by Will Hill
Jamie recoiled. “I don’t understand, sir,” he replied. “If he wanted to kill me, why didn’t he do it in the Twilight Home? Why go through all this?”
“I don’t know, Jamie,” said Seward, rubbing his eyes. The Director looked old, and worn down. “It may be part of a plan that we can’t see the shape of yet; it may just be for his own amusement. I may be completely wrong, and his reasons for wanting to be alone with you might be exactly what he says they are. But you need to know the possibilities, Jamie, because I’m not going to order you to speak to him. I’m leaving that decision up to you.”
“Why, sir?”
“Because all the information in the world is not worth putting an Operator of this Department alone in a room with a Priority Level 1 vampire against their will,” replied Seward. “Much of what we do here lies within the grey areas of morality; that is our burden, one we all share, and it weighs heavier on some than on others. But we do not throw our people to the wolves, Jamie; we do not put lives at risk on the whims of monsters. And we are not about to start now, on my watch.”
“Is he going to stop answering questions if I don’t talk to him?” asked Jamie.
“He says so,” replied Seward. “He wants to talk to you tomorrow, before we continue. I say again, Jamie, I will not order you to do this. But if you think you can handle it, I won’t stop you either. It’s up to you.”
Jamie thought about the lives that Valentin Rusmanov’s information could save, remembered the feeling of standing before Alexandru, the sensation of total helplessness, and tried to imagine the power that Valentin said Dracula possessed.
“I’ll do it, sir,” he said. “Tomorrow morning, like he wants.”
“We’ll be watching you every second,” Seward replied. “But we won’t be able to have anyone in the cellblock with you; Valentin specified that it be just you and him, and he’ll detect anyone else from a mile away.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway, sir,” said Jamie, a small smile on his face.
“Why not?”
“Because if Valentin decides to kill me, we could put the entire Department in the cellblock and it wouldn’t be enough to stop him. Sir.”
The two men considered the awful truth of Jamie’s words; they were standing in the centre of the most highly classified, technologically advanced and heavily armed military facility in the country, but sitting casually in a worthless cell several hundred metres below them was a creature they were powerless to control if it decided to do harm.
It felt like standing on quicksand.
The intercom on Admiral Seward’s desk buzzed into life, startling both men. Jamie smiled, a sheepish, nervous grin that the Director returned before he pressed the button on the intercom.
Marlow’s voice appeared instantly.
“Sir, we have a situation on Level B that requires your attention.”
“What kind of situation?” asked Seward.
“A civilian boy was brought in last night, sir, after making an emergency call he admits was designed specifically to attract our attention. Squad B-9 picked him up in Derbyshire, destroying two vamps that were about to kill him. He spent the night in the secure dorm, sir.”
“So what?” asked Seward, impatiently. “Quarantine him, explain what will happen to him and his family if he talks, give him twenty-four hours in isolation to think it over, then send him home. Why are you involving me in this?”
“Two reasons, sir,” said Marlow, his voice like that of a parent trying to explain something simple to a child. “First, how did the vamps know where he was? They can’t be monitoring the entire 999 system for anything supernatural, sir, it’s too vast; that’s why we have Echelon, to filter through it all.”
“I know exactly why we have Echelon,” snapped Seward. “Get to the point, Marlow.”
“Yes, sir. They were there before our squad was, which means they knew about the call at least as soon as we did. How did they know that?”
“My God,” said Jamie, softly. An image of Thomas Morris’s smiling face burst into his mind. “The vamps have access to Echelon.”
“How could they?” asked Seward, his voice sounding far more confident than he felt. “There are only two monitoring stations: GCHQ and…”
“Here,” said Jamie. “The leak’s here in the Loop, sir. It has to be. GCHQ doesn’t scan for the supernatural.”
“Christ,” said Seward, then addressed the intercom. “Marlow, are you still there?”
“Yes, sir,” his aide replied. “What do you want me to do, sir?”
“Kill it,” Seward said. “No mention of this goes beyond the people who already know. I have Lieutenant Carpenter with me; who is with you?”
“Major Turner, sir.”
“OK. This goes no further. Don’t touch the logs or the database; I don’t want anyone in Comms to know we’re looking into this. I want recommendations from Major Turner on how to proceed by 1900 hours, is that clear?”
“It is, sir,” said Marlow.
“Good,” replied Seward. “What was the other thing?”
“Sir?”
“You said there were two things that required my attention. What’s the second one?”
“Sorry, sir. The civilian they picked up last night is the same boy who was injured on the night Lieutenant Carpenter arrived at the Loop, sir.”
Jamie’s eyes widened. “Matt?” he asked, incredulous. “They brought Matt back in?”
“That’s right, Matt Browning,” said Marlow.
“So what?” asked Seward. “The Security Division has protocols for every possible civilian eventuality, Marlow. I really fail to see why you’re telling me this.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m telling you because when we asked him why he made the emergency call, he confessed that he was trying to engineer a way back to the Loop. It appears that the amnesia he was diagnosed with after he woke from his coma was fake, sir.”
“And?”
