by Will Hill
“What did he look like?” asked Larissa. Her heart was thumping in her chest; the prisoner, whoever he was, was real. The man sitting next to her had seen him with his own eyes.
“Tall, middle-aged. Pale, even though he was driving in out of the desert. In good shape. Hard eyes, like a soldier. I point my rifle at him and tell him to get down, but he doesn’t move. He keeps his hands in the air and shouts a code at me—”
“Which code?”
“F-357-X. It’s maximum clearance. Old, but still active. Then he shouts that he needs to see General Allen and that just floors me. This guy drives up to the Front Gate, outruns the grunts and then gives me a max code and tells me he needs to see the head of NS9? Refers to him by name? I mean, seriously, what the hell, right?”
“How did he speak?” asked Larissa. “Did he have an accent? Anything unusual?”
“English,” replied Ashworth.
“I guessed that much.”
“No, he had an English accent. The guy was English.”
Larissa stared, attempting to process what the Senior Airman was saying. In the deepest corner of her mind, a thought occurred to her: a ludicrous, impossible thought that she quickly pushed away.
“I understand,” she said, slowly.
“Good,” said Ashworth. “Anyway. He’s looking at me, and I’m looking at him, and then the grunts finally show up and they grab him and throw him over the hood of the jeep, and they’re about to cuff him when I suddenly realise I have to call this in. The guy’s used a max code, regardless of how he arrived, so I tell the grunts to stop, to go back to their post and forget this ever happened.
“The English guy watches them leave, then he thanks me and starts to tell me what he needs, but I tell him to shut up, tell him I’ll shoot him if he moves, and he kind of shrugs and just stands there with his hands up, and that’s when I start to think that maybe this guy is more than just a soldier, maybe he’s SAS or something, because he doesn’t even look like he’s sweating, even though he’s just raced through the desert and he’s standing outside the most classified facility in the country with a gun pointing at his head. He looks like he’s just out for an afternoon stroll in the desert.
“I grab my radio and give Central Control the code he gave me. There’s silence, a long silence, which means you’re getting transferred all over the base, and eventually this voice I don’t recognise comes on the line and tells me they’re sending a vehicle out, that I’m not to engage my prisoner in any way, not to even speak to him, but also not to let him out of my sight until he’s been collected.
“So I keep my gun on the guy and we just stare at each other for a few minutes, until this NS9 Hummer arrives and one of you spooks gets out and tells me to stand down. I’m like, no problem, no problem at all, I don’t want any part of this mess, so I head back into the guardhouse. The English guy gets into the Hummer and it drives off towards the lake. I haven’t seen him since and I still don’t know who he is. I’ve told you everything I know and I shouldn’t have told you that. So now you’re going to take your phone out of your pocket and delete those photos, then I’m going to sit here and eat my breakfast while you piss off and leave me alone. I’m all done talking.”
Larissa pulled the mess door shut behind her and stood beneath the wide central canopy, her head spinning.
She hadn’t expected Lee Ashworth to be able to tell her who the secret prisoner was, and she had believed him when he said he didn’t know. But she had got what she wanted from him, and more. The man was real, that much was now certain; he had driven out of the desert in possession of a maximum security code, which meant that he was either directly or indirectly involved with the secret apparatus of the US military. He had asked for General Allen by name, which meant that he was aware of the existence of NS9. And he was English, which didn’t in itself mean anything, but strongly suggested some connection to Blacklight.
Larissa wandered slowly back towards Central Control and the tunnel that would take her back to Dreamland. She was starting to think she might just take an elevator down to Level 8 and see if there was any way to see the prisoner with her own eyes. It would land her in serious trouble if she was caught, but at that moment she just didn’t care.
I have to find out who he is, she thought. I don’t even know why it’s become so important to me. I just have to know.
Half a mile to the east and almost the same distance down, the prisoner Larissa was so desperate to identify was finishing his morning shave. Under normal circumstances, prisoners were not allowed anything they could conceivably do themselves harm with, especially nothing as obviously dangerous as a razor blade. But the circumstances surrounding Julian Carpenter were far from normal.
Bob Allen may have had no option other than to lock him up, but he had brought the contents of Julian’s jeep down to the cellblock, and handed them over to him personally. He presumed they had been checked thoroughly first – his old friend was anything but stupid – but he was grateful nevertheless.
Changing his clothes every day, shaving his face in the morning, brushing his teeth in the evening: they were small things, but they made him feel as though he was still human, still himself. He laid the razor on the rim of the sink and looked in the polished sheet of metal that passed for a mirror. His face was paler than ever as a result of more than three months without exposure to natural light. His skin seemed loose; it hung from his cheekbones and beneath his chin.
He looked like an old man.
The situation he found himself in was almost blackly comic. He had overridden a lifetime of training, years and decades of forcing himself to make decisions based on logic rather than emotion, and handed himself over to NS9 because he had been desperately, terribly worried about his son. The vision he had seen in the desert cave with the cured vampire who called himself Adam had seemed terrifyingly real: his son as a vampire, with red eyes and gleaming fangs, telling him he was too late.
