"Three... two... one... Happy New Year!"
The collective shout pierced through the hospital's glass walls like distant thunder, a burst of euphoria trying to ignore the fact that 2026 had just been born. But in the white linoleum hallways, where the smell of antiseptic and sickness gets into your pores, joy is a guest that never arrives.
Caleb didn't feel the magic of the calendar. He was standing in front of a stained mirror in the women's bathroom, his gloved hands sticky with cheap disinfectant. In his twenties, Caleb had the back of a fifty-year-old man and the soul of a shipwreck survivor. He worked as a cleaning assistant in that prestigious hospital—a fancy way of saying he spent ten hours a day erasing the biological traces of people who wouldn't even look him in the eye. He earned minimum wage, or even less if you subtracted the social security the state snatched from his pocket, like taking candy from a blind person.
Life hadn't given him lemons; it had given him a kick in the teeth.
At home—if you could call that hole of shadows a home—his mother was waiting for him. She was barely sixty, but lung cancer and paraplegia had turned her into an empty shell, confined to a wheelchair whose gears screeched like a constant complaint. She was tied to an oxygen tank, an invisible leash keeping her anchored to this miserable world. All because of that damn tobacco. Caleb remembered her warnings, the pleas, and those first dry coughs that sounded like footsteps in a cemetery. Now, the state health entity—that bureaucratic monster that barely had a pulse—was the only thing keeping them from starving on the sidewalk.
Caleb barely knew how to read or write. High school was a dream that evaporated when he had to pick up his first mop. He was fed up. Fed up with the filth, the urine, and the sour smells the human body exhales when it gives up. He wanted another life, one that didn't smell like bleach.
He left the bathroom dragging his cleaning cart, the small wheels rattling rhythmically on the polished floor. The emergency hallway was deserted, a cavern of fluorescent lights flickering with an electric hum. Through the large window at the end, fireworks exploded in the sky—flowers of fire that illuminated his tired face.
Caleb stopped. The hospital's silence was so dense, he could hear his own blood pulsing in his ears. He clenched his fists and, with a voice that was more a curse than a prayer, he spoke to the darkness:
"I wish for my life to change completely starting tonight. I want to be the richest man to ever walk this earth. I want the world at my feet: women, gold, health. Likewise, I want the power to take my mother out of this misery, even if I have to burn heaven to get it."
Be careful what you wish for, the old stories say. Because sometimes, something in the darkness listens. And that night, something responded with a silent echo.
His shift ended sooner than Caleb could have hoped. He grabbed his backpack and put on his jacket because the night cold was immortal at that hour. Then, he went out to the street to head home. Obviously, at that time on a public holiday, there was no public transport Caleb could take to get back, or at least to make the journey shorter.
Walking through streets like a snake moving in a zigzag, Caleb managed to reach his neighborhood—a marginalized area in the city center suburbs, where life is literally "cheaper" than in a high-class district.
Walking with his eyes fixed on the ground and taking slow steps, Caleb continued his return home, but halfway there, he was stopped:
"Well, well. Look who we have here. Caleb Sterling. The king of the hospital mops," mocked Alaric, the leader of the "Dark Blood" gang that dominated the streets of Caleb's neighborhood.
Alaric treated the neighborhood as his territory, as if he had paid millions for it to believe he was the rightful owner and do whatever he wanted. As long as Alaric and his gang existed, no one in the neighborhood was safe from their cruel fate. He loved harassing sick elderly people who could barely walk, he made life impossible for defenseless children, and—most terrible of all—they recruited minors to sell drugs in the city.
Like everyone else, Caleb preferred to keep his distance from them.
Despite Caleb being an adult, Alaric had become obsessed with turning him into a gang member. Not just because he knew about the dire financial situation Caleb lived in with his sick mother, but because Caleb was the perfect "hook"; he worked in a place where he met many people he could easily exploit to sell drugs, making enough money to keep the business growing.
Slowly, the gang of nine men cornered Caleb against the dark brick wall behind him. Caleb stared at them, trying not to get nervous, because every time he did, things got worse—he would end up with a beating that could send him straight to the hospital.
"Alaric, I come in peace. Don't bother me, please. My mother is waiting for me at home."
But that small "plea" didn't matter to him at all. Alaric looked at Caleb with eyes that were ambitious to pressure him into joining the gang:
"What your mother needs now is good, effective medicine. And you? You need to stop smelling like that damn bleach that turns my stomach every time you're near me. Caleb, I've told you a million times: work for me. A couple of deliveries is more than enough to earn what that damn hospital pays you in a year, even counting overtime."
Caleb shook his head.
"I said no," Caleb stated firmly. His ambition was great, but his pride was not yet for sale. He didn't want to be another street parasite.
Alaric's patience snapped with that final refusal; it broke like fine glass hitting the floor. In a movement so fast human eyes couldn't follow, the gang leader pinned him against the brick wall so he couldn't escape. He didn't pull out a knife. He didn't pull out a gun. But his strength was so immense that Caleb was shocked and terrified at the same time, not knowing what to do.
"Nobody says no to me, Caleb. If you won't be my dog... then you'll be my dinner."
Alaric continued to grab Caleb by the neck with that same supernatural strength. Caleb felt an icy cold emanating from the dealer's body. Before he could scream, Alaric's lips pulled back, revealing fangs that glinted under the dim light of a streetlamp.
The impact was blunt.
Alaric's teeth sank into Caleb's jugular. It wasn't an ordinary pain; it felt as if they were injecting lava and ice at the same time. Caleb felt his life draining away, but just before the blackness claimed him, Alaric cut his own palm with a fang and pressed it against Caleb's mouth.
"Drink, you ambitious little thing," Alaric whispered into Caleb's ear. "You asked for a change. Here it is. Your wish, my dear Caleb, will soon come true."
The Awakening
The world disappeared. For what seemed like centuries, Caleb fell through an abyss of fire.
Suddenly, his eyes snapped open, needing to realize he was still alive. He was lying on the alley floor, alone. The dealers were gone, and who knows how long ago they had abandoned him there.
The silence was absolute, yet deafening. For a moment, it seemed as if the world had died.
Caleb stood up, but something had changed. He no longer felt the chronic pain in his back from the long hours of standing at work. The night cold no longer bothered him; in fact, it felt warm compared to the frozen void in his chest.
He looked at his hands. They were pale, almost translucent under the moon. His senses were sharp: he could hear a pipe dripping three blocks away and the heartbeat of a rat hiding among the trash.
And then, came The Hunger.
It wasn't a hunger for food. It was a ravenous thirst, a fire in his throat that burned more than his mother's cancer. He reached for his neck and found no wound, only skin as smooth and cold as marble.