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“Number four hundred and ninety-two.”

Reyna stared down at the crisp piece of paper she had been clutching the last three hours. She blinked in surprise and recognition: 4-9-2.

“That’s me.”

She raised her hand in the air. It was about time. She hadn’t expected to be waiting here so long. Reyna stumbled to her feet, stretching out her sore muscles and stuffing her shaking hands into her worn-out jeans. She headed across the room to a woman standing at the front of the stark white hospital ward. The administrator had long blond hair that was straight to her shoulders and a white uniform that matched her surroundings. The only bit of color was the bloodred symbol on the pocket of her shirt —Visage.

The largest company in the world. It employed more people than anyone else in recorded history. Visage primarily specialized in what they called body employment services. It was just a fancy term for blood escorts. Whatever people wanted to call them—blood escort or bodily employment—they were still the main job for people desperate to get by in this terrible economy.

And Reyna was about to become one of them.

“Four-nine-two?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Reyna said, embarrassed that her voice shook. She still couldn’t believe this was her life, that she was about to do this. Brian and Drew were going to kill her.

The woman ignored her discomfort.

“Right this way, four-nine-two.” Her voice was flat and lifeless.

“It’s Reyna,” she told the lady curtly.

She had a name. She wasn’t just some number.

The woman nodded minutely. Her big brown eyes stared through Reyna. She clearly didn’t care what Reyna’s name was. This was a job, and she was following orders. No more. No less. It was as much as Reyna had come to expect from everyone in this godforsaken place.

“Follow me,” the woman said.

Reyna sighed and did as instructed. There was no point in fighting it. She had made up her mind to go through with the Visage testing. She’d snuck away without telling her brothers and applied. She had no degree and no job. All that did was force her brothers to take extra shifts to cover her. She needed to do something to put food on the table. She couldn’t stand the sight of them wasting their lives away toiling in the factories, when she could be doing something to help their situation.

No, she was here of her own free will. If poverty and near-starvation could be considered part of her free will.

Not that that mattered to the administrator. Or likely to anyone at Visage. They didn’t care who she was. She was just another subject in the system.

Since Visage had unveiled its plan to employ humans as blood donors for vampires ten years earlier, thousands had gone through testing. It had been a most fortuitous circumstance—for them, at least. Millions of people out of jobs in one fell swoop, and then out of the gloom and doom came a knight on a white horse to save them all.

An end to the fear of what lurked in the darkness.

An end to being hunted for their blood.

An end to the economic struggles entirely—so long as you gave up the very thing they had hunted humans for.

Ten years later and not much had really changed. The majority of people still lived below the poverty line, and now the populace was more tied to Visage than ever. But Reyna couldn’t change that any more than she could quell the fear building in her stomach at the thought of becoming another mindless drone for the conglomerate.

Reyna fidgeted at the sight of the big white door looming ahead. The door that sealed her fate to Visage. Can I really do this? Do I even have a choice?

Unaware of or at least unconcerned with Reyna’s fear, the administrator pushed the door open. Reyna swallowed hard. She could just make out the long stark white corridor beyond the door. Once she was through that door, there was no turning back.

But if there were another choice, then she would have already found it. Visage was the only option, the absolute last option.

Just the way they liked it.

“Are you ready, 492?” the woman snapped. At least there was some kind of reaction.

Reyna bit back a snide retort. “Yes.”

Reyna walked through the door, and the admin escorted her down the long white corridor studded with white doors and past starkly dressed administrators standing like ducks in a row. They took a right, and the admin stopped in front of one of the plain white doors. She removed an identification card from her pocket with her name and picture on it and swiped it over a glass screen by the handle.

Reyna watched in awe as the door swiped open. The Warehouse District didn’t have technology this advanced. Hell, machines everyone had taken for granted before the collapse—phones, laptops, cars—weren’t even available to most people.

The interior of the room looked like any hospital room, though she didn’t remember the last time she had been able to afford a real hospital visit. The administrator fiddled with a few tools on a wheeled cart. She glanced up at Reyna, realizing that she hadn’t moved from her position in the doorway.

“Take a seat.” She gestured to the bed.

