by Matt Doyle
For a moment, it looks as if it won’t matter. Donal uses his momentum to drag the LV to the floor and climbs on top, getting ready to rain down more blows on his foe’s clearly damaged mask. Before he can, the LV lifts his feet to Donal’s chest and pushes, launching the Tech Shifter back far further than he should be able to, another audible hum accompanying the movement. Donal reacts to his sudden shift in direction instantly and lands on all fours like some sort of nightmarish cybernetic monster. He darts forward again.
Donal snaps his wolfen jaws at the LV, but the vamp throws two clubbed fists into the side of his head, forcing him to the side. He grabs Donal by the face and starts trying to ragdoll the massive Irishman into the wall. Donal resists and gets one of his clawed hands onto the man’s nearby shoulder, and shoves. The LV spins towards me and I do the only thing I can think of. My foot slams hard into the LV’s groin, causing him to let out a seriously pissed-off roar.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop him from noticing Donal approaching from behind, and he gets a strong enough hold on the Tech Shifter to launch him towards me. I see the move coming and press myself against the wall, avoiding the metal-coated mass as it flies by, and giving myself ample time to give chase as the vamp heads back into the hallway. He enters the nearest operating room, and I follow, running straight into a trolley of locked drawers as it’s shoved right at me. I trip and fall forward, but before I can go over the thing, two gloved hands grab me by the shirt and haul me into the air. I’m thrown towards the operating table. My knees hit it first, and it flips as I tumble over the edge.
The door slams open and I make the decision to lie still. Angling my eyes as far as I can without moving, I can see the feet of both Donal and the LV as they grapple around the other side of the table. Realising that I’ve somehow managed to keep my grip on the HK45, I let my arm drift slowly out, and point the barrel at the LV. The light goes green just as Donal is slammed down in front of me. He spots the gun that’s currently pointed right at him, his eyes meet mine, and he gives me a nod.
The LV steps around the table.
Donal rolls to the side.
I pull the trigger.
The first bullet catches the LV in the shoulder, the second embeds itself a little below it, and the third drifts down to his leg.
Breathing heavily, the LV drops into a seated position and lifts his good hand up to the back of his helmet. He unclips a lock at the back, and lifts it up, revealing the face we all expected: Doctor Sanderson.
Both Donal and I rise to our feet and walk towards the man, but he shows no fear. Instead, he looks up at us and smiles. “It…has been…a long time…since I…was last shot. Well…well done. I don’t suppose there’s…a doctor…in the house? I appear…to be…bleeding. Ha.”
Donal balls his fist and slams it into the man’s head. The blow rockets him to the floor. He’s still breathing, but he won’t be getting up for a while.
“The Doc was holding out on us. I wouldn’t have pegged him as strong enough to throw you.”
Donal shakes his head. “Me neither. That suit looks bulkier than the last one to me, though. What happened with the other one?”
“I shot her in the leg, but she escaped down the laundry chute. I’m hoping the security footage on the lower floors will at least give us a face.”
“With the number of injuries that come through here every day, we’ll get more than one to go through.”
“It’s a start at least,” comes a voice from the doorway, and we turn to see Captain Hoover staring down at Sanderson.
“What happened to you and Devereaux?” I ask.
Hoove grips his lower jaw in one hand and shifts it from side to side. “A little after you headed out, I heard something outside Welch’s room. Bastard coldcocked me. When I came to, I’d been dragged back into the room, and Welch had been… Well, let’s just say I’m glad she was already dead.”
“And Devereaux?” Donal asks.
“Hanson’s with him now, along with Doctor Thorndike. Was he the one who got the lights back up?”
Donal nods. “Aye. Once we knew where the power room was, it made sense. Took him there myself after Cassie and the other LV went back into the halls. Hanson was headed your way.”
Hoove sighs. “As I understand it, if she hadn’t headed straight there, Corporal Devereaux would likely be dead. As it is, he’s pretty beat up, but he’ll recover.”
