The Anomaly

I run my own blood at midnight because nobody's watching, and the machine spits back an error I've never seen.

Not a malfunction error. Not a contamination flag. A classification failure. My blood doesn't match any type in the system.

I run it again. Same result. A third time, because I maintain this equipment myself and I know it works.

Same result.

"Huh."

The blood bank is empty at this hour, which is why I took the late shift in the first place. No administrators. No coworkers wanting to discuss weekend plans. Just me, the hum of refrigeration units, and rows of labeled bags containing other people's life force. Morbid job for a morbid girl, my seventh foster mother used to say before she sent me back. She wasn't wrong about the morbid part.

I pull up the manual analysis kit. Old school, but reliable. Antibody panels, cross-matching, the full tedious process. I work through it the way I work through everything: methodically, alone, trusting the process because trusting people has never panned out.

Twenty minutes later, the manual results confirm what the machine already told me.

My blood doesn't match any known type. Not A, not B, not O, not AB. Not Rh positive or negative. The antigens don't correspond to any classification in the database. I've processed thousands of donations in this lab, and I've never seen anything like it.

The vial sits on the counter, dark and ordinary-looking. Keeping its secrets the way I keep mine.

I should report this. Call Dr. Morrison, explain that I've found a medical anomaly. That's the professional move. But I've spent twenty-seven years learning that when something makes you special, someone eventually shows up to take advantage of it. Foster home number three taught me that. So did four, five, and the group home where I learned to sleep with my shoes on.

I pocket the vial and the printouts. Tomorrow. Sleep first, then answers.

I finish my shift on autopilot. Lock the lab, set the alarms, gather my things. The parking lot holds one car, my ancient Honda, sitting under a streetlight that's been flickering for months.

I'm halfway across the asphalt when the flickering stops.

Not burns out. Stops. The light goes steady and bright, and in that sudden clarity I see them.

Three figures. Dark clothes, still as photographs. They aren't walking toward me. They're already positioned, one at my car, one behind me, one to my left. A triangle with me at the center.

"Elara Vance?"

My keys are in my fist, teeth out. Pepper spray in my bag. Three steps away, but the one behind me is closer than three steps.

"Who's asking?"

"We need you to come with us." The speaker is tall, hooded. "Please don't make this difficult."

"That's what people say right before things get difficult."

I bolt for the gap between two and three.

I make it maybe ten feet before a hand catches my arm. Cold. Impossibly strong. The hooded figure is right there, he'd been twenty feet away a second ago, and his eyes catch the streetlight and throw it back silver.

No human eyes do that.

"We won't hurt you," he says, almost gentle. "But you have to come. The king is dying."

"I don't know any..."

Something pricks my neck. The parking lot tilts. My knees go soft, and the vial in my pocket presses against my thigh like a fist, like a secret I didn't get to solve.

The last thing I see before the dark takes me: three pairs of silver eyes, watching me fall.