An Episode of Not Quite Dead.

Episode Content Warnings

Please bear in mind that this show is a work of horror fiction and frequently places characters in situations which jeopardise their psychological and physical health. This episode contains:

– profanity

– descriptions of injuries (broken cheekbones, medical injuries)

– depictions of violence and torture (sounds of hitting, gushing blood, squeals of cries)

– depictions of drinking blood, with sounds – descriptions of violent medical abuse and torture, including vivisection (of vampires)

– depictions of violence (hitting, slapping, breaking bones)

– hyperventilating

– implied threat to life and references to intent to end life

– sounds of medical equipment

– description of a blood draw/blood donation

Transcript

This is Alfie Dellon recording on, uh. God. I don’t even know what day of the week it is, let alone the date. This is an interview with. um. Sorry, what did you say his name was? Neige?

NEIGE
I didn’t. I don’t know what his name is.

ALFIE
Oh. Um. Right. Okay. Uh.

SOUNDS OF DISTRESS FROM A GAGGED PERSON

NEIGE
We cannot hear you, much to my regret, of course.

ALFIE
Oh, right, yeah.

FOOTSTEPS

UNIDENTIFIED MAN

Help! Help me, please!

NEIGE
Putain de merde!

ALFIE
Fuck’s sake!

GAGGED SCREAMING AND SOBBING

ALFIE
Look, okay, I really don’t want to hurt you any more than we’ve already hurt you so would you just shut up? Please?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN
(muffled)
Okay.

NEIGE
I will rip off your balls and put them in your mouth if you do not keep it shut.

ALFIE
Neige! No! It’s taken months to get him! At least let me talk to him first.

NEIGE
I’m sick of it!

ALFIE
Yeah, I know it’s annoying! But it’s not like anyone can hear him, is it?

NEIGE
What, do I not count anymore?

ALFIE
Of course you count! I just mean nobody is going to catch us if he screams, anyway.

NEIGE
It does make me significantly more likely to kill him. Did you know a vampire can have a migraine?

ALFIE
They can?

NEIGE
Oui. I will testify it in a court of law.

ALFIE
You’re such a drama queen.

NEIGE
You love it.

ALFIE
No. Enough of the performance, thanks. You said you’d help. Just do that.

NEIGE
D’accord. Understood.

ALFIE
Wait, what is that?

NEIGE
What?

ALFIE
In your pocket there.

NEIGE
One of your phones. The ones you’d been using to record me in secret.

ALFIE
God– will you let it go?

NEIGE
It is already gone.

ALFIE
So why are you bringing it up again?

NEIGE
You brought it up.

ALFIE
Ugh, you know what? Fine. Whatever. Just let me speak to him, then you can do whatever you like.

NEIGE
As you wish.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN
(muffled)
Fucking hell.

NEIGE
Manners to your gracious hosts, sîl vous plait.

ALFIE
You going to scream?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN
Uh uh.

ALFIE
Good. Because he will probably actually rip off your balls, you know. I can’t stop him. He’s like. Ten thousand years old.

NEIGE
Give or take.

ALFIE
Give or take.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN’S GAG IS REMOVED. HE GASPS AND BREATHES HEAVILY.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN
Thank you.

NEIGE
Bien. Better.

ALFIE
There we go. Nobody has to get hurt. Or. You know. More hurt. So. Your name, for the record?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN
Tim. Tim Sherman.

NEIGE
He’s lying.

ALFIE
Yeah. Probably. But that’s fine really, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter who he is.

TIM
I know who you are.

ALFIE
Oh?

TIM
Not you. Him. Ten thousand years old, at least. Blonde hair. Pretty face. You’re him, the ancient.

NEIGE
You think I have a pretty face? My my. I am flattered.

TIM
There’s not a vampire alive older than a decade who doesn’t know your story.

NEIGE
Oh, my story? My legend? Sang de Neige, Coeur d’hivers. People have called me many things over the ages. This is not why you are here, my friend.

TIM
That’s exactly why I’m here.

ALFIE
What do you mean?

