Department 19, The Rising, and Battle Lines

by Will Hill

  Elliott was about to key in the command to wake the rest of their unit, when something on one of the monitors caught his eye. It was a BBC News 24 feed, and the words BREAKING NEWS were scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

  “Better let the Loop know about the message,” Jackson called through the open door.

  Elliott didn’t take his eyes from the screen as he replied. “I think they already know, sir.”

  Chapter 40

  BREAKING POINT

  Jamie shoved open the door to the Ops Room.

  Frankenstein and Thomas Morris were exactly where he had left them; the two men were not looking at each other, and Jamie doubted a word had been said in the time he had been underground. They looked up as he entered, and he sat in a chair in front of them.

  “She didn’t do it,” he said.

  Both men opened their mouths to protest, but he didn’t give them the chance.

  “I don’t care whether you believe me or not. I know she didn’t do it. Which means you two, me, Admiral Seward and the Operator who moved the satellite are the only other people in the world who knew we had found Alexandru. The rest of the strike team were briefed in the air, and all radio traffic was monitored. So one of those has to be the person who tipped him off.”

  He ran his hands through his hair, rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms.

  “To be honest,” he continued, “I don’t care who did it. All I care about is what we do next. As far as I can tell, we have no more leads, and Alexandru has more than likely killed a load of innocent people to punish me just for looking for him. So I want to know what happens now.”

  With a whirring noise and bright flash of light, the screen that covered one entire wall of the Ops Room burst into life. The Department 19 crest appeared on the screen, six feet in diameter, as automated security protocols were implemented, then a window opened in the centre of the Blacklight system desktop, and a BBC news report appeared in front of the three startled men.

  “What’s happening?” asked Jamie. “The monitoring system checks all civilian media for potential supernatural incidents,” answered Morris, staring up at the screen. “This is happening now, whatever it is.”

  The words BREAKING NEWS were scrolling along the bottom in thick white text. The screen showed a reporter addressing the camera from a beach, his hair blowing in the wind, the sound crackling as the night air whistled across his microphone. Behind him a pair of portable spotlights were trained on the water’s edge, where a fishing boat appeared to have run aground. There were men and women wandering over the sand, blankets wrapped around their shoulders and dazed looks on their faces, while a number of policemen and paramedics moved amongst them.

  The caption at the bottom of the screen informed the viewer that the report was coming live from Fenwick, Northumber-land.

  In the bottom-right corner of the screen a man was standing still, a grimace of pain on his face as a paramedic applied a bandage to his neck. Two policemen were wrestling a screaming woman to the ground, and the reporter was trying desperately to find someone coherent enough to answer his questions.

  A light bulb suddenly blazed on in Jamie’s head.

  “Tom!” he yelled, and the Security Officer jumped. “Can you rewind this report?”

  Morris looked confused, but said that he could.

  “I need you to take it back thirty seconds and freeze it. Quickly!”

  Morris opened a window and keyed a series of buttons. As he did so, Frankenstein lumbered to his feet and walked over to stand beside Jamie.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “You’ll see,” replied the teenager, without taking his eyes from the screen.

  As Morris worked the controls, the news report stopped, then began to run backwards.

  “Freeze it there!” shouted Jamie after a couple of seconds, and Morris did so. “Zoom in on the man in the bottom right of the image.”

  A grid of thin green lines appeared over the picture, dividing it into sixty-four squares. Morris highlighted the four at the bottom right and clicked on them. They expanded to fill the screen, a blurry image twelve feet high. He clicked a series of keys and the image sharpened into perfect clarity.

  The paramedic was about to place a bandage over the man’s neck. Blood was splattered over the pale skin, almost black in the silver light of the full moon that hung above him, now removed from view. Jamie drew in a deep breath sharply, and held it.

  In the centre of the matted blood were two round holes of pure black.

  Jamie followed the blood down to the man’s shoulder, where it had spilled on to his upper arm, and across onto his chest. He was wearing a white T-shirt, now stained a dark red.

  “Where is this place?” demanded Jamie. “I need a map of the surrounding area. My mother is wherever this boat came from, I know it.”

  Morris leapt down from his control panel, opened a long narrow cupboard set into one of the metal walls, and hauled out a sheaf of maps. Jamie ran over to him, and they began to spread them across one of the tables.

  “Northumberland, Northumberland,” said Morris aloud, casting aside map after map. Behind them something beeped, but neither he nor Jamie looked up.

  “This is the one,” exclaimed Morris, and spread a map of the North Sea coast across the desk. The two men huddled over it, their fingers hovering in the air as they searched for the tiny coastal town of Fenwick.

  “Jamie,” said Frankenstein, but the teenager didn’t even look up, just waved a hand and continued to pore over the map.

  “Jamie!” said the monster again, loudly, and this time the urgency in the voice lifted his head, a scowl creasing his features.

  “What is—”

  He stopped dead, his eyes following Frankenstein’s pointing finger to the giant screen. A new window had opened, containing an e-mail from an address that was an indecipherable combination of letters and numbers. There was no text in the body of the mail, just a single high-quality photograph of the T-shirt that had been hammered into the door of the Department 19 Northern Outpost. The yellow lettering that spelt out the word LINDISFARNE was clearly visible, as were the words scrawled below it, the drying blood a sickly black colour.

