The Wakeful Dead

She didn’t know whether it was the hunger or the incessant screeching of the hibernation alarm going off that initially woke her, rustling her from her hibernation after all these years.

Her youth hadn’t been touched by the past 256 years of hibernation; immortality had its’ perks after all.

Though waking up from hibernation could feel like a slump to the world of the ever living, or the immortals, as they called themselves.  Some just called themselves ‘the hunters.’

Last time she had been awake the humans had caused their own apocalypse, which was something they were prone to be good at, apparently. At least according to the elders it was normally the mortals who caused it.

Turning her head and slowly opening her eyes, Arina glanced around the now flickering blue lights in her hibernation capsule, as it gradually got brighter to wake her. The scent of roses came through the artificial scent pod, allowing for a welcoming awakening.

She reached up almost lazily to shut it all off, moaning to herself.

Arina turned her attention to the screen to see for how long she had truly been asleep, almost gasping when she read the digital number of 256 in years.

“Bloody hell,” sighed Arina, now getting annoyed, mostly from hunger.

She moved her body around a bit before getting out, wriggling her hands, feet, arms then her legs to get the blood going again. She didn’t have any adrenaline going for a fight or flight response, which would catch up with them eventually even if it saved their lives initially, at least when they needed it.

The slow and relaxed method was the preferred method to wake up from hibernation.

Her hibernation capsule had been quite out of the way, far away from the slumbering higher ranks, she’d initially gotten lost the first time she had to look for it, and found it looked quite small in comparison to the others. But they needed her for smaller tasks, since she was demoted and threatened with being ‘made to dust’, so she had kept a low profile as far as possible.

That over mistakes and incompetence which hadn’t even been hers; she just had to be the fall ghoul. The foggy start of memories was coming back to her, hazy at first, but hunger overcame her need to remember for the time being.

“Time to eat before waking everyone else, otherwise I might make them my breakfast,” thought Arina to herself as she got out of her hibernation capsule, carefully but light headed. She straightened out and walked over to their kitchen area, the emergency meat and blood capsules would still be fine after all this time.

That’s what they were there for after all, to be rot proof even after centuries. The elders had marveled at her generation for its inventiveness and vitality. And that had allowed them to lord it over the humans; for a time at least.

Arina walked in the dark without a problem, her eyesight guiding her perfectly in pitch dark.

She turned on the lights on the way to the kitchen, and then the system started up and helped things along. Despite being able to survive in the dark, they still liked the warm glow of light. Her maroon uniform still felt fresh after all this time, but she still wanted to throw it into the wash and get a fresh one, soon.

“Good evening, Arina. Have you slept well?” Came a robotic female voice, following Arina as she opened up a freezer unit, extracting a large helping of blood and artificial meat from thick glass containers. She was famished, as if she had a hole in her stomach threatening to consume her.

“Hi Mina, I slept like the dead, thank you,” replied Arina hoarsely whilst her stomach growled.

For now she was just a feeding ghoul-vamp, enjoying her bit of solitude before having to wake everyone else, and then follow orders from the snobs. The much lower nobles were quite a pain, thinking they were gods, even though they were dead last on the noble pecking order. She’d been banished here to serve them and their underlings to the middle of nowhere. But she never let them know too much about her. 

Oh well, back to trying to be awake.

Whoever woke up first had to wake the others, if the Officers hadn’t yet. 

“Yeah, if anyone else is still around,” came a thought into her head, as she drank the blood from its’ casing greedily. She wondered for a moment why she had thought that.

A thought struck Arina suddenly; the top level Officers would be awake before her, unless the system had struck itself out from the other levels during an emergency, for whatever reason.

“Mina, has there been any damage to the ship?” Asked Arina nervously.

“No, none,” came the electronic reply.

“Are the officers up and about yet?” Asked Arina, wondering why no one had woken her up if they had. A menacing face flashed before her eyes, she cringed and shut it away quickly.

Sure, she was pretty much banished from all the others, but they still needed someone to do their dirty work they were too lazy and snobbish to do. Or learn to do.

Another memory came flooding back; not a good one.

They had thrown her about, kicked her, spat at her, insulted her, and put the fear of dying into her pretty much. Now that she had consumed blood, the memories of pre-hibernation were coming back to her. But not just the last ones before sleep; the other memories came up too. And they weren’t pleasant.

“Arina; there is only you left. I was shut off before the hibernation tubes were fried; everyone except you is ash,” said the female robotic voice, sounding surreal.

