of amusement and sarcasm in his tone, and Dean decided this really wasn’t a fair contest. Time to change the subject. Except Sam got there first.
“Dean, I’ve found us a case. It’s on Limestone, in the Illinois quadrant. Several young teenagers have gone missing, and there’ve been raids on the local blood banks. Looks like it might be a nest of vamps.”
‘Vamps, huh?” Dean felt a spark of interest that was quickly quenched at the thought of hunting alone. He’d done enough of that when Sam had left for Callie to study and Dad was off being mysterious instead of trusting his eldest son; and look where that had got them. “I’m sure we can get the word out to hunters in the area to take care of it. My priority is getting you fixed. We’re only a few of hours out from the Dakotas and Bobby’s.”
“Actually, we aren’t, and there’s no need to contact anyone, Dean. I changed our course last night; we’re en route to Illinois now, scheduled to arrive in two hours.”
Dean leapt to his feet, even his righteous anger not quite enough to burn off the weight of Sam’s constant dispassionate observations. Added to which, he was starting to feel like some sort of bug under a microscope, sharing the ship with this new omnipresent version of Sam.
“What the fuck, Sam? You changed course without even consulting me? What is wrong with you? Anyone would think you don’t want to get your body back.”
Sam said nothing for a second too long and Dean’s face set, the muscle in his jaw clenching while his eyes grew wide with shock.
“You don’t want your body back, do you,” Dean said, and there was no question in his mind that he was right. His hand dropped from where it had been resting on the plasplex that covered Sam’s frozen face and then Dean was striding out of the chamber.
He headed straight for command, fully intending to reset their course. He’d nearly reached the doorway to the command deck when the Sam in the machine took action.
Dean swore when the reinforced steel door swung closed right in his face. He didn’t need the automated alarm sounding to tell him what Sam had done. Baby was entering lock down and Dean was shut out of command with no way of accessing the controls. He should have realised Sam would follow him with the Impala’s internal surveillance and guess Dean’s intention immediately it became clear where he was headed. Sam probably didn’t need more than a fraction of Baby’s processing power to work out that Dean was going to change course back for Bobby’s and the Dakotas.
“Dean, I can’t let you alter our heading. I know you mean well, but you’re right about me not wanting to return to my body – not yet, anyhow. I’ve barely scratched the surface of this new existence; who knows how much more effective a hunter I can be with the Impala’s resources at my metaphorical fingertips?”
Dean refused to reply and smacked his palm against the matt-grey steel.
“Just think about it, Dean,” Sam said. Dean shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it, thanks very much.
Dean grabbed the handle and pulled with all his strength but he heard the locking mechanism engage before the door had even moved a millimetre. His hand gripped harder involuntarily, his knuckles white as he stared in frustration at the blank reinforced metal of the door. As if a door was going to provide him with answers. Over the shrill alarm he heard the dull thunk and hiss that indicated all the other doors in the corridor were closing too. He spun round, though he knew he was too late to make a run for it.
He was stuck in the damn corridor until Sam decided to abort the lock down.
“God-fucking-dammit, Sam!”
::-Sam-::
He left Dean in the corridor to rant and shout for a while until, as always, Dean ran out of steam. It took precisely ten minutes and forty three seconds, which was twenty seven seconds longer than Sam’s calculations had predicted. Sam adjusted his parameters for future reference.
“So, as I was saying,” Sam said, once Dean had fallen silent. “We will arrive at Limestone’s spaceport in one hour and forty seven minutes. I’ve tapped into the local law enforcement’s database and extracted everything they have on the disappearances. They are now expecting a Galactic Federation Investigator to join their investigation team, so you should have no problems moving around and interviewing relatives and witnesses yourself, such as they are. So far there have been three young men and seven young women who have been taken, which sounds like this may be a sizable nest. These Vamps don’t seem to be slowing down, or at all concerned about giving away their presence to the locals.”
