Hey! This idea started bugging me a couple of days ago until I finally gave in to writing it. I hope you like it. Please tell me what you think! I only own Nora.

They say that if you're ever in what seems to be a hopeless situation, that's exactly what you're not supposed to do; lose hope. Find a point to focus on and keep it in view. Sometimes this point can be a variety of things but to most, it is a person. And lately, I've not even had that much.

It's been a week, maybe two, since I was brought in by Dr. Whitmore. The year is 1949, coincidentally my 300th year as a vampire. I was caught in Jamestown after an historical society meeting (which I am completely invaluable to as I was born, raised, and turned in the Jamestown colony). I'd made a point to look nice, wearing an evening dress and pulling up my dark blonde hair. The dress is now ruined. My hair is now tangled, falling between my shoulder blades.

Over the last few days, I've pondered what I could have done differently that night. Not feed in the alley? Not drink so much champagne that I let my guard down? Wear more sensible shoes?

I've got the unfortunate feeling that none of that would have made a difference.

I had been hunted. These people had sought me out, they knew what I was and where I was going to be, and judging by the amount of vervain they pumped into my neck, they knew I was old.

The first day here, I woke up before the Augustines wanted me to. As I was being carried into a scientific lab, I opened my darkening eyes and flashed my fangs. I wrapped my fingers around the throat of one of the doctors and threw him across the room. Then I broke another's wrist when he tried to vervain me. My success didn't last long because Dr. Whitmore, the head of this ridiculous organization, stuck a syringe into my arm. The vervain was so strong that I passed out again.

When I woke up, I was strapped to a table, unable to move. I jerked at the straps. If I had been at full strength, I would've shredded them.

"There's no point, 20574." A man in a white lab coat turned to face me. I could see tools laid out on a table behind him, all of them silver and all of them some form of weapon.

"What?" I remember groaning.

"You can struggle all you wish but you're not getting out of here. We've learned our lesson." I assume they have. I've spent the time since then too weak to move on my own. Doctors come to my cell, pick me up, move me around, take me back, and throw me on the ground. My first night here I just stayed prostrate on the floor, unable to do anything but lay there.

"What is this place?" I pulled at the straps again. I couldn't see them all but I felt them around my legs, wrists, hips, and across my shoulders. I knew then as I know now that getting out of this situation won't be easy. In fact, if they keep drugging me, I'll likely never get a leg up on them.

"You're part of an experiment for the Augustine Society, 20574." I think I rumpled my brow in confusion.

"What sort of experiment?"

"Well, you see, I'm a doctor and the research I'm planning on conducting on you is going to help the human race." I've met a lot of crazy people in my long life on this earth but so far, Dr. Whitmore is in the running for number one. "You vampires heal so fast that it's hard to believe anything ever happened to you. I plan on figuring out how that works."

He made the mistake of catching my eye and I took the chance to compel him. "As fascinating as all that sounds, you've made a mistake. I'm not the one you want so you're going to let me go." In response, Dr. Whitmore only laughed.

"That's a good one," he replied, "but I'm wearing vervain, as are all of the humans who work here. But as I was saying, your blood regenerates, not only itself but it heals others."

"And you just want to take my blood to heal humans?"

"Oh no. I want to know exactly how it works." He had said it so sinisterly that I knew what he was going to do to me long before he did it.

The first day wasn't that bad, all things considered. My navy evening dress had the middle torn practically in half and there was a slit to the top of my thigh that hadn't been there originally so my humiliation trumped my pain. But the pain was still awful. I can barely recall what happened in my first few hours in the lab but I know I screamed the entire time. Let me put it this way, they made sure to drug me again because Dr. Whitmore thought I might have bled out the majority of the vervain he'd administered earlier.

I was so groggy after that that I couldn't walk on my own. I was brought into the basement with my arms draped around two men and my feet dragging against the ground. Then I was cast onto the floor of a cell and locked inside. After that, I must have passed out again or otherwise, I just stared at the ceiling until I fell asleep.

My second day, I was coherent enough to discover that my cell faced another. I think there are four down here, each pair facing the other. I turned onto my side, looked into the cell across from mine, and saw a man. He was looking back at me, probably had been all night. I barely had the chance to recognize that there was someone else in here with me before Dr. Whitmore came and retrieved him. "No, no, no," I muttered. Minutes later, I heard yelling and I knew that whatever was happening to my cellmate was worse than what had happened to me.

I spent the next few hours contemplating ways to get out of this place and came up completely short. I pulled at the bars, I tried to break the lock on the door, I did everything I could think of but I was far too weak. Finally I just sat down and covered my face with my hands.

