by CT Grey
Good, I nodded as I pushed my hands deep in my pockets and strolled casually towards the Tank at the back of the room. If they can keep this up, we might make it through.
“HJ,” Harry hollered from top of the step, holding a glass of brandy in his hand. “I thought she would never stop talking.”
“She’s quite a catch, isn’t she?”
“She is.” Harry smiled. He stepped aside and said, “Come in, come in… we have a lot to talk about.”
“I see.” I smiled and stepped into the smoky, dusky room, where the only grandiose display was an antique green glass lamp casting a warm yellowish gleam on the shadowy faces. Faces that all weren’t fully visible but instead were obstructed by the static noise the two holo-drones were projecting on their surfaces.
“Right.” I glared at the drones, thinking that they couldn’t be any other than Authorities, before I flicked my eyes back to Harry and said, “This kind of game.” I sat at the opposite end to Harry’s chair and claimed out loud, “You know, from the amount of the smoke in this room, I could probably name quite a few of you. But I won’t.”
“Henrik,” Harry snarled from the other end. “You know how this business goes.”
I cocked my eyebrow and asked, “Do I?”
The nearest shadow broker folded his arms and uttered in unrecognisable machine voice, “He’s got a point.”
“I see.” Harry nodded. He pointed his hand at those sitting on the right side and said, “Addison, Lady Ping and whoever’s on your the left, you don’t need to know. In fact, it is better that you forget that this conversation even took place. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly.”
“Now,” Harry said. “We want to know what you think about this domain business?”
I thought carefully for a moment how much I could try to push the set boundaries, before I determined that it was not likely that they were going to be sacking me on the spot. After all I was one of senior intelligence analysts that Harry had claimed he couldn’t be without. So I said, “To be honest, sir, I don’t know what I should think. It’s true that she’s vampire, and it’s quite possible that she even had her own domain in the hospital. But did she use it as a hunting ground? No.”
Addison sucked his pipe and then said: “Those are quite bold words, old chap.”
“Do you have any evidence to back this claim?” Harry asked. “Or is it just a hunch?”
I tapped the end of my fingers on the table a couple of times together, while thinking were they really trying to lure to be some sort of player in their game before I asked: “Isn’t it quite obvious at this end? You’ve all seen everything I have, if not more.”
“See.” Lady Ping slapped the table. “I told you. Now pay up.”
“Wait.” Harry waved away Ping’s pecking hand. “Why?”
“You’re asking me?”
Harry nodded and gestured with his eyes suggestively towards the base chief information officer. Whatever he had wagered in here while I’d done all the work had to be substantial.
“I see,” I said. “Well, maybe you should trust what Ping says because she’s way smarter than you are. Haven’t you noticed?”
Addison coughed a couple of times as if he was going to die from smoke inhalation, before he turned his gleaming gaze towards the Agency Chief and said: “I would say this chap is still pulling us. He simply cannot see a tree from the woods.”
“Now, wait a second.” I raised a finger to my defence. “I thought it’s obvious that she wouldn’t violate her domain. Any idiot could see that the hospital is a safe haven, and she wouldn’t violate their protocol to stay hidden unless she’s—”
“Now, now, laddie.” Addison leaned forward to reveal his bloated, reddish face from behind the smoke cloud and point me with his pipe. “You forgot that she did.”
“You mean that…” I gulped. Had I really missed something?
“Yes.” The base security chief grinned. “Go on, lad.”
“That,” I said. “You cannot say that she did it willingly. The lab assistant—”
“Now,” Addison suggested slyly. “Are you sure about that?”
I shifted my gaze from one face to another, and I noticed that even the shadow brokers’ poses were asking if this was my final statement. And I knew there was obviously something more in this than Jane had revealed to me. Maybe it was something that they’d found in the background research, but for some reason they never revealed it to me, even though the whole relationship between the Tank and the Interviewer should had been two bidirectional.
“No,” I said. “What is exactly that you’re after?”
“See.” Addison nudged Lady Ping and opened a hand at front her. “Pay up.”
Lady Ping turned suddenly in her chair and snapped at Addison. “This is not over.”
Oh dear, I touched my forehead as I realised that there’d been betting going all that time while I’d interviewed Mrs McGriffin. What the hell had I missed?
“Mister Jackson, take a look of this.” Harry’s Information Chief pointed at the bluish projection that cast out in front of each of our monitors. I leaned back and tried to empty my mind as the footage started to play so that I could watch it objectively. What I saw initially was one of the formal data requests, which the Home Office had carried out, since they had started to investigate a mysterious disease eighteen months ago. But what came afterwards was something quite different.
It was the footage from that corridor, where Jane had murdered her first victim. I could clearly remember her saying that she’d lost control, but how much, was never declared. I shied away when she tore poor man’s shoulder to shreds.
It was excruciatingly violent sight that was not needed, especially not when Lady Ping quickly zoomed to a close-up of the body and posted a link for everyone to see. “The method of entry,” she shrieked in her high tone that had to be left over from her head-mistress days. “…is clearly visible in this frame, where the wounds indicate a severe blood loss, presumably all caused by the vampire fangs.”