We go silent for a moment, until Hoove lets out another sigh and says, “Let’s get started with cleanup.”
“MUCH OF THE damage we managed was cosmetic and amounted to some minor chipping on the walls,” I say. “The items we’d been thrown over or onto throughout the night were all suitably sturdy, and so suffered little more than a minor misalignment compared to their original position. There were two exceptions to this. The first is the bed space divider which I apparently wrecked on LV49’s hand. The second covers the message boards in both the open-plan room and the operating theatre hallway.”
Hoove nods and gives his moustache a quick stroke. “Sounds like the PD’s damages coffers shouldn’t be too badly burned.”
“Less than you’d think,” comes a voice from behind me, and I turn to see Nurse Bridges back in her position behind the main counter. “I had a quick look, and the two message boards you mentioned were…well, they certainly weren’t there this morning. If Harold really was responsible, I guess he must have put them there to hide the power room.”
Hoove crosses his arms defensively and replies, “We’ll know more once we finish taking his statement. Once we have an official stance, however, you will all be informed. I’d imagine there must be a lot of reorganising to do while he’s in our care.”
Nurse Bridges giggles and plasters her face with a near-manic grin. “Oh, you can say that again. Speaking of which, I better make sure we have enough hands to finish getting the patients back up here.”
Both myself and Captain Hoover watch as Nurse Bridges sinks into the chair behind the desk and starts tapping away at the keyboard. Hoove shrugs and says, “I’m gonna head downstairs and check on Corporal Devereaux. Let me know if anything else comes up.”
“Will do,” I say, and start heading towards the room Pauline Welch is still laying in. The plan is to get the more vulnerable patients back into their rooms before we remove her. It seems like the best way to avoid causing too much panic.
Once I arrive at the room, I find Doctor Thorndike sitting in the chair next to the body and scrolling through a tablet with a scowl on his face. I’m not sure I’d be able to manage that. We have the body covered now, but I saw it beforehand. Sanderson obviously wasn’t aware that we’d figured out she was dead and wanted to leave us in no doubt.
I give the door a quick knock and Doctor Thorndike looks up from the screen. He waves me in and goes back to his scrolling. “Ah, I was hoping to catch one of you.”
“Any success with trying to figure out when she died?” I ask, resting myself against the wall.
“Indeed. Well, no, not for certain. All things considered, though, I suspect it happened before her transport to the operating theatre. Doctor Sanderson prepped her, and then completed the procedure within record time, it seems.”
“And was it a real operation he carried out?”
Thorndike shakes his head. “Sanderson was capable, he proved that on countless occasions during his time here. This time, though? The notes he completed show he performed a gastric bypass. The body, or what remains of it now, gives no clear indication of the operation having been carried out, and frankly, I cannot see any obvious reason for it.”
“He said she’d been booked in for the procedure for some time.”
“The paperwork says as much, but look at this.”
Thorndike holds up the tablet for me and I can see he’s opened up the properties for the file on the screen. It shows a creation date of two days ago.
“Ordinarily, we would never check this. We trust our staff. This was an unusual circumstance, however. It also
leads us to the problem that no one listed as assisting in the operation was in the building on the day.”
“We’re probably going to need copies of some of this. Will that be a problem, given patient confidentiality?”
“Corpses can’t complain. On top of that, I think data sharing may be pertinent in this case. Of course, there are hoops to jump through, but you can trust you’ll have my full cooperation in telling you which hoops.”
“Thank you. Captain Hoover will be happy to hear that.”
“Not at all. Oh, there is one more thing. This Nurse Bridges you mentioned. You are certain that was her name, I assume?”
“It’s what was on her name tag. What about her?”
“It’s probably an oversight, but…it wasn’t a name I recognised, and I tend to know all the staff.”
I shrug. “It’s a big hospital, Doc. There’s no shame in missing one or two, eh?”
