by Will Hill
The infirmary was now almost fully occupied by recipients of the cure, men and women sleeping and chatting in low voices. A great many more vampires had already recovered and been returned to the cells on Level H; a dozen or so had even been released from the Loop entirely, free to resume their normal lives with all trace of the supernatural gone. Those men and women had received their treatments after the first trial, when the doctors had known what to expect and had started administering the cure in thickly padded rooms, like the isolation areas in a secure hospital. None had suffered anything more than a pounding headache when they woke up.
Which is great for them, thought Jamie. It doesn’t help her, though. Doesn’t help my mum.
Through the small window, he could see the purple ridges beneath her eyes, the results of a nose so badly broken it had needed splinting, and the harness suspending her arm, which had been coated from shoulder to wrist in plaster. Jamie considered it a miracle, having read the report of her reaction to the cure, that she had not broken her neck or fractured her skull.
In barely thirty minutes, he – along with every single other member of the Department – was due in the Ops Room for a briefing by the Director. He knew there was nothing to be gained by standing helplessly outside the infirmary, that they were not going to suddenly change the rules and allow him in to talk to his mother, but he was still reluctant to leave. Because he needed to talk to her; to ask her why she had done what she did, why she had taken such an enormous risk.
I never knew how unhappy she was, he thought. How much she hated being a vampire. I mean, I knew, but I never really knew. Because I didn’t want to hear it. I had my own problems, and they were all so huge and important and she was safe down there in her cell so I just assumed she was OK because that made it easier for me.
I let her down so badly.
Jamie stared at his mother, wishing he could tell her the two things that suddenly seemed like the most important in the world.
That he loved her.
And that he was sorry.
Pete Randall knocked on Greg Browning’s office door and pushed it open.
“Are you watching this?” he asked. “It’s crazy.”
Greg nodded, his eyes fixed on the TV in the corner of the room. “I’m watching. The Prime Minister looks very pleased with himself.”
“Are you surprised?”
His friend shrugged. “I suppose not,” he said. “Probably too much to expect a politician to show a bit of humility.”
“We need to call a meeting, Greg,” said Pete. “We need to start working out what we’re going to do about this.”
Greg tore his eyes away from the screen and looked at him. “What are you talking about?”
“We need to amend the call guidelines, for a start,” said Pete. “Give the hospital list to the operators so they can pass it on to the vamps who ask about the cure. And we should get a press release out, saying that we’re ready to assist distribution of the cure in any way we can.”
“Why would we do any of that, mate?”
He frowned. “Why wouldn’t we?”
“This organisation was founded to help the victims of the supernatural,” said Greg. “Right from the start, we said that would include vampires who are victims themselves. And you think the best way to do that is for us to announce that we think they’re nothing more than a disease that needs curing?”
“Of course not,” said Pete. “But like you said, most vampires are victims themselves. They never wanted to be turned. This gives them a chance to undo it.”
“And help Blacklight in the process,” said Greg. “Is that what you want? To do their dirty work for them?”
“This has nothing to do with Blacklight,” said Pete. “This is about helping people, which is exactly what we founded SSL to do.”
“I disagree, mate,” said Greg. “But it doesn’t really matter, in any case. The board has already told me there are to be no changes to policy or procedures.”
Pete frowned. “You talked to the board without me?”
“I’m sorry,” said Greg. “I didn’t realise I needed your permission. I’ll make sure I ask you next time.”
Pete narrowed his eyes. “What’s going on here, Greg? Why are you being like this?”
Colour rose into Greg’s face. “Nothing’s going on, mate,” he said. “You suggested something, I disagreed, and so did the board. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, but for right now, I’m done talking about this.”
“This is the biggest thing that has—”
Greg slammed his hand down on the surface of his desk. His eyes were suddenly blazing, and Pete belatedly realised that his friend was absolutely furious.
“Didn’t you hear me?” asked Greg, his voice low. “I’m done talking about this. So unless there’s anything else, I suggest you go and do some work.”
Pete stared at Greg, a deep frown on his face. Every other member of SSL had reacted to the announcement of the cure like it was Christmas come early, especially after the fear and panic the second Dracula video had caused.
It makes no sense, he thought. Why is he acting like this?
“Actually, there is something else,” he said, hearing the icy chill in his own voice. “I finished my review of the call logs.”
“And?”
“I found another Night Stalker victim.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Greg.
“The old woman who got killed in Waddington last week,” said Pete. “She was a regular. Eight calls in five weeks, the last one two days before she died.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Greg, the colour in his face fading slightly. “We’re getting almost ten thousand calls a week now. I reckon every vamp in the country has probably rung us at least once.”
“Probably,” said Pete. “I just thought you’d want to know.”
