by Will Hill
Natalia frowned. “Why did you say sorry?”
“When?”
“Just then. You said sorry, then that you hadn’t realised how hungry you were. Why were you sorry?”
Matt shrugged. “I saw you smile at how fast I was eating,” he said. “It’s just what people say.”
“Perhaps you apologise too often,” said Natalia.
Matt sat back in his chair. “What makes you say that?”
“I hear you say sorry many times. But you are a brilliant scientist, and a good friend, and you have nothing to apologise for. I wonder if you know that.”
Matt grimaced. “It’s hard for me.”
“To do what? Believe in yourself?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” said Matt. “I felt like a disappointment for a long time. It’s a hard habit to shake.”
“Because of your father?”
His eyes widened with surprise. “I … yeah. Maybe. I think I always felt like I should apologise for not being the kind of son he wanted.”
“If you are not what he wanted, he is an idiot,” said Natalia, and smiled fiercely at him. “He should have been proud every day to be your father.”
Matt felt heat rise into his cheeks. “Thank you,” he said. “I think he is now. But I wish we could go back in time and have you tell him that.”
“I would tell him.”
He smiled. “I know you would.”
Natalia smiled back at him, then frowned as a shadow fell across their table. Matt looked up and saw an Operator he didn’t recognise standing over them, his helmet under his arm, his face set and solemn.
Oh shit, he thought. We’ve been here before. Why are neither of my super-powerful vampire friends ever with me when this type of crap happens?
“Can we help you?” asked Natalia.
The Operator glanced at her, shook his head, and fixed his gaze on Matt. He put the helmet carefully down on the table and extended his hand towards the teenager. Matt took it, a look of profound confusion on his face, and was almost jerked out of his seat as the Operator pumped his arm up and down.
“I’m Tom Johnson,” he said, in a thick American accent. “You’re Matt Browning, right?”
Matt nodded; bewilderment had robbed him of the ability to form words.
“Awesome,” said Johnson. “I just wanted to tell you that me and the rest of Intelligence heard about what you did in San Francisco. Driving into a brick wall on purpose to take out a double agent? That’s insane, dude. Seriously.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Matt saw a smile spread across Natalia’s face.
“Thanks,” he said. “That’s good of you to say. I didn’t really plan it, to be honest.”
Johnson laughed. “Probably a good thing,” he said. “You might have had second thoughts. Your neck all right?”
Matt touched his fingers to the foam brace. “Getting there,” he said. “This comes off tomorrow.”
Johnson nodded. “Glad to hear it. And apologies for the interruption, I just wanted to say hello. You two look after yourselves, all right?”
Matt nodded. “Thanks. We will.”
Johnson turned and strode across the room to where a group of Operators were waiting for him. They exited the canteen, and Matt turned to Natalia as the doors swung shut behind them.
“Well,” he said. “That was different.”
Jamie walked along Level B, concentrating on keeping his feet on the ground.
He wanted to fly down the grey corridor as fast as he was able, but he shared Larissa’s instinctive reluctance to demonstrate his vampire abilities inside the Loop. It was not that his colleagues were unused to seeing such powers – the Blacklight base was one of the few places in the world where they might be considered unremarkable – but rather that they felt like something that separated him from the ranks of Operators, a sensation he took no pleasure in.
Jamie had flown back from Brenchley as the eastern sky had begun to purple, reaching the hangar minutes before dawn broke over the horizon. After Larissa had departed, he had spent the rest of the long night deep in thought, his mind churning as it sought answers and explanations. His anger had eventually given way to a profound sense of loneliness, of having everything that he most relied on ripped away from him, and that loneliness had in turn been replaced by self-pity and bitter tears, as he silently raged at the unfairness of it all. He did not deserve the lies he had been told and the betrayals he had suffered; he had always tried to do the right thing, and had received only heartbreak in return. The eventual drying of his tears had been accompanied by a burst of self-loathing at having acted like such a child, like a spoilt brat who believed the entire world revolved around him.
Finally, as the darkness began to soften and lift, determined clarity had settled on him. The intermingled issues of his father and Frankenstein could wait, as could the decision about what, if anything, to tell his mum.
What could not wait was Larissa.
As soon as he touched down on the concrete floor of the hangar, he had sent her a message asking if she was awake. He had received no reply by the time the lift had carried him down to Level B, so he had walked quickly along the corridor and knocked on her door. There had been no response, and his supernaturally sharp ears had detected no sounds of movement from inside her quarters, so he had gone reluctantly to his room and slept fitfully, his mind whirring with worry. He had climbed back out of his bed barely two hours later and pulled a clean uniform on, trying all the while to quiet his increasingly frantic brain.
It’s fine. It’ll be fine. She just didn’t want to talk to you last night, and you can’t really blame her for that. Go and find her and tell her you’re sorry and sort it out. It’s not too late.
But there had still been no answer to his repeated knocks on her door or increasingly frequent messages, and no sign of her in the canteen or the Playground or the Briefing Rooms on Level A. He had sat through a routine Operational review with his feet tapping and his fists clenching and as soon as it was finished, after what felt like a thousand hours, he had sent a message to the one person he could ask for help in finding Larissa. To his enormous relief, Kate had replied immediately.
