I woke from a light sleep; it was always hard to sleep during the day. Once it used to come naturally but not anymore. It had gotten hard over the years, as the neon lights flashing advertisements all throughout the city blurred the lines between night and day further and further. I hadn't had a deep sleep in decades.

"Anya, time to wake up," I hollered towards/in the direction of the other room as I got dressed. I didn't hear anything coming from her room. With a huff, I banged on her door. "It's time!" I cracked open the door slightly. The lights were off but that didn't stop me from taking a glance around the room: an unruffled bed suggested she didn't come home last night. "Where have you been?" I whispered to myself. 

Anya, a girl whom I cared for like my own child, had been coming home less and less these days. She had a harder time controlling her thirst than myself as she was a younger one of our breed. She knew of the dangers of drinking from the tainted, and that was nearly everyone these days. 

I was practically starved because of it. I hadn't eaten in over a year. There were symptoms of starving myself, but nothing unmanageable so far. Soon, I knew, it would become too obvious to ignore. 

One symptom is getting pocked skin, it will look almost like acne scars, the longer I go without blood the more my skin deteriorates. I become slow, unable to use the speed I was gifted with when I was changed. There's more but I prefer not to dwell on it as it seems my time will be coming sooner rather than later. 

No longer did I worry about applying makeup, as with all the new enhancements everyone seemed to have a pale complexion these days. Worked in my favor, of course, but that was about the only thing that did. Detrimental was the fact that the enhancements tainted their blood, causing it to turn to poison for my kind. 

We had once been thought to be immortal, and maybe a century ago that was true, but no longer. We were hard to kill, yes, but not impossible. We are thought to be a myth and soon we will be. Extinction looms over my kind; a fate that will befall us by the end of my lifetime. I can count how many of us are left on one hand, and my heart breaks when I lower finger after finger.

Glancing out the window of my apartment, I watched the entrance to my bar below. While many passed by the door without a second glance, there was always the inevitable gaggle of regulars waiting outside for me to open just as they did every other morning, like clockwork. If I actually gave a shit, I'd tell them that they should have a cleanse, but their enhancements tainted them too much for a cleanse to work, so what would alcohol do to them? Not much worse if you ask me. 

My life wasn't thrilling. It wasn't depressing. It was stagnant. Stuck in a space where I couldn't enjoy life but I couldn't hate it. I wasn't being hunted, that hadn't happened in a couple centuries. Still, I didn't have much to live for anymore. Anya was the only thing I had left, and she was rarely around anymore. 

Anya's absence has left a bigger hole in my world than I would have realized. She wasn't my real daughter, I've never had one. She was the closest it came to that. Liam, my lover, and I had found her beaten in the streets of a small town, left for dead. I had said it wasn't our problem, but Liam, he never could leave something broken. He turned her and we nurtured her through the early stages of our lifestyle. She became our daughter, our world.

My lover had died many years ago when the enhancements first began to ravage our unsuspecting people. We didn't know what it would do to us, and he overindulged and it killed him quickly. 

The first day we noticed a change, he became slower and he skinn started the flake and peel, leaving behind what looked to be acne scars. The longer the poison was in our system the worse it got. Soon his fangs wouldn't retract, his speed slowed down to a humans pace, until eventually it was like being an elder human. I had left to find a pure blood source, but he had passed before I got back. Anya had to deal with it on her own. She left shortly later, with a goodbye of "We can't live like this, I can't live like this."

Mindlessly, I carried myself down the stairs out into the alley and entered the bar through the backdoor. Quickly, I did a wipe-down of the bar, turned on a few retro arcade games, and unlocked the front door. Stepping to the side, I flipped over my open sign and barely dodged getting hit by the door being slammed open by eager customers. 

A dark-skinned man walked in with a half smile, split by the metal half of his body. His eye glowed an artificially bright white as it fixed its gaze on me. That half smile was to die for; it was really too bad he had ruined it with his enhancements. 

"Evening, Skye, been waiting a minute out there. Thought you'd never show." 

I gave a soft laugh. "Where else would I have to be? Couldn't go a day without seeing you," I joked.

After the rest of the group filtered by and greeted me, I went to the bar and started making their drinks. I knew them by heart as they were my daily regulars. Every now and then they tried to give me a challenge and switch it up and those were the days I enjoyed most. Luisa, who had most of the left side of her crushed when her apartment building collapsed, asks for a surprise. "Make me a strange one, it's been a long day." She said as she leaned against the bar, head resting on her bionic hand. 