Despite Adam’s pleading, his warnings that visions were unreliable, Julian’s mind had been instantly made up. He had needed to know that Jamie was all right, and surrendering to NS9 was the only way he could think to do so; his last remaining contact inside Blacklight, from the time before he had been forced to fake his own death, was missing, presumed dead. And he had been right: Bob Allen had managed to persuade Henry Seward to tell him that his son was alive and well.
Julian’s relief had been enormous, but short-lived. It was not enough to know that Jamie was all right; he wanted to help his son, wanted it more than anything else in the world, and he had put himself in a position from where it would be absolutely impossible for him to do so.
Stupid, he thought, staring at his reflection. Weak. Stupid. Old.
At the end of the corridor that ran down the centre of the detention block, the heavy metal door clunked open and footsteps clicked across the concrete, getting louder as they neared his cell. Julian dried his face with the thin towel that was standard issue for NS9 prisoners and waited for Bob Allen to arrive; there was no question of it being anyone else. The detention block Duty Officer brought food three times a day, but never spoke a single word; Julian could have tried to engage him, knowing he would be under orders not to respond, but he had no wish to make the man’s life harder. It wasn’t his fault that Julian was where he was; it was no one’s fault but his own.
The footsteps stopped outside his cell. Julian heard a series of soft clicks as the access code was entered into the control panel, before the door swung open and the NS9 Director stepped into his cell, a tired half-smile on his face.
“Evening, Bob,” said Julian. “Good to see you.”
“You too,” replied General Allen. “How are you doing, Julian?”
“I’m in jail,” he said. “I’m having a ball. Yourself?”
Allen grunted with laughter, then flopped down into the plastic chair that was one of the cell’s three pieces of furniture. Julian pushed himself across his bed and sat with his back against the
wall.
“I’m tired, Julian,” said Allen. “We’ve destroyed or detained about forty per cent of the Supermax escapees. Another fifteen per cent are under surveillance. We couldn’t track the rest of them. So they’re gone.”
“That’s good, Bob,” said Julian. Allen had told him about the coordinated prison breaks and the frightening strength and speed of the newly-turned vampires, even though he was breaking about a dozen regulations by doing so. Julian had been full of grudging admiration for the tactics of the vampires. The chaos that had been created had sucked in every supernatural Department, and showed no sign of ending; it was a huge, audacious piece of misdirection, designed to keep them all busy with something other than looking for the still-recovering Dracula. “You’ll have more than half of them by the time it’s all said and done, and that’s not bad. You had no warning, and no reinforcements you could call in to help you out. Half is good, Bob. Don’t beat yourself up.”
“Thanks,” replied Allen. “I appreciate you saying so. And we got some of the very worst. My SpecOps team took down the entire leadership of the Desert Cartel in Nuevo Laredo, with a little help from our vampire guest.”
“Larissa,” said Julian.
The revelation that NS9 had a vampire working for them had been one thing, the fact that she was actually a member of Blacklight on secondment to the US was another, and the further fact, confirmed first-hand by his friend, that she was the girlfriend of his son, was the icing on the cake. He was desperate, truly desperate, to meet her. He had begged Allen for the opportunity to do so, for just five minutes to ask her about how Jamie was doing and the person he had grown up to be, but the Director had refused. Julian had seen on his face that it pained him to do so and hadn’t pushed the issue.
Not yet, at least.
“Lieutenant Kinley,” confirmed Allen. “Tim Albertsson, the SpecOps head, said he’s never seen anything like it. Apparently the leader of the cartel shot her point-blank in the stomach with a shotgun and she didn’t even notice it. I think he was a bit scared, to be honest with you.”
“Any of your people get hurt?” asked Julian.
Allen shook his head. “Kinley lost an ear along with her gunshot wound, but they fed her blood and she was back on her feet a minute later. No other injuries and only one civilian fatality.”
“After a night assault on the headquarters of a Laredo cartel,” said Julian. “You’ve got to be pleased with that, Bob.”
“I am,” replied Allen. “To be honest, I wish we could keep her, and I’m not the only one who does. I think I could persuade Cal to let me have her, but she wouldn’t come without her friends, and there’s not a chance in hell that he would transfer your boy. Not after everything he’s done.”
Julian smiled. He was immensely proud of his son and would never be able to forgive either Thomas Morris or himself for conspiring to prevent him being able to share in Jamie’s triumphs. He was a man who had a great many regrets, so many that he had long since committed himself to not thinking about them unless it was entirely unavoidable, but none were greater than how he felt about his son having to fend for himself, having to fight and struggle and survive, without his father.
“That’s sort of why I’m here, Julian,” continued General Allen. “I spoke to Cal this morning. He’s sending a team here overnight. They’re taking you and Larissa home in the morning.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that. They’re working on something big and Cal says they need Larissa’s help. To be honest, I think he wants to tie up any Blacklight loose ends.”
Julian’s expression didn’t change. “Are they reinstating me?”
