"Hey, Hadley. I don't think I've told you much about my Baron, Lujeo."

The voice floated to Hadley through a heavy blanket of darkness.

Ruqwik.

It was the vampire's voice.

Hadley wanted to smile but couldn't remember how.

"Lujeo used to wax poetic about ambrosia. It's supposed to be this strange, golden liquid that comes from our fangs during a Turn. He would say that Ambrosia exists because vampires can't eat, but still have acid-filled stomachs from their human origins. Over centuries, the acid changes, transforming into the golden Ambrosia that allows a vampire to turn others. This is the only way we can add to our numbers."

Hadley sighed.

She had never been so exhausted.

She should rest.

"Lujeo wasn't allowed to tell me any of this, you know. I rejected the offer to be a Master too many times, and only Masters are allowed to know the secrets of a Turning. But he always became sentimental in the days following a Turn. A little lax with the rules of the Masters. On those days, you could almost forget how annoying he was the rest of the time. He'd say, 'Ruq, you don't control the Ambrosia. The Ambrosia controls itself. It makes itself present only when it is needed. You must be in the right mind space. Calm. Collected. And in love with life itself.'"

The words made little sense to Hadley, but the vampire's voice was soothing, so Hadley let them lull her deeper into the darkness.

She was so exhausted.

She would rest.

She would let the voice sooth her into rest.

"I never knew what he meant by those words. Not until now."

A fleeting whisper now.

Hadley sighed again.

Then, she let go.

"Okay Hadley, I need you to drink."

Irritated, Hadley pulled herself back up from the darkness. Why was the voice trying to ruin Hadley's peace?

"Please, Hadley..."

This was exasperating.

'Please...'

It wasn't just a voice this time. It was a feeling. A desperate plea. A command yelled in her mind.

Hadley's body lurched, surprising her because she thought she was dying.

Not thought.

Knew.

Warmth suddenly pooled in her mouth.

Irony, coppery warmth.

It fell down her throat.

Lit up every part of her.

She wasn't dying.

She wasn't dying?

The warmth suddenly cut off, plunging Hadley back into cold darkness with a force she couldn't fight. She was lost in the darkness once more, exhausted and in need of peace. But there was no peace! Dark shadows ceaselessly twirled and whirled and tumbled around her! An unsettling fury of movement she couldn't see or reach beyond.

Or escape.

***

Hadley woke up with her throat burning, desperate to ease her thirst. She was on a bed with crisp, clean bedding that was scratchier than she'd have normally liked, but she'd been sleeping in tents on the forest floor for weeks. If it didn't have stray moss and dirt, it was an improvement. The lights above her were a soft red. Dim, but enough to outline objects around her, like the bed she lay on flanked by a table and some medical monitoring equipment, and a door in one corner of the room. She focussed on the bedside table. It was bare except for a jug of water and a tumbler next to it. She forced herself to sit up and pour herself a drink.

The moment the water touched her tongue, she spat it out and dropped the tumbler, backing away from it like it'd stung her!

She wouldn't try that again. That was disgusting!

But she was so thirsty!

The feeling clawed at her, demanded all her attention, making every other sense annoying background noise. She swung her legs over the bed's edge, her toes gently hugging the shiny, white, ceramic floor, but her legs were weak, and that first step ended with her facedown against the white ceramic. She pulled herself up, first to her knees, then to her feet. Her thirst was more than overpowering now, Hadley trembling from need. She hugged herself and carefully studied the room, trying her best to think past the misery to figure out how to kill the thirst.

The room's dim red lights brightened to a bright soft white, a welcome distraction. The door opened and in walked a tall black woman with an eyepatch covering her left eye. She was of medium build, but most of her features were obscured by a lab coat that revealed the legs of a loose pair of scrubs pants and simple soled shoes, triggering an unexpected nostalgic hit from how often she'd won the same exact outfit at the Compound Clinic. The woman was carrying a tray with several bags for the intravenous infusion of a clear liquid that Hadley figured was a mix of vitamins and minerals.

"You're awake." She said, her brows hitting the ceiling and her jaw dropping. It was a wonder she didn't drop the tray.

