Obstinacy

This is an entry for Finish the Story Contest - Week #33.

Here is @dirge's story:

Obstinacy

---

"I'm not going in there." Imani took a drag from her cigarette and put her muddy boots up on the dashboard. "I'm going to sit here until the sun comes up. I don't want to live anymore."

Isaac groaned. He glanced at his watch. They had twenty minutes till sun up. "Hiraam and Kat are inside waiting on us." He turned off the car.

"I hated Hiraam a hundred years ago and I hate him today. You know that."

"I know, Imani. But it's not like we have a whole lot of fucking options."

She scoffed. "Here you go. Angry as always. You know, you'd think that someone could handle their fucking anger issues after a few hundred years but. Well. You're kind of a living betrayal of that idea."

"Eloquently spoken from a drama queen," he murmured. Isaac rummaged through his coat pocket for a blunt. "What's it this time? General depression? PTSD from the bloodshed? Bored with the general state of things? Let me guess. It's just too hard now, right? Now that they've all gone and dropped the bioweapons on each other? Now that they're too sick for us? Just too much work for little Miss coffeeshop revolutionary. Little Miss Make A Revolution For Fun."

"Far more interesting to participate in their history then sit around painting all day." Imani tossed her cigarette out of the window and lit another. Isaac lit his blunt and stared at her smoking. So beautiful in the moonlight, her black skin was smooth and supple after their recent kill. It was this time that they'd usually go back and enjoy themselves, let out whatever violent energy that had on each other before blacking out.

"You're not serious," he said. "This is just-"

"You're right." She turned to him and he saw between the growing high that she was serious. "You're right. I don't want to bother. There's hardly any of them left anymore, and the ones that are still alive are all armed and fighting. It's too much work, Isaac."

Isaac hit his blunt and thought it over. She was right. It was different now. He glanced up at the sinking moon. The sky had shifted from the starry blackness to a deep bruised purple. Isaac was ready to speak again, to try and change her mind, when the door to the warehouse opened. Hiraam stepped out, his hands up in that universal sign of surrender. Behind him stepped three men in camo. One held a shotgun to Hiraam's back.

"Shit!" Isaac ducked and pulled Imani down.

"How many?" she asked.

"Three."

"Human?"

"Didn't see."

Isaac opened the car door. Imani hesitated. He pulled her out of the car. They ran behind trees.

Imani sat as he scouted. His eyesight shifted to infrared. The man with the gun and his buddy flared hot red. But the third one was ice blue. "Two humans," he said, creeping back down. "The big one with a beard is vamp."

"Smell pot?" the vamp asked.

---

And this is my ending:

They had tied Hiraam to the operating table. The bonds were strong, enough to restrain his might. He could hardly move. When he squinted his eyes to the right, he could see part of another table, as well as Kat's restrained legs.

Two doctors entered the room. An older severe woman, a younger man.

She started moving what looked like an electronic device around Hiraam's body. Passing over his earlobe, it beeped once. "Specimen 'Hiraam'. Last capture 28 years ago. Well due for a checkup."

The man was staring at Hiraam with an adoring expression. "It-it's just so... Fascinating! Professor, can I talk to it?"

The professor frowned disapprovingly. "As long as you can talk and work at the same time. Your graduate thesis, Wilkins, do I recall correctly?"

"Yes!," Wilkins nodded with enthusiasm. "Personality stagnation in evolved parasites. Our job here, at the wildlife refuge, is my dream come true." He turned to Hiraam. "There's only 93 of you left, see. We're trying to prevent your species from going extinct."

Hiraam growled, showing his long canines. "I'll drink you, fucker."

Wilkins beamed. "That would be awesome! ...but I doubt I can get permission. This body's on loan, in six months my consciousness will be back in the cloud with everyone else."

Scowling at her device, the professor interrupted. "There's an infection in the brain. It's rotting. Figures. We're removing it."

Aghast, Hiraam turned to her. "You're removing what!?"

Wilkins laughed. "Don't worry, you're not using it anyway. The parasite simulating you, resides in the bloodstream of the host body. Your EEG is flat, it always has been. Better clean all that grey stuff up, before it starts to smell, amirite?"

"Bone saw," the professor ordered.

---

---

"The poor thing's passed out," said Wilkins. "I might have overloaded it with all my chatter... Hopefully, it will forget this encounter."

"I do not share your fanciful perspective," the acid professor commented. "The parasite itself isn't smarter than a mosquito. They feed; avoid sunlight; reproduce. Sure, they developed the ability to mimic their victims' dead minds... Decent disguises, in the old analog society... But they're buggy as hell: self-destructive, repetitive, incapable of learning anything new. An evolutionary dead end."

Wilkins emptied the messy bucket full of brain matter in the waste bin. He sighed. "Preserving them is stubbornness on our part," he conceded. "I just find them so pitiful. They believe they're actual persons."

"Anyway. We're done here. Let's release specimen Hiraam to its natural habitat."

---

---

"Smell pot?" the vamp asked.

The man pushed Hiraam with the butt of the shotgun, and he stumbled forward. He ran towards the trees and crouched beside Isaac.

"Let's bail," Hiraam said. "Kat's not coming."

Imani would not have it. "What happened in there?"

Hiraam opened his mouth, then closed it. "I don't remember," he answered. "Don't ask."

The three stared dejectedly at each other.

Then, in sullen silence, they entered the deep woods.

Once more, the night receded; and with the dark they went.