I raised my brows questionably. “But—“
“Boys.” Lady Ping shot her hands in the air. “Always in such a rush. Would you please be quiet for a moment, as we see how the victim progresses, while the Met armed response team clears the hospital.” She posted a series of other links that all had recent department tags. I clicked the first one marked with +5.00.
The footage sifted rapidly through the time stamps, showing how the female walker followed after Jane few minutes later, leaving the laboratory worker’s corpse lying still on the floor. The next one was marked at +75 minutes. And in its thumbnail, I could see a black-clad metropolitan policeman was peeping in the frame, obviously checking the victim.
I clicked the frame and allowed it to progress. It showed the police operator checking the laboratory and the supplement control area carefully; finally he finally disappeared a few minutes later. “They never went in…” I muttered.
“We presume that,” Addison said, “they only saw a corpse without ever realising it was a ticking time-bomb. You watch the next ten minutes, and you’ll see that nobody comes to double tap the bastard even though it was written in their Rules Of Engagement.”
“But they should have had plenty of time to clean up. The walkers don’t rise—”
“Ah,” Harry said. “I told you he didn’t think about it. Didn’t I?”
Addison and Ping sighed and started digging their pockets, while I tried to stretch my mind to think what I’d really missed. There was not a thing I could get, especially as I knew it took some time for necromorphosis to go through and raise their host up as a mindless, ravenous beast.
Twelve hours, my mind said. Twelve hours for one to wake up and join the army of the dead. But there wasn’t +12.00 hour time-stamp, but actually last one marked on +3.07. So
I clicked that and saw the victim getting up, looking around and then starting to move around as if he was one of the type threes.
&n
bsp; I tapped the screen to begin again, while I slowed the play speed with my other hand. And then it became obvious: the victim jerked first, then opened his eyes and started moving as if nothing had happened. But there was a difference as he was now one of the living dead.
“Three hours,” I gasped. “Is that right?”
“Absolutely.” Lady Ping nodded sharply. “There is no doubt about it. But what’s curious is that it caused no log entries. He was recognised as a dead, but not as one of the many walkers that were erased or got away from the location. And I can only speculate that whoever did monitor the situation didn’t know that one of those kind got away.”
“What happened to him?”
Harry leaned back and said, “We don’t know. It seems he vanished.”
I looked Harry and asked, “Do you think he went into the Underworld?”
Harry coughed in his fist and said, “That’s a good question HJ. Something you should bring up next time if she doesn’t answer the question directly.”
“So…” I whirled a finger in the air, while I formed words carefully. “You suspect that she was aware of what she was doing, and she manufactured a screamer to be her guardian?” They all turned to look at me as if they were waiting for me giving some sort of theory. But I wasn’t going to. Not this time. “You implied it when you started to talk about it. And the fact is: she wasn’t hunting in the hospital and I don’t think she’s establishing a hunting ground there either. But what she wants from us, I don’t know.”
“But you know,” Harry said, “we are not bargaining with her kind.”
I let a thought on how he dared to try to use the bollocks the Authorities liked to use to back up their lies to the public to settle for a while in my mind, before I said, “Didn’t think you would, but at the same time I don’t think she’s asking for us to bargain with her.”
“Is that your final point?” Harry asked bluntly.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s where I’m standing. By the very definition of our mission she’s cleared for the interviews and it is honestly better that way. But now that you put the hospital victim in play, I’d like to ask what happened to that skinhead?”
The two silent brokers sifted sharply in their chairs and turned to look Harry. It was a big question that had not come across in the light of the talks. “The people assume,” I said while I tried my very best to try to suck in the grin, “that girl is dead. Is she?”
Harry didn’t need much encouragement as he moved at once and started tapping the machine to bring mysterious figures and text at front of him. Then, a few minutes later, his face brightened up and he sent a link to our screens. I clicked it as Harry opened his mouth: “There. She’s lying on a morgue slab, still unmoving, chest and skull open twenty seven hours after the time of death.”
I sighed in a relief. There was nothing to worry about. Jane might be different, but she wasn’t a fool. She wouldn’t have brought a screamer inside the facility to doom us all. “Good,” I said. “Then you don’t mind if I go to grab some lunch, do you?”
“HJ, what’s the rush?” Harry asked.
“I just...” I looked down, rubbing my hands together. “...I just need some time to gather my thoughts before I go back in.” When I lifted my gaze I could see that Harry wasn’t pleased, an interrogator was meant to stay with the group to the point where they had solved the intelligence task but… “The truth is: we are the last, and even though we have the finest technology man has invented, we cannot escape from the damage we’ve inflicted on Nature…”
“Krhm,” Addison cleared his throat.
I raised a finger and continued, “It’s true. We’ve known about Em-Six for a long time, and in the end we did nothing to save those who were left outside.”
“A moral problem, eh?” Lady Ping said. “What about all the information we gave to the public? The media has been toting the facts more and less since the Em-Six incident, haven’t they?”
“Yes,” I said. “I thought you might say something like that but—”
“You cannot say we didn’t try,” Harry insisted. “They gave a D-notice at the end, and if you had been watching the screens, you have seen that it did no good! They are still out there. Multiplying. Killing. Massacring defenceless people.”