NEIGE
He means he is a fool.

TIM
We’ve been watching you. Counting your kills. That slip up in Leeds. Abducting two of my colleagues. You’re sloppier than your legend would tell. Very disappointing for vampire royalty.

NEIGE
I am no king, nor prince. I answer to none, and none answer to me.

TIM
That’s not entirely true, is it?

NEIGE
You must really not be overly fond of your testicles, Timothy.

TIM LAUGHS

ALFIE
Neige? What’s going on?

NEIGE
He’s trying to get into my head. Ignore him. Ask your questions.

ALFIE
Um. Okay. Tim Sherman. What do you know about vampires?

TIM
Seriously?

ALFIE
Yes?

TIM
Well. Can you be more specific, maybe?

ALFIE
Uh. Sure. Um. You know vampires are real, correct?

TIM
I know there are creatures, such as yourself, whose traits broadly align with the fictional entities we know in pop culture as vampires. Yes.

ALFIE
Right. And you study vampires. That’s your job.

TIM
Yes. Again, you could be more specific. Have you never held a hostage before?

ALFIE
Uh. Yeah. So. What’s your job title?

TIM
Lab technician.

ALFIE
At?

TIM
What?

ALFIE
Where were you a lab technician?

TIM
Holden Laboratories.

ALFIE
And what’s that?

TIM
It’s a laboratory.

NEIGE
Please can I kill him?

ALFIE
No! Look, would you just stand outside? You keep distracting me and he’s being deliberately obtuse just to wind you up. He wants you to kill him.

TIM
Oh, very good. Nicely done.

ALFIE
Shut up. Or I will let him savage you.

TIM
Nobody lets him do anything. He just does. He’s a force of fucking nature.

ALFIE
Neige. Please. Wait outside.

NEIGE.
Understood.

FOOTSTEPS. A DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES. ALFIE SIGHS.

TIM
He’s indulging you.

ALFIE
I don’t care. I’m right. You’re winding him up so he loses it and tears your head off.

TIM
I don’t mind which of you does it, frankly. The result is the same. It’s the same whether I answer your questions or not, too. The way I see it, I’m dead however this goes. What incentive do I have to speak to you?

ALFIE DRAWS A BREATH LIKE HE’S ABOUT TO SPEAK, BUT DOESN’T.

TIM
Rookie error. You need to know what your bargaining chips are ahead of time. Remember, torture is a terrible way to illicit information.

ALFIE
Hmm. I don’t know about that.

TIM
It is. Look it up if you doubt me.

ALFIE
I have looked it up, actually. Torture is a pretty terrible way to get a confession out of someone. It’s a great way to get them to cooperate with you, however. That’s actually why it’s so bad in the confessions department, you know? If you make it clear what your bargaining chips are before you hurt someone, you tell them exactly what to say to make the pain go away. Hurt them enough, they’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear just to make it stop. That’s why it’s awful for confessions.

Fortunately for you, Tim, I’m not interested in confessions. I’m not interested in you admitting things, accepting responsibility, or placing yourself in a position to incriminate your colleagues. Nope. I just want to know what you know.

TIM
Still contravenes the Geneva convention, though.

ALFIE
It doesn’t. Not here. We’re not subject to the Geneva Convention because we’re not at war.

TIM
Aren’t we?

ALFIE
A disparate community of vampires doesn’t constitute a state, Mr Sherman.

TIM
Oooh, I’m Mr Sherman now? Charming. Does this mean we’re close to letting your friend back in to tear out my throat? Something tells me your not the throat ripping type.

ALFIE
Despite my best efforts, you’re incorrect.

TIM
You seem young. Reckless. Two years since you turned, maybe even just one. There’s a spryness to you, and a loyalty to him that you’d have lost, if you were any older.

(pause)

I’m right, aren’t I?

ALFIE
You seem pretty interested in him.

TIM
He’s older than time. Literally, older than the concept of time. Older than agriculture. Older than towns and cities. The things he’s seen…

ALFIE
How about this; I ask you one. You ask him one.

