by Will Hill
The former was an insult to her intelligence, and she hated being thought of as stupid almost as much as she hated being patronised. The latter was even worse; she knew, with absolute certainty, that they both believed she had a crush on Jamie.
Kate was a girl with a highly developed sense of self-awareness, and would have admitted, had anyone asked her, that there had been a tiny period of time during which she had possibly, just possibly, thought about Jamie in that way.
During the madness of Lindisfarne and the days that followed it, days in which the shape and course of her life had been altered forever, when she had been faced with decisions that she would spend the rest of her days second-guessing, he had been there, by her side, helping her through it. He had rescued her on Lindisfarne, as the bodies of her friends and neighbours lay discarded on the streets she had grown up in, and saved her life, all their lives, by destroying Alexandru Rusmanov. Then, when it was over, she had seen him with Frankenstein, and with his mum, and for a few short moments, she thought that she had maybe been a little bit in love with him.
Maybe.
But the feeling had passed, and passed quickly; partly because it was obvious to her from the moment they woke up at the Loop on the morning after Lindisfarne that he had fallen for Larissa, and that Larissa felt the same way about him, but also because in the cold light of day, away from the blood and the screams and the horror of the night before, the aura that had glowed around him as he stepped forward to face Alexandru was gone. She loved Jamie; in the months since her home had been attacked he had become one of the two closest friends she had ever had, and she would have done anything for him.
But she was not in love with him.
That was what hurt her most about the deception that he and Larissa were perpetrating; she was genuinely, unreservedly happy for them both. She had waited and waited for them to tell her, convincing herself they were looking for the right moment, until she had been forced into the bitter realisation that there wasn’t going to be a right moment. They weren’t waiting for anything; they had decided to keep her in the dark.
Well, to hell with that, she thought. Tomorrow I’ll tell them I know. No more of this.
After all, it wasn’t as if Kate had been without problems of her own to deal with in the aftermath of Lindisfarne; real problems, unlike the adolescent nonsense occupying her two supposedly best friends.
After they had arrived at the Loop, after the wonderful, heart-stopping moment when the news had been passed to her that her father was among the survivors who had made it to the mainland in John Tremain’s fishing boat, Kate had been escorted down to the secure dormitory on Level B and crashed into a deep, dreamless sleep. She had slept until a female Operator, in the same black uniform that Jamie and his colleagues had been wearing when they arrived on Lindisfarne, shook her awake six hours later and told her that she needed to get dressed and follow her up to the Loop’s Ops Room.
She had done so without complaint, still half-asleep, rubbing her eyes as they made their way into a lift and up to Level 0. The Operator had pushed open the Ops Room door, and held it wide; Kate walked through it, and looked around the large circular room.
There was only one other person in there, a strikingly handsome Latino man in his mid-forties, wearing the now familiar all-black uniform, and sitting casually on the desk at the front of the room.
“Miss Randall?” he asked. His expression was entirely neutral; there was no malice there, no threat, but no warmth either, and for a second, the strangeness of the situation she had found herself in sank into her, and she felt a sharp rush of fear as she nodded.
What if they’re going to lock me up for what I saw? What if I’m never going to get out of here? What will happen to my dad?
“My name is Major Christian Gonzalez,” the man said. “I’m the Interim Security Officer at this facility. Please, take a seat.”
Kate did as she was told, crossing the wide room and sitting in one of the plastic chairs that were ranged round a grid of long tables. She turned it so she was facing Major Gonzalez.
“Did you sleep well? Is there anything you need?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Good,” he said. “That’s good. Now, Kate – do you mind me calling you Kate?”
She shook her head again, and his lips curled at the edges.
“Thank you,” he said. “So, Kate. We have a problem, you and I. We need to work out what we’re going to do about it.”
“What problem?” she asked, her voice low and nervous.
“That you were never supposed to see the things you’ve seen. The creatures that attacked your home last night, the men who rescued you; as far as the general public is concerned, none of them exist. Neither does the building you’re standing in now. And that’s the way we need it to stay.”
Fear pulsed up Kate’s spine.
They’re going to lock me up. I’m never going to be allowed to go home.
Major Gonzalez saw the look on the teenage girl’s face and smiled.
“We’re not going to hurt you, Kate,” he said, his voice kind. “We’re the good guys. But we do need to protect the security of what we do, and that means you have a decision to make. A big one.”
“What do you mean?” Kate managed. “What decision?”
Major Gonzalez picked a small sheaf of paper from the desk he was sitting on, and showed it to Kate.
“This is the preliminary report into the events of last night,” he said. “It is based on statements from eyewitnesses, including senior members of this organisation. It describes the circumstances leading to the destruction of one of the most powerful vampires in the world at the hands of a teenage boy with nothing more than the most basic training, and the actions of the men and women that helped him. It mentions you, several times. It says that you exhibited remarkable bravery and resolve in leading Mr Carpenter and his colleagues to the monastery where Alexandru Rusmanov had made his base, and that you continued to demonstrate those qualities when confronted with a hall full of hungry vampires, led by one of the most evil creatures ever to walk the earth. It claims you destroyed one of the vampires yourself. Is that true?”
