Whole Blood - VII. The Shield (chapter 7) by Alika Yarnell

I was one of twelve people who had seen Vierge since its disappearance over forty years prior. I wouldn’t say I was mesmerized. Or entranced. Or giddy. How to describe love at first site? Others have tried and done a better job than me. Poets, philosophers, romantics. I was just a scientist. I wished her blood was normal, mediocre red like mine, maybe then I could have stood a chance. But as it was, she could have anyone. And she did.

After a year of testing, they set her free. Dr. Head decided she’d been poked enough. They had gotten all the information they could. They would study their results but there was nothing more that she could do for them. This didn’t stop the men from wooing her, courting her. And the women too. They would take her to lunch and get pedicures and hope the sharp tools would slip. Who’s to say which came first? Did the color make her insides glow and leak pure radiance out her veins or did her purity transform her blood into magic?

And then she chose him. Ten years younger than her, a boy, really. So innocent, like her insides. He was so humble and normal it was sickening. I would’ve rather her pick Dr. Head who set her free. Or a rock star. Or the President of the United States. At least then I would’ve known there was no chance for me. But this guy. I could’ve been this guy. He was even white. I was painfully close and as far away as I’d ever been.

It didn’t take long for her to become pregnant. I didn’t want to see the pictures in the papers, didn’t want to know. The media and her fans wondered if her child would have Vierge blood. But Pam wouldn’t even reveal the gender of her child (though most thought that it was a girl), let alone the blood type.

I dreamt about Pam and her daughter for 27 years. Her child’s blood would be blessed, I could already see it. The master race would form with her as their queen. Infant suitors were already lining up to procreate with the child in hopes of Vierge-blooded offspring. She would have to have many children, all with different fathers to increase the odds. Still no one knew what caused Vierge to be. And Pam would be forced to stand on the sidelines as her daughter was raped and I would go to her. I would don my lab coat and rescue her and the child from their prisons.

But Pam was gone and hidden from the public, hidden from me, and the lab was cold and stark, the fluorescent lights boring into my soul. There was no meaningful work for me to do. The Vierge laboratory kept testing newborns but I didn’t want a part of it. I quit.

And she was far from me, finished with being prodded and interrogated. She kept her family sheltered and didn’t allow people with questions into her life, let alone the very man who had needled her for a solid year.

I remember our last encounter. It was in the parking lot outside of the laboratory just before dusk and the sky cast a bronze-red shimmer. I followed her toward the idling car that was waiting for her.

She turned toward me, as if sensing my presence and said, “What are you going to do with all my blood?”

The expression on her face was one of true puzzlement. After all this time, the fine lines around her eyes had grown deeper and she still wasn’t any closer to an understanding. I searched through my mental files for something to comfort her, something to give her peace.

I said, “We will preserve it, document it for future generations. There are still people who’ve never seen Vierge. You’ve been of great help to us—to the world.”

She looked at me briefly, then at the setting sun shining gold on her black skin. The car’s engine revved and she was swallowed into the passenger side. From the back window, I thought I saw the head of a young girl peeking out.

I neglected to confess about the vial of her blood that I kept in the back of my refrigerator at home. I loved her and she didn’t love me.

And then.

And then the other side of the world turned over. It was winter and somewhere in the snowy depths of a Russian wasteland: a howl. A new color, different from the first. This one just as spectacular, maybe even more so. And there was plenty of the new color to go around—it was erupting from volcanoes.

They called it Ogon, the Russian word for “fire.” Indeed, it was like staring into flames, warping and melting before our eyes. Just like with the original Vierge sightings, Ogon had been spotted on different parts of the planet simultaneously and the Hawaiian underwater volcanoes were full of it. If Vierge was beauty and all that was liquid purity, Ogon was the soft flame of clean fuel, powerful and energetic, yet with a pure stillness to it. Again, it defied scientific explanation, and again, people flocked to be near it.

I grew tired of theories and predictions. I followed the progress of Ogon but cared less about how and why it worked and more about what could be done with it. Already they were harvesting it and creating simple batteries to store its energy. It wouldn’t be long before they released the first Ogon-powered vehicles and erected Ogon-run homes. The progress was good but tiresome, bogged down by the archaic scientific method. Who could predict when the next wind would blow or which direction a new river would turn? Why did the branch choose to grow and curve at one precise spot over another? There are some things that have to be accepted.

Three years after Ogon’s discovery, I got an idea. I stared into my Ogon fireplace, mesmerized by the melting lava flames and I thought that together, the two colors could help to reshape the planet. If the internal Vierge blood was forged with the external Ogon fire, something miraculous might happen. Scientists said there would be an explosion of catastrophic nature, but I didn’t believe them. I just had a feeling.

I took the vial of blood I’d kept in my refrigerator for so long and went to Hawaii where most of Ogon was being extracted from underwater volcanoes through giant needles. I’d seen pictures of the deep trenches of the Pacific where Ogon squirmed out and turned to the familiar orange molten glow, only to be cooled instantly by salt water. Deeper, still, where sunlight was a dream yet to be comprehended, there lived other creatures. Most aquatic life was transparent, invisible in the black ocean backdrop. But some sported vibrant lit-up gills or phosphorescent skeletons or glowing sequined skin. I marveled at how such otherworldly life forms could have evolved in the depths of our own planet. As I learned about their neon tentacles and nautical light-sticks igniting in their inky habitat, I was reminded of seeing Vierge and Ogon for the first time. There was a sense of awe and wonder and with that, a kind of respect that resembled fear. I studied these underwater terrains for months before deciding to go above land with the vial.

There was only one known Ogon volcano above water. I didn’t have anyone to stop me. My actions bore no consequences.

It took half a day to climb to the summit of the smoking volcano. I put one drop in the lava fire and created an explosion which turned into the magic of The Shield. No one ever asked me where I got the blood.