TIM
You’re just going to kill me anyway.

ALFIE
That’s how you’ll know he’s telling the truth. Why lie when you’ll be dead in an hour anyway?

TIM
In an hour?

ALFIE
Maybe more, maybe less. Depends on how interesting you make this conversation.

TIM
Depends on how willing you two really are to speak.

ALFIE
Neige? You amenable to that?

NEIGE
Oui, je suis disposé. Si je parviens à le tuer à la fin?

ALFIE
D’accord, d’accord.

NEIGE
Merci, mon petit.

TIM
I don’t speak french.

NEIGE
Let the funky music do the talking then, eh?

CHAIR LEGS SCRAPE.

TIM
Wha–

NEIGE
(low, almost soft)
What do you want to know, little man?

ALFIE
Wait, wait, wait. First. Haemapheresis.

TIM
Ah. I see.

ALFIE
What do you see, Tim?

TIM
You found the lab. You saw what we were doing. We left in hurry, didn’t destroy the records properly like were supposed to. That explosion must’ve happened way after we were all gone. I can’t remember how long it was. It’s all in pieces, that night. But the call we got from Sarah and Jamie was clear. They saw your car. You must’ve got to the building before it blew. You know what haemapheresis is.

ALFIE
Describe it. To me.

TIM
Whenever we bring in a Type 2 we process them and assess them for the treatment.

ALFIE
Type 2.

TIM
Yes. The semi-animate corpses are more numerous. Ergo, you. You’re Type 2.

ALFIE
Vampires.

TIM
We don’t like to use that language.

NEIGE
Why?

TIM
Makes you sound like fairytale creatures. Like you’re magic.

NEIGE
We never named ourselves.

TIM
Would you have picked ‘vampire’ if you had?

NEIGE
No.

ALFIE
Okay. So what happens after you assess the Type 2?

TIM
Hang on. I want to ask my question for him, first?

NEIGE
You just did. I said no.

TIM
But–

ALFIE
Technically you haven’t answered my question yet.

TIM
I have. You asked what I meant when I said ‘I see’, and I told you.

ALFIE
Haemapheresis. What is it?

TIM SIGHS

TIM
A treatment for vampirism.

NEIGE
There is already a cure—

TIM
Not a cure! A treatment, a therapy, an on-going–

ALFIE
What?

TIM
The method uses modified dialysis machines.

ALFIE
To do what, Tim?

TIM
Didn’t you read the papers?! Didn’t you–

ALFIE
What do the machines do?!

CRUNCH. TIM CRIES OUT.

TIM
Purify the blood! They purify it!

ALFIE
By doing what?!

TIM
I think you broke my fucking foot, you psychopath.

ALFIE
How do the machines work, Tim?!

TIM
I want to ask my question! Please! That was the— please!

ALFIE
Fine, fine!

TIM CATCHES HIS BREATH

TIM
Paris. 1902.

ALFIE
What? That’s not a–

TIM
Come on, snowy. You know what I’m talking about.

NEIGE
You want to know about Henri.

TIM
Yes.

ALFIE
Henri?

NEIGE
I mentioned other vampires besides Casper and Bonham had been studying the mechanics. Henri was such a vampire.

TIM
Only. Something happened to him in 1902. Didn’t it.

NEIGE
I do not know the whole figure, how many died by his teeth and hand. But it is in the hundreds, I believe. Hundreds he turned and tried to turn. Many half-mades. At least several dozen fully made vampires, kidnapped, bitten, turned in the dark. The– when his laboratory was uncovered after he died, it– there was a young vampire on a table. His organs exposed to the air. The top of his head– none. His mouth, toothless, hands crushed. No eyes, just two voids, crusted with old blood. I remember, the way his lungs moved, I was mesmerised. One was punctured, you see, by a splintered rib.

All this, under his townhouse in Paris. He kept corpses in the basement so we could not smell the vampires and half-mades he had penned into small, hand dug tunnels underneath. I had been to that house many times. I thought Henri a friend.

TIM
Go on, snowy. Tell us what you did to him.

