by P. T. Hylton
“It’s filled with people just trying to get through the day. People with families. People with dreams. All of them doing whatever they can not to think about the horrors that live outside their city. In other words, they’re just like us.”
Fleming thought a moment. “Their head vampire, this Jaden, he contacted me early this morning, just before sunrise their time.”
CB and Alex exchanged a surprised glance.
“I spoke to him briefly. It was fascinating. He sounded almost like a real person.”
“What did he want?” CB asked.
“He had the ridiculous idea that one of their people should come spend time on New Haven the same way Jessica spent time in their city.”
“What did you tell him?” Jessica asked.
“I said I’d think about it. Needless to say, that’s one call I won’t be returning. They may be dumb enough to let a spy into their midst, but we are not.”
Aaron hadn’t known what to expect when Jaden told him he and Mark would be starting their new jobs that night. He’d imagined it would involve venturing out of the city to gather supplies. Or to hunt. But he certainly hadn’t expected this.
They stood in a storeroom the size of a football field (ah, football, how he missed watching it on Sundays), surrounded by large shelving units filled with carefully labeled crates.
If Mark’s crossed arms and dour expression were any indication, he was just as unhappy about their current situation as Aaron was.
Jaden and Robert stood in front of them, along with a vampire whose name Aaron couldn’t quite remember. Toby? Tommy? Something like that.
“Your training begins tonight,” Jaden told them. “Every human and every vampire in Agartha needs to earn his or her keep. You two are no exception. You will be expected to pull your weight, and that starts now.”
“In the storeroom?” Mark asked.
Jaden nodded. “As vampires, you fall under my jurisdiction. So, your duty is whatever I say it is. Be happy I don’t have you scrubbing toilets.” His tone softened a little. “Do what’s asked of you without complaint. Earn our trust. If you can manage that, you’ll move on to more fulfilling tasks in time. You’re immortal—be patient.”
Robert then explained their duties. They’d be performing maintenance in the storeroom, as well as moving and cataloging the supplies that came in and out. Toby would train them, and eventually, he’d move on, leaving them in charge of the storeroom.
“Lucky us,” Mark muttered.
Thankfully, neither Jaden nor Robert seemed to notice the comment.
“Like Jaden said, work hard and you will be rewarded,” Robert told them. “Any questions?”
“Yeah.” Mark turned to Jaden. “What’s the long-term plan, here?”
Jaden glanced at his watch as he answered. “What long term plan are you referring to?”
“I’m talking about the Feral vampires suffering right outside your door.” There was a hint of anger creeping into Mark’s voice now. “When are you going to help them? What’s the plan to rebuild society?”
Jaden regarded Mark for a long moment before answering. “Let me ask you a question. Do you like your accommodations? Do you like having a regular supply of blood delivered to your door every night just after sunset?”
Aaron answered before Mark could. “Yes. We do.”
“Good. You need to understand that these things are only possible because of the careful balance we’re maintaining. We’ve kept that balance for one hundred and fifty years, and it’s kept both the vampires and the humans alive and well fed.”
“Some of the vampires,” Mark clarified.
“Sure. But you have to remember we’re playing the long game here. For now, you can either choose to be part of this city and assist in its operation, or you can go try your luck elsewhere.”
“We’re staying,” Aaron said quickly. He wanted to hit Mark. As much as he agreed with the other vampire’s sentiments, there was no need to say it out loud. Not when he knew it would piss off their benefactor.
“Okay, then,” Jaden said. “We’ve already upset the balance by adding two more vampires to the mix. Don’t make me regret it.”
“You won’t,” Aaron assured him. “We’re going to be great assets to Agartha. Thank you for the opportunity.”
Eight hours later, they finished up their work and Toby escorted them back to their shared quarters.
“You did well,” Toby told them once they reached the solid steel door. “You’re going to like it here. Keep up the good work.”
After they were inside and Toby left, Mark said, “Yeah, we did well, but not so well that they aren’t going to keep locking us up every day. This place is bullshit.”
Aaron walked to his bed and sat down, saying nothing. Morning was fast approaching, and he wanted to sleep.
“We have to do something,” Mark continued. “Doesn’t it drive you crazy thinking of all those poor starving bastards outside the city?”
“Of course, it does,” Aaron snapped. “You think I don’t want to help them?”
Mark plopped down on his own bed. “I wouldn’t have known it by the way you clammed up in front of Jaden. You could have had my back.”
Aaron leaned forward and looked Mark in the eye. “You really think pissing off the ancient asshole who runs this city is the best way to help the other vampires out there?”
“You have something better in mind?”
A sly smile crept across Aaron’s face. “We need to do exactly what Jaden told us to do. We need to earn their trust. We’re going to be the best little worker bees Agartha has ever seen.”
Mark nodded slowly, starting to understand. “Get them to let their guard down.”
“Exactly. Then, once we have a plan and have their trust, we make our move. Then, and only then.”
“I like it. You know, I’m glad we happened to bite the same guy.”