Sam monitored Dean closely while he talked, noting the reluctant gleam of interest igniting in Dean’s eyes. If Sam had facial muscles, he would have smiled, maybe done a little fist pump.
Gotcha!
Sam briefed Dean about the possible vampires on Limestone, but he deliberately omitted to mention a few other salient details he’d found whilst researching the IG-Web. Namely that, while investigating the disappearances, he’d discovered a nearly invisible thread that led, via a convoluted route, to a backdoor in the systems of the universally reknowned pharmaceutical giant, Campbell-Corps. Following this lead, Sam unearthed some very interesting information about a secret drug known only as V. Based on his findings, Sam thought that these vampires might be a different variety to the ones the Winchesters had tackled back when John Winchester was alive. Sam had a theory, but he needed someone on the ground to test it. If Sam was right, and he was ninety nine point nine per cent sure that he was, then this drug could be exactly what Sam was looking for. And if he was wrong, well, Sam had the solution to that too.
That wasn’t the only omission Sam made. His delving into the depths of Campbell-Corps had thrown up a lot of supplementary data, including a detailed history of the Campbell family dynasty. None of this information was directly relevant to the case, so Sam didn’t bother distracting Dean with the news that Samuel Campbell, CEO and founder of the company, was the father of Mary Campbell, and their grandfather. He needed to keep Dean focussed – not only to distract him from his misguided attempts to return Sam’s consciousness into Sam’s feeble human body, but also to ensure Dean’s presence on Limestone as a possible test subject for the potential immortality drug, V.
Which brought him to the next little problem. How was he going to persuade Dean to accept the coms implant he’d had a fixer-bot prepare? Somehow he didn’t think Dean was going to embrace with enthusiasm a device that would allow Sam to monitor his brother every step of the way while he was on planet. Sam had already had to mollify Dean’s sensibilities by pretending to turn off some of the ship’s cameras in strategic positions – like the shower and Dean’s cabin. Obviously he hadn’t actually shut them down, he’d merely switched off the camera-active lights, but it made Dean feel better, and that was all that mattered.
The trouble was, all that mattered to Dean was Sam, and Dean was still convinced the ‘real’ Sam resided inside his frozen, useless body. And therein lay the solution to Sam’s dilemma. Sam waited until Dean had landed the Impala, and was preoccupied with dressing appropriately for the GFI investigation, before he put forward his studiously casual proposal.
“So when you go out there, I suppose you’ll be wanting to monitor my body’s condition. It’s ok, I understand. You and I will need to keep in touch too, so I’ve prepared an implant. It gives us two-way coms and gives you real-time readings from the cryopod when you want them.”
“I…yeah…that’s great. Um, thanks.”
Dean knelt and allowed the fixer-bot to inject the nano-implant into his spinal column just between the C1 and C2 vertebrae. Sam tested it immediately. He could tap into Dean’s visual and audio cortex with ease, though there was no way he was going to let Dean know this was anything more than a standard intercom with a life signs monitor added.
Remember, you don’t have to vocalise to communicate with me, Dean.
“Yeah, I know, genius. But I prefer talking the old fashioned way.”
Luddite.
“I don’t even know what that means. Once a geek, always a geek, hey, Sammy?”
Sam hoped his satisfaction at hearing Dean call him Sammy – him, the ghost in the machine, not his virtually dead body – didn’t bleed through their connection. He wanted Dean exposed to him, not vice versa. Especially now, when Sam was hiding so much from his brother.
Dean would agree with Sam in the end, he was sure. They would have many decades to come to terms with decisions Sam was making now, if Sam was correct about these particular vampires, and about V. It would be fine. Dean would be fine.
::-Dean-::
It might be one of the largest moons orbiting Illinois, but Limestone was a dump. Dean had been on the surface for less than minute before coming to that conclusion. The sky had come down to meet the ground in a solid sheet of rain that showed no sign of abating. Dean had walked the dark streets for hours in a stupid G-Fed uniform, which was in no way waterproof, looking without success for evidence of this supposed nest of vamps. He was soaked to the skin, cold, hungry and increasingly pissed off.
