The news studio was hot.

Sure, the lights were blazing and the air con had to be off during broadcast but even so, man it was hot.

You could see the sweat on Gibson’s head, pushing its way through the make-up caked onto his face as his voice grew louder and angrier. “Look, let’s not- Let’s not shy away from the facts here. V immigration or vampire normative living or vampigration or whatever you want to label it. This influx of v’s is eating this country alive.”

“Are you gonna allow him to say that?” Javid cut in, his eyes flashing across to the host McCullen in the vain hope of intervention. None came.  

“I can say what I want.”

“Are you going to allow him the platform to say that?”

Gibson pounced, he moved forward in his chair, his gut poking out over his belt, his chin forcing down onto a collar already doused with sweat. “Oh so you’re gonna no platform me now? So much for the tolerant left, huh? Well I won’t be silenced, I won’t Because you know and everyone at home knows that Massachusetts is being flooded, flooded with v’s-”

“That’s not true-”

It was a debate that had raged on for years, long before the discovery of the genetic link between humans and vampires, long after the anti-v rhetoric of the mid-nineteenth century. People had long feared those who drank blood for survival, and, though they were now known to just be another branch of the evolutionary tree, it did little to dissuade those who feared them, as tonight’s debate proved once more.

“It is true. It is. And the number one reason they are here, the top reason, is the disastrous, disastrous Massachusetts free blood scheme”

Javid piled on top of Gibson’s stream of consciousness rant again. He knew once he was on a roll with these he could eat the air time up like a fire would oxygen, “The free plas scheme has been extremely successful, extremely.”

“As soon as the state. As soon as the state provided free, synthesised plasma for vampires, for them to feed on and grow on, as soon as that happened they flooded into our cities in masses and masses since that day. Since that day.” Gibson came to the end of his flourish and sat back in his chair with the bold aplomb of a man who very much felt like he had completed a job well done. Gibson was the latest in a long line of anti-v firebrands. Vampiricism had been around for generations, and had always attracted those that spoke of a threat from them, but their genetic markers were recessive in reproduction, lending itself as a community more to be outcast and shunned, in little communities and enclaves, rather than genuinely fulfilling the anti-v ideas of them ‘invading’ or ‘taking over.’ That they were repelled by Christianity or that garlic, an anticoagulant, forced them away just helped to cook in their ‘otherness’, their ‘impurity’, no matter how untrue it was. 

However at some point a few decades ago the markers became dominant in mixed relationships. Suddenly v and non-v’s produced v children rather than not, and the old battle lines had suddenly become rocket fuelled.

The old folks' tale, stained with more than a whiff of racism, was that the fallout from Chernobyl had caused the change, however some academic work undertaken in the 90’s indicated this was a natural evolution that had begun before that tragedy. Whatever the truth, vampirism had become dominant, and more and more v children were born. The number of v’s grew, and the prejudice against them became more febrile, more urgent. Gibson, cooking with rage under the studio lights, was just the latest to give it voice and fire.

The host turned to Javid, offering her hand as a prompt for her guest to retort. “Mr. Javid?”

“Let’s look at the real facts here, the evidence. Let’s look at the studied, verified facts. One, there has been an empirically proven downfall in violence since state plasma was introduced-”

Gibson was forward again, back in the fight, “Data from who?”

Javid continued,  “And that data, that independently verified data proves that these people, these v’s coming here to Massachusetts do not want to be violent, they want to have better lives. That’s why they’re coming here. They are fleeing the same violent extremist v thinking that we are battling.”

“We’re inviting that extremism right into our cities.”

“These people are not extremists, they’re people. People fleeing the extremist doctrine of The Coven. They are leaving everything, everything-”

But Javid didn’t get to finish his points. He’d touched on one of Gibson’s trigger points there, The Coven, and once he had heard those two words the stream of his arguments poured forth.

“There you see, there you see, The Coven, The Coven. Finally we get to the point. An established, v only state in the very heart of Europe. It’ll be here next, I tell you. They’ll be here following their task to eliminate humanity, which they have publicly stated by the way, they’ll be destroying humanity in this country if we let them in and we’ll be giving them the free plasma to drink while they do it. It’s madness.”

“They are fleeing The Coven, they want to live with our-” Javid was about to say ‘values’ but Gibson was steaming away by now.

“They want to destroy us, The Coven want to destroy us.We let them in, we'll have these violent blood lettings here that we see happening all the time in Europe. You mark my words. Mark. My Words.”

For a long time there had been an uneasy truce, between the v’s and the Sapiens, they kept in their own remote communities, Sapiens kept in their large cities, but the advent of the internet speed up the spread of misinformation and the establishment of The Coven had blown the whole thing up. One side said it was the result of oppression and sanctions, the other that it displayed v’s true nature and values. And now everyone seemed angry and afraid.

After the collapse of the USSR and the crumbling of communist regime in Romania, the disparate communities of central European v’s came together under one leader, one banner, and took their own land after a bloody conflict, naming it The Coven. And the world of Sapiens, usually comfortable with pushing v’s to the fringes and ignoring them, were suddenly gripped with an existential fear for their futures.

But that was the big picture.

