Dr. Dressler immediately glanced at his wristwatch, nodded, and then beamed at Sarita. "Very good. Asherah will clean up the worst of the blood, and then take over with that last bag you're holding. I have to make a note of the time and then we can talk."
He hurried away to the desk she'd noticed earlier, and Sarita turned her attention to Asherah as the woman reached under the table and retrieved some kind of nozzle. It was only when she pushed a lever and water began to run out over the midriff of the body that Sarita realized what it was.
Careful to keep her hand in place over the funnel, Sarita bent slightly to look under the table and saw that the top half of the table was fixed in place, only the bottom half was movable. Two pipes ran up one table leg, one pipe ending at a hose with the nozzle on the end, the other to a drain on this side of the table. Straightening again, she checked to be sure the bag of blood was still over the funnel, and then looked over to see that Asherah had already rinsed away most of the blood from the body.
Finding the spot where the upper body had been separated from the lower half, Sarita saw that they were now joined, with just an angry red scar where they had once been separated.
"Madre de Dios," she breathed, unable to believe her eyes.
"Move."
Glancing around with surprise, she saw that Asherah had finished with the hose and moved up beside her. Even as she noted that, the woman took over holding the bag and urged her away. "El Doctor wants to talk to you."
Sarita stepped back, her eyes returning to the scar where the body had once been cut in half.
"Move," Asherah repeated coldly. "You are done here."
Noting the dislike on the woman's face, Sarita reluctantly turned to walk to the desk where Dr. Dressler was scribbling furiously in a notebook.
Apparently finished making his notes, he raised his head as she stopped in front of the desk, and he smiled at her widely as he stood up. "Thank you, Sarita. Your help was invaluable."
"What exactly did I help with?" Sarita asked with a frown as Dressler moved around his desk. "That man was dead."
"Not dead," he assured her, crossing the room to the cupboards and retrieving a couple of syringes before moving to the refrigerator. "And not a man."
Eyebrows rising, Sarita peered back to the table. "He looks like a man to me."
"Yes," he agreed, bending to retrieve two ampoules from the refrigerator. "But he's not. He is an immortal."
"Immortal?" Sarita asked, following him back to the table. When he didn't answer, but concentrated on preparing a shot for the man, she glanced to Asherah as she tossed the now empty blood bag away. When the woman then moved around to the wheeled tray and grabbed another bag of blood, Sarita thought she intended to keep feeding it into the funnel. Instead, she replaced one of the now empty IV bags before grabbing another bag and replacing the other as well.
"Immortals are scientifically evolved mortals," Dr. Dressler announced, drawing Sarita's attention back to him. "This man is full of bio-engineered nanos programmed to keep his body healthy."
Finished filling the syringe, he set the ampoule on the wheeled tray and then simply held the shot and peered down at the man he called an immortal as he explained, "These nanos fight disease, repair the ravages of sun and time, and-as you saw-repair injuries."
Sarita shifted her gaze back to where the body had once been separated, and was quite sure the scar was smaller and less angry-looking than it had been just moments ago.
"After enough blood there won't even be a scar," Dr. Dressler announced. "The blood is what powers the nanos you see. They apparently use it to replicate themselves as well as to make repairs and so on."
"Blood," Sarita murmured, glancing toward the empty blood bags now littering the floor.
"Yes, they need a lot of it when injured," he said with a nod. "But even if not fighting illness or repairing an injury, the nanos need more blood than their host bodies can produce to keep them young. The nanos have forced their host bodies to evolve to make up for that need. In effect, making them scientifically created vampires."
When Sarita turned to him with disbelief, he glanced to Asherah and said, "Show her."
Asherah unhooked the harness from around the man's head and began to slowly remove it, pulling the feeding tube out with it.
Sarita half expected the man to begin screaming again, but other than a weak moan he was silent. Once Asherah had set the harness and tube aside, she picked up one of the disposed blood bags and sliced it open, then wiped up the little bit of blood left inside. It amounted to a couple of drops at best, but she waved it under the man's nose and despite his seeming to be unconscious, two of his upper teeth shifted and slid down in his open mouth, becoming fangs.