This is the nightclub where the third girl went missing.
Sam’s voice sounded in his head, dispassionate, unconcerned and very un-Samlike. Dean didn’t like it. Scratch that. He full out hated it.
“Great. This is probably the stinkiest alley yet.” Which was true enough, but not what Dean really wanted to say. He just hoped he wasn’t subvocalizing his true thoughts back to the ship.
Grumbling under his breath about people dumping garbage everywhere, Dean pushed open the door and stepped inside. The lobby area was poorly lit, bare concrete and smelled faintly of piss, but at least he was out of the rain. Now he was inside the building, he could hear the repetitive thudding of a bass beat coming from inside the club. He sighed and braced himself as he pushed the inner door open. Cosmic-crud-rock. Fucking peachy.
“Sammy, if I come out of here with bleeding ears, I’m blaming you.”
Thankfully Dean didn’t have to endure this auditory torment for more than fifteen minutes before he spotted his first potential predatory vamp amongst the crowd of wild-eyed, too-skinny trance-users and longhaired crud-rockers.
The club was dimly lit and the walls were running with condensation from the combination of too many sweaty bodies and poor ventilation, but the vamp and his intended victim didn’t care. She looked young, barely twenty, long dark hair and too much make-up, which was already smudging in the humid atmosphere. Dean bristled when the vamp brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned in as if sniffing her neck. Her eyes were dark and from a distance Dean couldn’t make out whether she was high on trance or just oversexed. She looked out of it, either way. He cursed under his breath when the two of them edged towards the exit. He fought his way through the mass of writhing bodies and just managed to slip outside in time to catch sight of two figures disappearing into the alleyway down the side of the building.
Dean skidded round the corner to find the vamp had the chick pinned up against the wall. Her head was tipped back, the long line of her neck gleaming pale in the lurid light from the club’s sign. In two strides, Dean’s knife was in his right hand and the guy’s collar grasped in his left as he yanked the guy off the girl, who screeched like a banshee and ran. Dean slammed the guy up against the wall, then hesitated with his blade pressed to the guy’s neck. Who was gushing words like a water fountain.
“What’re you…oh my god, please, just take my credits, my GUV keys, anything, just don’t kill me, please…”
Doesn’t sound much like a vamp, Dean, Sam said inside Dean’s head.
“No shit. This case sucks,” Dean said, and rolled his eyes when wannabe-vamp looked even more terrified than before. Dean sighed. “Okay kid, just got to check something. No sudden moves; just put your hand up to your mouth there, and show me your teeth.”
Sure enough, there was no sign of fangs. Dean growled a bit to scare the kid out of being so damned stupid, hanging out where vamps prey on humans, then let him go. The sound of the fleeing kid’s footsteps had barely faded into the rain when a voice from behind saved Dean wondering where to look next.
“You’re pretty.”
Dean turned around slowly, keeping the knife concealed behind his back, just in case. Rain slid cold down between his collar and his neck, making him shiver. The man addressing him didn’t look like anything much – medium height, broad but bordering on overweight, long crud-rocker hair curling in the damp atmosphere – but his face was shadowed and his tone raised Dean’s hackles.
“Had a tip off there might be a guy outside who’s just the type I’m looking for; looks like my information was right.” The guy drawled. “You’ll do nicely, especially as you just scared my other mark away.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Dean said, backing away as he talked, all the while trying to broadcast to Sam on their internal radio. “But you’re not my type.” Sam, you getting this? Any chance you can call for some local back up? Any time soon would be…ah fuck.
Too late, Dean caught the sound of a footstep to his left, and so totally missed the guy coming up on his right. Fucking amateur move, Winchester, letting yourself get surrounded. He twisted, attempting to bring the knife up, but one of the guys already had hold of his left his arm in a vice-like grip, while the other smashed something that felt like a metal bar onto his knife hand, forcing him to drop the blade with a pained yelp. He struggled hard, but both guys were strong, and all resistance went out of him when crud-rock-dude joined in the fray. All it took was two well placed punches, one to his solar plexus and the other to the side of his head, and Dean was too busy trying not to throw up his lunch while seeing more stars than the deep sky census.
