Department 19, The Rising, and Battle Lines

by Will Hill

  Jamie considered this for a long moment, then sighed deeply. “I can’t believe he never told anyone,” he said. “My granddad. I can’t believe he kept your deal a secret.”

  “It’s not that remarkable, Jamie,” said Valentin, smiling gently. “Haven’t you ever done anything you didn’t tell anyone?”

  Jamie flinched, noticeably, but Valentine didn’t react, outwardly at least. Although Jamie wouldn’t have noticed if the vampire had; his mind was suddenly elsewhere, drifting back to the conclusion of the first Zero Hour Task Force meeting, and the event he had finally told Larissa and Kate about.

  32

  THE DEPTHS OF KNOWLEDGE

  THREE DAYS EARLIER

  Jamie was first out of the Ops Room as the second Zero Hour Task Force meeting drew to a close.

  He waited in the corridor while the members of the group filed out. He wanted to thank Professor Talbot for standing up for him when Brennan asked what justified Jamie’s presence on the Task Force, and reminding him that Jamie had taken down a Priority 1 vampire. He’d been surprised, and grateful.

  Professor Talbot emerged, and gave Jamie a quizzical look.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I just wanted to thank you,” Jamie replied. “For what you said. To Brennan.”

  “There’s no need,” said Talbot, but he smiled. “I merely told the truth. You killed Alexandru. I doubt anyone else in that room could have done the same.”

  “Nevertheless. Thank you.”

  Professor Talbot nodded. “Walk with me,” he said, and set off down the corridor.

  Jamie fell eagerly into step with him.

  “It must be very difficult, being you,” continued Talbot. He didn’t look at Jamie as he spoke, but his tone was kind. “The son of a traitor. Then the son of a hero, all over again. The boy who destroyed Alexandru, but who lost Colonel Frankenstein. It must be a heavy burden for you to carry.”

  You have no idea how heavy, thought Jamie. No idea at all.

  “It’s difficult sometimes,” he said, feeling embarrassed at the crack in his voice. “When I got here, everyone hated me for what they thought my dad had done. But I was trying to save my mum, and I didn’t really care about anything else. Then when we got back from Lindisfarne, everyone applauded, like I was some kind of hero, because of what I did to Alexandru. But then they realised that Frankenstein was gone, and everyone knew that if I had listened to him instead of Thomas Morris, things probably would have turned out differently. I couldn’t tell them that what happened to Frankenstein made me feel worse than any of them, that I blame myself more than they can possibly blame me. But I can’t wave a wand and bring him back. He’s gone.”

  “And your father?”

  Jamie felt the familiar pang of pain in his chest that gripped him whenever he thought, really thought, about his dad.

  “It was easier to hate him,” he said, eventually. “When I thought he had abandoned us, when I thought he was a criminal and a traitor, I didn’t want him back. I missed him, but I didn’t want him back. Does that make sense?”

  Talbot nodded.

  “Now I know the truth, that he died because he was trying to protect me and my mum, that Thomas Morris framed him and he never did the things they said he did. That he was a hero. And knowing that…” He paused, and looked up at Talbot. “Knowing that was like losing him all over again,” he finished.

  There was a long moment of silence, broken eventually by the Professor.

  “Are you finished feeling sorry for yourself?” asked Talbot, and Jamie recoiled.

  “What…” he managed, but the Director of the Lazarus Project rolled over him.

  “You’ve had it hard, Jamie. I don’t dispute that, and I feel for you, and for your family. But self-pity is nothing more than self-indulgence, and it’s something you should have grown out of by now.” Talbot looked at Jamie; his face bore no malice, and there was no anger in his voice, but Jamie still felt as though he had been punched in the stomach.

  “What you do every day,” continued the Professor, “saves lives. It saves souls from damnation. It’s important, and you do it well. It should be enough for you, to know that you make a difference every time you put that uniform on and go out there, helping people that can’t ever thank you. You should be too old to care so much about what other people think.”

  Jamie was reeling. The Professor’s casual demeanour as he lectured him had caught him completely off guard.

