First Interview (Necromorphosis Book 1)

by CT Grey

  “What is this place?”

  “This.” Bran waved his hand. “This is one of those places that never has, and never will exist in the official history books. And I think you understand why we have these here.”

  Alison nodded. She didn’t want to voice her objections, but she understood the reasons of why they had secret interrogations rooms within Thames House. However, what she couldn’t understand was why the dead ones were there at the place of the live ones, when it was clear that none of them were exactly able to answer or even understand the questions. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “To prove a point.” Bran opened a side door and gestured her walk before him to the bottom level.

  Alison folded her arms and looked at Bran sternly at the thought he was setting up something nasty and unpleasant. “What point exactly?”

  “Just humour me please,” Bran said. “I’ll promise it’s safe to go down there.”

  Alison laughed. “Safety is an illusion, and we both know that one has to be on guard all the times, or otherwise our enemies will literally consume us.”

  “Exactly,” Bran said proudly. “I’ve always said to the top floor that you were one of the brightest ones we’ve had the privilege to employ. So please, come with me.”

  “No,” Alison said. “Not before you explain to me exactly what we’re doing here.”

  Bran sighed. He closed the door and sat down on one of the leather armchairs at the end of the row. “You were right when you assumed that Number Ten has known about them far longer than the public assumes. How long, is the question, which I cannot answer, simply because I don’t know. But what I do know is that they have been here, watching these subjects as their doctors performed a number of examinations on them.”

  “You mean torture,” Alison said.

  Bran nodded subtly. “If that’s how you want to put it, but these two were alive when they arrived here. And if you would have come with me, I could have shown you the barcodes on their skin.”

  “Barcodes?” Alison frowned.

  “Yeah.” Bran turned his gaze on her. “You got it right. Outside those markings, those two don't exist in any registry, any database in the world. Where do they came from? I don’t know. Why they were brought here, of all places? I have my own suspicions. And I bet you’ve already drawn your own conclusion as to why the government wanted to study them well before the first victim appeared in the case files, haven’t you?”

  Alison said nothing. She couldn’t. She was that shocked. If what Bran was saying was correct, then the government – that she’d served willingly most of her life - was more treacherous than anybody could possibly know. If they’d been aware of the walking dead, then they must have known about other night creatures as well. But there was also one thing that didn’t make any sense. “If these things have been here for a while, then why has nobody heard about them before?”

  Bran’s eyes flashed fiercely. “Exactly the right question I wished to hear from you, and I bet you can formulate an answer, since this project,” he flicked his eyes towards the two individuals, “has been their ultimate secret for quite some time. And, as you heard from the PM’s opening remarks, they’ve abandoned it only to announce this…” He fished in his pocket and produced a small vial.

  “Well.” Alison moved her gaze from the vial to Bran’s eyes. “I get what you’re saying, but maybe they wanted to keep this under wraps until they’d proven that’s the real thing. So how do you know that’s not a placebo and is the real thing?”

  “Yeah,” Bran said. “Exactly. How do we know if this is the real thing without testing it ourselves? That is exactly the reason why I wanted you to witness it.”

  “Okay,” Alison said hesitantly. She didn’t feel comfortable about going into the dungeon without the protection of her sidearm, but she trusted that the racks which had held the dead in place so far functioned properly long after they’d carried out the experiment.

  How it was going to happen, she wasn’t sure, but she stayed standing near the stairs as Bran approached one of the subjects, holding a syringe in one hand and the vial in another. When her boss stabbed the victim in one shoulder, Alison saw a movement in the shadows under the observation dome from the corner of her eye.

  As her hand automatically shot towards the handbag, the zombie screamed so inhumanly that Alison’s heart missed a beat. The next moment she was staring at a tall, handsome man standing at front her. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “What—”

  “—am I doing here?” the man finished her sentence. He pulled out a silver cigarette case and tapped a smoke on its lid, while he said, “I could ask you the same question, and the answer in both cases is curiosity.”

  Bran turned around and bowed his head slightly. “Master Damien.”

  Those words burned fiercely in Alison’s mind. “You are his…”

  “That’s right,” Damien said. “He’s a double agent. But then again, so are you. So no love lost there, eh?”

  Alison could feel anger churning her guts. Their words, their treachery was unbelievable. Of the all people, she could not have believed that Bran was a turncoat serving this man. And she realised the best thing she could do now was to turn around and just walk from the scene. But there was something in that man that kept her heels firmly locked to the floor.

  Damien blew smoke out from his nostrils. “Any signs yet?”

  Bran looked over his shoulder and said, “Nothing yet, master. But if this a real cure, we won’t be seeing anything happening instantly.”

  “Okay,” Damien said. He turned towards Alison and asked, “How’s Jane?”

  “She’s fine, I suppose.”

  “Good, good,” Damien said, as if he was fully satisfied with the answer. There was no remorse in him and the fact was it was he who had lured Jane out that evening. And seeing him brushing off the answer so quickly made her guess that Damien had not even given a half a thought in the past days about whether his wife was hurt or not. The zombie started thrashing wildly.