"Where am I?" Hadley asked.

"You're safe," the lady replied, replacing the surprise on her face with a smile. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Hadley took a moment to think about the question. She closed her eyes and watched fractured memories play through her mind. She snapped her eyes open and grabbed at her right shoulder, petrified. She pulled on the papery gown she was wearing until she could see her shoulder. Her clavicle was perfect, and her shoulder was covered in smooth, flawless skin. Not a single scratch on her. She looked up at the woman, confused.

"You're fully healed." The woman said.

"How long have I been... how long was I...?" Hadley asked, her voice shaky.

"A little over three weeks."

Hadley did the math. There was no way that could be true. She remembered everything. She remembered the crunching of bone, the tearing of muscle and sinew, the ripping of skin, her blood pouring into Ruqwik's mouth. And she remembered the pain. Pain beyond anything she had ever thought possible. Pain that had wiped the world away until it was the only thing she could feel. The very last thing she felt. Three weeks weren't nearly enough to heal that kind of damage. She wasn't supposed to have been able to heal from what happened.

Ruqwik had killed her!

Hadley looked back at the woman, shaking her head. "That's not possible."

"Oh, yes, I agree completely. Yet here we are," the woman said, nodding. "But you know what they say about gift horses and mouths."

"Um... no?" Hadley replied, confused.

"It's something my dad says. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth." The woman explained with a shrug, placing her tray on the bedside table. "He got the saying from my great grandfather."

"I don't get it." Hadley said. The woman was speaking English, but Hadley had no idea what the words gift horse, dad and great grandfather meant.

The woman smiled.

"It means that, impossible or not, you're alive and you're healed. That's all that matters." The woman said.

Hadley began to walk towards the door, that vicious thirst having punched through the mild distraction that was the woman. Hadley had to find something to stop it! The woman stopped her and pushed her back towards the bed.

"At least give yourself time to get used to being awake." the woman said.

"The others... Ruq... Jamila... my friends... where are they?" Hadley demanded.

"They're safe, just like you are. They've been visiting almost every day. They'll be here in a few hours and I'm sure they'll be happy to see you awake," she explained. She picked the tumbler Hadley had dropped, filled it back up with the water and handed it to Hadley. "Especially if you're well fed and hydrated. Here, drink this. It'll help."

Hadley took a moment to calm her thoughts. She had to figure out exactly what was going on. If Jamila was safe and okay, she would have been here every day, not "almost" every day. Ruqwik too. The vampire would have been there now, just like in the tent after Mrs. Smith. Especially after what had happened! Hadley noticed her hand had subconsciously gone to her right shoulder, massaging the perfectly healed joint. She lowered it back to the bed.

Something was off, but Hadley didn't know exactly what. She had to be smart about this.

"What's in the cup?" Hadley decided to ask first. "It's doesn't taste like water."

The woman's eyes drifted to Hadley's right shoulder. "It helped with the healing."

A lie. The woman was just as dumbfounded as Hadley was at the healed shoulder. She had said as much.

"You're a Medic?" Hadley asked, her eyes narrow.

"Yes, but we call ourselves Healers here."

"We?"

"Wildlings." She said. "You were searching for us, were you not?"

Not a complete lie, but something didn't track. From what Aunt Zee had explained, Wildlings were generally Luddites. After the Human Error, they embraced nature, working with and indulging in it completely. They despised technology, which they believed was the true reason for the Human Error. Nature was the Wildling's whole existence. Hadley looked around the room. There was nothing natural about this place. It was too clinical, the very personification of artificiality, even better equipped than the Compound Clinic.

Yet, inexplicably, Hadley believed it when the woman said that she was a Wildling.

Maybe the Wildlings had changed their ways? Evolved? It had been over two decades since Aunt Zee had been a Wildling, after all. The errors in her diary's maps, not to mention the truth bombs that Hadley had learnt from Mrs. Smith, were evidence that maybe Aunt Zee wasn't the paragon of truth Hadley had imagined her to be when it came to describing the world beyond the Compound Walls.