"Why the long face love?" I asked as I grabbed a tall glass, pouring two clear liquors and a lime colored liquor into the mixer and shaking it up. 

"You know that prick Danno. Always bitching at everyone while he sits on his high horse thinking he's god." 

"What'd he do this time?" 

Before she could answer her coworkers waltz up to the bar throwing his arm over her shoulders. "Oh you know Skye, it's the same shit daily. Luisa needs to get a heart enhancement if she wants to last with the big dogs." He said, slapping her shoulder and wincing from hitting her bionic shoulder. 

She shoved his arm off her. "You know what you need Chang? You need to fu-"

I cleared my throat loudly with a small smile, before slapping the drink down in front of her and dropping a strawberry into it. "It's on the house, let me know how it is, I've never tried this one before." 

This group would be here for about an hour and half, some more regulars would filter in, this group would trickle out and another wave of regulars would come to replace them. I had a routine, and it was an old, boring one. Every now and then I'd get a new face that came in and that brought some interest to my nights.

Halfway through the night, one employee would come in and take over while I did laps around the bar serving drinks and cleaning messes. Anya used to come in, but since she's been gone doing whatever mysteriousness she does, I had to hire my one employee: Blare.

Blare was a sweet girl, with very little in the way of enhancements. She had lost an eye at a young age and had to get it replaced, but she chose a natural blue light to match her other blue eye. after a particularly nasty car crash, she earned her bionic legs. Blare was a looker—the men loved her, and even some of the women. While the other women seemed to tend to make the knee-jerk decision to despise her, a few drinks usually flipped that opinion on its head. Of course, there were a few nasty women that, even with a drink, couldn't let it go, earning them a personal escort out of the bar by me. I could get a bouncer, but why do that when I was perfectly capable of handling it myself?

When Blare arrived, I waited twenty minutes for her to get in her groove before I stepped out the back door for a break. I took the opportunity to briefly head upstairs and check to see if Anya had come home while I was working. Unsurprisingly, she was still gone. I sighed heavily, disappointed. 

I stomped my way back down the stairs and lit a cigarette in the alley. Unlike with humans, smoking didn't bother my lungs. We—my kind, that is—were built to withstand much more than a habit as trivial as breathing in foul air. Smoke wafted up around me in clouds of weightless gray, and with each drag, my shoulders relaxed, tension easing in both my muscles and my mind. Anya would return, I was sure. She would be just fine.

After stubbing it out, I took a few deep breaths of the city air. Breathing deeply through my nose, I took in all the sights, sounds, and smells of the rundown city. 

Chugging exhaust from factories filled the air, along with the smell of metal and infection, at least on this side of the city. I tried my best to ignore the scent of blood, making my throat burn as if I had swallowed a handful of burning coals fresh from a fire.

Tainted blood smelled worse than pure blood, but tainted blood was still blood, and it sparked my hunger. Being inside the bar, I had to let my chest rise and fall as if I was breathing to maintain my disguise but I didn't bother to actually take anything in, knowing it would only cause me pain. It was rare for me to enjoy an actual breath these days. 

I took one more big breath before opening the back door. At the last second, I got a whiff of deliciousness, of pure blood. Taking a quick step back, I let the door shut behind me again as I looked towards the mouth of the alleyway. 

I haven't smelt anyone this pure in ages–I couldn't miss them. I needed them. Nearly tripping over my feet, I rushed towards the alley entrance. Looking in both directions of the street, I couldn't pinpoint who it was. So many people had obvious bionic enhancements.Others were less blatant about it, making it hard to determine if they had any or not. 

The smell began to fade, and my search of faces and bodies became more frantic. I tried to follow the smell before I lost it completely. I went right and took a few steps before the scent evaporated, rushing back the other way and hurriedly jogging through the wave of people walking. Jostling other pedestrians, I mumbled apologies I didn't mean. It was too late, though. The scent trail was already long gone.

"Damn it!" I shouted, startling the people around me. I didn't bother to apologize this time. They got in my way and I lost the only blood source I had found in a long time. 

Just a little bit of that blood could have kept me going for another year. Anya would need more than myself, but I had learned to manage with less due to my age. I could have made a deal with them. Had them do blood donation or something, anything to keep us alive. 

My chance was gone now, and hunger settled in my stomach, lingering indefinitely.

Authors note
Yes I waited till my birthday to publish this chapter as a gift to you all.
Let me know your thoughts!