“We asked him why he wanted to get back here so badly, and he said that Lieutenant Carpenter told him to. Sir.”
Seward froze, then slowly craned his neck upwards.
“Stand by,” he said into the intercom, and then fixed Jamie with a look that could have been carved out of a mountainside, an expression of indescribable disappointment. “Jamie,” he continued, his voice low and full of menace. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Jamie took a deep breath. “Sir, I don’t want to tell you—”
“Tell me what you did!” bellowed Seward.
The teenager swallowed hard, and began to talk.
Jamie waited in the corridor beyond the infirmary, leaning against the wall, attempting to look casual. His head was lowered, and he had an open folder in his hands that he appeared to be leafing through, but his attention was surreptitiously fixed on the double doors of the infirmary, forty metres down the corridor.
He had been denied permission to see Matt Browning ever since the boy had awoken from his coma. The operating theatre at the rear of the infirmary had been cordoned off, and the boy had been placed in complete isolation; only his doctor and the nurse who had treated him were allowed entry, and they were forbidden from discussing anything other than strictly medical matters with the teenager.
Jamie understood the protocol that had been put in place; the boy was lying in the middle of the most secret government installation in the country, and the only way it would ever be possible for him to be returned home was to prevent him from seeing or hearing anything that would make him a security risk. It was the right thing to do, but Jamie didn’t care; he felt a remarkable bond with the boy, with whom he had never spoken.
Matt’s life had changed forever on the same day as his, and in the dark nights that followed, as Jamie had fought to keep himself going as horror descended around him, he had sought solace in the unconscious teenager, making regular visits to his bedside. He had told Matt what he was going through, grateful to have the ear of someone who was incapable of lyi
ng to him, or trying to manipulate him.
It was more than that, though; Jamie had been at the Loop for less than an hour when Matt had arrived, barely breathing, after Larissa had torn his throat out in his small suburban garden. Larissa hadn’t meant to do it, claimed to not even remember having done it, and Jamie believed her; it was merely one of the long list of things that filled the vampire girl with guilt, and was why she had refused to help him when he explained his plan to her.
But whether she had intended to or not, she had almost killed Matt, and the sight of the pale, critically injured boy in the hangar on the night that Jamie had arrived had served as a warning more real than any of the hundreds he had received during his training. Matt had been the barely-living proof that what Jamie had found himself a part of wasn’t a game, or an adventure; it was life and death.
Since Matt had woken up, Jamie had repeatedly petitioned Admiral Seward for permission to visit him, until the Director had threatened to place him on the inactive list. Jamie hadn’t asked again, but nor had he given up; he had begun to observe the patterns of the security that had been placed around Matt, and after a week or two, had identified a window of opportunity.
Every evening, there was a hole, sometimes as long as six minutes, often no longer than three, where Matt was unattended; it happened during the shift changeover at 8pm, when the doctor in charge of the infirmary went to his office to send his update report to Admiral Seward. His office was at the far end of the corridor, near the lift, and he was always gone for at least ten minutes.
The problem was the Operator who was on guard outside the door; only once in the time that Jamie had been watching had the sitting officer been physically relieved; the vast majority of the time he left with the doctor on the stroke of eight, before his replacement had arrived. This was by any measure unacceptable, and Jamie’s response to the discovery should have been to alert Major Turner, the Department’s Security Officer. Instead, he kept it to himself, and waited to put his plan into action.
Now that moment had arrived.
Jamie checked his watch, and saw that it was thirty seconds until 8pm. He lowered the visor on his helmet, not far enough to look suspicious, but enough to obscure his features to anyone who took more than a passing look at him, and waited. Then he heard the rush of air as the infirmary doors opened, and two voices echoed along the corridor, decreasing in volume as they walked briskly away from where Jamie was standing.
Regular as clockwork, he thought to himself, and grinned.
He raised his head a fraction, and saw the doctor disappear into his office. The Operator was standing with his back to Jamie, waiting for the lift. This was the crucial moment; if the lift opened and the relieving Operator stepped out of it, then he was screwed. He felt his heart begin to beat a little bit faster as he heard the lift slow to a halt.
The doors slid open to reveal an empty metal box. The Operator stepped inside, then turned to face down the corridor; Jamie felt a sudden burst of panic as the man’s eyes seemed to momentarily meet his own. But the expression on the Operator’s face didn’t change; the lift doors closed, leaving Jamie alone in the corridor.
He immediately set off towards the infirmary, his footsteps loud on the concrete floor. He reached the double doors, took a deep breath, then pushed them open and stepped quickly inside. The beds that lined the walls to the left and right were all empty; establishing that fact had been the first thing Jamie had done, via a conversation with one of the nurses in the dining hall. At the rear of the room, the door marked THEATRE was closed, the chair positioned at the side of it standing empty.
Not for long, he thought. Hurry.
Jamie crossed the wide room, gripped the handle of the theatre door and pushed it open. Matt Browning looked up from the bed he was lying on, the expression on his face one of awful boredom, but then his eyes flew wide as he saw the dark figure entering his room.
“Who are—” he began, but Jamie cut him off.