Julian Carpenter sat in the garden of his mother’s cottage, listening to the BBC on an old portable radio. The Prime Minister’s announcement was being replayed at fifteen-minute intervals, and a fierce debate was already underway in the television and radio studios of the country; the phone-in he was listening to was rapidly descending into a cacophony of shouted insults and threats.
One of the loudest voices belonged to a man who was furious not at the cure itself, but at the amnesty that had been announced alongside it; he was bellowing that his brother had been killed by a vampire, and that the government was now officially letting his murderer off the hook. One of the other callers was a vampire, and was trying to simultaneously sympathise with the man and explain that, without the incentive of the amnesty, the strength of the anti-vampire feeling surging through the country would mean that many vampires who desperately wanted the cure would be too scared to come forward. An Oxford philosophy professor was trying, largely unsuccessfully, to get a word in, and was arguing that the very existence of the cure was a human rights violation, an admission by the government that they viewed the vampire population of the United Kingdom as a disease that needed wiping out. In the midst of it all, the DJ was desperately trying to regain some semblance of control of the conversation.
Julian didn’t care about the wider impact of a cure; he was pleased at the prospect of fewer vampires in the world and, although he empathised with the point the increasingly angry caller was making, he could also understand the reasons for issuing an amnesty.
What he did care about was what the cure meant for his family.
It was possible that his wife loved being a vampire. He doubted it, but the sad truth was that he simply didn’t know; given what she had been through in the years since he had seen her, it was unrealistic to assume that the woman living in a cell in the bowels of the Loop was the same woman he had slept beside for two decades. But, either way, his greatest fear, that his wife was trapped in a nightmare from which she could never escape, had now been quashed; if she wanted to be cured, and he hoped with all his heart that she did, she was now in the best possible place for
that to happen.
And so is Jamie, he thought. Although he might think being a vampire is brilliant, for all I know.
Julian tried not to think about what the future might hold for his wife and son; if he dwelt on the impotent reality of the situation he found himself in, his guilt quickly became unbearable. But the Prime Minister’s statement had given him hope that his family might be able to change their situation, even if he wasn’t able to do anything to help them himself.
He glanced at the tracking chip he had cut out of his arm so many months ago.
For now, at least.
Larissa Kinley perched on a stool in the kitchen of Haven’s big house, watching the analysis of the discovery of the cure. Similar statements had now been issued by the governments of the United States, France, China, Germany, Brazil, Russia and more than a dozen others, although none of them had been able to match the Prime Minister’s for sheer jaw-dropping impact.
It was almost four in the morning, but she, along with the majority of the residents of Haven, was still awake. She had been about to go to bed when the Prime Minister walked out into Downing Street, but sleep was now the furthest thing from her mind. It had been difficult to comprehend the sheer magnitude of the announcement, and for a community of vampires that had shunned the wider world in favour of peaceful isolation, it raised a number of questions that they were not going to find easy to answer. Larissa knew it would only be a matter of time until people started asking each other whether they were going to take the cure, and she wouldn’t be able to blame them; it was the biggest thing to happen to the realm of the supernatural since Dracula had first been turned, more than five centuries earlier.
As the news coverage droned endlessly on and on, Larissa felt as uncertain as she had in the final weeks before she left Blacklight and began the process of founding Haven. The inner peace that the community had provided her with was gone, replaced by concern for the future and the realisation that she too had a decision to make.
If anyone had asked her seven months earlier whether she would be interested in taking a cure for vampirism, she would have answered yes without a moment’s hesitation; she had said as much to Jamie and her friends on a number of occasions, and had not been lying to them.
Now, though? She was no longer sure.
During her years with Alexandru – and even after she joined Blacklight – her vampirism had been a miserable, isolating condition, one that filled her with shame and singled her out from her friends and colleagues. At Haven, surrounded by people who were the same as her – biologically, at least – it was different; she no longer saw herself as a freak, as something to be distrusted and whispered about. At Haven, she felt accepted, and welcomed, and she wasn’t remotely sure she wanted that to change.
“Still awake?” said Callum, from behind her.
She turned, and smiled at the Texan vampire. “Still awake,” she said. “There’s coffee in the pot.”
Callum nodded. Larissa returned her attention to the TV as he lifted a mug from the drying rack beside the sink and poured coffee and cream into it.
“This is crazy,” she said. “Half the countries in the world have announced they’re going to distribute the cure.”
“Hardly surprising,” said Callum. “This is the first bit of good news they’ve had in a long time. Can’t blame them for making the most of it.”
“The Prime Minister is making a big deal about it being developed by Blacklight. You would think he’d been putting in shifts in the Lazarus Project labs himself.”
“Now that is crazy.”
“The Prime Minister trying to take all the credit?”
Callum shook his head. “That your friend Matt is probably at least partly responsible for all this.”