ALFIE
You don’t have to. He’s goading you, he thinks–

NEIGE
He thinks I will kill him to make him shut up. But I do not care about Henri, I will gladly admit that I let his starving prisoners tear him to shreds. I have no shame in this.

TIM
He’s missing something crucial about that though, aren’t you, snowy? Because one thing we’ve learned, one thing Henri knew, and Dr Bonham, and your darling snowball know from experience. Type 2 don’t lose consciousness when you take them apart. Nope. They cling onto it, right up to the moment they go insane from the blood lust. You know, I’ve managed to get one to read the alphabet backwards with just his brainstem in tact. We had his head-stump connected to a blood pump, but because he was disconnected from his lungs we had to make do with lip-reading. But yeah. Entirely functional until the very last sliver of brain was sliced—

WET THWACK. CHAIR LEGS SCRAPE. A THUD. ALFIE BREATHES HEAVILY.

NEIGE
Mon coeur. Please.

ALFIE
(breathless)
Sorry, I’m sorry.

NEIGE
Non. It is okay.

THINGS MOVE. TIM GROANS.

NEIGE
He’s present in his brain, oui? Timothée? Bonjour?

SLAP SLAP

TIM
S’fuckin’…

NEIGE
He lives. No harm caused.

ALFIE
Hmm. I think I’ve broken his cheekbone.

NEIGE
Eh. He will not be using it for much longer.

ALFIE
Might make it difficult for him to talk to us, though.

TIM
(garbled, indistinct nonsense)

ALFIE
Give me your ring.

NEIGE
Do not waste your blood on him.

ALFIE
We need to understand this, don’t we? Neige.

NEIGE
Oui.

ALFIE
Give me the ring.

NEIGE
Let me.

ALFIE
Fuck no; he’s weird about you. I’m not letting him taste your blood. He can get fucked.

NEIGE
How sentimental.

ALFIE
Not sentimental. Sensible.

NEIGE
We’ll see.

ALFIE HISSES THROUGH HIS TEETH.

ALFIE
If you bite my finger, we’re castrating you with this.

TIM GROANS

ALFIE
Alright! Enough! Enough.

TIM LAUGHS

TIM
Oh my god. That’s– I’ve never. The taste. It’s more effective when administered intravenously but, the taste. I see why Bonham never let us…

ALFIE
You’ve been dosed with the blood intravenously?

TIMby
Ha. Funny how you call it that.

ALFIE
What?

TIM
‘The blood’. Like it’s special. Like it’s all one thing.

ALFIE
Isn’t that your doctor’s theory, too? We’re all hosts to the same disease. Corpses that it puppets along.

TIM
In a way. You can follow each adapting strain of an infectious organism, kind of like a virus, we think, but not quite. But it becomes more dilute the further it gets from the source.

NEIGE
What bullshit.

TIM
Is it? There must have been a patient zero. Come on, Alfie. You know how epidemics work.

ALFIE
Vampire epidemiology. An intriguing concept.

TIM
Basic biology, isn’t it? The source, the origin myth, maybe the story is bullshit. A curse, a demon, whatever. But there has to be a patient zero, there has to be a beginning. It has its own version of a genetic code.

ALFIE
Stop looking at him.

TIM
His blood, if we sequenced it, we could understand—

ALFIE
You better not be including me in that ‘we’, there.

TIM
Don’t you think it’s what your Casper would have wanted? If we identify the origin, maybe it’s—

NEIGE
It is not me. I am not the first.

TIM
How could you possibly know?

NEIGE
I remember. I am not.

TIM
How could you possibly remember?

NEIGE
Your question has been answered. Mon coeur?

ALFIE
Er. Right. Bonham dosed you with the blood? Why?

TIM
To cure us.

ALFIE
Of?

TIM
It was different for everyone. It’s my turn to ask.

ALFIE
What was he trying to cure you of?

TIM
It is my turn.

ALFIE
Fine. Fine.

TIM
Before you fed him to his prisoners what did you do to Henri de la Bigne?