“I thought the same, but I checked anyway. As it happens, she’s not on the HR system. Now, HR staff are a law unto their own, so I asked around a little. It seems Nurse Bridges turned up a little under a month ago, claiming to be working cover shifts due to the increasing workload. No one questioned it and she just became…a part of the daily grind, I suppose. She was certainly close to Doctor Sanderson, though, and a few people remember seeing her moving Miss Welch back to this room after her operation. Her not being on the computer system means I can’t give you an address for her, but she is on the hard copy rota, so if you thought it worth questioning her, she’s next due in in two days.”
“She’s at the main desk right now…”
“Are you sure? She shouldn’t be in at all today.”
“Wait here.” I push away from the wall and start running back down towards the waiting area. As I pass the operating theatre hallway, a movement catches my eyes, and I force myself to stop. Through the window in the door, I see her, pulling a small bag onto her back. I draw the HK45 and kick the door open. “Nurse Bridges. Stop what you’re doing and place your hands behind your head.”
She shakes her head, still wearing that same creepy smile, and takes a step back, noticeably limping on the leg I shot LV49 in. “You got me good earlier. Even with these new painkillers and the leg brace, it’ll take a few days before I feel confident walking again.”
“Hands behind your head, Nurse Bridges,” I repeat and take a step towards the woman. “My gun has locked onto you, and any attempt to run will be compensated for by the auto-aiming system. You cannot escape.”
“You still have the contact lenses in,” she says, her tone conversational. “You did say they don’t impair your vision. Was that the same in the dark, I wonder? And I see you don’t have your headphones on.”
I take another step towards the woman and muster as much authority as I can into my voice. “Hands. Behind. Your. Head. I will not ask again.”
Nurse Bridges rolls her eyes and moves her hands up, slowly pressing them a little below her ponytail. I’m so busy watching her hands I don’t see the flick she gives with her left foot and only register that something is wrong when the all-too-familiar nausea sinks in and causes me to drop to one knee. Nurse Bridges slides a small metal disc off behind her. “Do tell Casille that I’ll see him soon, won’t you?”
She calmly hops up into the laundry chute and disappears from sight just as I start scrambling towards the disc. Before I can get there, it pops, and bursts into flames. On the positive side, whatever sound it was emitting stops, and I’m able to right myself enough to get to the chute and see that I’ve let LV49 get away down there for the second time tonight.
“IT WAS A long night last night, and this afternoon’s come all too quickly,” Hoove says, relaxing into his chair at the back of the war room. “Okay, let’s start with the facts. Doctor Sanderson has confessed to the attacks. His statement confirms his motivation as an attempt to curtail the blood crisis, just as we expected. He claims to have no knowledge as to who the Four Kings are, other than being aware of their existence to the extent most citizens are. That he has admitted to the crime itself makes this a lot easier, at least in part.”
“In part, huh?” Hanson says. “So, what’s the hard part?”
Hoove’s lips twitch, and I can tell from the quiet anger in his eyes that he isn’t happy with what he’s about to say. “Some things don’t add up. For one, we found the blood samples he’d taken, exactly where he told us we would. His reliance on needing a mix of samples due to trying to match up potential donors with those in need ties up, but he doesn’t have any explanation for why some of the samples are gone.”
“The missing samples are the ones related to the Kings, aren’t they?” Devereaux says.
“Got it in one. All the Kings-related samples and a couple of others. Sanderson’s gear identifies him as LV48, but we know there was also an LV49 present. Sanderson has explained this as being an effect of the light and audio disturbances he created. He claims to have included some specific sounds and leading words in the attacks to create a sort of delusion in victims.”
“Bullshit,” I mutter.
“You know that. I know that. Fuck it, we all know that. But we have a problem. Nurse Bridges, whoever she was, triggered a virus on the computer before she left. It destroyed all video and written evidence she ever existed. The tech guys are looking into it, but they’re saying that, even if they can get around the confidentiality red tape, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to recover anything.”