  Why the hell is he saying this to me? Who the hell does he think he is?

  “I’m telling you this for your own good,” said Talbot, as though he could read the teenager’s mind. “I believe in you, and I want you to believe in yourself. And if you won’t, then I’ll keep at you until you do. Because someone has to.”

  They walked on in silence, Jamie churning with grief and a sensation that was new, and alien; he found himself feeling a swell of affection for the man walking beside him.

  His mother loved him, he knew that, and he loved her back with all his heart. But since she had been turned, since she had discovered the truth about Department 19, about her late husband and the life her son had thrown himself so completely into, what she mainly did was worry about him. She was so grateful every day when he returned home safely, when she heard his footsteps echo along the corridor of the detention level as he made his way down to visit her, that parental discipline was the furthest thing from her mind.

  And although she was safe in the cells, she was isolated from him, from the world he was a part of; he told her everything he could, but there was still a wall between them, beyond the ultraviolet barrier that separated them physically.

  He had confided in Larissa, and she had told him it was part of growing up, part of becoming a complete person in his own right, separate from the parents that had raised him. She had warned him it could be a painful process, for him and his mother, and Jamie believed he was starting to understand what she had meant.

  All of this merged into the affection he was now feeling for Professor Talbot; he was proud of the things he had done, he was thankful that the men and women of Blacklight treated him as an equal, as an adult, but there were times when he yearned to feel like a kid again, like the boy he had been not that long ago. Talbot’s words had reminded him of what that felt like, and he was grateful for it.

  Despite all that, he was still seventeen, and it was not in his nature to receive a lecture without at least attempting to answer back.

  “What’s the Lazarus Project?” he blurted out. He prepared himself for a reprimand, but instead, Professor Talbot smiled at him.

  “Come and see for yourself,” he replied.

  Jamie stared. “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “Always,” replied the Professor.

  When they reached the lift at the end of the grey corridor, Talbot pressed the F button on the control panel, and the lift began to descend. They waited in silence until the lift slowed to a halt, and the doors slid open. Talbot stepped through them, Jamie following.

  He was as excited as he could ever remember being.

  Since its announcement in Admiral Seward’s speech, the Lazarus Project had remained a mystery; no one knew what went on behind the heavy white doors in the depths of the base.

  But now Jamie Carpenter was going to find out.

  Larissa and Kate are going to puke when they find out I’ve been down here, he thought, a mischievous smile on his face. Although I’m probably not going to be able to tell them.

  He followed Professor Talbot along the main corridor of Level F, a long grey hallway indistinguishable from every other in the Loop. When his companion stopped outside a large white door, Jamie felt a burst of excitement in his chest, like a child on Christmas morning. He couldn’t wait for Talbot to open the entrance; it was all he could do to stop himself hopping from one foot to the other in anticipation.

  Talbot keyed a long series of numbers and letters into the panel beside the door, then low
ered his face to a black lens and let a green laser slide across his eyeball. With a series of heavy thuds, the locks that separated the Lazarus Project from the rest of Blacklight disengaged, and the door slid open with a loud hiss and a rush of air. Jamie was suddenly wary, and he grabbed the Professor’s arm as the old man was about to push the huge white door.

  “Wait,” Jamie said. “Aren’t you going to get in trouble for letting me in here?”

  Talbot laughed. “My dear boy,” he replied. “Admiral Seward may be in charge of every other level of this facility, but down here, what I say goes. You have nothing to worry about.”

  With that, he pushed the door open, and Jamie got his first look inside the Lazarus Project.

  The room beyond the door was long and wide.

  It was bright white: the floors were white tiles, the walls and ceiling were painted a flat matt-white, the desks and surfaces were a gleaming metallic white, the coats worn by the doctors and scientists were white. It was a wide rectangle, with a high ceiling. Along one wall stood a row of silver cabinets; they hummed in the quiet, studious atmosphere of the room, rows of lights blinking in erratic patterns on their black displays.