NEIGE
I gutted him. Alfie?

ALFIE
You–

NEIGE
This is a distraction. He is goading us. You know this.

ALFIE
Well yeah, but. Gutted. Like a fish?

NEIGE
I used my hands.

ALFIE
Neige…

NEIGE
You do not understand the suffering he– you do not understand. Imagine we had walked into that lab. Imagine seeing what you saw. Vampires with their organs exposed, punctured, replaced with the organs of animals, rotting inside their squirming bodies. Tell me you wouldn’t have responded with savagery. Tell me.

ALFIE
Neige…

NEIGE
If you had walked in and seen they had done this to Casper, and Bonham was there, watching, staring at you. Laughing. Tell me you would not have torn out his insides.

TIM
Not so straightforward is it, Alfie?

ALFIE
What do you mean?

TIM
You still sure you’re on the right side of this fight?

ALFIE
Oh, oh fucking hell. You think that–
(Alfie laughs)
You reckon I think we’re on the ‘side of the angels’ or whatever? You reckon I think we’re the good guys? Jesus fucking Christ, you infant. You have no fucking clue.

TIM
What?

ALFIE
Baby. Sweetheart. He’s a liar. He knew Cas was dead for MONTHS. Maybe not for sure, but oh. He fucking knew. There’s nothing you can tell me about him that will make me hate him more than that does. I know what he is, and I know what I am too. We’re monsters. We’re here to eat you alive for your fucking sins. We’re not the goodies. We’re the ones stopping you from killing them.

TIM
So naive.

ALFIE
Oh goodness me. Right. Okay. Sure. Say I’m naive, then. Give me your fucking pitch, Mr Sherman. Poach me.

TIM
Do you want to cure every disease? Not just every known disease, but every single disease that has been, that will be, that could be? There is a secret in your blood which, if we can decode it, could do that. There would be no more sickness. None. No cancer, no common cold, nothing. We could regrow lost limbs, grow new organs. We could heal fractured DNA. The very concept of suffering would be over. And the answer is in your blood.

ALFIE
Say for a moment that’s true. Do you think that makes it okay to fucking– to do whatever it is you’ve been– to slice the conscious brains of living creatures–

TIM
Arguably living.

ALFIE
We’re intelligent! We’re cognizant!

TIM
So your argument for your own consciousness is that you pass the Turing Test? What about people with severe head injuries who are unconscious? Are they dead?

ALFIE
No. But neither are we.

TIM
Dr Bonham understands it’s not true. But he also understands the potential. He thinks—

NEIGE
He’s an idiot. He believes he can conquer death. This is not possible.

TIM
How can you say that? You are ancient. You’re older than—

NEIGE
Shut up. I know who I am. Do not presume to tell me. One day this planet will die. If I have not perished long before that, I will die with it. If by some cruel eventuality I survive that horror, I will go out with the universe. Death is the god that eats everything. You cannot conquer him. You can only hope to meet him as an equal.

TIM
Maybe not immortality. But tens of thousands of years of—

NEIGE
For what, eh? What do you suppose this would get for you? I am a fucking relic. The only reason I have been able to live is chance, and my willingness to change. What happens if everyone lives forever? What do they do with their time? How do they spend it? I would hope it would lead to prosperity and peace. To green fields and equality. But even then. Change. It is one of life’s great wonders. Life is not meant to stands still.

TIM
So why are you?! Why are you so fucking special? What makes you better than the rest of us?

NEIGE
Nothing. I’m not better. I just go on. That is all. There is no greater meaning to it than that.

TIM
Vampires aren’t fucking special.

ALFIE
Don’t you fucking get any of this? Hardly anyone who is a vampire chose this. You can’t, really. You can choose to try, but you can’t choose this. The likely outcome of a change is death. You know that. You fucking know it. I know you know because I know you and your idiot lab buddies have been trying to make new vampires, and some of that makes sense to me, sure. You want a way to synthesise more of the blood and you’ve not found a way to do it outside of a vampire yet. I know THAT from your records. Some of it, though, it just doesn’t track. So tell me. What the fuck you’re doing. With Haemapheresis.