Reyna took a deep breath, reminding herself of all the reasons she had decided to do this, then walked inside. The paper crinkled underneath her as she sat, and she cringed at the harsh lights. Everything smelled like plastic and disinfectant. Reyna had thought the waiting room was the most unwelcoming room she had ever been in. She’d been wrong.

When she was approved earlier that week, Visage had given her a packet explaining what was to come. The gist of it was—needles.

Lots and lots of needles.

Reyna barely suppressed a gag. She hated needles. Always had. She didn’t even know where the fear stemmed from. If she’d had a traumatic experience as a child, no one who was still in her life knew about it. Considering what she was about to do, it was ridiculous to fear needles. They were going to be the least of her worries where vampires were concerned. She braced for the worst.

The woman strapped a band around Reyna’s arm, clipped her finger in a large plastic clothespin-type device, and ran a giant thermometer over her forehead. She stuck a stethoscope under the band and squeezed a bag that inflated the band and constricted Reyna’s arm. Reyna tried to relax, but she wasn’t successful.

“Good,” the administrator said. “Vitals all look good.”

Reyna breathed a sigh of relief.

The woman spoke to herself as she entered information into the computer system. “Temperature—97.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Acceptable. Pulse—72 beats per minute. Acceptable. Blood Pressure—102 over 65. Acceptable/Low.”

She turned away from her computer to face Reyna. “Family history?”

Reyna stilled her shaking hands. “My parents are, um…dead.”

The words sounded hollow. It had been thirteen years since they died in the car accident. Since she and her brothers moved in with their uncle in the city. Since their uncle drank and gambled away their inheritance. Since the world went to utter shit.

“Any diseases or chronic illnesses?” the woman asked. Her voice was flat. No compassion in the Visage hospital ward.

“Breast cancer on my mother’s side. That’s all I know,” she whispered.

“Are you often ill?”

“No.”

“When was the last time you were admitted to the hospital?”

Reyna racked her brain. She couldn’t even remember. “Probably when I was a baby.”

The woman gave her a searching look. “Any other treatments or surgeries?”

“No.”

As if anyone could afford a hospital stay. This woman had to know it. She wasn’t going to act ashamed of her life.

The admin tapped out a few more notes and then withdrew a needle and a few small vials from a drawer. Reyna’s stomach dropped out, and the color drained from her body. Here we go.

Reyna held her breath as the woman placed a tourniquet around her right arm, swabbed the crook of her elbow, and then without warning pricked the vein in her arm. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to calm her rapidly accelerating heartbeat. She suddenly felt nauseated, weak, and clammy. Fear pricked at the back of her neck.

She glanced down at her arm and tried not to vomit. Bright red blood flowed out of the vein and into the little tube. Pain throbbed in her elbow, but she couldn’t look past the blood. It made her stomach turn, and she had to physically look away until the administrator was finished.

After she removed the needle, the woman placed a bandage over the hole and then gave her a cup to pee in.

“Leave the cup in the compartment in the restroom.” The woman pointed to a nearly invisible doorway to her right. “Come back here once you’re through. The doctor will be with you soon.”

“Thank you,” Reyna said hollowly.

At least the worst was over.

Reyna tried not to think about the blood loss or needles. She needed to think about eating right, sending money to her brothers, and finally living a real life again. It wasn’t as if this was permanent. She could get out at any time. She could work for a couple of months as a blood donor and then quit if she wanted. Just to get back on her feet or to help her find something else.

At least, she hoped that she would make enough to be able to send money to her brothers. If they had known she was here, they never would have approved. No one would approve of their little sister becoming a blood escort to a vampire.

She left her sample in the restroom and waited for the doctor. At least the bed was more comfortable than the chairs in the waiting room. Honestly, it was more comfortable than everything else they had at home, too.

A knock at the door, and the doctor strode inside with a clipboard. She was a tall, wiry woman with brown skin, black groomed hair held back in a ponytail, and dark, emotionless eyes. Like everyone else who worked there, she clearly didn’t think smiling was part of bedside manners.

There was something about this woman that was other.

Vampire.