Aaron chuckled. “Think about it, though. This city could be the first step in rebuilding the vampire race for the long haul. We already have a nice food supply. If we cultivate it, breed them, we can expand. But step one is getting access to other parts of the city.”
“And that requires Jaden’s trust,” Mark repeated.
“You got it. That means no more of this mouthing off like you did tonight. You need to be respectful to Jaden and the others.”
“I can do that,” Mark said. “I’ll happily kiss ass and wait for our moment. But I do have one request.”
“What’s that?”
“When we take over, I want to throw Jaden in a cage and let him starve for a couple centuries. I want him to know firsthand the hell he’s let every Feral vampire experience. Then, I want to bring him back and do it all over again.”
Alex waited until the wee hours of the morning to make her move. Of course, in New Haven, the wee hours were just as bright as any other time. There were far fewer people awake, though. Even in a city that was always in sunlight, people observed day and night.
As soon as she reached the Hub, she scurried up the first fire escape she saw. The buildings in the Hub were all built to be a uniform height, which made traveling from rooftop to rooftop an ideal way to get to the City Council headquarters without being noticed.
It felt odd running a covert mission on New Haven. Unlike her usual operations, there was no risk of encountering a vampire today. So why did she feel so nervous?
She leapt to the rooftop of the City Council building and made her way to the fire escape on the northeast end. Taking a deep breath, she headed down to the third floor, jimmied the window open, and slipped inside.
She found herself in an unoccupied office. After listening at the door for almost a minute, she crept into the hallway and made her way to the conference room where the City Council held their meetings. The room where they’d died.
Just as she’d expected, the door was locked. That was okay; she’d come prepared. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a key card.
As colonels, CB a
nd Kurtz both had access to open most of the doors in this building, but using one of their key cards would have been risky. If Alex did her job correctly, Fleming wouldn’t know anyone had been in this room until it was too late for it to make a difference. But it was possible he was tracking the movements of his colonels, and they didn’t want to throw up any red flags.
Thankfully, Kurtz had come through and provided her with General Craig’s keycard. The badges had taken it along with the rest of his personal effects when he was arrested. Granted, if someone looked at the access logs, it would seem awfully strange that a man currently locked in jail had entered the City Council chambers at three in the morning, but it seemed unlikely anyone would check. And even if they did, it would take time to figure out Alex had been the one using it.
She opened the door and entered the chamber.
Even more than two weeks after the explosion, the devastation in this room shook her. The furniture and carpet had been removed. The western wall had been stripped down to the studs, but there were still telltale scorch marks on the ceiling and some of the other walls. The thought of what had happened here made her shudder.
The north wall was still intact, and she saw the removable panel with the small hole in it just where Kurtz had said it would be. Taking a screwdriver out of her pack, she went to work. Unlike most security cameras which fed to the network rooms on each floor, Kurtz had told them that the hidden camera had a separate storage mechanism kept in the hidden compartment with the camera.
In less than a minute, she was able to confirm that for herself. She quickly had the camera exposed, and a few seconds after that, she was holding the tape in her hand.
She suppressed the urge to laugh. She couldn’t believe it had been that easy. After all the scheming Fleming had done, he was going to be taken down by this little video tape. The thought made her giddy.
On the way out, she stopped at the network room at the end of the hall and pulled the tapes for every camera in the hallway, thus erasing the evidence she’d ever been there.
Then she went out the window, up the fire escape, and started back toward GMT headquarters.
14
Garrett Eldred watched from the doorway as Councilman Stearns sat down at the table and looked around at the other Council members, a wide smile on his face. “Ladies! Gentlemen! It’s been too long.”
“Indeed, it has,” Phyllis said. “How’ve you been, Stearns?”
“I can’t complain. Shall we get to it? We’re here to discuss the future of our great city. I think you’ll all agree that there’s more we could be doing—”
He stopped mid-sentence and looked at Garrett. “Firefly. You again?”
But it wasn’t just Stearns who was staring. It was all of them. Phyllis, a woman in her sixties who represented the agricultural sector. Vernon, a man in his late thirties who’d been elected to represent the engineering sector only earlier that year. On and on it went, every Council member staring at him, as if waiting for him to say something important.
Garrett opened his mouth and felt his vocal cords tighten as he tried to speak, but no sound came out. He wanted to warn them, to tell them to run. He knew what was coming next.
It started at the far end of the table with Councilman Vernon. Thin tendrils of smoke rose from his sleeves, quickly thickening, and followed shortly by flames as the man’s clothes caught fire.
The strange phenomenon traveled down the table, and it became more violent as it progressed, changing from a strange fire to an explosion.
Garrett found himself unable to move, unable to speak, forced to watch in horror as these people burned.
The councilmen and councilwomen didn’t scream. They made no move to dampen the flames. They sat still, resigned to their fates as the slow-motion blast tore flesh from bone, leaving only charred, blackened patches of skin. The exposed teeth left behind after their lips disintegrated made them look like they were wearing ghastly smiles.