TIM LAUGHS

THWACK

ALFIE
TELL ME.

TIM
(slightly thickly)
We reverse engineered a– a protein– it— it binds to the infection. It decouples it. It’s not like with the chemotherapy where the cells are destroyed. But–

ALFIE
But what?

TIM
(laughing)
They fucking die anyway! They die! Or–

ALFIE
Or?

TIM
Revert.

AFLIE
Revert? Explain?
(pause)
EXPLAIN.

TIM
To a different state! We say revert because, we thought it was to Type 1, maybe.

NEIGE
The half-mades in the river.

TIM
We thought they were dead, until the attacks started. We managed to repossess some of the specimens when they were still semi-animate. They seemed like they were Type 1s, but we weren’t sure.

ALFIE
What do you mean they seemed like it?

TIM
They– you’ve seen them! They are just. Insatiably hungry. They can’t seem to process human blood the way Type 2s can, but. Ugh. In a Type 1, the infection takes the brain, but not the body. It’s like it doesn’t take in the meat, but the nervous system responds super well, right? But these. You look at tissue samples, it looks like… I don’t know.

ALFIE
It looks like what, Tim?

TIM
Type 1s, you see these sponge-like degradations. Like. Fuck. It’s like the infection tried to properly take over the brain, but it failed. In a starved Type 2, you see the same holes forming. We call it synaptical decay. It’s more important for the infection that it maintains control of motor function, see, so it’s like it— it pulls from the nearest resources, like pulling up the floorboards to throw it on the fire.

ALFIE
Like with the teeth. It’s prioritising the mechanisms it needs to heal the body.

TIM
Right. But. In the haemapheresis subjects. You don’t see the decay.

ALFIE
So why do they act like that?

TIM
We don’t fucking know! We’ve– we tried separating the brain entirely from the body and bathing it in the protein, re-installing, and it– it still–

ALFIE
It showed no signs of decay. But the bodies did?

TIM
At first.

ALFIE
Fuck, Neige. Fuck.

NEIGE
Composure, little love. Composure. You, Timothée, I don’t like the way you are watching him.

TIM
Jesus christ, how can I be looking at him wrong!

NEIGE
Look at the ground.

TIM
Fucking fine! Fine!

NEIGE
Alfie. Composure, mon râleur. Composure.

ALFIE
The– the fucking. Access sites. For haemapheresis. Detail them.

TIM
You have it in the—

ALFIE
Your records only take us up to two weeks before we found your lab and blew it up, fuckhead, you know that, you and your fucking idiot buddies ran off with everything in that research window. I wanted to know why. And now I do. So tell me. Access points.

TIM
We extract from the juglar and infuse through two femoral, two median cubital, two saphenous.

ALFIE IS HYPERVENTILATING

ALFIE
(whispering)
And what is the clinical hypothesis there?

TIM
We can insert a higher gauge needle through the juglar. Sometimes this is internal. At first we’d been using manual cardiac stimulation, but actually, if you just keep the blood moving with external pumps, you don’t need the heart, provided you have dispersed infusion sites.

ALFIE
So you extract the blood, add a protein that binds to the infection, and then run it through a centrifuge. The protein and the infection is then siphoned off and the blood replaced.

TIM
Yes. That’s the gist of it.

ALFIE
So your patients which seemed to revert to Type 1? What happened there?

TIM
At first we’d run haemapheresis and we’d lose signs of electrical activity in the subjects’ grey matter pretty quickly. We increased the infusion speed, mixing the extracted blood with donor human blood, that would keep them going a little while longer. We disposed of the corpses, thinking we’d neutralised them. Then. In our most successful test, one’s heart started beating again. She wasn’t feeding, she was just. Lying there. And her heart started beating. She started breathing, too. We intubated her, gave her oxygen – she had a blood oxygen level. Do you know how incredible that is? For three hours, her heart was beating, she was breathing. It was amazing. But she was gone too, in just a week. No electrical activity. Signs of decay began to spread.