"You still didn't tell me what's in the cup," Hadley finally responded.

"It's an extract of herbs and plants that we use to help with healing," the woman said. "Please, have some. I know it doesn't taste very good, but it'll help hydrate you and keep you at full strength."

Hadley turned to the IV bags on the tray the woman had walked in with. Another idiosyncrasy in the world of Wildlings. But it did say something. This woman wasn't trying to kill Hadley. She was trying to keep Hadley alive. That meant the liquid in the cup on the nightstand wouldn't kill Hadley either.

Hadley's thirst was bordering on torture now.

She kept her eyes on the woman as she downed the liquid, trying not to taste it and hoping it would kill the thirst like the woman promised.

It hit her immediately!

That wasn't a healing tonic. It was a sedative. A strong one at that.

As she lost focus, the woman placed Hadley on the bed, inserted an IV drip needle into her left arm and connected the bags from the tray. Then the woman tied a torniquet around her upper right arm, set up a blood drawing kit and drew a pint of blood from Hadley's arm. Hadley blacked out before she could see any more.

She wove in and out of consciousness. Whether it was hours or days or weeks, she couldn't tell. However, one thing did stand out. Every so often, her muddled brain would notice something odd. Something small that would huddle up at the foot of her bed. But whatever drugs the Healer with an eye-patch regularly pumped in her veins kept Hadley in too deep of a stupor for her to know if she was imagining this small bundle at her feet or if it was actually happening.

Days went by in the blur.

Weeks maybe.

Months?

*

Hadley's chest is heavy as she wakes up. Today is Initiation and Exaltation Day. The five-year-old girls will go through the first initiation, transitioning from being a care-free child to taking on a few responsibilities around the Compound, while the thirteen-year-old girls will transition into young women, taking on full-day responsibilities rather than part-time, and starting their lessons on being a mother in seven years. Hadley finds it strange that they spend seven years learning how to be a good mother, but most of the girls will only spend five years with their child before being harvested out of the Compound. They don't use the name "harvest", of course, but Hadley knows better – from Aunt Zee's lessons – though she keeps it to herself.

This knowledge is dangerous.

At twenty-five years old, Hadley is among the Cohort of women who will be Exalted today, which means that they'll leave the Compound in the company of vampires, presumably for a better life, although Hadley highly doubts that. But not every twenty-five-year-old woman will leave the Compound. Two women from the Cohort of twenty-five-year-olds will be chosen to become Elders. Elders are the only women in the Compound who live to the age of forty-five, which is when they will be Exalted alongside the eight twenty-five-year-old women from that year.

Hadley's mother, Aadya, is an Elder at forty-five and will be Exalted alongside Hadley's Cohort. Aadya believes that Hadley will be chosen as an Elder, but Hadley has tried her best to make sure she is the last person the Compound women will ever think of voting in as Elder, despite her being an Elder's daughter and a Medic. There are only two Elder positions and Jamila, Hadley's ex-lover, as well as Jael, the best tinkerer to ever exist in the Compound, deserve the positions more than her.

Hadley looks over at the baby cot in her cubicle. Summer, Hadley's daughter snores softly in the cot. She's named Summer after Jamila's favourite season. Even though Hadley crudely and publicly dumped Jamila five years ago – part of her plan to build up resentment from the other women so they wouldn't vote for her to be an Elder – she loves Jamila more than she could ever express and knowing that she will never see her again will be the darkest and most cruel outcome of the day. But Jamila is destined for great things. Her reign as Elder for the next two decades will be an amazing experience for the Compound.

"It's time to get up, Summer," Hadley says, rousing the little girl whose knees are bent as she sleeps. The cot is much too small for her, but Summer will be in an adult bed tonight, after her First Initiation ceremony.

"I can't wait until you're finally gone!" the little girl mumbles without opening her eyes.

Summer is always upset at Hadley these days. She's still not over Hadley's treatment of Jamila, and she makes sure Hadley suffers for it daily. But Hadley doesn't know how to make the little girl understand that she did what she did for Jamila's benefit. If it wasn't Hadley leaving today, it would be Jamila and Hadley can't stand the thought of the best person she knew being harvested off to become nothing but a bag of blood to gruesome vampires.

