Department 19: Zero Hour

by Will Hill

  “Preliminary,” said Cal. “He said he’d discovered an anomaly in Adam’s blood. And then he told me that one of your Operators tried to kill him.”

  Allen grimaced. “You heard about that, huh?”

  “I did,” said Cal. “Have you spoken to Aleksandr?”

  “He called me,” said Allen. “Is it terrible that I didn’t find it hard to believe?”

  Cal shook his head. “It was a bad time,” he said. “At least he told us. It’s not that long since the SPC would have destroyed the files and left the remaining Safeguards in place. Are you cleaning house?”

  “We were about to anyway,” said Allen. “Our ISAT launches the day after tomorrow. We think that’s what set Simmons off. One of my Operators reports having discussed it in his presence, not long before he flipped.”

  “It wasn’t common knowledge?”

  Allen shook his head. “Only a few people knew.”

  “That’s it then,” said Cal. “It’s the same as Brennan. He knew that ISAT would uncover him, so he made a pre-emptive move.”

  “So it would seem,” said Allen. “I can’t really process it, Cal. I’ve known Rich Simmons for fifteen years.”

  “It’s not his fault,” said Cal. “You have to remember that. The SPC programmed him.”

  “So many secrets,” said Allen, and sighed deeply. “So many lies.”

  Cal nodded.

  “At least nobody was hurt,” continued Allen. “Apart from Simmons, that is. Browning is already asking when he can come home.”

  “Tell him I’m sending the Mina II for him,” said Holmwood. “It should be there within eight hours.”

  “I’ll tell him,” said Allen. “He’s a smart one, Cal. He makes me feel like I should have paid more attention in school.”

  Holmwood smiled. “I know exactly what you mean, Bob. Put him on the plane for me as soon as she arrives?”

  “Of course.”

  “And don’t tell him about Jamie. He doesn’t need anything else to worry about.”

  Cal nodded. “I won’t tell—”

  The NS9 Director disappeared, his face replaced by the words EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS SHUTDOWN. Cal had time to frown before the general alarm, deafeningly loud and horribly familiar, burst out of the speaker above the door of his quarters.

  Paul Turner grabbed the phone from the desk, typed in four numbers, and demanded an immediate report from the Security Division watch commander. He listened carefully, then ordered the general alarm to be stopped. When the screaming two-tone siren fell silent, Turner pulled his radio from his belt, entered his override code, and spoke quickly into the microphone.

  “Operators,” he said, his voice emerging from every speaker in the Loop. “This is the Security Officer. There has been a perimeter breach, which is being investigated by the Security Division. Carry on with your duties as normal. Out.”

  He was standing in one of the offices at the rear of the infirmary, waiting for the doctor who had been about to transfuse Jamie Carpenter to return. He had sent him to the Science Division to collect data on the turn, and on the hunger; he did not want Carpenter to suffer any more than was absolutely necessary when his transformation began in earnest. The door to the office flew open and the doctor entered, carrying a stack of files and folders.

  “I heard the alarm,” he said, breathlessly. “Are we safe?”

  “We’re fine,” said Turner. “I need to go up to Security. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes, at which point I’ll expect a report and a treatment plan.”

  The doctor nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” said Turner. “Thank you.”

  He left the man frantically leafing through documents and strode across the infirmary. Kate and Larissa were still huddled round Jamie’s bed, chatting softly; as Turner passed, Kate glanced over at him and raised her eyebrows inquiringly. He gave her a tiny shake of his head.

  Nothing for you to worry about.

  Turner walked down the Level C corridor, his radio pressed to the side of his head, the handset tuned to the Security Division frequency.

  “Is it the damn protesters again?” he asked, as soon as he heard the Duty Operator’s voice.

  “We think so, sir. It was a single breach, less than a second. We think they threw something over the fence, or fired something over it, worst case. There’s a brief heat signature on the thermal tracking, but no explosion. Perimeter patrol should be onsite now, sir.”

  “Keep me informed,” he said. “I’m going out there.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the Duty Operator. “Out.”