Back in the smaller picture of the debate, Javid had lost all remnants of cool he had. He jabbed his finger towards Gibson, spitting each word at him with a machine gun pace. McCullen sat between them, quietly watching the carnage. There is no way this doesn't go viral, she thought, Gibson is God-damned box office.

And now Javid, normally the calm, reserved debater, had been dragged down to his level, “That is the exact kind of ill informed, inflammatory rhetoric you, and the people who follow you, rely upon. You, your party is simply tapping into ancient prejudices against vampires that they carry disease-”

“They do.”

“That they are an inherently violent people-”

“They bleed people to death in the streets, is that not violent Javid?”

“This is nothing more than the modern rebranding of anti-vampiric propaganda last seen in Nazi Germany-”

Got him, thought Gibson, always fall back on the Nazi card. 

“I resent that” he interjected, “I resent the implication of that, are you going to allow him to say that?”

Of course McCullen was going to allow it, this was great TV.

Javid was well into his flow at this point, a vein appearing more than pronounced upon his temple as he raged on “Next you’ll be saying that Vampirism is passed on by biting which has empirically proven to be complete nonsense.”

Gibson sat, now silent, hands folded non-threateningly in front of him and a butter-wouldn’t-melt expression on his face. He no longer looked angry, just disappointed.

After a pause for dramatic effect, he spoke again, but this time in a softer, almost reverential tone. “We are just decent people. Decent people worried about our children’s lives. And for that you label us Nazis. Nazis. Well I never. I tell you what has been empirically proven Mr. Javid, I tell you what, the dominance of the vampiric genome. We let them in, we die out. That what you want?”

The anger rose in Javid again and the pulsing vein looked ready for round two but McCullen allowed him no air, she knew this battle had run its course, time to give the eyeballs at home and online something else to glare at. “Well let's get the political angle on all of this from one of the architects of the Massachusetts free plas scheme, Republican Senator Anna Coborn.” 

McCullen turned to look at the green screen behind her but in the corner of her eye he could see the feedback monitor, showing her looking up at a smiling, warm woman in her 50’s, petite, dressed as boldly as the focus groups would allow and a shock of red hair swept to one side, gently falling over the faux pearl necklace around her neck.

The only concession to her being a vampire was the pale, slight glean her skin gave off under the studio lights, and the tiniest pronouncement of her front incisors. Coborn really looked every inch the acceptable face of Vampirism.

In sharp contrast to the two men in the studio, hot, fired up and angry, she was calm, composed and happy to be there, a slight glint of mischief in her eyes.

“Good evening Senator Coborn.”

“Evening Clare”

“So you’ve heard what the gentlemen here have been saying-”

“It was hard not to.”

McCullen couldn’t help the briefest smile cross her face, “So, Senator Coborn, yourself, as a proud v American, as a Senator for Massachusetts, as a policy maker on this issue, what are your thoughts?”

Coborn shifted easily on her chair, as if chatting to old friends over the dinner table. “Hey, look, tyranny is the removal of nuance right? And on both sides here I think we’re getting so fired up and so emotional we’re refusing to hear each other’s points on, what is, a complex and knotty issue.”

“So where do the Republicans sit on this nationally?”

“Well Clare, look, I wouldn’t presume to speak for the whole Republican Party on any subject, but I can tell you about what I do. In Massachusetts, and hopefully across New England, the free plas scheme-”

“Which you had a hand in drafting.”

“Which I had a hand in drafting, indeed, the free plas scheme has been a huge success. V’s no longer have to steal it so crime is down, and with crime down that encourages more cohesion between v and non v communities. V children’s scores in schools are up. It’s a win.”

“And what do you say to Mr. Gibson’s charge that it’s encouraged a huge influx of v’s to enter Massachusetts?”

“Well the facts don’t back him up on that and I think even Mr. Gibson will admit he was being a bit naughty there-“

Gibson took the bait “I object to the-” But Coborn was giving him no time to start up again.

“But let’s be straight here”, Coborn brushed her hair from her forehead casually, “there are merits on both sides of this argument. This is a country built upon immigrants and the huge contribution they make to society. I mean, I would not be where I am without my family being accepted into this country many years ago. But I do also see that safeguarding measures have to be in place and the establishment of The Coven in Europe, and the letting attacks which have followed it are unprecedented.”

Gibson nodded almost cartoonishly. Even when he isn’t speaking he loves to pull focus, McCullen thought.

Coborn continued, “Therefore we must screen carefully the refugees we accept. This is not demonising them, this is protecting our citizens from threat, which, after all, is the first priority of any government.”

McCullen turned away from the green screen, “Senator Coborn, Saeed Javid and Ben Gibson, thank you for your time.”

In the small booth in Washington, Coborn watched the red light blink dark and the camera operator gave her the nod that they were off air. She removed the earpiece and made her way off her chair as the studio lighting was turned off one by one.

Andrew, mid forties pencil thin, worn by worry and seemingly always with a folder, dashed up to her.

“Score that one to you.”

Coborn looked him up and down, she gave him a peck on the cheek and leant in, whispering into his ear. “You drop a prizefighter into a street brawl, that’s what you’re going to get.”

She smiled at him and began walking towards the door.

Andrew grinned, watching her go, very much as in love with her as when the two had met in college all those years ago. “So arrogant.”

He followed her out of the studio, checking his phone for reactions to the show.