Arina almost dropped her empty glass container, the blood drained from it. The lights around her were getting brighter suddenly, along with her realization of past events.

Memories were coming back, she had been so angry at everything and everyone. They had humiliated her for years by then, and only kept her around because they hadn’t seen her as a threat, but not good enough to mingle among them. 

Not because she was a hybrid; but rather, she had committed the one sin that was unforgivable; she had called out the elders’ pet favorites when they’d gotten up to trouble, and screwed up procedure to get what they wanted, among other things. But because they had been the favorites, nothing happened to them. This nepotistic trash was everywhere. They had sent her to this outpost to these clowns, to humble her and teach her a lesson, with that order to them and a bad reference to boot for her. And they’d seen that as permission.

But the worst sin was because she discovered they were dealing in supernatural blood and bone-marrow, selling it on the black market, to both humans and immortals. Their authorities had done nothing, except to her. 

It was the biggest violation against the sacred blood; which was their holy grail. Supposedly.

And they just didn’t give a damn anymore.

Her parents had still raised her to believe in honor, treating the blood in their veins as sacred. But as time had passed, their people just stopped caring. Her generation had been the inventors and creators, until they weren’t favored anymore, because they had everything now. It all came flooding back, making her almost sick. 

Arina was the one who had to fix the damn system in the ship every time; she had to deal with things when no one was there.

But then right before they were supposed to hibernate; things had gone quite awry when one of the officers had tried to re-program the system, thinking he knew everything but didn’t.

He nearly programmed the capsules and ship to shut down completely, and delete all data.

Arina had gone to his senior and shut down the system, which had ticked him off at the time. But she’d gotten to his senior and told her, and showed her the evidence. She had initially been angry with her junior for it, at least in front of Arina, because she knew the implications damn well.

“I know what I’m doing! That dumb corpse-bat doesn’t know anything!” He had wailed. She’d backed up everything anyway, saying she was going to her hibernation capsule; it was now their problem she thought.

“Don’t worry bat-slut; I’ll come visit you,” he had said, winking at her and blowing a disgusting kiss to her, in front of his Senior Officer, a female were-vamp. His crooked fangs looked like they wanted to fall out, from bad health and his dried corpse brain drug habit.

They all knew he had a record for perverted crimes, which was why he was sent here. But he had been a useful pet to someone at least. Despite how by their standards he was lower than a criminal.

As she turned to leave and go to her capsule, which she had re-programmed without their knowledge, she heard the senior officer say the sentence that had ended up sentencing them all.

“Don’t worry Robbie; we’ll all pay her a visit,” Senior Officer Lena had said.

Arina had heard rumors that they had fun before killing their prey; those like her, who had been sent to them as punishment. If you survived your sentence you could leave. They kept saying this wasn’t a prison, but another chance. Then the hibernation order came in from the top tiers suddenly.

And she couldn’t remember anyone who had ever been let free.

She had fought back before in the past, getting all bloody. It was part of being a supernatural creature, but she had managed to keep herself safe.

Until now, now she knew for sure it was time to fight back. Just not in the way they would expect.

She walked over to her hibernation capsule, calmly as if she had heard nothing.

She had gotten in, locked herself in, hacked into the system and executed the order to destroy them all when the hibernation started, except for her.

Arina sat still for a moment, picking up her artificial meat, eating it slowly and thoughtfully. She got up to put her dishes in the washer, and made her way to the other capsules, in all the rooms. Everyone had been turned to ash upon hibernation.

“Mina, did they try to open my capsule?” Asked Arina, the sound of her voice echoed off the now brightly lit walls.

“Yes, but as per order, they were electrocuted. They gave up when they saw it wasn’t going to work, and said they’d wait for you after hibernation. I recorded it, if you’d like to see it?” Replied Mina’s robotic voice.

“Maybe later,” said Arina, accessing the system and having their ashes scattered to the spring winds outside, watching on the security cams as they blew away. And how beautiful the spring looked, she saw some bright flowers outside, and badly wanted to go out.

She looked at the footage from the outside world, having sent out the cam squad to fly about discreetly even further.

She opened up the file after all, watching as they tried to get close to her capsule, but getting fried by electricity instead, not dying but making them leave in agony. She remembered now; she was awake when it happened, only dozing off after they had all been hibernated, permanently.

She wondered vaguely if the trauma could have caused her temporary memory loss as well; not just the sudden hibernation.