The slow-motion blast reached Stearns, and as his eyeballs liquefied in their sockets, he spoke to Garrett in a calm voice. “Am I pretty now? Do the ends justify my makeover?”
Garrett screamed as loud as he could, straining his vocal chords, but no sound emerged.
Until it did.
He heard himself crying out and opened his eyes to see his bedroom. For a few moments, he just lay there, breathing deeply and waiting for his heart rate to return to normal. Then he glanced at the clock and saw it was nearly morning.
Twisting himself out of the tangle of sweat-drenched sheets, he got up and walked to the bathroom. He looked at himself in mirror for a long moment, and he couldn’t help but remember the vivid way Councilman Stearns’s eyes had been destroyed in his dream.
“Fuck you, Stearns,” he said, still looking into the mirror.
An hour later, he was outside the GMT facility. He waited by the doors where he’d instructed his handpicked recruits to meet him. Thankfully, none of them were there yet. As the boss, he made it a point to always be the first in and the last out.
He hadn’t been to this building since he’d left the team, and it felt odd being here as an interloper who’d been forced upon them. But that was his role, and he’d play it out.
Shirley arrived three minutes later, followed by Henry and Mario. These were the top three recruits. All of them were honored badges, and he was hoping to give them this experience to help prepare them for leadership roles on the surface.
“You ready for this?” he asked them.
Shirley was the first to respond. “Captain, I’ve been waiting for this all my life.”
“Good,” Captain Garrett Eldred said. “Then let’s go. It’s time for your first mission to the surface.”
CB, Owl, and Alex huddled around the monitor as Brian scrubbed through the security footage Alex had brought back.
“Whatever we find on this tape, we still have to proceed with caution,” CB said. “This is our smoking gun, but we need to make sure everything is in order before we reveal it. Kurtz is still working on his badges, and I still believe we need Firefly.”
“Of course,” Alex said, but she was barely listening. In a few moments, they would see the hard evidence against Fleming. And then, whether he knew it or not, Fleming was finished.
CB frowned at her, clearly able to tell she wasn’t paying attention. “I’m just saying, we can’t show our cards until―”
“Hang on, CB,” Brian said, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“Is there a problem?” CB asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
They waited in silence, watching the images on the screen flicker past in fast motion.
“Okay, there’s a problem,” Brian said.
“Explain.” CB’s voice was tense.
Brian paused the video on a shot of the empty Council room. “This is two days before the explosion.” The picture flickered to a very different, burned-out image of the room. “This is the day after.”
“Where’s the footage from in between?” Owl asked.
Brian looked up at them, his face drawn with concern. “It’s not here. Someone erased it.”
Alex felt sick.
For a long moment, no one spoke.
Finally, CB cleared his throat. “I don’t want anyone to panic. This is a dead end, but we’ll find another way.”
“What way?” Alex asked, her voice weary. “Fleming’s two steps ahead of us. Again.”
“There’s evidence out there. We just need to find it. In the meantime, winning Firefly over to our way of thinking is more important than ever. Today’s a great opportunity to start working on him.”
Alex nodded absently, barely registering the words. She’d been so sure this was how they were going to take Fleming down. She’d been so confident. And now the tape had proven itself worthless.
“I know this is disappointing,” CB told them, “but don’t give up. You keep doing your jobs. Kurtz and I will do ours.”
> The GMT away ship cruised toward their target location.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Owl said in their headsets, “you will soon be planting boots on the fertile soil of a rainforest in the pre-infestation country of Columbia. It’s a diverse landscape filled with more species of bird than any other place on Earth.”
“We’re really doing this again?” Patrick grumbled. “Every time?”
“Spanish was the primary language of the region,” she continued. “The economy was agrarian for most of its history.”
“What the hell is that?” Ed asked.
“Means they farmed and shit,” Chuck said.
“In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the country was engaged in ongoing warfare between the government and guerilla groups. I assume that’s the source of the weapons stash we’re after today. Columbia was also part of the region that scientists called the Ring of Fire, because of the frequency of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.”
Patrick put a hand to his earpiece. “Hang on. Did she just say, ‘volcanic eruptions’?”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Now you’re paying attention?”
“I signed up to fight vampires. I don’t mess with volcanos. Lava is liquid rock.”
“If any volcanoes erupt, we’ll let you get back on the ship.”
The purpose of the mission was to recover a large weapons stash they’d identified from the NSA records. As disappointing as Brian’s news about the tape had been, it felt good to have a straightforward mission for once. Go to a building and find some guns. No politics, no electricians, just her team and a clear-cut objective. The only thing that had her on edge was their companions.
Firefly—she couldn’t bring herself to think of him as Garrett—and three of his top Resettlement recruits were accompanying them on this mission. At Fleming’s orders, of course. Fleming had informed CB and Alex in no uncertain terms that this was not optional. They were to take the Resettlement crew along to give them some experience on the surface.
Alex was doing her best to hide her frustration at the situation, but she was pretty sure the others could see through it.