“You wanna live forever, pretty boy? Sure you do,” Crud-rocker said. Dean fucking hated rhetorical questions, but even worse was the fact that Crud-rocker dude was sweet-talking him, like Dean was his date or something. It really wasn’t helping with his efforts to keep his gorge from rising.
Crud-rocker gripped him by the hair and yanked his head back, and Dean knew what was coming next. Having his throat ripped out by a vamp wasn’t how he’d seen his life ending, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He’d been such a fucking idiot, coming here without backup when he should have been concentrating on getting Sam back. He should never have listened to anything mechano-Sam said – look where it had got him. He was going to die in a smelly alley on a shit-hole planet on the edge of civilisation, while Sam would be lost, stuck as a ghost in the machine forever.
Incredulous and angry, Dean kept his eyes open in futile defiance as Crud-rocker sank needle-sharp teeth into Dean’s vulnerable neck, sending an electric current of white-fire through his body. Holy fuck, Dean hadn’t thought dying again would hurt this bad.
The last thing Dean expected to hear before he blacked out was his brother’s voice inside his head, telling him everything was fine.
Relax, Dean, Sam said. He’s not going to suck you dry, he just wants to recruit you.
Dean enjoyed a brief moment of satisfaction that he managed to fire off a heartfelt fuck you to Sam before it was lights out.
Chapter 5
::-Sam-::Sam hadn’t taken into account that with Dean unconscious, the implant would lose access to Dean’s visual and audio inputs. Sam was effectively blind and deaf for as long as Dean’s brain was offline.
Now he had to wait impatiently for Dean to come round before he could find out where the vamps had taken his brother and put the rest of his plan into place. Frustrated, Sam could only hope that the injection of the V drug into Dean’s veins would work as he expected, and that he could restore contact with his brother in time to prevent Dean from ingesting any blood. It was not part of Sam’s plan for Dean to become a vampire. Sam was aiming for Dean to become something else, something new.
It all seemed so simple once Sam had found his first piece of the jigsaw – the synthetic compound drug known only as V. It was the side effects of V that caught Sam’s initial attention and focused him on the suspicious activities of Campbell-Corps. V wasn’t on the market, and hadn’t undergone any of the rigorous testing requirements laid out by the I-G Federation, and Sam could see why. Its use wasn’t widespread, so Sam doubted anyone without access to his unique combination of resources would be likely to notice that on a small number of outlying planets, vampires were colonising a few backwater towns and moons with behind-the-scenes support of the pharma-giant, Campbell-Corps.
Sam had discovered a few unsecured reports that mentioned the potential for a synthesised version of the vampires’ genetic modification that specifically focussed on their longevity – precisely the element Sam was interested in for Dean. Sam dug deeper, wormed his way through Campbell-Corps many-layered security defences until he finally reached a dead end.
Frustratingly, the formula for V was not to be found anywhere within Campbell’s systems. He’d found the antidote almost immediately, but Sam’s searches dug up nothing useful on V itself; in fact he could confirm that Samuel Campbell’s possibly justified paranoia meant all records containing the ingredients of V were apparently kept on paper, in Campbell’s own journal. As a result, Sam was forced to opt for this crude and less than predictable delivery mechanism, which entailed placing Dean, like a sacrificial victim, in the path of the vampire recruiters.
At least Sam was pretty sure of the rest of his information, given that Campbell’s ultimate objective appeared to be similar to Sam’s own. Campbell was looking for something that could bring the dead back to life, with his end game being opening the gates to Purgatory and freeing Mary Winchester. Sam filed that information away, in case he needed leverage against Campbell in the future, but was otherwise uninterested in Campbell’s ambitions to resurrect his mother.
