Mosquito System: Blood Required

Blight of the Damned

The transfusion room was a sterile, white-tiled purgatory that smelled of rubbing alcohol.

Nurses moved with a frantic urgency, their rubber-soled shoes chirping against the floor like panicked birds.

In the center of it all stood Roy or rather, the hollowed-out shell that used to be Roy.

​I watched from the back of a plastic chair, my compound eyes tracking the jerky, robotic movements of his limbs.

Inside that body, the real Roy was howling. I could feel the vibrations of his terror through the System's link; he was a passenger in his own skin, screaming at a wall of silence.

​"Get out! Get out of my body, you freak!" his mind shrieked.

​I chuckled, the sound came out a low, dry vibration in my thorax. No one gonna noticed me... A mosquito! Hahaha...

​"Lay down here, Mr. Roy," a senior nurse urged, her voice tight with the stress of the ticking clock.

"We need to tap the vein now. Every second we lose is a second your wife doesn't have."

​Roy stood stiffly, his muscles twitching as he fought the invisible strings the system was pulling. His gritted his teeth.

​"Mr. Roy?" the nurse asked, her brow furrowing. "If you don't cooperate... your wife—"

​"I don't care if she rots! I don't care if she dies!" Roy's internal voice was a blade of pure, unadulterated malice.

"Let her die! Let the brat go netherworld with her!"

​[System Notification: Host, the puppet is protesting with extreme prejudice. The Host's 'Benevolence' is warring with the target's Inner Demon. The System is struggling to maintain grave control.]

​"Then find a way," I buzzed, my wings shimmering with a dark, iridescent heat.

"I didn't sacrifice a year of my life to let this coward win."

​[There is a secondary protocol, Host. But the price is steep.]

​"What now? Another year?"

​[No. To break a spirit this foul, you must inject the 'Blight of the Damned', the worst, most agonizing strain of Dengue in the database. It will shatter his resistance, but it comes with a cost: Bad Karma points will be etched into your account. Upon your final death, you will be consigned to the Hell Pit.]

​I looked at the shadow in the corner. The flickering, translucent form of Teresha. She was standing there, her hands over her belly, watching the man she loved wish for her demise.

Her grief was so heavy I could almost taste it. It was a suffocating, silent scream.

​"You're a real piece of work, System," I muttered. Always a trap.

But look at him. Look at that rot. If helping her means I walk through fire later, then light the match. Deal.

​[Protocol Accepted. Injecting Blight.]

​Roy's body suddenly went limp, then arched in a silent, bone-cracking spasm. The nurses gasped, thinking he was having a seizure, but it was just his spirit breaking under the weight of the System's

Protocol.

The fight left his eyes, replaced by a dull, glazed emptiness. He sat back, offering his arm like a piece of wood.

​The needle slid in. The dark, Crimson blood began to flow into the bag, a thick, rich stream of life being forced out of a man who didn't deserve a drop of it.

​"You saved your wife, Mr. Roy," the nurse said softly, her face softening as she finished the collection.

She patted his hand and rushed out with the bag, headed for the emergency theater.

​The moment the door clicked shut, the System released its grip.

​Roy slumped forward, his eyes burning with a sudden, localized inferno of rage. He gripped the edge of the cot.

The invisible force was gone. He was back in control of his body, and the first thing he felt was the stinging insult of his own charity.

​"What the hell... what was that?" he hissed, his voice sounded like a ragged whisper.

He looked at his arm, at the small cotton ball taped over the puncture.

"Teresha. This is all her fault. Even if she got the blood... I won't let her keep it," he screamed.

​His mistress came burst into the room.

"Roy! Why did you do it? You said she was an obstacle! You said we'd have it all! Then why did you agree? Also for her you slapped me!"

​Roy didn't answer. He couldn't explain the nightmare he'd just lived through. He just stood up, his face darkening into a cold, calculated murder.

"She thinks she won. She thinks she can take my blood and live?"

​He stormed out of the room, heading straight for the Emergency Ward where the transfusion was already being prepped.

​I followed him, a silent shadow on the wall.

​Inside the ward, Teresha's pale and ghostly figure layed on the bed.

Machines beeped rhythmically—the only thing keeping her tethered to the world of the living.

Her soul form hovered just above her body, her eyes fixed on Roy with a heartbreaking hope. She reached out a translucent hand as he approached.

​"Roy..." she whispered, a sound only I could hear.

​Roy ignored the ghost. He ignored the miracle of the life he had just technically saved.

He looked at the blood bag hanging from the stand...his blood! And a sneer of pure disgust crossed his lips.

​"Why didn't you just die quietly?" he whispered into the sterile air. He looked at the mistress standing behind him, then back at his wife.

Look at her, Teresha. This is the woman I'm going to marry. This is the woman who is actually worth my time.

You? You're just a debt I'm tired of paying.

​

He reached for the plastic tubing, his fingers curling around the line. He was going to rip it out.

He was going to kill her right there, in front of the monitors, in front of the world.

​Not today, you son of a bitch.

​I didn't wait. I launched from the wall, a needle-thin streak of black. I landed on the side of his neck, right over the pulsing carotid artery.

My proboscis sank deep into his flesh, and I drank. I drank the Crimson tax until I was bloated, until the System roared in my ears with the rush of rare power.

And then, I emptied the 'Blight' into him.

​Roy froze. His hand stayed clamped on the tube, but his eyes rolled back in his head. A sound like a dry branch snapping echoed in the room.

His heart just stopped working.

​He slumped to the floor, a heavy, lifeless heap of cold meat.

​The mistress screamed, but the nurses who rushed in didn't move with the same panic they had for Teresha.

The senior nurse knelt down, checked his pulse, and looked up with eyes that held a strange, grim clarity.

​"He's gone," she whispered. Then, so low only I could hear: "Karma serves him right."

​The room fell into a bizarre silence. The mistress was sobbing, the doctors were noting the time of death, but my eyes remained on Teresha.

​Her soul form stood by the bed, looking down at the corpse of the man who had been her world.

There was no anger in her face, only a profound, bittersweet relief. She was free. The tie was cut.

​She turned her head, and for the first time, her eyes locked directly onto mine. I froze. I was a bug. I was a speck. I should have been invisible.

​"Thank you," she whispered.

​The words didn't come through the air; they hummed directly into my spirit.

She gave me a small, weary smile...a final gift of light before she drifted back into her own body, the monitors finally stabilizing into a strong, steady beat.

​I sat on the edge of the monitor, my body glowing with a faint, dark red aura. I had the blood. I had tonight's tax. And I had a thank you from a ghost!

​I looked at the chaos in the room one last time. "Let's go," I buzzed. "I'm done with this place."

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