"Enough of that. I have my initial results for the serum taken by ___."
At those words, everyone straightened up and became serious. The atmosphere immediately became tense as we waited for him to continue.
"In my initial observations of the venom under a microscope, I noticed something strange about the venom. Only 20% of it was active," he paused, allowing us to take in this information.
"What this means in the remaining venom is not acting as it should. It is essentially severed from the hive-mind of the venom and is not actively multiplying. From my studies on venom behavioral analysis, this is not in line with its pattern of thinking. As we know, the venom is a conscious...thing...a demon, if you will. It's in its best interest to multiply itself in as many bodies as it can; therefore, when it was introduced to ___'s body, it should have acted appropriately and turned her. But as I said...it's not. I haven't determined why it's essentially acting deceased or if it really is deceased. This means one of two things. Either someone or something has found a way to nullify the venom...or, in the worst-case...how to kill it."
I clenched my jaw and looked around at the others, equally frightened or disturbed. Ludwig also appeared visibly distressed by the information though he did his best to hide it.
"If there is a way to nullify or even kill the venom, what this means is we do, in fact, have a weakness, and someone knows what that is and has produced potentially hundreds of copies of it in serum given to humans. I have a few theories I'd like to discuss. One is that humans like __ are meant to destroy us somehow. Two is that they are the first generation of humans to be immune to venom, making it impossible to turn more vampires in the future. If the second part is true, we are in a dire situation where we have no choice but to kill these experiments or else risk losing our species. If they know how to kill us, they likely will, and if they can make humans immune to us, on top of that, we have no way of surviving by any means other than natural reproduction, which is difficult at best among vampires. Rest assured, however, that that is only a theory, maybe even outlandish, as I do not have proof of what is really happening to the venom, only what it looks like." He paused again, reshuffling his papers with the results.
"I have more...but are there any questions so far?"
Monika nodded and raised her hand. Ludwig nodded to her, and she spoke.
"Does this mean ___ is immune to the venom and cannot be turned into a vampire?"
Antonio, Francis, and I exchanged worried looks.
"Well...Francis, are there any signs that may back up a theory of immunity?"
Francis was visibly upset, a few things on his mind. He wrapped his arm around Toni and looked to me to speak for him.
I sighed and nodded, "ja. First...she ingested unsheathed venom and lived...it did hospitalize her, though, but she recovered fairly quickly. Second, and the only other real occurrence I can think of was when we marked her."
August nodded, as did his brothers, it was a weird and unheard of situation when that happened, but everyone pushed it to the side to deal with Kuro and the revelation he was a Red-vampire.
"Any instances to prove the venom does work?" Ludwig countered, and I nodded.
"We've used it to heal her wounds multiple times and as a substitute for blood but never enough to cause multiplying. Alfred pointed out she has too much in her veins to not be turning, however...." I admitted.
Ludwig looked confused. "When did Alfred become involved?"
"After the trial. He bit her when he realized her marking had completely sealed up."
"Did he..." Ludwig seemed concerned.
"Is that an issue?" Julchen asked, looking at our concerned faces.
"Well...even though we will likely need help from our association, Alfred getting personally involved is usually more trouble than it's worth. It seems to work out in the end, but he's rather...."
"Invasive."
"Intrusive."
"Annoying."
"Lacking boundaries."
"Demanding."
Everyone spoke at once, trying to finish for Ludwig, who looked annoyed but was in agreement.
"He's just...very nosy...I should say. He asks for more than what he needs to know," I explained to Julchen, who nodded and allowed Ludwig to continue.
No one had any more specific questions.
"From what I've heard and observed myself, it seems the venom mainly seems to work in its healing aspects. It's possible it's had effects on her aura, personality, and female biology."
"Female specifically?" Garibald asked.
Ludwig seemed flushed.
"W-Well...the venom may perceive any form of...er...bleeding...as an injury. I don't know if that's the case or not....do you?" He asked, turning to me.
I looked at Francis for answers. I'd been away a little more than a week; it's possible that...that...happened while I was gone.
Francis shook his head. "Eh...well. She has hygienic items amongst her belongings, but nothing has occurred in the months she's stayed with us."
"So does that mean the venom makes you infertile? If that's the case, we may not need to worry about second generations stemming from the experiments at all," Hathagat seemed relieved.
Julchen silenced him, attempting to educate us on things we didn't entirely want to know but was probably necessary. "Nein. It's different for all women; it can even change based on diets and medication."
"She takes medication," Francis revealed.
"Oh? What for?" Harold asked.