Sam’s focus was elsewhere, on what V could do for him and for Dean. Their mother was an irrelevance, a distraction for Campbell but not for Sam.
Once the drug was administered (whether by vampire’s saliva or by more conventional injection), its effects were rapid, and reversible only by using the antidote called Lambda, or Λ. Λ only remained effective as long as the subject didn’t combine V with feeding on human blood, and there was no evidence in Campbell’s archives to show whether any of his researchers had tried to prevent a subject from feeding. Unlike V, the formula for Λ was readily available, so Sam downloaded the data. It was always good to have insurance, after all.
Sam thought it was worth the risk to dose Dean and then take whatever steps necessary to make sure he didn’t feed. This would ensure that Dean didn’t turn fully, but should still retain the longevity of a vampire, a life long enough to keep up with Sam. But Sam’s whole plan hinged on making sure Dean didn’t drink any human blood. One taste of blood and that was it; Dean would be lost to the effects of V, his brother would become a true vampire with no way back, and no way of controlling him.
Sam couldn’t allow that. He needed Dean. For once he refused to analyse why. It was a fact; he accepted it. Sam never considered approaching Campbell directly, and maybe looking at pooling their resources. In his view, their grandfather was too obsessed with finding Purgatory and bringing their mother back from the dead to give any consideration to anyone or anything that didn’t contribute to his own selfish, human goal.
So that had been Sam’s grand plan, which was now halted by the most ridiculous of mistakes. If Sam had been human right now, he’d either be sighing or throwing things in frustration. As it was, he couldn’t quite compute how he’d made so many basic errors.
Not only did he have to wait for Dean to revive, he had also failed to factor in the effects that the injection of V into Dean’s system would have on Dean’s cerebral cortex when Dean did awake. Or how Dean’s reactions might affect Sam and thus Sam’s ability to bring Dean back unscathed and more importantly, un-blooded.
Basically, Sam had miscalculated a lot of things, and was having trouble recalibrating, due to interference from Dean’s disorientation, which started the moment Dean regained consciousness. Everything Dean was experiencing was broadcast back through their connection. The implant was only supposed to tap into Dean’s conscious speech, together with Sam’s illicit inputs and outputs from his brother’s audio-visual centres, but either Dean’s subconscious was encroaching on those areas of his brain, or Sam had designed the implant wrong, because what Sam got from Dean on waking was pure chaos.
Random images flashed through Dean’s head, simultaneously bombarding Sam’s processors with a series of meaningless bursts of sounds and images, between periods of static.
Crud-rocker dude’s teeth, bloody and fenced like a Callie shark. A grimy, ill-lit hall, green-stained and probably stinking of rot, though thankfully Sam lacked the receptors to appreciate smell or taste. Shadowy figures that resolved into pallid faces – other vamps, no doubt. Sounds that were over-loud and intrusive, images random and confused. It was anarchic, and completely offensive to Sam’s desire for order.
Sam needed Dean to focus or he was going to lose him in the melee.
::-Dean-::
The first coherent thought Dean had was that his neck didn’t hurt. He touched the bite marks on his neck and felt nothing, even though his fingers came away sticky with his own blood. He knew it was his own because he recognised the scent of his own DNA, which was bizarre. But then this whole situation was confused and whacked out.
Dean was on overload. Hearts beating too slow and sluggish reverberated on his eardrums Odaiko-loud; footsteps resounded like a herd of Kenyan elephants on a wooden floor; his own breathing was as harsh as a steelworks bellows. He longed for the peace of space.
He could hear his own steady heartbeat and easily distinguish it from the others that surrounded him. He could readily pick out the bodies that had no heartbeat at all. That wasn’t normal. Oh yeah, that’s right, Crud-rocker had turned him.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Dean was a walking dead man. His nostrils flared and his mouth began to water as the air filled with an extraordinary, rich, metallic scent.
Fresh blood.