  Turner cut the connection, placed the radio on his belt, and fought back a momentary urge to scream with frustration. He simply didn’t have time to deal with the protesters and their increasingly regular attempts at mischief; there were so many more important things that required his attention.

  He knew exactly what had happened out at the fence; after the two deaths the previous day, the protesters had mourned their dead, then returned with even greater outrage burning within them, and thrown something over the fence, something designed to shock, to make their point. Turner was expecting to find a burning effigy dressed to look like an Operator, or something equally juvenile.

  On a gut level, he respected their right to protest, and would, if pushed, allow that there was merit to some of their arguments. Despite that, what he wanted to do more than anything in the world at this particular moment was drive out to the camp, bang the heads of the leaders of the movement together, and tell them all to go home before they got anybody else hurt. He wanted to explain to them that there were events in motion that were simply beyond their comprehension, and that despite the arguable nobility of their intentions, they were only making things worse.

  But of course he couldn’t do that.

  He stepped into the Level C lift and pressed 0. When the doors opened again, he walked quickly down the corridor and through the double doors that led into the hangar. He scanned the wide semi-circular space, and froze.

  Standing in the middle of the hangar, smiling warmly at him, was Valentin Rusmanov.

  Turner stared at the vampire, his eyes wide, his entire body reeling with shock. Valentin was wearing a long coat and floating a few centimetres above the concrete floor, an elegant travel bag resting beside his feet. As he slowly began to accept that he wasn’t imagining it, the vampire really was standing in front of him, his shock gave way first to surprise, then to a profound sense of gratitude.

  He came back, he thought. I had honestly given up hope that he would.

  He forced himself to walk towards Valentin. The vampire’s smile widened as he approached; when he was within range, the youngest Rusmanov grasped his hand and clapped him hard on the shoulder.

  “Major Turner,” said Valentin. “Long time no see.”

  “Valentin,” replied Turner, fighting back a smile of his own. He was suddenly almost euphoric at the sight of the ancient vampire. “It’s good to see you.”

  “I wouldn’t commit to that sentiment just yet,” said Valentin. “Not until you hear what I have to tell you.”

  Turner nodded. “All right,” he said. “Tell me.”

  Valentin took a deep breath. “I found them,” he said. “As I promised I would. Dracula, my brother, their associates. And your former Director.”

  Ice spilled through Paul Turner’s body. “You saw Henry Seward?” he said. “With your own eyes? Is he alive?”

  Valentin nodded. “Yes,” he said. “For now, at least. But we need to hurry.”

  Turner frowned. “We?”

  “You heard me,” said Valentin. “Take me to Cal Holmwood, then get everyone ready. We don’t have much time.”

  Matt Browning walked down the Mina II’s ramp on to the familiar tarmac runway of the Loop and paused, rooted to the spot.

  He was utterly exhausted; the flight had been barely four hours long, but his body was still running on Nevada time, and was convinced it was barely midnight. That, cou
pled with the stiff foam collar that was wrapped tightly round his injured neck, the splint and bandage covering his finger, and the emotionally draining experience of the operation in San Francisco, had left him feeling as though he had been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. He wanted nothing more than to climb carefully into his bed and grab at least a couple of hours of desperately needed sleep, before he returned to the Lazarus Project labs and got to work on the data he had brought back from America.

  But the sky stopped him in his tracks.

  The entire eastern horizon was filled with glorious light, a seemingly endless watercolour vista of pink and purple and orange and yellow, rising from the tops of the trees to a scattered layer of low white clouds, above which the blue-black of the departing night was still visible. It was simply breathtaking; the kind of sky that made even Matt, a man devoted to science and reason, understand why people chose to believe in God. He stared, unable to tear his eyes from the wonder of it all, until a small voice spoke from behind him.

  “Oh no,” it said. “Your neck.”

  Matt felt a familiar flutter in his chest and smiled, despite his pain. He turned and found Natalia Lenski looking at him with wide eyes, her blond hair fluttering in the morning breeze.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Nothing permanent.”

