Lorenzo positioned the dish under the microscope, peering down and letting Frankie have a turn. They
looked at each other, both seemingly confused and at a loss for words.
“Did it not work?” Snod asked, breaking the tense silence.
“It worked too well,” Frankie replied quietly, his face completely smooth now.
“Explosively well,” Lorenzo chimed in with a grimace.
“How explosive?” Snod quirked his eyebrow.
Lorenzo picked up the syringe of Frankie’s blood and squirted its remaining contents into another
Petri dish. He grabbed the serum and poured the whole thing in. The dish smoked and the glass
cracked loudly as it shattered.
“Shit,” Snod hissed.
“Highly explosive,” Lorenzo sighed miserably.
“The cell wall ruptured,” Frankie said sadly. “Violently. Much more so than we predicted.”
“The cure won’t work?” Snod questioned, still trying to understand.
“Not for me,” Frankie said quietly, his eyes focused on the floor as he got lost in thought. He was
completely still, a marble statue of contemplation.
“Okay,” Lorenzo said, rubbing his temples as if to soothe away a headache. “Here’s the deal.
Frankie’s blood is like, ninety-nine percent V. He still has some human red blood cells, but like,
maybe five. Okay, exaggerating, but still not a lot, all right?
“If we give him the DD 1.4, all those V cells inside his body will rupture and not only will they
compromise his entire vascular system, but Frankie won’t have enough human blood left over to even,
like, get his heart pumping. Not that it would matter, because all of his arteries and veins will be
freakin’ goo.
“But you, well, there’s at least some hope. Your V level is only like, meh, two percent? Maybe? The
rupturing would be super minimal, the infection would be cleansed, and you would be cured.”
“But I’m not infected,” Snod said slowly. “There’s nothing to cure.”
“The bond,” Frankie said quietly. “It would break the bond between us. You still carry my blood
inside you, my infection. It’s what allows us to be connected.”
“The V cells in your blood are dormant,” Lorenzo interjected. “When you drink from Frankie, the V
can’t survive because of all the oxygen, you know, being a person with a pulse. They die, no
vampifying, all that.