The memory of the previous night burst unbidden into Kate’s mind. She remembered the screams and the crunch of weapons as the small group of men and the vampire girl fought valiantly against monsters that outnumbered them five to one, remembered the spray of blood and the tearing of flesh and bone, remembered with shuddering revulsion the vampire who had held her, and the sensation of his sharpened fingernail tracing a line across her neck. Then she remembered the primal roar that had echoed through her head as she sank her teeth into his arm and tore at it like a mad dog, the warmth of his blood coating her from head to toe after she plunged a metal stake into his heart, and the subsequent sense of overpowering elation that had shaken her to her core.
“That’s true,” she said, quietly. “I destroyed one of them.”
Christian Gonzalez smiled at her again, and this time the smile was wide, and dizzyingly beautiful. She felt his approval wash over her, and thought she might blush.
“Well done,” he said. “Very well done indeed. That you survived as long as you did on an island overrun by vampires, that you were then able to play the part you did in their defeat, is why you now have a decision to make. The first option is as follows: you can return home, with a cover story explaining your whereabouts for the last twenty-four hours, and never tell anyone about the things you saw. You’ll have to sign the Official Secrets Act, you’ll be monitored to make sure you comply with it, and if you don’t, you will be discredited so that no one believes you, to the extent that the likely result will be a period of evaluation in a secure psychiatric hospital. But you’ll be able to resume your life as it was before the events of last night, and you’ll be reunited with your father.”
Tears welled in the corners of Kate’s eyes as she thought about her father, her brilliant, loyal dad, who must be going through h
ell with his daughter missing and his home recovering from a massacre.
“I should be clear,” continued Major Gonzalez. “This is an offer that is made extremely rarely. Under normal circumstances, once a civilian is exposed to the existence of the supernatural, as you were last night, continuing a normal life ceases to be an option. There are obvious risks in allowing that information to be taken out into the world, and those risks are normally considered sufficient to see the civilian in question placed in classified custody. I’m not trying to scare you, or threaten you, I promise. I’m merely letting you know how this usually works.”
Kate felt both scared and threatened, but she tried not to let it show.
“What’s the second option?” she asked, her voice packed with as much bravery as she could muster.
The smile returned to Christian Gonzalez’s face.
“The other option is that you stay here and help us save the world,” he said. “You become an Operator in this organisation, and you help us stop what happened to Lindisfarne from happening anywhere else.”
“What’s the catch?”
“The catch is that the life you led until yesterday will be over. You will never be able to tell anyone who you are, who you work for, or what you do, and you will never be able to contact anyone from your former life. Including your father.”
Kate felt faint.
The idea that she would never see her dad again was so abhorrent to her that she thought she was going to throw up at the mere thought of it. But what the handsome Major was offering her was a way out of the life that had been stretching inevitably out before her on Lindisfarne: she would inherit her father’s boat, carry on fishing the same small stretch of water for the next forty years, maybe find a local boy to marry, have a kid or two, and live and die on the island where she had been born.
Kate knew she could never have left her father alone, could never have moved to the mainland and abandoned him to an empty house full of the memories of his family. She had come to terms with her lot a long time ago, but now this man was offering her a way to change it all, to do something that mattered, something that would be exciting, and dangerous, where there were no limits to the places she might go and the people and monsters she might meet. But even for all that, there was a price that would be too high for her to pay.
“What will you tell my dad?” she asked, carefully. “I can’t let him think anything happened to me. I need him to know I’m OK.”
“He’ll be told that you are the primary material witness to a major terrorist incident, and that you are being voluntarily detained for questioning. In a few months’ time, when all this has died down, he’ll be asked to sign the Official Secrets Act and told that you have been recruited into the Security Services. He’ll be extremely proud of you, I promise.” This time Major Gonzalez grinned, and Kate blushed, despite herself.
“How long do I have to make the decision?” she asked.
“About an hour,” replied the Major. She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “I’m sorry, I know this must seem very unfair. But I’m afraid there are time factors at work here that controlling the public story depends on. If you decide to go, we need to get you home while there is still confusion on Lindisfarne.”
“And if I decide to stay?”
“Then we need to get started,” he said.
In the end, she had only made Major Gonzalez wait for ten minutes before she told him she would take the second option. He congratulated her, before escorting her along a curving grey corridor to one of the Briefing Rooms where she was reacquainted with Jamie Carpenter and the vampire girl, Larissa Kinley. And even then, as she looked back on the most important day of her life, she had noticed the small glances and half-smiles that passed between the two of them.
Tomorrow, she thought again. I’ll tell them tomorrow.