IN MY QUARTERS. WHAT’S UP?
Jamie stopped outside his friend’s door, took a deep breath, and knocked on it, hard. A second later it swung open and Kate appeared, a slightly quizzical look on her face; it took all of Jamie’s self-control not to hug the breath out of her.
“Morning, Jamie,” she said. “Everything all right?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Can I come in?”
“Of course,” said Kate, and stepped aside.
Jamie walked into the small room and stood beside Kate’s desk as she closed the door behind them. “Have you seen Larissa?” he asked. “Today, I mean?”
Kate laughed. “What is it with you two? I had her asking the same thing about you yesterday. Can’t you keep in touch with each other without my help?”
“Have you seen her or not?”
Kate frowned. “No,” she said. “Not today. What’s going on, Jamie?”
He grimaced. “We sort of had a fight.”
“I’d worked that much out for myself,” said Kate. “What about?”
Jamie hesitated; he didn’t want to tell her, didn’t want to tell anyone. But he had thrown the promise they had all made to each other in Larissa’s face, had deliberately used it to make her feel guilty, and it would be unforgivably cowardly if he did not apply it to himself.
No more secrets.
He lowered himself into Kate’s chair and began to talk. To his great relief, his friend listened in silence; she allowed him to plough through the whole story of his trip to Norfolk with Frankenstein, his reunion with his father, and the terrible conversation between himself and Larissa, without interruption or reaction. But as soon as he was finished, she shook her head and stared at him with eyes full of anger.
“Of course not,” he said. “I was angry, Kate. I’d just found out that my dad wasn’t dead, that he and Frankenstein had lied to me for years. I wasn’t really thinking straight.”
“I get that,” said Kate. “I really, really do. And I’m sorry about what you discovered. But none of it was Larissa’s fault.”
“Don’t you think she should have told me what she heard?”
“What did she hear?” said Kate. “A name? Three words that might easily have been completely meaningless?”
“They weren’t, though,” said Jamie. “And if she’d told me I could have—”
“You could have what?” interrupted Kate. “Asked Cal if he was keeping your dead dad in a cell? What do you think his answer would have been?”
“I’m not stupid, Kate,” said Jamie. “I know Cal would have denied it. But maybe I could have found out some other way, or managed to get in to see him, or …”
“That’s all well and good,” said Kate, “but you’re overlooking the most important thing. She was going to tell you, unless you’re actively calling her a liar. It’s bad timing that Frankenstein decided to come clean on the same day, but that’s not Larissa’s fault either. She was going to tell you, and before you say she had plenty of time to do so, think about what’s been going on around here lately, and whether or not she might have had one or two other things on her mind.”
Jamie stared at his friend. He knew she was right; everything she was saying was true.
“I need to see her, Kate,” he said, his voice low. “I was angry, and I said some stuff I regret. I just … I need to tell her I’m sorry. Can you help me?”
“I’ll run her chip,” said Kate. She drew her console from her belt and Jamie watched as she tapped the screen with her fingers, silently urging her to hurry. After an agonisingly long wait, the console beeped as the results of the search were returned. Kate grimaced as she read them, and Jamie felt his heart sink.
“What is it?” he asked. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” said Kate, looking up and staring at him. “Her chip stopped transmitting nine hours ago.”
“Where?” asked Jamie. “Where was the last position it was tracked?”
“About seven hundred miles off the west coast of Ireland,” said Kate. “The middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”
Kate pushed the door of her office shut and slid into the chair behind her desk. She turned on her terminal, trying to slow her rising unease as she waited for it to go through its series of security checks.
She had left Jamie in her quarters with strict instructions to stay there until she got back. He had looked thoroughly defeated, as though the life had been drained out of him, but she knew from long experience that it would only be temporary; his despair would rapidly turn to anger, and before she knew it he would be charging through the Loop, demanding a search party be raised for Larissa or, more worryingly, going to look for her himself. He’d agreed to sit tight, but Kate knew she needed information fast; right now, they had nothing to go on, and a response based on nothing was only likely to make an already bad situation worse.
Her monitor bloomed into life and Kate’s fingers flew across the keyboard, accessing the Security Division logs and entering Larissa’s name into the search field. The terminal worked quickly, bringing up a minute-by-minute record of her locator chip for the last twenty-four hours. Kate scrolled down to the point where Larissa had left Brenchley, and studied the subsequent lines of text and coordinates.
She came back through the hangar. Went to her quarters, then down to the cellblock, where she stayed for eleven minutes. Then back to her quarters, out through the hangar, and in a straight line west until her chip stopped transmitting.
Kate’s eyes settled on the line that listed the Level H cellblock. She knew full well that there were only two vampires currently being held down there: Marie Carpenter, who was perhaps the least likely person in the Loop that Larissa would decide to visit, and the third oldest vampire in the world.