  TELL

  THE BOY

  TO

  COME

  Jamie took a long, deep breath, and looked around at his friends.

  “That’s where she is,” he said.

  *

  Jamie unloaded his weapons on to the Ops Room desk, and checked each one in turn. He didn’t look up when Frankenstein and Morris walked back into the room.

  “I’ve spoken to the Northern Outpost,” Morris said. “They’ll control the press, and keep the police off the island until we give them the all clear.”

  “Good,” replied Jamie. “That’s good.”

  He re-tied the laces on his boots, clipped his body armour into place, and replaced the weapons in their holders

  “I can feel you looking at me,” said Jamie, pulling one of his gloves on and fastening it to the sleeve of his uniform. “Say whatever you’ve got to say.”

  “The rescue team will be back in a few hours,” said Morris. “Why don’t you wait, and then we can—”

  “No waiting, Tom,” said Jamie. “I’m going now. Give me the code for Larissa’s cell.”

  “What for?” asked Frankenstein.

  “I’m taking her with me,” Jamie replied. He saw the look on the monster’s face, and he stopped what he was doing and faced him. “She didn’t do it, Victor. I know she didn’t. If you can’t believe me, that’s fine, but I trust her, and I’m taking her with me.”

  “Jamie,” said Morris. “If she didn’t do it, then who did?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Jamie. “All I know for certain is that it wasn’t her.”

  Morris swallowed hard, then looked at Jamie, his face solemn, his eyes wide.

  “I think there’s something you should know,” he said. “But it’s not my place to
tell you.”

  Frankenstein stiffened in his chair. “Shut the hell up, Morris,” he said, his voice laced with threat.

  Jamie looked at his two companions.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Morris lowered his eyes.

  “Ask him,” he said, pointing at Frankenstein. “Ask him where he was when your father died.”

  Jamie stared at the monster, who was looking at Morris with open fury. Then the teenager’s head seemed to split open, and the memory of that night flooded into his mind.

  Eight policemen wearing black body armour and carrying submachine guns were arranged across the drive, the barrels of their weapons pointing towards the door that Julian was walking through.

  “Put your hands above your head!” one of the policemen shouted. He was a huge man, wearing a full balaclava and a riot helmet that looked comically small atop his enormous shoulders. Jamie stared at the giant figure, blind terror coursing through him, and saw that the man’s tree-trunk arms were different lengths. “Do it now!”

  Horror beyond anything Jamie had ever felt ripped through him, dumping ice-cold water down the length of his spine and turning his legs to jelly. He looked at Frankenstein.

  Nonononononononononononononononononononononononononono nonono.

  His throat closed, and he gasped for air, bending over and placing his head between his legs, his hands gripping the thick pads on his knees, as he tried not to collapse.

  Think of your mother. Don’t let her down now. Think of your your mother.

  He forced himself back upright and looked at Frankenstein. The monster was staring at him with a look of utter anguish on his face, and he had extended his hands across the table, as though he was reaching for Jamie.

  The sight of the grey-green hands at the end of the monster’s uneven arms broke Jamie’s paralysis, and he recoiled, back-pedalling away from the table.

  “Jamie—” the monster began, but he was cut off.

  “You were there,” said Jamie. “I remember now. You were there when they shot my dad.”

  “Jamie, I—”

  “Were you there or not?” screamed Jamie. “Don’t lie to me any more! Were you there?”

  Frankenstein shot a look of pure murder at Morris, who was looking at his hands, then returned his gaze to the teenager in front of him.

  “I was there,” he said.

  Jamie felt numb; as if he might never be able to feel again.

  “Don’t you ever come near me again,” he said, his voice trembling. “I swear to God, I’ll kill you if you do.”

  He turned his attention to Morris, who stared at him with the look of a man who has just committed a crime he knows he can never atone for.

  “Tom,” Jamie said, “if you were willing to come to Lindisfarne with me and Larissa, I’d be very grateful. If you don’t want to, I understand. But I need the code to her cell, either way.”

  Morris stood slowly up from the table. He avoided the gaze of Frankenstein, who was staring silently at him with hatred burning in his eyes.

  “The code is 908141739,” he said, in a low voice. “Give me five minutes, and I’ll meet you in the hangar.”

  “Thank you,” said Jamie. “Thank you very much.”

  Then he turned and ran out of the Ops Room, towards the lift at the end of the corridor.

  *

  Larissa was lying on her back in the middle of the floor when he ran down the cellblock. She sat up and smiled at him when he skidded to a halt in front of her cell.

  “Back so soon?” she asked.

  “I told you I would be,” he replied, between deep breaths.

  He composed himself and looked at her.

  “I know where my mother is,” he said. “I’m going to finish this, one way or the other, and I could use your help.”

  She stood up slowly, and stretched her arms above her head.

  “There’s not much I can do from here,” she said.

  Jamie reached over and pressed the buttons on the keypad beside her cell. The UV field disappeared.