“Do we know what she took?” Donal asks.
“She definitely took the parts of her gear she discarded during her fight with Caz, as well as everything she was wearing. It’s almost certain that she took the missing blood samples, as well as any other equipment Sanderson left behind. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to track her. We sent a camera drone down the laundry chute and found the maintenance hatch was open between the third and second floors. We followed it through a few times and discovered it was part of the vent system. One of the side routes led out to the street, but the security cameras there were disabled. Providing she knew where the cameras were, which is a distinct possibility, she could easily have found a route back to wherever she went without being detected.”
“We at least got the stuff Sanderson was wearing,” Donal grumps. “The techs are having a tinker with it, but I don’t think it’s the same boots he used when went through the window. These ones had some sort of strong electromagnetic system on the bottom. Or that’s what they’re saying anyway. It looks like he could switch them on and off, switch the poles, and alter the strength. It’d explain how he managed to kick me off so bloody hard when I had him pinned.”
“And the way Nurse Bridges stuck to the wall with me,” I add. “Did Sanderson explain why he went for vampire imagery?”
“Too fucking right, he did. He said we invented Tech Shifting so he figured the best way to combat werewolves was with vampires.”
“So, what now?” Hanson again.
“That depends. Did you find anything on Nurse Bridges during your search?”
Hanson shakes her head. “Nothing under Denise or Anabelle Bridges. Or no criminal record at least, and no photos online that seemed to match.”
“Okay. O’Brien. Anything that can tie Sanderson to California?”
“Aside from the photo Cassie turned up, not really. He had a legitimate job there. No criminal convictions, and nothing I can see that would make him a suspect. If we dig enough, we may turn up something, but if this does all come back to Angel Tanner, she could see it as a reason to instigate another attack.”
“That’s a big risk,” I comment.
“Aye, it is. If we knew what to expect, we could plan, but this makes it clear she could throw anything at us. If it’s her doing in the first place.”
“Caz. Did you get anything more from Castleford?”
I shake my head. “No. His story is consistent with last time.”
“And you’re certain Bridges didn’t say anything useful
when you confronted her at the main desk?”
I bury the twinge of guilt nice and deep and reply, “Nothing. Just the comments about the contact lenses and earphones.”
“Devereaux. Did you turn up anything on Tanner that would help?”
“She’s similar to the Kings, in a way. Almost every photo of her is masked. I can’t find any other photos I can verify as legitimate, and it seems like everyone knows what she gets up to but won’t do anything about it. The conspiracy theory crowd have plenty to say about her, none of it useful. Pretty much all of them claims this is her, though.” Devereaux passes some copies of a photo around. It’s a small girl, celebrating her fifth birthday. “No hits with a reverse photo search.”
Hoove drums his fingers on the table and stares into space, then lets out a tired sigh. “Due to the nature of the case, I’ve had to keep in touch with my bosses throughout. Once I explained our current position, they informed me that unless today’s searches give us a definite irrefutable way in, we were to accept Sanderson’s statement and put the case to bed. Given what you’ve all told me, I don’t think we have any other choice here. Make your final reports, but don’t leave anything out. If we’re lucky, Sanderson will trip himself up in court and we’ll be given leave to dig deeper. Dismissed.”
We get up to leave and become a swarm of sagging shoulders and sombre expressions. Nobody is happy about this. I feel especially bad for Hoove, as he clearly doesn’t agree with the call he’s had to make. As if he knew I was thinking about him, he calls out just as we all reach the door. “Caz, hold on a minute.”
I stop and wait for him to come out from behind the desk, and he starts to lead me towards the back of the building. “How did you find working with us this time?”
“Can’t say I enjoyed the way I got started. The case was fine, though. Why? You about to offer me a job?”
Hoove smirks. “If only. Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
“Why can’t it ever just be good news? Best give me the bad.”
“Your pay for the case has been agreed.”