The world had been too dangerous to run away into, at least back then.

Arina tried looking for the other hidden ships and underground bases, but communication was cut off completely.

“Oh crap,” said Arina, wondering if she had somehow hacked into all the systems.

“Mina, are there any functioning bases left?” Asked Arina, sounding worried.

Mina ran her diagnostics for a moment before replying.

“No, seems they all had warfare from the mortals. How they knew where all the bases were and how to get rid of them; is up for conjecture,” replied Mina, sending Arina the footage. They themselves had been too far away from mortals; this was after all, the butt-end of their hierarchy, a place to be forgotten.

“Show me security footage if it’s available,” said Arina, knowing the security cams would have recorded and be on the mainframes. It wasn’t long before Mina accessed it.

Arina watched in shock as she saw her people bombed, flamed, and somehow made to explode, pink mist turning to ash. Her family were long dead, even before this, so she felt really nothing, except a momentary loneliness. 

Realizing she was quite literally, the only one of her kind left.

But she had backed up their libraries and education systems, for herself. And she still had her possessions stored in her tech, which was a part of her. 

She sat back in the chair, thinking of how it could have happened. 

“Well, the higher ups always liked their mortal pets. Whether they liked them back wasn’t even a question. Glad I never had any,” sighed Arina, missing her parents.

“Mina, are you meaning to tell me, that while I basically got rid of the jerks here, the humans did me an accidental favor, and got rid of everyone?” Asked Arina awed.

“Looks that way Arina, I have compounded my theories on that, if you’re interested,” offered the female AI.

“Go ahead and run them by me while I wait for the cam squad,” said Arina, sitting back further in the seat, and listening to Mina’s soothing calm voice, chatting with her like an old friend. 

“That pure dumb luck could go so far to save me, damn,” marveled Arina to herself in wonder.

What a wake up this was becoming.

“Their marked mortals seemed to have caused all this trouble, most of them had worked and known the essentials, even those who had been offered to be immortalized, which is strange. Why would they want to stay mortal and die sooner?”

“Because it was against their will, and no one likes to be a plaything,” remarked Arina, remembering her mother, who had been a turned vampire.

Arina sighed as Mina named some of the mortal leaders who had led the very well planned attacks, and their immortal handlers.

Recognizing their names hadn’t been very hard; she’d even met a few of their would-be sires before being sent here. And knew most of them as Class A Delusional Snobs.

They forgot that mortal & immortals had one massive streak in common; pride.

Her parents had often warned that something like was possible, but with immortality a certain kind of blindness can form in you. Her family had called it the ‘Supernatural Darwin Awards’. She liked that title, and wondered what Darwin himself would make of her former people.

She was truly on her own now, but she could survive.

The cam squad were making their way back, watching the footage as they had taken it.

The sun was now setting and it looked so beautiful. She was lucky in that Supernaturals could actually walk around in daylight like a mortal, unlike what the propaganda they had sent out for centuries had said.

Sure they were better equipped for night life, but daylight hours held no complications for them. They could even eat normal human food and enjoy it.

Watching the footage a tear streaked her face but she quickly wiped it away, her fangs coming out a little bit, mostly from joy. She forced them back quickly.

The sight of the outside world was beautiful, the setting sun, people in a small town a few miles away, at the seaside. There was a pretty hill with spring flowers growing nearby, far away from people but overlooking the town, splotching the hill in bright yellows, blues and reds.

She would go fly there tomorrow morning, then maybe go walk on the beach later that night.

But for now; she just wanted to take a nice, hot shower, for as long as she pleased.

It was a gloriously beautiful morning; the scent of wildflowers wafted around her, their bright colors sprinkled around her.

Arina sat in the midst of it, watching the view from the hill, watching the little village far below waking from slumber and people starting to mill about. She was too far away for them to see her; and things looked rather primitive here, even the squad cams had shown there wasn’t much here, and the village hadn’t been here when her team had been awake.

All that was in her past though, she felt relieved and smiled, feeling truly alive for the first time in centuries.

“I’m just beginning a new spring in my life,” she quipped to herself cheerfully, smiling a toothy grin as a light breeze played with her hair, wafting more of the wildflowers’ perfume to her.

She sat back and enjoyed the view a bit longer, before flying back to her ship quickly. No human would have been able to see her.

“Life really can bloom with surprises,” she thought to herself, planning her next trip and what she was going to do with her new spring season of her immortality.