Dean shuddered as he felt the slick movement of fangs sliding down inside his upper lip. He swallowed down the rush of saliva, then jumped a foot in the air when a hand landed heavy and over familiar on his shoulder.
“Hey there, newbie. Nice to see your pretty green eyes open. Here,” Crud-rocker said, with a smile full of points, “have some blood. You need to keep your strength up.”
The vamp was holding out a blood bag, and Dean leaned towards it, involuntarily, his stomach protesting with hunger urges stronger than anything he’d ever felt before. Strangely, it helped Dean focus. He knew what he had to do.
He’d been assessing his surroundings and thought he had the measure of this place and its occupants. He still had all his weapons, an error of judgement Crud-rocker wouldn’t make again. He gripped the smooth handle of his machete, letting his index finger slide down the sheath to test the sharpness of the cold steel.
Dean smiled back at Crud-rocker, lips stretched wide over his own extra teeth. Show time.
::-Dean-::
Fortunately for the human population of Limestone, the vampire’s nest was a long way out of town, but conveniently situated on a road that led straight to the spaceport where the Impala was docked. Drenched in viscous, black vampire blood and stinking of iron and rot, Dean found the road and ran, his hand still clenched around the handle of his dripping machete.
His fangs sunk deep into his own lips, and he swallowed down his own blood as he ran, as if any red liquid could quench his raging thirst.
Sam’s voice was in his head, but that was impossible, because Sam was dead, wasn’t he? Dean shook his head, his mind full of bullish rage and visions of death. How many vampires had he just killed? He’d lost count.
Dean, you need to get back to the Impala. I have the cure, but you need to come home so I can give it to you.
Sam’s words buzzed and crackled and made no sense. Sam was dead. Sam was a machine. Nothing mattered now. He didn’t have a home any more, he’d run away from Lisa and Ben because Sam was alive/dead. Here/gone.
Dean was a monster. Sam had made him a monster.
Dean slowed and spat a gobbet of bright blood onto the concrete landing pad. He was briefly distracted when it made a pattern like the Crab Nebula, but Dean didn’t stop moving, just toppled forward until the floor met his face and his momentum finally halted.
::-Sam-::
Sam watched, helpless, through his own external sensors as well as through Dean’s eyes, as Dean slowed to a stuttering stagger on the approach to the Impala. Dean was so close, but then his stagger became a collapse and Dean dropped like a felled tree.
Luckily for Sam, Dean was only a short distance from the Impala’s ramp, and he was able to use the fixer-bots to roll his unconscious brother onto a stretcher and wheel him aboard. Manoeuvring him into the med bay was a challenge, but once safely inside with a force screen deployed, Sam’s problems were only just beginning. Dean regained consciousness but was feverish and raging beyond reason. Sam’s efforts to talk to Dean via the implant caused more distress than using the ship’s audio system, so Sam quickly switched from internal to external communication, though eventually he had to acknowledge that neither method was getting through.
“Dean, please let me give you the antidote.” Sam wasn’t above begging.
“Fuck off, don’t you fucking touch me!” Dean raged, drops of sweat running down his face. He was back on his feet, crouched in a fighting stance, his hands dark-crusted with the blood of the vampires he’d slain. Every few minutes his body would shudder, wracked with waves of pain he refused to acknowledge.
Sam withdrew. He needed to think.
It was abundantly clear, as if Sam needed any further confirmation, that his plan had been fundamentally flawed. The V in Dean’s system was sending his fragile human body into overload, and it was difficult even for Sam to weigh up all the different variables and work out how long Dean could last before his heart gave out, or his brain fried. Sam had miscalculated. Clearly the ingestion of the blood was a key part of the survival process, and omitting the blood meant the subject would not gain the full advantage of the transformation into a vampire. There was no halfway stage where Dean could live forever but lose the cravings for human blood. All Sam had done was administer a poison that was killing Dean slowly, and agonisingly.