ALFIE
So what changed in the last four months before we found you?

TIM
Ah. Wouldn’t that be telling? Unfortunately, it’s my turn to do the asking.

ALFIE
Ugh. Fine.

TIM
Did you know he came to us willingly, snowy? Did you know he said that he was sure you’d follow him? Hmm?

NEIGE
Yes.

TIM
(clearly stumped)
Oh.

NEIGE
I thought you were curious about me. It seems that you are instead a deeply ignorant and incurious creature.

TIM
What did you do to Henri de la Bigne’s journals?

NEIGE
Your turn for questions has ended.

TIM
Mine has, yeah, but he wants to know too, don’t you Alfie? I can see it in your eyes.

ALFIE
Sorry mate. I trust him.

TIM
I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.

ALFIE
Pretty sure I can throw things a lot further than you could, buddy. Bad luck. So you drain them, filter their blood, infuse it with a blend of human blood, it doesn’t work. You changed something else though, in those last few months. That’s what you ran off with. The only bit of your research you wanted to keep, burn the rest, who cares? So what did you learn in those last few months?

TIM
Your ex boyfriend was extremely helpful in that development process, you know. Extremely helpful.

ALFIE
Don’t talk to me about Cas.

TIM
We’ve been talking about Casper Novotny this whole conversation, haven’t we? That’s what you want to know. You want to know if he suffered, don’t you? Idiots.

ALFIE
Neige is right. You are incurious.

TIM
How so?

ALFIE
Well, here you are criticising me for not reading your paperwork, but you’re barely sparing a thought to why you’re getting this particular line of questioning at all. We’ve not asked you how to stop the half-mades which have been showing up all over the city or tried to get you to go into more specific detail about your process – if I’d not read your notes, that’s the kind of shit I’d be drilling you for, right? But I’m not. Because I don’t care about that and you’ve not once thought about why.

TIM
Oh. You took a little souvenir. How sentimental of you.

ALFIE
Did you think we’d just leave him there, you fuck? Leave on a slab in cold storage? Hollowed out, filled with holes. Empty. We might be the monsters, Mr Sherman, but you are a fucking villain.

NEIGE
I think we’re done.

ALFIE
No! Neige, I–

NEIGE
Step out with me.

ALFIE
Don’t command me.

NEIGE
Not a command. A request.

ALFIE
Fine, fine.

FOOTSTEPS

ALFIE
Don’t go anywhere.

DOOR OPENS AND SLAMS SHUT

NEIGE
Look at me, Alfie.

ALFIE
What.

NEIGE
Look at me. It’s done. Okay?

ALFIE
I– sorry, I’m sorry, I’m going too far, aren’t I? I can stop myself. I’m still in control. I’m still present.

NEIGE
Oui. I trust you in this, but he’s not going to tell us anything more. Not now.

ALFIE
How do you know?

NEIGE
He has been resistant to cooperation the entire time, and I think we have reached the limits of our bargaining power. We have not caught this man because we have gotten better at finding these lab technicians. Look how he watches you, Alfie.

ALFIE
You think he let us take him.

NEIGE
Oui, I think this.

ALFIE
Why would he let us take him? We killed the last ones. He’d know it is a death sentence.

NEIGE
The same reason Casper’s artistic subjects came to him weeks before they were due to die.

ALFIE
He wants to die?

NEIGE
Non. He wants us to kill him, my sweet.

ALFIE
He hates us. He must. Or–

NEIGE
But it is a particular kind of hate. A hate of the other. A child bred of fear and envy.

ALFIE
Yeah.

NEIGE
You still want to try for more, don’t you?

ALFIE
Yes.

NEIGE
Okay. Okay.

DOOR OPENS

NEIGE
Apologies for the delay.

ALFIE
It is interesting, how you watch us. There’s something in your eyes. A hunger. Almost like you’re jealous.

TIM
As if I would be jealous of you. Walking corpses.

ALFIE
Oh shut up. You and Bonham, too, and your whole operation.You’re obsessed, the lot of you. It’s sick. What’s wrong with us, the way we are now? What about our bodies is so wrong to you?