"That's not your business," Antonio hissed, and he stayed quiet.
"C-could we please move on," Ludwig asked, still a little embarrassed.
He handed a stack of papers to Francis and asked him to pass them along. Francis reached over to Antonio and handed them to me, taking one for Toni but not letting him hold them.
Antonio gave a little smirk as if he'd been outsmarted.
Once the papers had been passed out, everyone looked equally confused.
"What's VSACA?" Garibald asked immediately.
"Venom-specimen, active-cell A." He informed though he seemed a little displeased, we hadn't come to that conclusion independently.
"So that makes VSICT...venom-specimen, inactive-cell T?" Monika asked, and Ludwig smiled proudly.
"Ja. Exactly."
"Okay...so that fuck is LPPYDINS," I asked, and Ludwig proceeded to explain all his labeling to us, which took a few minutes, followed by more time explaining the differences.
"Questions?"
"Ja."
"And?"
"I don't get it."
He sighed, and Francis rolled his eyes.
"I just told you—"
"No, I mean, what are the scientific conclusions? Not the ones you observed last night in the lab, but what all your fancy machines and stuff told you? What does that say?"
Ludwig straightened up, more serious.
"They are...inconclusive."
"Which means..." Francis asked, slight panic in his voice.
"That other than the venom I've explained to you and my theories on it...I don't know what else is in the serum. I've never studied these elements or hybrid elements, and my software doesn't recognize them either. Our software is more knowledgeable than what humans have, yet it doesn't recognize something supposedly distributed by humans, which leads me to a few more theories."
"Out with it," Antonio insisted, growing anxious.
"First of all, I'm certain Vladimir is involved; however, I think venom extracted from other vampires may be at play, too, whether they knew it or not. I've determined six owners so far of the active venom analyzed; those people are Vladimir Popescu, Francis Bonnefoy, Gilbert Beilshmidt, Antonio Carriedo, Alfred Jones, and Wang Yao. A seventh venom had a genetic similarity to myself, but I haven't determined who among us it belongs to or how it ended up in the serum."
"The three of us and Alfred are probably just from when we bit her, right?" I asked, and Ludwig shook his head.
"Francis and Antonio's venom is low enough to indicate this, but yours and Alfred's were far more prevalent in her system than what should be there," he revealed.
My brows furrowed in confusion. "I've had less of her blood than Francis and Antonio, so that doesn't make sense. How could someone have gotten my venom? Only you have vials of my extracted venom, and you told me you ran out." I reminded him sternly.
He seemed annoyed. "Ja. I just told you the venom could be involved without the owners' knowledge."
"But how can that happen, is what he means." Francis clarified. Everyone stared at him intently, he looked nervous.
"It's...possible they got it from my personal vials...."
I stood up angrily, "what!?"
He raised his hands, and Hathagat and August moved closer to Ludwig protectively while Francis tried to calm down Antonio, who was snarling menacingly.
"I get requests from the queen for complete tests and results along with some of the remaining venom. It's possible that one such request could have been faked. That's all I can think of at the moment," he said firmly.
I felt enraged someone would trick my cute little Ludwig into giving away not just precious resources but a part of myself.
I growled, "if someone would go so far as to pull elaborate schemes like this, then this is probably more serious than what we originally thought."
Ludwig nodded, "I agree. I think we should leave now and head to the Vienna Clan before reaching out to the association with this issue."
Francis nodded, but Monika had more questions.
"How much do we tell them?"
"Huh?" I questioned, and Ludwig looked curious as well.
"Your potential mate is potentially the first thing to threaten our kind and is definitely part of some experiment that, as far as we know, not even the queen knows about. If this spreads quickly, especially to people closer to the queen like Alfred is, then __ could be in worse trouble with our kind than with whatever is happening now."
She made a good point, and I sat back in my seat, looking as defeated as Toni.
"We tell them she was kidnapped by vampires with a mental ability to induce sleep. They don't need to know more than that," Francis decided and looked intensely at Ludwig until he nodded in agreement.
"Good. Then we all agree that what we learned today and everything to do with this mysterious serum stays in this room. Oui?" He reiterated, and one by one, we verbally agreed.
Francis shook Ludwig's hand, an agreement from one clan leader to the other to seal the deal.
Toni looked ready to break and stammered, "hehe...I thought she was in danger with the human government...but...she's in danger from everybody... isn't she?"
We all stayed silent, unable to respond to his conclusion—because we knew he was right. And if she was in trouble with our kind and we protected her...what did that mean for us?