Sam pondered but couldn’t see any solution as long as Dean refused to allow Sam to administer the Λ antidote. If Sam had use of his body, he could have held his brother down and injected him, but as it was, Dean had already destroyed three of the fixer-bots Sam had deployed to do the job. The only option seemed to be waiting for Dean’s body to shut down so he could try to get a bot into the med bay quickly, and hope Λ was fast acting enough to prevent Dean’s death.
In the background, unheeded by Sam, his systems were running the many routines required to keep his body – the Impala’s body - functional. Diagnostics on the flight systems; backups; programming the fixer-bots to carry out routine inspections and repairs that sent them scurrying through conduits and vents too small for the human maintenance (human maintenance being Dean) to reach or fit through.
In the med bay, Dean was screaming.
His brother was screaming in the agony of withdrawal from the V drug, and Sam heeded that over all else.
He didn’t even notice Castiel’s ship docking, or the airlocks opening. He was unaware of the angel’s presence until Castiel was standing in command, demanding Sam show himself.
“Castiel,” Sam said, shocked that he’d allowed himself to become so preoccupied that someone, albeit a friend, had been able to board Baby without him noticing. “What are you doing here?”
Castiel frowned, looking around as if he expected someone to jump up from behind one of the consoles. “What do you mean, what am I doing here. You called for help, Sam. I am in the middle of a war, California is in turmoil thanks to Raphael, but I dropped everything to answer your call.”
Cas looked around again, and if anything, his frown was deepening. “Why are you speaking to me via the comms? Where are you, and where is Dean?”
“I didn’t call you,” Sam said, but even as the words formed and the sound waves generated, he found it, buried deep in the communications records. His own distress signal, sent the moment he’d brought Dean aboard. A subspace-wave sent by Sam’s subconscious, a plea for help sent on a private channel directly to Castiel.
Before Sam could say anything else, Dean cried out again, the pained almost-scream carrying clearly through the ship’s main corridor into the command centre.
Castiel moved, and was out of the door and striding down the ship’s spine towards the sound faster than a slingshot manoeuver round a moon. Sam followed.
“Cas, I didn’t mean to call you, but I—we do need your help.” Sam was surprised to find that it was actually a relief to admit it. Castiel’s stride faltered when Sam’s voice tracked with him down the corridor, but picked up again when Dean’s cries didn’t stop.
So Sam explained as best he could en route - what had happened, both to him, and what he’d done to Dean. He didn’t say why he’d decided turning Dean was a good plan, but from the expression on Castiel’s face, the angel thought he had a very good understanding of Sam’s motives. Which Sam envied if true, because right now he was having a hard time remembering why it had seemed like such a great idea. All the data he’d collected back then no longer made the same sense it had when he’d deliberately sent Dean onto Limestone, merely to test a theory.
Having the cure wasn’t the easy option Sam had envisaged. He’d been careless, uncaring, inhuman in his reasoning, and now his brother was suffering because Sam had made decisions based on computations, and because Sam no longer had a human hands to administer an injection. Λ was useless if he couldn’t get the drug into Dean’s veins.
He’d been wrong about so many things.
Sam trailed his consciousness like a whipped dog after Castiel to med bay, where the angel stopped in the doorway, unable to enter until Sam lowered the force field he’d put in place to contain his brother – for Dean’s protection, but also to stop Dean harming the ship and Sam.
Sam realised that he’d been avoiding monitoring inside the room since he’d mentally prodded Dean there. After Dean had smashed the third bot into smithereens Sam had given up trying to administer the antidote. He’d left Dean alone to deal with the effects of the vampire drug raging through his system while Sam took them out of Limestone’s orbit. In as far as Sam could manage given his circumstances, he’d run away rather than deal with the problem.
Lost in his own guilt, it took Sam a moment to realise Castiel was talking to him.
“Sam. Lower the field. I need to help Dean.”
Castiel was fiddling with the control panel on the door, and Sam couldn’t allow that. He was willing to try and reason with Cas before taking more drastic action, so he refrained from making the panel give the angel a shock.
