how important she’d felt, and how delicious the merger of these two feelings had been. Two was quite literate. A love for books had served her, in truth, far better in this area than the high school education she’d given up on probably could have. Yet there was no word she knew -- and perhaps no word at all -- for how she felt.

Two had made many trips to the museum that year, with Rhes and alone, absorbing all she could see. Trips to the Museum of Modern Art followed, galleries of new work in Greenwich Village, street artists in SoHo. Never any desire to attempt to create the work herself, only to immerse herself in others’ creations, to learn and experience what she could through them. To absorb some alternate view, as meaningful and inconsequential as her own.

Art had brought Two a deep, abiding love for the complexity and magnificence of human life. Even in utter disgrace, trapped in horror, she had still found some grim beauty in the structure of it all.

Now, she felt as if this precious connection with the rest of humanity had been torn from her. She had become something outside of the scope of those eons of art. Against her will she had been made an interloper, no longer welcome in the human world. It seemed as if those ties that she had found within the art had been severed.

As the blood tears dried on her cheeks, her preternatural eyes staring out through darkness no human could have penetrated, Two felt truly and completely alone for the first time since Rhes had first brought her to the museum.

Sitting on the stone floor in the darkness, listening to the drip of water, Two wondered when she might see Theroen again. Clearly, she had been put here in order to ensure that she would not run away in his absence. There was no reason for him to continue holding her in a cell once he returned. She had not protested, had not attempted any type of escape.

This, more than anything else, calmed her. If Theroen had intended simply to kill her, she would be dead. The altered physiology, the translucency in the mirror, the blood tears... these things suggested some further plan, one in which she joined him among the ranks of the undead. He would not leave her here to rot. She would see him again.

But not that night.

* * *

Two rose from sleep in a manner entirely unfamiliar to her. Before it had always been fuzzy, a gradual awakening. Now, she went from the deepest blackness to instant, total comprehension. It was startling. She sat up, looked around more from habit than from any need to clear her head. She was still in the cell, of course. Nothing had changed.

Almost nothing.

Before her was a bottle of water, and a note. Two took it, read it, crumpled it up and threw it out through the bars.

Two, please accept my apologies for my absence, and the appalling conditions of this cell. It is the only place in where I can be assured you will neither flee, nor come to any harm while I am away. I will see you later this evening. If you are thirsty, it should still be within your capacity to drink water at this time. - Theroen

No apologies for the bite, though. No apologies for the lack of warning. No apologies for whatever he had done that had begun this process without her permission. No apologies for taking away that beautiful connection with humanity, for making her some sort of monster.

Two felt a crawling, tightening sensation in her spine, followed by sharp cramp in her abdomen and the muscles behind her shoulder blades. Her mouth felt dry, her skin hot, and a wave of panic flooded through her. She knew this feeling, and a small part of her brain was surprised that it had taken so long to come around.

Her body had been without her drug for at least 24 hours now, and it wasn’t happy about it.

“Oh, God...” Two fought against the panic, knowing it would only worsen the symptoms, and was able to push it back for the time being. The gnawing desire still sat in the back of her brain, and her muscles ached like she had the flu, but she was not yet in the horrible pain that she knew was the next stage.

She uncapped the water, drank, felt it run down the length of her chest. It