  A grid of desks had been positioned in the room, four sets of eight. Some of these were occupied, by men and women who barely glanced up from their screens as Talbot and Jamie entered. The wall to Jamie’s left was half-filled with shelves, upon which stood an enormous number of grey box files, labelled with long combinations of letters and numbers, and half with long benches covered in an amazing array of laboratory equipment. Jamie saw all this with his peripheral vision; his attention was dragged instantly to the centre of the room, and what stood there.

  On the floor, a wide circular lens had been placed; its mirror was attached to the ceiling directly above it. Between them, spinning slowly, was a three-dimensional hologram of a double helix: thousands of tiny spheres, the majority red but a significant minority blue, linked by transparent white bars. As he watched, a single sphere on the arm of the double helix closest to him suddenly enlarged, and spun out of the pattern. Unintelligible lines of code appeared next to it, then the sphere changed colour, from red to blue, and shrank back into its place on the strand.

  A woman in a white coat, who looked barely older than Jamie, got up from one of the desks, walked over to the hologram and peered at the sphere that had just changed colour. Apparently satisfied, she returned to her seat.

  Beyond the hologram, set into the middle of the rear wall, was a thick airlock door. Biohazard signs flanked it, and red letters were printed on to the wall above it.

  STERILE ENVIRONMENT

  NO UNAUTHORISED ACCESS BEYOND THIS POINT

  ALL STAFF MUST COMPLETE DECONTAMINATION

  BEFORE ENTERING

  Jamie’s mouth hung open as he looked at the hologram and the men and women working on it. He collected himself, and turned to Talbot, who was watching him with an obvious look of pride on his lined face.

  “What are you doing down here?” Jamie asked, his eyes wide, his voice shot through with wonder.

  “I’m sorry,” replied Talbot, “I thought that would have been obvious. We’re trying to find a cure.”

  33

  IN THE COURT OF THE VAMPIRE KING

  LA FRATERNITÉ DE LA NUIT RUE DE SÉVIGNÉ, PARIS, FRANCE YESTERDAY

  The room Frankenstein entered was so dark that, for a moment, he couldn’t tell whether it was occupied. Then he heard a deep, rattling gasp, and a quavering voice issued forth from the gloom.

  “Can it be?” asked the voice. “After all these years, does it really stand before me?”

  There was motion in the darkness, and then a pair of lamps bloomed into life; what Frankenstein saw before him threatened to eradicate what was left of his damaged mind and send him teetering towards the edge of madness.

  A round dining table stood in the middle of the small room, set for eight. The plates were chipped and dusty, the glasses flecked with dirt. Seven of the chairs that stood haphazardly around the table were empty; the eighth, facing the door, was occupied. The chair was old, and had once obviously been ornate, almost a throne; the carving on the arms and the sides was still clearly fine work, even through the layers of dirt and brown, flaking blood that coated it. In it, squatting like a spider in its hole, was an ancient, wizened vampire.

  The creature’s skin was the grey of funeral ash, its face lined so deeply that all Frankenstein could see of its eyes was the red glow emerging from beneath the drooping, hooded skin of its brow. Its mouth was open in surprise, exposing rows of dark brown teeth, and a tongue the colour of rotten meat. The head was topped by long streams of vividly white hair, emerging from the grey, liver-spotted scalp like tendrils of smoke. The vampire was wearing a tuxedo, but the garments had been tailored for a larger man; they hung as heavily and shapelessly from its limbs as lumps of dead skin, giving the ancient monster the appearance of moulting, of decay being held at bay by the flimsiest of barriers.

  From its sunken chest, something angular protruded, raising the dirty white fabric of its shirt away from the skin in a pyramid. Frankenstein’s eyes were drawn to this anomaly; he had taken a quick glance round the room as the lamps flickered into life, and he believed that unless he focused on something, on one tangible thing, he would collapse, or worse.

  Piled haphazardly around the chair the monster was sitting in were the remains of more men and women than Frankenstein could even allow his reeling mind to estimate.