The word slithered up in Reyna’s conscious and she recoiled away from the thought. It made no sense considering her current predicament, but she couldn’t help it. Deeply ingrained fear stuck with her no matter her decision to work with them.

“Four hundred and ninety-two. Miss Reyna Carpenter. Five foot four inches. Brown eyes. Brown hair. White. O negative. Correct?”

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“Good. I have to make sure that you fit all the parameters.” She looked up at Reyna over the rim of her thick black-rimmed glasses. “Negative for pregnancy. That’s good.”

Reyna breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t thought it probable, but it had been possible. When she applied for the position at Visage, she had been in the off-again stage with her boyfriend, Steven. The problem was that Steven was charismatic as hell. Every time she walked away, somehow he would sweep her off her feet again. Which he had done a couple of weeks ago when he’d convinced her to meet him at the end of his shift. Two weeks of a whirlwind of romance and then a big “fuck you” at the end of it.

Steven had made her feel cheap and disposable. No better than the run-down trash that they lived in. When Visage had approved her for testing shortly afterward, she had felt like it made sense.

The door opened unexpectedly once again. “Excuse me. Dr. Trainer, you’ve been called to the east corridor. I was reassigned to number four hundred and ninety-two.”

“Of course, Dr. Washington,” Dr. Trainer said. “Here’s her file.”

They swapped information, and then Dr. Trainer left her alone with the new doctor. He was tall and pale with a slightly more disheveled appearance than the doctor she had been dealing with. Though what he lacked in proper grooming, he made up for with the severity of his features. He seemed excessively stern, and the haphazard state of his attire only gave off the impression of a mad scientist.

“Welcome, Miss Carpenter. I’m Dr. Roger Washington.”

He extended his hand. Reyna looked down at it skeptically. No one had addressed her or acknowledged her as anything more than a subject to be tested and questioned. What was this, bad cop, good cop?

“Hi,” she said softly. She shook his hand once. It was cold and made her shiver.

“After reviewing your profile, we’ve elected you to be a trial subject in our new program. Your blood type and specific history, build, and biology make you a great candidate for this venture. I’m the head of the team, and we’re looking for interested participants. You understand that anything we speak about here is completely classified, yes?”

“Sure.”

A new program? Classified information? She didn’t know what any of that meant, but she was willing to hear more about this. It sounded like they wanted her, and if they wanted her badly enough, then maybe she could get more money out of them.

“For some time, Visage has been considering going to a more streamlined system of employment for our human subjects,” Dr. Washington explained.

“Streamlined…how?”

The man smiled, and her skin turned ashen. Sharp canines gleamed in the high contrast lighting. She tried to swallow but felt like her mouth was stuffed with cotton balls. She knew he was a vampire. She had known that both doctors were, but suddenly it felt different. This wasn’t some person in the papers or on billboards, but a real live vampire that could reach out and touch her.

He assessed her discomfort and closed his mouth so that the stern expression was back in place. “You do realize, Miss Carpenter, that the company you wish to be employed by is run by vampires, and that if you are selected for this, you will live with vampires?”

“Yes, I’m well aware,” she said, regaining her composure.

“Good.” He nodded. “Now back to what I was saying. The current system places a subject with a Sponsor for one month. After that month, you are granted a week off to recuperate, and then you rotate to another blood match Sponsor. As an O negative subject, you would meet with a group of O negative Sponsors in your assigned region. The system then perpetually rotates. Everything is carefully monitored by Visage so that it is safe and orderly.”

Reyna had read all about this on the pamphlet when she had originally applied. When vampires drank blood from just anyone, the blood fed them only on a completely basic and primal level, but it didn’t provide anything more than that. It contaminated their systems, making them corrupt, lethal, and animalistic. When Visage came forward, they promised a new horizon for humans and vampires alike to coexist in a mutually beneficial atmosphere.

Thus came the blood type cure.

Vampires who drank blood that matched the blood type they had when they were human functioned at higher cognitive levels. Visage registered all the known vampires and offered humans money to become their blood donors.

“How is the new system different?” she asked.

The doctor smiled once more, and her fingers dug into the paper on the bed. “Now the Sponsor requests a blood type match and a certain profile, and the subject stays with the Sponsor…permanently.”