  In fact, the abomination’s movements became so violent that Alison unintentionally grasped the railing and raised a foot on the first step. But as she was rising to the second one, Damien glanced at her. “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere,” Alison said. Against all her instincts, she stepped down again, just as a loud crack echoed from the walls. Black, rotten-smelling blood spurted out of zombie’s arm as a white bone splinter pushed out through the flesh. Even though the creature was screaming louder than ever before, it wasn’t because of pain, but because of anger. A pure hatred that she could see in his eyes, as the zombie locked his hate-filled gaze on them.

  “I think we’ve seen enough.” Damien dumped his cigarette and jerked his head towards the observation room. “Miss Granger, would you lead the way please?”

  “Yeah,” Alison said. “No problem.” She didn’t wait for another gesture, as she climbed the steps hastily and stepped into the room. She took a deep breath. “That…” She pointed a hand toward the racks, without looking at them. “I don’t want to experience that ever again.”

  “I agree,” Bran said. “But it proves the point. The stuff the powers are offering to the population isn’t working. It’s a deception of…”

  “…the worst kind,” Damien finished Bran’s sentence. “Absolutely,” he nodded. “And it proves the point that we should’ve never trusted in them at the first place. However,” he caught Alison’s arm quicker than an eye could track and pulled her close to him. “You should have trusted your instincts in the first place.” Alison she felt something piercing her skin, and then her legs turned to jelly.

  *** Henrik ***

  I glanced at the << Turn on the direct feedback now or else! >> message floating at the corner of my vision and I said, “Excuse me dear, but they are demanding,” before I reached the keypad to establish a direct connection to the Tank. Then I picked up the pen and leaned back. “So I understand that Miss Granger really
worked for Her Majesty’s Secret Service and the others, including you, had no other connections to the government. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” Jane nodded. “You got it right.”

  “And you met them around four, five years ago, accidentally.”

  “Not accidently,” she said. “I had been observing them for some time, before Alison approached me at a New Year’s party and dropped the question.”

  “The question?”

  She pulled another cigarette from the silver case and lit it, inhaling deeply. “Not exactly a question, because she said, ‘I’ve never seen you here, but it seems that you have seen the New Year coming thousands of times.’ And I couldn’t deny it, I casually dropped in, ‘Not thousands, just a couple of hundred times.’”

  “And did she get it?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Straight away, and it didn’t shock her. Quite the opposite. She seemed relieved. Maybe it was the alcohol Jaq had been ferrying her all night long in the hope of getting into her panties. Or maybe it was simply because she was accustomed to the Damned ones, as she said, ‘Ah, you’re one them, aren’t you?’”

  “And you didn’t deny it?”

  She laughed. “No, why would I have? They were couple of the few people who’d been purging the nests of young ones. And I was intrigued to get on their good side. I knew if I could prove I was one of the few good ones, they wouldn’t come after me. The other thing I needed from them was Mister Bee’s services.”

  “The hacker?”

  She nodded. “You got that right. The Dutchman is one of the very few who was able to do what I needed him to do, and he wasn’t exactly scared of vampires. In fact, he had been spying on our kind ever since one of the Damned had slaughtered his whole family.”

  “That’s a shame,” I said knowing exactly that Harry’s lot would have been very interested in establishing a connection to his kind of operation. The information I suspected he’d gathered from the fringe groups, which could prove to be useful on the new models that the Agency needed if they ever wanted to take back the Earth.

  “How did they die?”

  Jane shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  *** Jane ***

  It was early evening the following day. They’d brought me back to the house, and I woke to a sharp slap on my face. It tingled badly, but also in a good way, as the pain told me the nightmares weren’t real. They were out there and I was alive with my friends. Or were they? I opened my eyes as another slap brought anger in me. Who dared to disturb my sleep?

  “Jane,” Jaq growled. “Don’t tell me you’re fucking enjoying this.” She raised her hand as I used mine to check if my jaw was broken. “What’s the bloody matter with you today? Don’t you be fucking ignoring me. I’m talking to you!”

  I grabbed her arm just as she was bringing it down. And for a moment we struggled face to face, eye to eye, before she turned her gaze away as if she was ashamed. Why she was doing this, I didn’t know. Yet I just couldn’t let her go away without regaining the authority, so I said: “Trust me. How could I be ignoring you in my sleep?”

  Jaq turned to look at me and I immediately saw she wasn’t ashamed, but full of anger … and pain. “Because that’s what you do. Bitch.”

  I rolled my eyes and sat up to wrap my arms around her. “Jaq, whatever you’re going through, you need to start trusting me again or I will ignore you, my love. And that’s a promise.”

  “Don’t you even dare.” She glanced at me bitterly. “Because if you do that, the next time you wake up, it’ll be a moment before I stake your rotten heart. Now, get up!”

  “Why?” I frowned as I glanced at the clock coming up to seven in the evening. “What’s going on Jaq? Why have you woken me up at this hour? The sun’s barely gone down and I’m not going anywhere. I need my beauty sleep or I’ll start to look like Zelda from the Terrahawks.”