There was a knock on the door of her quarters, and she padded softly across the cold floor to answer it, smiling as she did so, knowing there was only one person who would be visiting her at this hour. Shaun Turner was standing in the corridor outside, his face breaking into a smile as she opened the door to him. Then he was pushing her backwards, his hands on her waist, his lips on hers, and a thought flashed through her head as they sank on to her narrow bunk.
At least I’m actually good at keeping secrets. Well, from one of them, at least.
Jamie stood outside the door to Admiral Henry Seward’s quarters on Level A, pushing his hair back from his forehead and tucking his T-shirt into his combat trousers. When he was as presentable as he was likely to get, he knocked on the door.
“Come,” called a muffled voice. Jamie pushed open the heavy door and stepped inside.
The Director of Department 19 was sitting behind his desk. Admiral Seward put the papers he had been working on atop the towering pile of his inbox, and regarded Jamie with a warm smile which the teenager returned.
They had become close in recent months, these two men; united in grief by the loss of Frankenstein, whom Seward missed almost as much as Jamie, and drawn together by the Director’s terrible sense of guilt over the death of Julian Carpenter. Jamie had never blamed Henry Seward for the loss of his father; for that, there was a jet black corner in the darkest, angriest depths of his soul set aside especially for the traitor Thomas Morris, who had died before Jamie got the chance to make him pay for what he had done. But the Admiral’s guilt was real, even if it was misplaced, and it had allowed Jamie the chance to get to know the man his father had really been.
They had spent many evenings in this room, the Director telling tales of Julian Carpenter, Jamie drinking them in hungrily, then passing them on to his mother, often after heavy editing for violence. It had made the Carpenters feel like a family again, had rebuilt the bonds between that had been eroded in the years after Julian had died, when neither mother nor son had known how to fill the void that had been left in the middle of their lives.
Now look at us, thought Jamie, and stifled a grin. I hunt and destroy vampires for a living, she IS a vampire and lives in a cell hundreds of metres below the earth, yet we’ve never got on better.
“Something funny, Jamie?” asked Seward.
He had clearly not stifled the grin as well as he thought, and drew himself up to attention.
“No, sir,” he replied.
Seward smiled at him.
“At ease,” he said. Jamie relaxed into an easy stance, his hands loosely together behind his back. “Give me your report.”
“Nothing notable, sir. Father and daughter vamps robbing a blood bank.”
“Were you able to capture them?”
“Yes, sir. I handed them over to Dr Yen, sir.”
The Director nodded. “Well done. Lazarus needs all the warm vamps it can get its hands on.”
“So I hear, sir.”
“Any signs?”
“Yes, sir. On the wall outside the hospital. The same two words.”
Admiral Seward swore, scribbling a quick note on a piece of paper.
“Sir,” Jamie continued. “Why does the Lazarus Project need so many captive vamps? What are they doing down there?”
The Director put down the pen he had been writing his note with, and looked at the young Operator. “The Lazarus Project is classified, Jamie,” he replied. “You understand what classified means, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me remind you, just in case you’ve forgotten. It means that everyone who needs to know what the Lazarus Project is doing already knows what the Lazarus Project is doing. Is that clear, Operator?”
“It is, sir.”
“Good. There’s a Zero Hour Task Force briefing scheduled for 1100 tomorrow. Mandatory attendance.”
“New information, sir?” asked Jamie, hopefully.
Admiral Seward shook his head. “Just routine, Jamie. Dismissed.”
Jamie nodded, and left the Director’s study. As he walked towards the lift that would finally, mercifully, deliver him t
o his bed, his mind drifted back to the speech Admiral Seward had given a month earlier, that had brought to light the existence of the Lazarus Project, that had birthed the Zero Hour Task Force, that had altered how every Operator in the Department went about their job.
The speech that had changed everything.
3
THE ART OF COMING CLEAN
TWENTY-NINE DAYS EARLIER
“Do you know what this is about?” asked Larissa.
She and Jamie were walking along the main Level B corridor towards one of the lifts standing near its centre. Larissa had a towel slung round her shoulders, and was dressed in a dark green vest and a pair of shorts. Jamie guessed she had been with Terry in the Playground, the wide, sweat-soaked space in the bowels of the Loop where the veteran Blacklight instructor ruled with an iron fist, and she looked deeply unimpressed about being interrupted.
“I’ve no idea,” replied Jamie, glancing over at her. “I got the same message as you.” He had been asleep when his console had blared into life, and was almost as grumpy as Larissa.
“All right,” she said. “Don’t bite my head off.”
“Sorry,” he replied, casting her a weary smile which she returned.
The two teenagers were tired, more tired than they could ever remember having been in their lives before Department 19. You never really got used to it, not completely, although they had both become skilled at not letting it interfere with either their performance as Operators, or the tiny sliver of each day that could charitably be called their social lives. But there was something looming on the horizon that was fuelling their bad moods, something that all the T-Bones and ultraviolet light in the world couldn’t stop.