  She reached out with a trembling hand and gently touched his injured finger. “You are hurt,” she said.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Honest. Two or three days of keeping my head still, that’s all.”

  Natalia looked far from convinced, but nodded. She pointed at the sky. “Pretty,” she said.

  Matt looked directly at her. “Yes,” he said.

  Natalia blushed, her cheeks colouring a delicate pale pink. Then she darted forward and kissed him, her soft lips pressing urgently against his. Matt frowned, then closed his eyes and kissed her back. The flutter in his stomach turned to heat, spreading up through his chest, until she broke the kiss and stepped back. Matt opened his eyes and saw a look of such profound misery on her face that the fire raging within him was instantly extinguished.

  “What’s the matter?” he said. “Are you OK?”

  “I am sorry,” she said. “I wanted you to have something nice before you heard.”

  Matt frowned again. “Before I heard about what?” he asked.

  “About Jamie,” said Natalia, and dropped her eyes to the tarmac.

  Matt’s insides froze. He stared at the Russian teenager, his eyes widening, his legs beginning to shake, then reached out and took hold of her arms. She raised her head and looked at him.

  “What about him?” he managed to ask. “What’s happened to Jamie?”

  Matt walked stiffly along the Level C corridor, his neck throbbing with pain, his heart pounding in his chest, and pushed open the doors to the infirmary.

  Jamie was lying in the bed nearest the doors, his eyes closed. On the table beside him stood a glass of water, a pile of files and folders, and two plastic bags full of blood; it was these that drew Matt’s gaze.

  This is real, he thought. Part of me was hoping Natalia had got it wrong.

  His friend looked peaceful as he slept, but the sight still sent a chill up Matt’s spine. It was exactly how Jamie had described him, when he had been lying in a coma in a guarded room at the back of the infirmary, after Larissa’s vampire side had almost killed him. Jamie had come to see him as he lay unconscious, for reasons he had never been able to fully articulate; what had happened to Matt had scared him, he said, and he had felt very alone, in desperate need of someone to talk to. So desperate that he had chosen as his confidant a boy in a coma that he had, at that point, never spoken to.

  Matt smiled, even as sorrow filled his heart. This was not how it was supposed to have gone; he was supposed to have found a cure so that Larissa and Jamie’s mother could be returned to normal, not find himself standing beside the bed of another innocent person who had been changed forever into something that was both more, and less, than human. As a result, the overriding emotion filling him was guilt.

  You failed him, he thought. He believed in you and you let him down. You let them all down.

  Jamie stirred, his long arms rising languidly above his head in a semi-conscious stretch. Then his eyes opened, and for a long moment, the two teenage boys simply stared silently at each other. Then a slow smile rose on to Jamie’s face.

  “Nice collar,” he said. “Shame I haven’t got a ball you can fetch.”

  Matt grinned. “Dick,” he said. “How are you, Jamie?”

  “I’m not really sure how to answer that,” said Jamie.

  Matt walked across to the bed and peered down at his friend. “Come on then,” he said. “Let’s see them.”

  Jamie smiled, then bared his teeth as though presenting them for inspection at the dentist’s. His face contorted and reddened with effort, and after a long moment, two white fangs slid down from above his upper teeth. He ran his tongue across them and shook his head.

  “That feels so weird,” he said. “I can’t even tell you.”

  “It looks weird,” said Matt. “What about your eyes?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jamie. “Larissa told me I won’t be able to control it for a while. It will just happen.”

  “I can’t believe this,” said Matt. “What happened, Jamie? Who did this to you?”

  “The first victim,” said Jamie. “He bit me.”

  “The who?”

  “Are you kidding me?” asked Jamie. “Don’t you ever read your Zero Hour reports?”

  Matt shook his head.

  “The first man Dracula ever bit,” said Jamie. “He’s almost as old, maybe almost as powerful. Grey found him in Romania, and we went to see if he would help us fight Dracula.”