  Jaq remained still for a moment. Then slowly her shoulders started shaking, and laughter burst from her chest as she turned around and gave me a hug. One that meant as much as the anger she’d poured into the slaps. As she drew back I saw the pain was still there. It had not gone anywhere, but she wasn’t telling me anything. She repeated her question: “Are you coming or not?”

  “All right, my love.” I lifted my hands. “I’m coming.”

  As I slipped into my nightgown and stepped into my fluffy, I noticed how she looked at me. There was something lingering behind her eyes. Something that told me the hormones raging in her young body were aimed at me, as I swear that lingering look had a bucketful of lust in it. It was gone the minute I noticed it. I approached my dressing table to grab a hairbrush. Whatever she wanted me to do had to be done now, or else I was going nowhere fast.

  I sighed deeply and said: “Show me the way.”

  Jaq took the lead and climbed the stairs to the main floor, where Bee had built his operations centre in my study. The big television screen hanging on the back wall was tuned into whatever terrestrial channel he was currently interested in, while the rest of the monitors on the table displayed meaningless data. So whatever Jaq was so concerned about, it wasn’t immediately visible. And neither did it look as if Bee had expected me to get up so early, as he was fully zoned into whatever he was doing when Jaq crept up on him and snapped one of his headsets cups.

  “Ouch.” Bee swivelled around, holding a hand over his ears, while the other one was raised to defend against whatever punishment Jaq was going to lay on him next. But when he saw me standing in the hallway, he stopped and said, “Oh hi. Could you please tell her to leave me alone?”

  “Oh come on Bee.” Jaq stepped back to observe the condition of her matt-black nails. “Don’t be such a crybaby. I bet it didn’t even hurt.”

  “It hurt.” Bee snapped at her, while his eyes begged for help. “It really did. A lot.”

  “Children, children.” I raised up my arms. “What is it that you wanted me to see?”

  “Show her what you found on the net,” Jaq demanded, and took out her mobile and tapped numbers in. “Where are you?” she said, frustrated, as she got a ‘number unobtainable’ tone. The big screen flickered a couple of times as it switched channels to show some footage.

  At the beginning it looked like Bee had pulled up something from the Metropolitan Police archives, but soon as the archival notes ended, the big screen split in four small windows that showed Central London - not very far from the corridors of power. In fact, it was taken from Vauxhall Bridge, and in the lower left corner that showed the bank of the Thames I saw a sewer tunnel just under Thames House. And in it was a group of well-dressed people crawling out from the pipe as if they were feral vampires, but they couldn’t be. Not in the light that the evening sun was reflecting on the muddy banks.

  Feral vampires would never have done that. They would have stayed underground, far away from anything that could have harmed them. But these creatures weren’t like them, even if they resembled their animalistic behaviour when they started climbing the walls and getting into the shadows of trees that shade the Millbank.

  I tapped a finger on my lip and asked: “Is this some kind of sick joke?”

  “A joke.” Jaq cocked up her brows. “Do you think I would have woken you up to have a laugh? Do you?”

  “No. I don’t.” I shook my head. “But look at them. They are moving too fast for—”

  “Zeta’s.” Jaq nodded her head. “Yeah. I know. But what you see is very real. We checked it, as this shot was taken just…” She glanced at Bee for help. “What fifteen, twenty minutes ago, yeah?”

  Bee checked his screen and said, “Twenty-four minutes ago to be exact.”

  “To be exact…” Jaq repeated Bee’s words as she turned to me with a look on her face that said she was expecting me to go ballistic at the sight of these new undead creatures. It was almost as if she was saying, “get your gear, we’re heading out,” instead of getting more information on what we
were facing.

  So I had no other choice but to throw the ball back at Bee and ask: “How did you find that?”

  Mister Bee pressed a key and returned the big screen to the original channel before he said, “I got a tip from my contacts saying something really weird was going down at Thames House. So I checked it and you saw what I got.”

  “Is that all?” I frowned at him. “Where’s the rest of it?”

  Bee looked at Jaq and then he shifted his attention back to his screen as if he was afraid to answer the question. So I took a step forward and laid my hand on his shoulder. “You’ve done well, my friend. But I can’t for a second believe that was all there was.”

  “No,” he said without lifting his eyes from the screen. Instead I felt his tension increase as his muscles stiffened and I smelled sweat starting to trickle out from his pores. “That was all there was. And believe me, I’ve tried my best but there is something seriously weird going in Westminster and Whitehall.”

  “What do you mean?” I glanced at Jaq, who had tilted her head to see Bee’s face. “What strange things?”

  “Not things,” Bee snapped at me. He shrugged off my hand and said, “A thing. A massive thing. One that should not have happened as the whole neighbourhood is under a severe blackout. It’s almost as if they’d been cut off from the grid. But they’re not, look…” He pointed his stubby finger at one of the smaller screens at the far edge of the table. While I leaned down to see better, Bee clicked it twice to make it bigger. With the full screen display, I saw a power distribution grid for the whole of London. A network that was glittering like a blanket of jewels, as every little node showed one neighbourhood connected to another. And in the middle of orange and green dots were two black ones. And those two places were exactly in the neighbourhood that Bee had just announced. Then just as I was about to say: “Thank God it’s only them,” I saw Victoria switching from the orange to deep black.