Valentin, she thought. Why did she go and see Valentin? And what the hell did he say to her?
One floor below, Jamie sat on Kate’s bed, his foot tapping incessantly as he waited for his friend to return. He knew that waiting was the right thing to do – they needed to know more before he made the fuss that he was already itching to make – but doing so was frankly killing him.
She’s out there somewhere, he thought, as he checked the time on Kate’s bedside clock for the hundredth time. And there’s only one reason why her chip would have stopped transmitting.
Because she doesn’t want to be found.
He checked the clock again.
Twenty-six minutes.
That’s how long Kate had been gone.
It felt like hours.
Jamie checked his console again, hoping against hope that he would see a message from Larissa glowing on its screen. He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t help himself; it made him feel like he was doing something, no matter how insignificant, and distracted him for a brief moment from the onslaught of accusation the guilty part of his brain was currently hurling at him.
Your fault! You drove her away! You ruined everything! Idiot! Loser! Failure!
He tried to ignore the howling voice, but couldn’t; it was, after all, absolutely right. He had driven her away, of that there could be no doubt; she had come back to the Loop after their fight and within an hour she had been gone. There was simply no way to even begin to pretend that the two events were not connected. It was his fault, plain and simple, and if he got the chance he would apologise to her until he lost his voice.
What if she’s gone for good? What if she’s never coming back?
Jamie shook his head. He could not allow himself to think like that. It was possible that Larissa was simply blowing off steam, that she had just needed to get away from everything, including him, for a little while. Maybe she had gone back to Nevada, where he knew she had been happy. Maybe a message would arrive from General Allen, telling them that she had gone to visit her friends at NS9 and would be home soon.
Then why would her chip have stopped transmitting?
“Shut up,” whispered Jamie. “Shut up, shut up, shut up.”
Footsteps echoed down the corridor, a rapid rhythm that would have been inaudible to anyone without his supernatural senses, and Jamie froze, listening for the telltale pause outside the door that would signal Kate’s return. The steps stopped, followed a second later by a beep and the whirring sound of locks drawing back. Jamie was on his feet before the door swung open, heat boiling into the corners of his eyes. Kate stepped into her quarters and recoiled.
“Jesus, Jamie,” she said. “Have you been standing there the whole time?”
“What did you find out?” he asked. He was aware that his voice was on the verge of becoming a growl, but was helpless to control it.
“I pulled her chip’s record,” said Kate. “She got back here just after eight thirty last night and left about forty minutes later. Other than her quarters, she only went to one place while she was here.”
“Where?” he asked.
“You have to promise me that you’re going to stay calm.”
“I can’t promise you that,” he said. “Where did she go, Kate?”
“To the cellblock,” said Kate. “She went to see Valentin.”
Jamie stared at her for long seconds, then strode across the room, and hauled the door open. His feet left the ground and he was halfway down the corridor before Kate managed to shout, “Wait!”
In his quarters on Level A, Paul Turner opened the message that had appeared on the screen of his console and frowned.
It was from Angela Darcy, announcing that she was back from the cellblock and had ordered the Security Division to officially lis
t Larissa Kinley as AWOL while an investigation was conducted. Turner knew that the formal classification was merely procedural – he had no reason to believe that the vampire Operator represented any kind of threat to the Department – but her disappearance was a body blow nonetheless; with the exception of Valentin Rusmanov, whose loyalties were murky and changeable at best, as the morning’s developments were illustrating yet again, Larissa was the most powerful Operator in the Department and her loss would severely diminish Blacklight’s ability to respond to Dracula’s next move, whatever it was and whenever it came.
The news of Larissa’s disappearance had been a bad start to the day. Beyond the tactical problem it presented, Turner was also seriously concerned about the effect her disappearance was going to have on the morale of the Department.
There had been widespread distrust of her when she had accepted the offer to become the first vampire Operator in the Department’s long history but, while it had never entirely gone away, it had been dramatically reduced by Larissa’s role in repelling Valeri Rusmanov’s attack on the Loop and her performance at the Battle of Château Dauncy, in which she and Valentin Rusmanov had fought Dracula to a standstill. He knew there were still people in the Loop who were uneasy at the thought of a vampire Operator, and a small number who would simply never accept her, but he also knew that the majority had come to believe that they were better off with Larissa on their side than without.
Now she was gone, and he suspected that her disappearance would be yet another blow to the already fragile confidence of the Department he now led.
And there’s one thing that’s absolutely certain, he thought. Jamie and Kate and Matt are going to be devastated.
The relationship between Jamie Carpenter and Larissa Kinley – the descendant of the Founders and the vampire girl – was an endless source of whispered curiosity throughout the Loop. Turner had stood in the infirmary barely two weeks earlier as Larissa threatened to murder every Operator in the Department if the medical staff didn’t give her boyfriend the transfusion that would stop his turn taking place. Only Jamie’s intervention had calmed her down, and Turner knew that her disappearance was going to hit the teenager like a ton of bricks. They had been through so much together that he believed it would be hard, if not impossible, for Jamie to move on if she simply didn’t come back.