“Exactly.” I smashed a fist on the table. “My little girl wanted to go to a park and …” They turned to look at me, all quiet, waiting. “… and I wanted to, but—”
“You couldn’t,” Harry finished the sentence. “I know. It’s hard for all of us. My wife had exactly the same problem, when she started planning a vacation in Spain. Can you believe it? Spain!” He shook his head. “I just couldn’t but laugh at such insanity and I swear, sooner or later people will realise that there’s no turning back. The world they know now is either the underworld or—”
“Underworld,” I said. “She said that the one that we expected was not there.”
“Krhm,” Addison cleared his throat again. “Were we expecting something?”
“Not that I know of,” Harry answered. “No.”
I thought about what Jane might have meant for couple seconds. “Then what do we know about them?” The looks I received told me pretty much what I’d been thinking. “Next to nothing. And all we can put together is from fictional sources. And those things doesn’t add much to the speculation, do they?” The puffs from cigar and pipes said enough. I was on the correct track. “So my hypothesis is that all those four vampires were more or less part of this mysterious underworld, and like Jane said, it’s not—”
“Ah, Mister Jackson,” Lady Ping said. “But if it exists, then I’d say that it will present a major factor in this play, yes?”
The conversation exploded. We started to speculate the origins and even capabilities of this mysterious underworld, against what we knew about our world. We had never even factored these minority groups into our original projections; whatever they were. But what we could count on was, they were going to represent a new rule in the world we’d left behind. Or were they?
“Do they have the numbers?” I asked.
“To do what?” Addison said. “Take over and rule over the zetas? No.”
“No?” I looked Addison questionably. “Is that all you can say?”
“Yes, mate,” Addison said. “They do not have enough people take down all zetas and establish a world where they are the kings and queens. It’s an impossible task.”
Before I even managed to gather enough thoughts for a counter-argument, I heard a soft knock on the door. Harry silenced the room and then said, “Enter.”
An operator pushed open the Tank door and locked her smiling eyes on me: “Sir.”
“Yes,” I said. “What is it?”
“Prisoner four-one-six is back in interview room three.”
I waved her away and then turned around to say, “I wanted to get something to eat before I go back in, but I guess I can forget that now.”
Harry started to say something, but I wasn’t listening. I didn’t want to hear his excuses. I didn’t need to hear them because I knew one man’s grumbling stomach meant nothing. So I left the blue smoke-filled Tank behind me and went back to my telepresence cocoon pretty much the same way I had come in - with my hands dug deep in my pockets.
When I connected back to the holo-drone, I saw her sipping something from a prison issue mug. “Ah, darling,” Jane said. “I hope you enjoyed your lunch. What did you have?”
<< We are so sorry. Honest. >>
“A slice of Shepherd’s pie and a cup of coffee.”
“Sounds delicious.” She smiled at me. “Was it?”
“Yeah.” I smiled at back as I picked up the pen. “Can we continue?”
“Certainly sweetie,” Jane said. “Where would you like to begin?”
“The underworld…” I said, but I didn’t stop as I focused on her eyes. “What is it?”
<< What are you doing? >>
There was no movement in Jane’s eyes. Not
even a slight twitch in her hair. She was almost completely frozen, but not paralyzed. But I could also see that there was certain coldness in those eyes. Something that told me she was carefully calculating her next move.
“Come on, Mrs McGriffin. Talk to me.”
*** Jane ***
The old Victorian station marked the boundary of the underworld, and when I tell you this, you must understand that there are more things in that world than you really want to know about. You might think you know everything about the M6-virus, but you don’t. You really don’t know anything that matters.
Just allow me take you back to that station, at the edge of the infested underground tunnels. It was nothing like any other place I’d gone through and the most striking detail about it was its desolated loneliness. You could see with one glance that it’d not seen human life for a long time. There were all those the massive webs that countless generations of spiders had woven from ground to the ceiling. It was almost as if they were trying to warn any wanderers from venturing any further. That behind this line lay a resident evil.
If you can call that thing evil, because if you’d been there, in my shoes, with my limited brain capacity, you would have sensed that the station and the tracks led downwards to a domain of something very, very old. What it really was, I couldn’t tell. All I could say was that it was observing every single move I made, when I climbed on the platform, huddling the plastic plasma-bags against my dirty, bloodied and naked body.
In one way, it was a perfect hiding place. But I could also tell it wasn’t happy about my appearance. It wasn’t just a feeling because the moment I reached the station’s dark exterior I stepped on a nail. Its rusted head pushed right through my foot. I took a step back to get some light to shine on my feet, and did the same to the other foot.
Then my back hit a barricaded window and something heavy got attached to my skin. Was the hell was it? I couldn’t tell. But what I realised was that the Entity didn’t want me there.
So there I was, lonely, hurting, unable to cry, not talking about being somehow able to communicate with its guardian spirit to ask it to grant me asylum. On top of everything, I sensed my limbs starting to stiffen, just as the hunger grew towards an intolerable limit.