Larissa smiled widely. “If I know Matt,” she said, “there won’t be any ‘partly’ about it.”
He nodded, and took a sip of his coffee. “You need a top-up?”
“I’m good,” she said. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do, Callum?”
“Can’t think about anything else,” he said. “You?”
“The same.”
Callum put his mug down and looked at her. “And?”
Larissa shook her head. “I have absolutely no idea.”
As he sat down beside Professor Karlsson in the Ops Room, Matt Browning reached the conclusion that he was more tired than he had ever been.
He doubted he had slept for more than two uninterrupted hours at any point in the last week; his brain felt as thick and slow as treacle, and his body trembled constantly from a combined excess of caffeine and adrenaline. The Lazarus Project, which was hardly a relaxed environment at the best of times, had shifted into overdrive, a relentless regime of testing and reporting and observing and checking and double and triple-checking. Matt, who was usually glad his work got him out of all but the most vital meetings, had been genuinely relieved when the order to attend the mandatory briefing that was about to begin had come through; for at least a few minutes, he could allow his brain to stop churning and ignore the relentless voice inside his head that told him he could, and should, be working.
He glanced round at his boss, who gave him a small, tired smile. Matt returned it, and realised how much he envied Karlsson, and the rest of his Lazarus colleagues. They were killing themselves to finalise and produce the cure they had been gathered together to find, but none of them were dealing with the extra pressure that he was, pressure that could be summed up by a single word he had already come to hate.
PROMETHEUS.
The project’s origin lay in a throwaway remark he had made during a conversation with Cal Holmwood almost a year earlier, a conversation that he had been forbidden to discuss with anyone else at the time, and then forbidden from doing so again by Paul Turner after he had been promoted to Director and inherited his predecessor’s notes. Since then, there had been three short meetings, in which the hypothetical details of PROMETHEUS had been hammered out, details which had made Matt increasingly uneasy. He had been able to console himself with the knowledge that the concept was unfeasible until the day came that there was a workable, reliable cure for vampirism.
Now, that day had arrived.
There was a rush of whispered voices as the Director strode through the door and up on to the low stage at the front of the Ops Room. He looked out over the massed ranks of the Department, his gaze settling momentarily on Matt, then called for attention. Instantly, the room fell silent.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Turner. “I am assuming that you all know what this briefing is about, so I’ll get straight to the point. For the last year, the Loop has been home to a handpicked team of the finest scientific minds on the planet, working together on what has been codenamed the Lazarus Project. I am aware that the project and its staff have been the subject of a great amount of speculation, the result of the strict conditions of secrecy in which they have been operating. As you will no doubt have inferred from the Prime Minister’s announcement, they were gathered together with a single goal, to find a cure for the condition that we know as vampirism, and I am delighted to confirm that they have succeeded in their task.”
A low murmur of excitement rippled through the Ops Room, and Matt jumped in his seat as a number of hands clapped him on the back; he turned round to see Operators he didn’t know grinning at him.
“Before I go into what this means for the Department,” said Turner, “and for the world outside, I would ask each and every member of the Lazarus Project to stand up.”
Oh God, thought Matt.
Professor Karlsson immediately did as the Director had asked. Matt turned in his seat, saw the rest of his colleagues getting nervously to their feet, and realised he had no choice but to join them. Slowly, his cheeks burning with sudden heat, he stood up and glanced over to where Natalia was also standing, her face a bright shade of pink, a wide, embarrassed smile on her face.
“Men and women of the Lazarus Project,” continued
Turner. “What you have done is nothing short of miraculous, and everyone in this room, every single person on this entire planet, will be forever in your debt. My profound thanks to each and every one of you.”
The applause that exploded through the crowded room was deafening, punctuated by shouts and cheers as the entire Department rose to their feet, clapping and yelling and grinning. The members of the Lazarus Project were swallowed up by the crowd, and as Matt’s hand was pumped up and down, as praise filled his ears and he was jostled back and forth by the gloved hands of dozens of strangers, he was able, just for a moment, to almost forget about PROMETHEUS.
Almost.
Matt scanned the crowd as the men and women of Blacklight filed towards the Ops Room door.
Paul Turner was standing in front of the stage, talking to James Van Thal and Dominique Saint-Jacques; the Director was smiling slightly, the result, Matt suspected, of having given his first briefing in a long time that had not made the majority of the audience want to kill themselves. On the other side of the room, he saw Natalia walking side by side with Kate Randall, and felt a surge of warmth in his stomach as he dragged his gaze away and continued his search for Jamie Carpenter. Matt had seen his friend when he had been ordered to his feet by the Director, smiling proudly at him from maybe ten rows back, but now he couldn’t locate him; he was about to conclude that Jamie had already left the room, when a voice spoke into his ear.