“Cas, wait. If you go in there now, we’re going to lose him. It’s been fourteen hours since the vampire injected him with V. Look at him. He’s going crazy for fresh blood; he needs it worse than an oblivion addict needs Vismrti. Just like demon blood withdrawal.”
Sam knew by the way Castiel’s shoulders stiffened that he was getting through. “You know I know what I’m talking about, Cas. There’s no way we can reverse the effects of V if he feeds; and you? You’re a walking blood bank.”
Looking through the force field, Sam’s camera eye could see the same scene that faced Castiel. The room was wrecked. Medical supplies were scattered across every surface, while the treatment couch had been wrenched off its space-safe moorings and thrown into a wall. Dean was on his feet but swaying like seaweed in a strong tide, his back to the doorway. Something must have alerted him to Castiel’s presence, because he suddenly spun on his axis and was moving towards the force field faster than should be humanly possible. Sam couldn’t blame Cas for making a shocked sound and jumping backwards as Dean flung his whole body into the field, making it crackle and spark. Dean’s face was contorted into an almost unrecognisable picture of fury, his skin an odd mixture of grey and mottled red that made him look like the veined volcanic rocks on Yellowstone.
For a moment Sam thought Dean would continue to batter himself against the barrier, but after a couple of seconds a look of recognition passed through Dean’s reddened eyes, and the tide of rage ebbed out of his features. He took a single step back.
“Cas? What the hell are you doing here?” Dean’s voice was normally deep but now it sounded raw and strained, like he’d been swallowing hot coals.
“Sam called for my help. There’s a cure that will reverse what the vampire did to you. It’s called Lambda, but Sam tells me that you refuse to allow his bots to administer it.”
Dean shook his head, as if Castiel’s words were flies buzzing round and irritating him. Sam could barely suppress his own irritation at the bullish expression on Dean’s face. His brother’s response was both frustrating and typical.
“Never mind me. What about Sam, Cas. Can you fix him?”
Castiel’s head swivelled and he looked up to where the camera Sam was using was blinking its red light. He spoke directly to Sam, even though his reply was ostensibly aimed at Dean.
“I don’t know, Dean. Does Sam even want to be fixed?”
It was a question Sam couldn’t answer. He’d made such a mess of everything. Did he even deserve a second chance? But he did know he wanted Dean restored. If promising to allow Cas to ‘fix’ him got Dean to acquiesce to taking the necessary dose of Λ, then that’s what Sam would do.
“If you can save Dean, we can talk about me,” Sam said. That seemed to satisfy Dean, because he took another step back from the doorway and slumped down to sit on the med-bay floor, as if he was trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. Castiel, on the other hand, gave Sam’s camera a cynical raised eyebrow, but didn’t comment, just asked for the antidote.
Sam didn’t waste any time, he didn’t think Dean had much of that left. He sent another fixer-bot with a full syringe of Λ, and switched off the force field so Castiel could enter the room. He was done making stupid mistakes, so he flicked the screen back on as soon as the angel was inside.
Dean fangs were bared and he was shaking from the effort of holding himself in check, but Sam had to hand it to Castiel. The angel showed no fear, just crouched down next to his friend and helped Dean shuck off his jacket and roll up a sleeve to bare a nice plump vein to take the needle. Sam could hear the low murmur of their voices but made no attempt to tune his receptors into their conversation.
He didn’t even watch; he knew Cas had it in hand, that Dean would be okay now. The use of Lambda wasn’t experimental; all the test results had been available on Campbell’s database. The process wasn’t pretty, and Dean might suffer much more pain than Campbell-Corps test subjects, none of whom had such a long gap between their dose of V and the antidote.
It felt disloyal not to remain, bearing witness, but Sam turned off all his interfaces regardless. It wasn’t as if he could do anything useful. He couldn’t even put his arms around his brother and hold him while he screamed. Sam shut down everything apart from his connection to the command centre and the automotive functions needed to keep the Impala on track, so he could consider his options without any distractions. He had some decisions to make.