Not only is Jamila unaware of the scam that "Exaltation" really is, but Jamila isn't strong enough to face that type of brutality. Hadley is. As she gets ready, she slips her wood carving knife soaked in dead blood into a discreet thigh holster. The first vampire to try and suck her dry was in for the wildest surprise.

A celebration precedes the main Initiation and Exaltation Ceremonies. Most of the adults get blind drunk on illicitly brewed moonshine. This is the only time the women at the Compound over-indulge in alcohol and it's understandable. The event is gilded in the sheen of extreme positivity – this incessant, dysfunctional emotional need to never disapprove of any happenings at the Compound – but deep down, everyone perceives this as the most sombre and saddest day at the Compound. No one ever says it out loud. They could never!

Eventually, all the women who make up the Compound's population – all three hundred of them – line up in immaculate grid formation on the large grassy knoll just outside of the Cafeteria, between the Compound Pantry and the Habitation units that hold the cubicles. Mothers of children from one to four years old have their children beside them, either in little bassinets, strollers, or tiny lawn chairs, depending on the children's ages. The others, everyone from five years old and up, stand at attention in synchronised formation with their Cohort members. The fifty Elders who govern the Compound stand in a line in front of them all.

The Initiation Ceremonies are first, starting with the five-year-old girls and then the thirteen-year-olds. Eventually, it's time for the women to vote for the new Elders. Only the women who are thirteen to twenty-five can vote. It always takes several hours for the vote casting and counting by the oldest Elders. The vampires are then informed of the outcome, and they make the final call, usually in line with the votes. Eventually, to end the day, the two new Elders are announced.

This year, Aadya makes the announcement.

"Every day in The Compound is a good day. We wake up and enjoy safety and everything we will ever need inside these walls," Aadya begins. The speech remains unchanged year after year. "But this is not just another good day. This is the Greatest Day! The day of Exaltation!"

Mandatory applause fills the air, but there is a coldness to the sound. The silence that follows is dense. Sepulchral. Suffocating.

It always is.

With practiced movements, Hadley's cohort, the twenty-five-year-olds, march to the front of the crowd, standing between the other Cohort members and the Elders. Every one of them is nervous, even though they know whose name will be called out.

"Our first new Elder is..." Aadya continues. "...Jael, Mechanic and Tinkerer!"

The applause is metered as Jael joins the line of Elders.

"And the other new Elder is..."

"...Jamila." Hadley whispers under her breath, more of a sigh than anything.

"...Hadley, Medic!"

Hadley's heart drops, a cold dread freezes the blood in her veins and her throat swells in pain as she tries to keep the tears at bay. Her body betrays her as it follows Jael to the Elders' line. Aadya and Indra – Jael's mother and the other fifty-year-old Elder – swap places with Jael and Hadley. Everyone watches as the eight women from Hadley's Cohort, including Jamila, walk towards the cloaked vampires and stop in formation, ready to leave the Compound. There is always vampiric representation at the periphery of every Initiation and Exaltation Ceremony, but no one knows how they get in and out of here. The other women of the Compound are dismissed, and everyone is ordered to go back to their cubicles.

It is only when the others are all locked up in their rooms that the women in the vampires' company disappear in Exaltation, never to be seen again!

"It was supposed to be you! Not Jacinta's mum!" Summer screams at Hadley when they were back in their cubicle.

Hadley's heart is still bleeding from losing Jamila to the worst fate imaginable and this doesn't help.

"You don't deserve this! You're just like Grandma Aadya!" the little girl explodes.

If there is anything worse that Hadley can be accused of, she doesn't know what that can be. But before she can reply, Summer says one last thing.

"I hate you, and I wish you were dead!"

Another metaphorical slap in the face. Seemingly unable to tolerate sharing the same space anymore, Summer stomps out of their room, recklessly breaking the Initiation and Exaltation Ceremony rules. Hadley deserves the spite, but she can't let the girl get into trouble. Hadley rushes out of the cubicle after the little girl.

"Summer!"