  “Who’s we?” asked Matt.

  “Me and Larissa,” said Jamie. “And four others, from other Departments.”

  “Jesus,” said Matt. “Why didn’t you tell me about all this?”

  “You were already gone,” said Jamie. “We didn’t get selected until after you’d gone to Nevada.”

  “I tried to find you,” said Matt, his voice low. “The day before I went. I sent you messages.”

  “I know,” said Jamie. “I’m sorry, mate. I screwed up the night before, screwed up badly. I wasn’t up to seeing anyone.”

  Matt nodded. “So what happened in Romania then? You found this first victim and he attacked you?”

  Jamie shrugged. “Sort of,” he said. “He refused to help, and Larissa told him he didn’t have to, that we could use his blood and what was on his fangs to make vampires powerful enough to fight Dracula. He still refused, so I called him a coward, and he bit me. He said he was giving me what I wanted.”

  “How did Larissa handle that?” asked Matt.

  “Not well,” said Jamie. “She screamed and attacked him. I lost consciousness, but she told me that the rest of our squad attacked him as well, and got taken apart. Then he gave me to her and said it was up to her what she did. The next thing I knew she was standing right where you are now, screaming and yelling and saying she’d kill anyone who tried to stop me from being transfused. It was pretty crazy. I managed to talk her out of it, just about.”

  “Christ,” said Matt. “That is crazy.”

  Jamie shrugged again. “Maybe,” he said. “You have to see it from her perspective, though. We’ve talked about this loads of times, about what would happen if I ever got turned, and she’s always made it clear that it would be her worst nightmare. Now it’s happened, and to be honest with you, I’m pretty sure that at least part of her thinks I did it on purpose.”

  “Did you?” asked Matt.

  “No,” said Jamie, instantly. “I thought about it when we got selected for the op, and I guessed it might be the end result, for at least one of us. But I didn’t go looking for it, Matt. It just happened.”

  Matt nodded. He was sure there was at least a small part of his friend that was going to relish bei
ng a vampire, would enjoy the speed and strength that came with being turned, but he didn’t think that, given a genuine choice, it would be something Jamie would have volunteered for. With a mother and a girlfriend who were both vampires and both vocally hated the condition, it would have been far more selfish than Matt was willing to believe his friend was capable of being. His turning was going to break his mother’s heart, and he was certain that Jamie would never knowingly cause that to happen.

  “So what happened to your neck?” asked Jamie. “Did Adam do it?”

  “No,” said Matt. “It’s probably all classified, for now at least, but it wasn’t Adam. It was the NS9 squad leader.”

  Jamie’s eyes opened wide. “What the hell?”

  Matt shrugged, extremely carefully. “No idea. He put a gun to my head, forced me to take my samples, and dragged me out of the lab. I made him crash the squad’s SUV into a wall, and gave myself whiplash in the process.”

  Jamie’s smile had disappeared. “Jesus,” he said, softly. “You crashed a car into a wall?”

  Matt went to nod, and grimaced as a bolt of pain shot through his neck. “Yeah,” he said. “I pressed his foot on the accelerator. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt and I was, so it sort of made sense at the time.”

  Jamie nodded. “You’re OK, though?” he asked. “Right?”

  “It’ll be fine in a few days,” said Matt. “Now enough about my neck. I’ve got a question for you, a big one. I’ve never asked Larissa, because it felt a bit too personal.”

  “Go for it,” said Jamie.

  “What does blood actually taste like?” asked Matt, and smiled widely.

  “Honestly?” said Jamie. “It’s absolutely disgusting. It takes like metal wire wrapped in raw steak. But the feeling you get when you drink it is indescribable. Literally.”

  “Did you get the hunger?”

  “I think so,” said Jamie. “But not like Larissa did, or most other vamps do. When I woke up this morning, there was a painkiller IV in my arm, and one of the doctors gave me blood to drink. So, if I got the hunger at all, it came and went pretty quickly. I reckon getting turned in a state-of-the-art infirmary is the way to go.”