  Larissa walked out of her cell, and kissed him quickly on the cheek.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Chapter 41

  THE EASTERN FRONT

  SPC CENTRAL COMMAND BASE

  KOLA PENINSULA, RUSSIA

  The two Blacklight helicopters descended towards the SPC base, their engines roaring in the freezing air, their rotors churning the falling snow into spinning flurries. Their wheels skidded across the icy surface as they touched down, then the doors were flung open and Admiral Seward led the rescue team towards the SPC control room.

  Twenty Blacklight Operators ran across the snow, dark shapes moving quickly through a landscape of pure white. The men shivered as the Arctic wind whipped through the mesh of their uniforms; snow slid in torrents down their purple visors, obscuring their view.

  They reached the entrance to the base, skidding and sliding to a halt in front of a ragged metal hole where the heavy airlock door should have been.

  “Christ,” muttered one of the Operators.

  The door had been ripped out of its frame; it lay to one side, buckled and twisted like an empty drink can. The hinges that had held it in place were eight-inch cylinders of solid steel, more than two inches in diameter, and the vacuum seal that connected it to its housing should have been able to withstand an earthquake almost twice as strong as the Richter scale was able to measure.

  “Alert 1 from here onwards,” said Seward, and stepped through the hole.

  Snow was piled high on every surface in the control room, and stood in deep drifts against the sides of the desks and tables that had, until very recently, been the work stations of the SPC duty staff. In places it had turned a bright pink, as blood soaked up from beneath it.

  Admiral Seward almost tripped over the first corpse.

  It lay in front of the empty doorway, the body of a man who could have been no more than nineteen or twenty. He was covered in snow, and Seward ordered the men to clear the man’s body. They knelt and brushed the snow away with their gloved hands, uncovering the dark grey SPC uniform inch by inch.

  There was a gagging sound from one of the men working at the man’s waist, and Seward stepped up next to him. The man turned away, his hand over his mouth, and the Admiral felt his gorge rise.

  The soldier had been pulled in half.

  Below his waist there was nothing but an enormous quantity of blood, covering the floor in a thick pool.

  Admiral Seward split the rescue team into two groups, and addressed the first.

  “Clear this room,” he told them. “I want these men taken out of here. The rest of you, come with me.”

  He left Major Turner overseeing the recovery of the bodies in the control room and led the rest of the men deeper into the base. They walked slowly along a wide grey corridor, and into a lift that was standing open at the end. Seward pressed the button for the first underground level.

  “Search this building floor by floor for survivors,” he said. “I don’t want anyone left behind.”

  There was a ringing noise, and the doors slid open. The Operators filed out, split into two-man teams, and started checking the doors that ran along both sides of the corridor. Seward watched them until the lift doors closed in front of him, and he began to descend again.

  The Director of Blacklight pulled a triangular key identical to the one General Petrov had used little more than two hours earlier from a chain on his belt, and inserted it into the slot below the numbered buttons. The lift swept past the -7 floor, and slowed to a halt. The doors opened, and the long rows of heavy vault doors stopped him momentarily in his tracks. Seward had only been here once before, shortly after he was appointed to the position of Director. Yuri Petrov, a man he had fought side by side with on several occasions, in some of the darkest corners of the globe, had escorted him down and taken him through the vaults one by one, a personal guided tour of the most secret artefacts the Russian nation had
collected over the course of its long history. For a moment he was overcome by the loss of the SPC men who had died in the control room, the latest casualties in a long, bloody war that the public could never know was being fought. Then he shook his head to clear it, and hurried onwards.

  The corridor was slick with gore and splattered with chunks of scarlet meat, and Seward held his breath as he stepped around the carnage; the air was thick with the scent of blood, and the foul stench of the vampires who had spilled it. He forced himself onwards until he was at the door marked 31, where he found General Petrov staring at him from the empty table inside the small metal room.

  His severed head had been placed upright, his dead eyes pointing towards the door. Blood had run down the metal pillar and pooled at the base, drying black. The face itself was almost unrecognisable; long ridges of purple bruising criss-crossed the skin, the nose and jaw were broken in several places, and the mouth was swollen to huge proportions. But the eyes were clear, and full of defiance.

  Petrov was Spetsnaz when it meant something. I bet they tired before he did.

  Seward walked round the pillar, checking every corner of the vault. He knew it was futile, but he did it anyway; he would not dishonour Petrov’s memory by missing something obvious. But there was nothing in the vault apart from the Russian General’s head.

  He walked back out into the steel corridor, stepping carefully around the remains, and pulled his phone from his pocket. He dialled a number, and held it to his ear. “It’s gone,” he said, when the phone was answered. “Yes, I’m sure. I’m standing in the empty vault right now.”

  There was a long silence.

  “I understand that,” he said, eventually. “I need a list of anyone who accessed encrypted SPC content on the Blacklight mainframe in the last forty-eight hours. Yes, I’ll wait.”

  He paced up and down the corridor, waiting for the information he had requested. After almost a minute, the voice told him there were no records of anyone accessing the information he had requested.