  Gleaming white bones, picked clean of all their flesh, shone in nauseating lumps from a mass of dead, rotting meat. Long strands of hair, of every colour, tracked through the carnage like veins, light reflecting on their shiny strands. There were arms, and legs, and hands; some of the skin was black with age and decay, some the vivid, mottled white of the newly dead.

  The smell was beyond imagination, a scent of blood and filth so thick it felt as though you could have bitten into it. Faces stared out of the vile mess; skulls with a papery-thin covering of skin, green-black bubbles of what were left of the features of men and women who had long since died in this room, the bright-white faces of the most recently murdered, their expressions of pleading and outrage still visible, even without eyes that had fallen in or been plucked out.

  As Frankenstein stared at the vampire’s chest, his eyes caught the slightest movement at the side of the chair, and although he didn’t want to, he was unable to stop himself from looking. The monster’s ancient grey fingers were absently stroking the long blonde hair of a disembodied head that had clearly been placed within his reach. The dead girl stared out across the room, mercifully bereft of signs of torture or violation; she wore a perfect expression of surprise, and Frankenstein was able to hope, with all his heart, that it was because her suffering had been brief.

  “My Lord Dante,” said Latour, softly. He had bowed his head as he followed Frankenstein into the room, and it was still lowered as he spoke. “After almost ninety years, I have brought the monster back to you. I have brought you revenge, Your Majesty.”

  “Latour,” said Lord Dante, his voice like nails on a blackboard. “My favourite. Still you honour me where others have forsaken me. You shall be rewarded for this work, rewarded with anything you desire. Name it, and it shall be yours.”

  “My lord,” said Latour. “My reward comes from seeing justice served, finally. But if Your Majesty insists, then there is a small prize I have coveted.”

  The vampire king laughed, an awful rattling sound, like a last breath.

  “I know what you speak of,” he replied.

  Lord Dante reached out a trembling hand, picked up a small golden bell that stood on the table and rang it sharply. Almost instantly, a door that Frankenstein had not noticed slid open, and a butler appeared. The man was dressed immaculately, and as he approached his master, Frankenstein saw his nose wrinkle momentarily with disgust.

  “Your Majesty,” said the butler, bowing his head. “How may I be of assistance?”


  “Bring Sophie here,” said Lord Dante, a revolting smile twisting its way through the wrinkles of his face. “She belongs to Latour now.”

  Behind him, Frankenstein heard a low, guttural growl of excitement emerge from Latour’s throat, and his stomach churned.

  “At once, Your Majesty,” said the butler, backing smoothly away from the table and disappearing through the door. Lord Dante watched him leave, then turned his attention back to Frankenstein.

  “I never believed I would see you again, monster,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “I had come to accept that I would never have my vengeance. Yet here you are, standing before me; how amusing the way the world works. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “I have nothing to say,” said Frankenstein, as firmly as he was able. “I don’t know what bad blood exists between you and I, and I have no memory of us ever having met. So I have nothing to say to you.”

  Lord Dante slowly turned his neck, the creaking of the sinews and bones audible in the small room, and looked incredulously at Latour.

  “What madness has befallen your friend, Latour?” he asked. “Does he speak the truth?”

  “He does, Your Majesty,” replied Latour. “His mind is gone, for reasons I have not been able to ascertain. He remembers nothing, beyond the last few months.”

  The vampire king tapped his chest, slowly, his fingers drumming against the angular bulge in his shirt.

  “And this?” Lord Dante asked. “He does not remember this? He has forgotten what he did to me?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” replied Latour. “There is nothing left of the man that he used to be. I have tried to coax that man back to life, so that your vengeance might be all the sweeter, but it appears there is nothing to be done.”

  Frankenstein listened to the two vampires talk about him as though he wasn’t there, and wondered at their words. It was clear that the monster in the chair, the creature that Latour referred to as Lord Dante, had been waiting many years to make him answer for some long-past crime, although he had no idea what that crime might have been. But it appeared that whatever he had done had caused the ancient vampire considerable distress, and he felt a savage surge of satisfaction at the thought.