I've done a lot of bad things in my life. I've killed innocent people. I've threatened them, stolen from them. But do I deserve this? Am I so irredeemable that I should be locked up and tortured? In the time that I've been here, I can't say I agree with that.

Once I heard the screaming stop, it wasn't long before Dr. Whitmore brought the man back down. I eagerly looked through the bars, my hands wrapped around them, and watched him be locked in.

"You're up, 20574." Dr. Whitmore had turned toward me and I only shook my head.

"Are you saying I wasn't enough for you?" the vampire in the cell said. He's got an accent. "I'm ready to go again." I looked at the guy like he was insane before realizing he was trying to help me.

"Oh, you'll get your turn again tomorrow, 12144."

"Why do you call us numbers?" I asked. "Is it to make you feel better about cutting into us or are you just bad with names?" I saw a smirk stretch across the face of my cellmate.

"Tread lightly, 20574." I recall staring at Dr. Whitmore standing in front of my cell, ready to snap his neck. "If you learn to behave, I won't have to keep doing this." It was lightning fast. He grabbed my hand through the bars and injected a syringe of vervain. I clenched my teeth together in pain and I immediately weakened, though not enough to knock me out.

He unlocked the door, manacled my wrists, and pulled me out of the cell. I wasn't much for a fight then and I'm definitely not now. I let him walk me into the lab without even a complaint. I hadn't been here twenty-four hours and I felt like I had already given up.

That day, Dr. Whitmore told me his name, split open my forearm, and broke my leg. That day, I also yelled until I was hoarse.

"Is there any correlation between age and healing factor?" he asked, running a scalpel along my lower stomach.

"I don't know. You tell me," I replied, my breath hitching.

"If you care to know, I am aware of your name, 20574. It's Nora Darby. And most estimates put you at close to 300 years old." Those estimates would be right.

"And how do you know all that?"

"Vampires seem to be naturally arrogant but those that go into history have to have a particularly potent form of it. They always give themselves away. Giving far too accurate corrections, saying something that no amount of physical evidence can back up, speaking as though they were there. All are mistakes you've made, 20574." I'm guilty of everything he listed off and I can't deny it, especially the arrogance. "Maybe while you're here, you can do some thinking about how to change your approach."

When I was put back in my cell that night, the guards that brought me back down threw me a ball of clothes and gave me a pair of boots. The guy in the cell across from me watched incredulously.

"What are you waiting for, 20574?" one of the guards asked. I hugged the bundle of clothes to my stomach. No way. There was no way I was going to change in front of them.

"Are you serious?" I responded. They only laughed. The dress I had on when I was brought in had been torn to tatters. If I didn't change in front of them soon, it wasn't going to matter. I was close to nude anyway. So I did it. I faced the wall, crumpled my expensive navy dress, and got dressed in cargo pants, a white shirt, and combat boots.

They were careful not to get close to me when they grabbed my dress. I quickly hid my right hand in a pocket. They might want to confiscate everything that I came in with and I could not give up my daylight ring. I worked hard for that thing. I spent a century in the dark before getting my ring and I am never going to experience that again. But they didn't ask for it, even though Dr. Whitmore has seen it every time he's seen me.

I spared a glance across the hallway and saw that the other vampire wasn't looking at me. I admired him for it. If the view of the Augustine Society is that all vampires are ruthless monsters, unworthy of pity, it is one that is wrong.

The guards left and one of them winked at me. I've decided that I'm going to kill him first.

"That was a beautiful dress," my fellow captive said.

"Well, I paid a lot of money for it so it should have been," I responded. He moved to his bars, leaning up against them so that I saw him better. He's good looking and appears charming.

"I meant to give you the welcome speech yesterday but you passed out before I got the chance. You must've done something to really piss them off."

"Yeah, I guess you could say that." I put my hands through the bars, linking my fingers together.

"It might be best for you to lay low. You'll get weaker anyway. There's no point in speeding up the process." I figured he would know.

"How long have you been in here?"

"When I was on tour in Europe, I slipped up. Dr. Whitmore was travelling to different camps and found out what I was. He drugged me and sent me back here."

"You've been here for years?" I was in disbelief. If he's been since World War II, there is no hope for us. Unfortunately, nothing has changed on that front.

"Regrettably. I'm Enzo."

"Nora."

In the days (or weeks) that I've been here, Enzo has been the only light spot. I like him and he was right. Not laying low when I first got here has cost me a lot of agency. For the first few days, I was given no blood and kept heavily vervained. But now they've got me where they want me; too weak to fight or even protest anything verbally. Judging by the fact that Enzo has been in here for at least four years, I doubt that I'm going to get out any time soon. I use the time I have where I'm not being tortured to contemplate killing everyone working in Augustine.

That serves as a point of hope, right?