TIM
You can’t survive without consuming human blood!

ALFIE
So what?! It can be obtained ethically! If Bonham wants to fucking live his life, maybe he should be campaigning for equality!

TIM
He is.

ALFIE
Oh, fucking hell. Fucking hell. His panacea. He thinks– he thinks that he’s dead, but there’s a way to fix him. He wants to live forever with none of the fucking caveats.

TIM
The secret is in your blood, Alfie.

ALFIE
Fuck off. Fuck off. Maybe it is. But you can’t just. MURDER US TO GET IT.

THUDDING AND CREAKING

NEIGE
Alfie, darling–

ALFIE
Shut your face, Neige, you don’t own me, I don’t owe you anything!

ALFIE IS HYPERVENTILATING.

ALFIE
(whispering)
Tell me, Tim. Are they fucking. Conscious. When you the haemapheresis starts?

TIM
We’ll get to that when he tells me if—

ALFIE
Tell me, fuck head, was he conscious when you were draining all of his blood out of him?

TIM
My turn to ask the questions.

CRASHING. BANGING.

ALFIE
WAS HE CONSCIOUS. WHEN YOU DRAINED HIS BLOOD.

TIM
I’m afraid I don’t know.

ALFIE IS STILL HYPERVENTILATING

ALFIE
Why?

TIM
Because we removed significant portions of his brain and he was no longer able to communicate. So it’s not clear what he’d have felt. If he’d have felt at all.

NEIGE
I’ve changed my mind.

ALFIE
Oh?

NEIGE
Put him in storage.

TIM
What does that mean?

ALFIE
Yeah?

NEIGE
Oui. We need the reserves, and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.

TIM
What’s storage?

ALFIE
Right. Okay.

TIM
HEY!

NEIGE
CASSE-TOI!

A DRAWER OPENS

TIM
What are you doing?

ALFIE
You’ll feel a sharp scratch.

TIM
What is– ow! Is that a cannula! Fucking– what are you going to–

ALFIE
Hush.

TIM
You’re going to drug me?

ALFIE

No. Ah, beautiful. You have excellent veins, Tim. Look at that flow.

TIM
Oh– oh my god.

ALFIE
Yeah. That will take twenty minutes or so to fill. I’ll get a new bag, then. You’ll be done in a couple of hours. Storage.

TIM
Fuck. FUCK.

ALFIE
Mmm. And to think. You were so sure you’d get to feel it, weren’t you? That sink of teeth into your flesh? A final little moment of ecstasy on your way out of the door. Well. Sorry Tim. Thanks for playing.

TIM
Wait. Where are you going? WAIT!

DOORS OPEN AND CLOSE

TIM IS YELLING IN THE BACKGROUND

NEIGE
Are you okay?

ALFIE
No.

NEIGE
What can I do?

ALFIE
Nothing. You need to stop. Thanks for helping – this doesn’t mean– you can’t.

NEIGE
Of course.

ALFIE
Thank you for this, too.

NEIGE
Not at all, little love. Did it help quiet your mind a little?

ALFIE TAKES A DEEP BREATH

ALFIE
He’s not rotting, Neige. He’s not become a half-made. He’s just. Lying there.

NEIGE
We should burn him. Like I told you.

ALFIE
But what if. What if we can bring him back.

NEIGE
My sweet. My little love. I think if he could come back to us he would have done so already, non?

ALFIE
I— I can’t.

NEIGE
You are not ready yet. That is okay. You can hold on as long as you like. We have all the time in the world.

ALFIE
Okay.

TIM CONTINUES TO SHRIEK AND SHOUT

NEIGE
If Bonham had found an answer to this problem, he would not still be hiding.

ALFIE
Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.

NEIGE
Are you still recording this?

ALFIE
Shit, probably. Sorry.

NEIGE
No. it is okay. It is a good sign, I think.

ALFIE
What? Me recording this?

NEIGE
Oui. It implies to me that you still have hope.

[END]