“Keep your voice down,” he whispered. “I’m not supposed to be in here. If they catch me, it’s going to be really bad for us both.”
“Who—”
“My name’s Jamie. Jamie Carpenter.”
“What do you want?”
Jamie paused. He was suddenly unsure why it had seemed so important that he see this boy again. “I don’t want anything,” he said, eventually. “What do you want?”
“I want to go home,” said Matt, instantly.
“I can imagine,” said Jamie. “Have they told you what happened to you?”
“Sort of. They said I had an accident. But I can’t remember.”
“I heard. How far back?”
Matt’s shoulders tensed, ever so slightly. It was barely noticeable, but Jamie saw it.
“I remember working at my desk,” said Matt. “It must have been late afternoon, early evening. Then I woke up here. Everything in between is gone.”
Jamie stared at the boy for a long moment, then leant down towards him. “I don’t believe you,” he whispered, then smiled.
Matt’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?” he asked, his voice trembling.
“I mean, I don’t believe you,” repeated Jamie. “I think you’re either a brilliant liar or a natural actor. Because I think you remember exactly what happened to you. And when you do what I do for a living, you rarely believe what anyone tells you.”
“So you kill vampires?” asked Matt, his face and shoulders relaxing, and his mouth curling fractionally upwards at the edges.
Jamie recoiled, then grinned. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew you knew. What made you lie?”
“I didn’t know what they would do to me if they knew,” replied Matt.
“Smart,” said Jamie. “They’re releasing you tomorrow, did they tell you that?”
“No,” said Matt. “They don’t really tell me very much.”
“It’s the protocol,” said Jamie, his voice still lowered. “They can’t let you see anything that would make you a security risk if they let you go. If you want to see your parents again, stick to what you’ve been doing.”
“You came here to tell me that?” asked Matt, his brow furrowing. “I was doing that anyway. Why are you here?”
“I came to visit you when you were in a coma,” said Jamie. “The night I arrived here was the same night you got hurt. I… don’t know. I just wanted to meet you.”
“Can I ask you something?” asked Matt. His voice rose as he spoke, and Jamie shushed him again.
“Go for it,” he whispered.
“Where the hell am I? You’re wearing the same uniform the men who came into our house were wearing, and the girl who landed in my garden was a vampire, it’s obvious now. She should have been dead, but she wasn’t. And then she…”
“Don’t think about that,” said Jamie, quickly. “Her name is Larissa, by the way; the girl who hurt you. She didn’t mean to do it.”
“You know her?” asked Matt, his eyes widening.
“Yeah,” replied Jamie. “I do. It’s… complicated. But that doesn’t answer your question.”
He took a deep breath, as he prepared to break the most fundamental rule that Blacklight operated by. “This place is called the Loop. It’s a military base, completely classified. It’s the home of a branch of the government called Department 19, the department that polices the supernatural. I’m what they call an Operator; it’s like a soldier, but a top-secret version. There are hundreds of us here, hundreds more abroad; basically, you’re lying in the middle of the biggest secret in the world.”
Matt stared at the ceiling for a long moment, and Jamie feared, for a moment, that he had overwhelmed the teenager, given him too much too quickly. Then he said something that Jamie wasn’t expecting.
“That sounds amazing,” he said. “How do I join?”
“Join?” spluttered Jamie.
“Yeah, join. How do I get to be like you?”
“It’s not that simple,” said Jamie. “Most of the O
perators are recruited from the military, or the police. I was just lucky; I’m allowed in because I’m a descendant of one of the founders.”
“The what?”
“No time,” said Jamie, checking his watch. He had been inside the infirmary for more than two minutes already. “If this is what you want, then there’s only one bit of advice I can give you: find your way back here.”
“How do I do that?” asked Matt, his eyes full of excitement.
“I don’t know,” replied Jamie. “You seem like a smart guy, figure it out. You can’t let them know you know; you have to let them take you home tomorrow. I don’t know what they’ll do if they find out you’ve been lying to them. And I can’t say anything to help you, it wouldn’t do either of us any good for them to know I’ve been in here. So once you’re out, find your way back. It’s the only thing I can think of.”
Jamie backed away towards the door.
“Wait,” said Matt, his voice rising again. This time Jamie didn’t quiet him, he just stopped with the door handle in his grip.
“What?” he asked. “I really have to go.”
“Why are you doing this?” asked Matt. “Why are you trying to help me?”
“I don’t know,” said Jamie, and then grinned, a broad smile that was beautiful to look at. “I just have a feeling about you. I don’t know why. Good luck.”
With that, Jamie threw open the door and ran across the infirmary at a dead sprint. His watch read 20:02:41; over two and a half minutes had passed. He mentally cursed himself for being so careless, but even as he did so, realised that he didn’t regret it; finding a way to see Matt, to tell him what he had told him, was the right thing to have done, he was absolutely sure of that.
There was a moment’s silence, then the Director of Department 19 exploded.
“Despite all the times I explained to you why you couldn’t!” shouted Seward, his eyes blazing with anger. “And all the times you told me you understood. You stood where you’re standing now and you lied to me, Jamie. I could have you court-martialled for this.”