“I don’t know,” replied Allen. “But if you want my advice, I would suggest you prepare yourself for disappointment.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” said Julian, his voice rising. “I didn’t betray anyone and I didn’t get the Harkers killed.”
“A warrant was put out for your arrest and you faked your own death rather than answer it,” said Allen, evenly. “I understand why you did what you did, and I’m sure Cal does too. But you died, Julian. Or at least you let everyone think you did. If you’re expecting Cal to give you a big hug and hand you a new uniform, then you’re delusional. You have to see that.”
Julian slumped on the bed, his eyes downcast and red at the corners.
“So, what?” he asked, his voice now little more than a whisper. “What do you think is going to happen to me, Bob?”
“Best guess? They’ll clear you of any wrongdoing and send you on your way. I think they’ll let you have a life, Julian, but I don’t think it will be inside Blacklight.”
“And my family?”
Allen looked away.
“What about my family, Bob?”
“I can’t tell you what Cal will do,” said Allen, looking straight at his friend. “But I know what I would do.”
“What would you do?”
“I’d forbid you from ever contacting either of them,” said Allen. “Jamie is an Operator and Marie is in Blacklight custody, and they both think you’re dead. I wouldn’t let you anywhere near them, at least until the Dracula situation is resolved. If it gets resolved.”
An uneasy silence hung in the air for a long moment, thick with the dismal prospect that Bob Allen had described. Julian couldn’t believe that Cal Holmwood would do that to him, not after all the years they had fought alongside each other, but he knew that his friend was suggesting a genuine possibility. If they wanted to keep him away from his family, it would be easy for them to do so.
Their case for doing so would also be easy to make: that his return would provide a distraction to a serving Operator as they approached potentially the darkest period in their long history. He was sure that Marie and Jamie would be furious if they found out, but therein lay the central problem; with his son and his wife living inside the Loop, merely letting them know he was still alive would be almost impossible.
“I hope you’re wrong, Bob,” he said, eventually.
“So do I, Julian,” replied Allen. “More than you know.”
The two men sat in silence for a long while; both of them looked old and tired, the cumulative wear and tear of years spent walking into the darkest corners stood out in the deep lines on their faces.
“Is it worth it?” said Julian, suddenly.
“Is what worth what?”
“What we do,” he said. “Everything we’ve done and everything we’ve given. Was it worth it? Did we ever do anything good, Bob?”
There was a long pause. “I don’t know,” said Allen. “There are people who are alive because of the things we did. That has to count for something.”
“There are just as many who are dead, maybe even more,” said Julian. “Men and women we killed because they were vampires, not because of anything they’d done. I think of some of the things I’ve done and I can’t even begin to imagine how I justified doing them.”
“Orders,” said Allen. “Following orders.”
Julian grunted. “Right,” he said. “I’ve heard that excuse before, Bob. Heard it used to excuse the same thing in fact: destroying people because of what they are, not what they’ve done.”
“Jesus, Julian,” said Allen. “I get it, you’re locked up down here and everything looks black. But don’t do this to yourself.”
“Do you remember Kosovo, Bob?” he asked.
“I remember.”
“What was that, 1999? 2000? Christ, I can’t even remember.”
“It was ’99,” said Bob, his voice low.
“There was that Albanian girl in the square. Do you remember her? What the vamps had done to her?”
“Yeah,” said Allen. “I remember.”
“We found them up in that barn behind the church,” said Julian. “The vamps and their women and their kids.”
“Julian…” said Allen, helplessly.
“We started shooting, and then I grabbed my stake, and when it was over, I coul
dn’t lift my arm above my shoulder for two days. I remember that, Bob. I’ve tried to forget it, but I can’t. I just can’t.”
“We did what we had to do,” said Allen. “What we were ordered to do. They were killers, Julian, we saw what they’d done with our own eyes.”
“The men,” said Julian. “But the women? The kids? What had they done to deserve a stake?”
Allen didn’t answer.
“If Dracula rises,” he continued, “then it’s over for us, and everyone like us. But even if he doesn’t, even if you manage to stop him in time, I think it might still be over. Nothing lasts forever. We keep the biggest secret in the world, and we’ve killed and killed and killed to keep it safe. But how long until someone finds out what we don’t want them to know? Or until more people find out than we can lock up or kill? What happens when the world sees the things we’ve done?”
“I don’t know, Julian,” said Allen. “And neither do you.”
The two men looked at each other, the weight of history bearing down on them.
It was a long time before they spoke again.
48
BEHIND THE CURTAIN
Matt Browning ran down the centre of Level D and skidded to a halt outside the entrance to the Blacklight Science Division. He pressed his ID card against a black panel on the wall and waited impatiently as a series of locks released. When the panel turned green, he pushed the heavy security door open and stepped through it.
He emerged into a large square room containing a wide reception desk and the open-plan workstations that were occupied by the Division’s administrative staff. The woman behind the desk frowned at Matt as he approached: his arrival was unscheduled, and his eyes were a little too wide for comfort.
“Can I help you?” she asked.