Department 19: Zero Hour

by Will Hill

  After stepping out of the lift on Level A Matt Browning took a moment to compose himself.

  Before he rounded the corner and presented himself to the Security Division Operator stationed outside Cal Holmwood’s quarters, he leant his back against the wall and took a slow series of deep breaths, his eyes closed, his hands at his sides, focusing entirely on the air flowing through his body. It was a ritual he used whenever he was summoned to speak to the Interim Director, one that had been required far more often than he would have liked over the previous ten days. Professor Robert Karlsson, the Director of the Lazarus Project, was in China on an information-sharing mission to PBS6, the People’s Bureau of the Supernatural, and his absence, combined with Cal Holmwood’s assertion that he had no time to deal with new people, had seen Matt become the project’s de facto spokesman.

  It was not just that talking to the Interim Director made him nervous, although he would be the first to admit that it did; it was the fact that he knew exactly what Holmwood was going to ask him, and exactly what his reply would have to be.

  Matt took a final deep breath and stepped round the corner. The Security Operator raised his MP7 by a few degrees and told him to identify himself.

  “Browning, Matt, NS303, 83-C.”

  “Go ahead,” said the Operator, and stepped aside.

  “Cheers,” said Matt, then immediately felt foolish for having done so. He walked down the short corridor and pushed open the heavy door at the end of it. Cal Holmwood, for once, was not seated behind his long desk; instead, he was sitting stiffly in one of two armchairs that stood round a now empty fireplace, a remnant, Matt assumed, of less formal, more opulent times. The Interim Director held a glass of water in one hand and gestured towards the second armchair with the other. Matt crossed the small room and took a seat.

  “Drink?” asked Holmwood.

  “No thank you, sir.”

  Holmwood narrowed his eyes. “Are you all right, Matt? You look like you’re about to faint.”

  Matt swallowed. “I’m fine, sir.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir. Honestly.”

  “All right,” said Holmwood, regarding him carefully. “I have to update the Directors on the progress of Lazarus. What should I tell them?”

  This was the moment Matt dreaded, the moment he always dreaded.

  “Tell them there’s nothing new to report, sir,” he said, and felt embarrassment warm his cheeks. “I’m afraid that’s the truth.”

  “That’s what I told them last time,” said Holmwood. “And the three times before that.”

  “Like I said, sir,” said Matt, “it’s the truth.”

  The Interim Director sighed deeply and set his glass down on a small table beside his chair. As he fixed his gaze on Matt’s, he looked far older than his thirty-nine years.

  “The finest minds on the planet,” he said, his voice low and tired. “Cutting-edge equipment, an essentially unlimited budget, and you have nothing I can take to the others? No progress of any kind? None whatsoever?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” repeated Matt. “We are making progress, every day, and everybody is working as hard as they can, harder than is healthy in most cases. But we’re nowhere near a meaningful breakthrough.”

  “Why not?” asked Holmwood. “Layman’s terms, Lieutenant.”

  Matt nodded. “Sir, the scale of what we’re attempting is monumental. We’re trying to map DNA that is at least sixty-five per cent unique in the entire natural world, reverse engineer a protein activation that is unique in the entire natural world, then synthesise a serum that will physically alter an individual on a genetic level. It’s like being asked to make a century’s worth of discovery in a fortnight, sir.”

  “Will we have a cure in the next decade?” asked Holmwood.

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Guess.”

  Matt wracked his brains, trying to settle on a number within a margin of error that didn’t exist.

  “It’s possible, sir,” he said. “Fifty-fifty chance.”

  “In five years?”

  “Eighty-twenty against, sir.”

  Holmwood sat forward in his chair. “And what would you need to have a cure ready a year from now?”

  Matt laughed: a short, sharp sound with no humour in it whatsoever.

  “Honestly, sir?” he asked. “A miracle.”

  Matt’s words rang in Cal’s ears as the lift slowed to a halt on Level H.

  He had moderated the bleakness of his report to the other Directors; he saw no sense in burdening them with the whole truth, especially when there was nothing any of them could do. But the reality was simple.

  The Lazarus Project needs a miracle.

  We need a miracle.

  Holmwood was angry with himself for showing his disappointment in front of Matt; it was not fair to take bad news out on its bearer. He knew that the young Lieutenant spoke the truth, that the Lazarus Project team were working themselves into early graves in pursuit of a cure, and he was certain they would find one as quickly as it was humanly possible to do so.

  But five years? A decade?

  Part of him, a part he was now forced to accept had been almost hopelessly naive, had believed they would be administering vampire vaccines before the Zero Hour countdown was complete, vaccines that would render it irrelevant. Instead, he was forced to face a bleak reality. There was simply no chance of a cure arriving in time to stop Dracula’s rise; all that was left to do was hope it was found before there was nobody left for it to help.

  Inside the entrance to the non-supernatural containment facility, Holmwood nodded to the Security Operator, then walked quickly down the cell block. He tapped a nine-digit code into a wall panel beside a heavy metal door; it unlocked with a series of heavy thuds and the whir of spinning gears, and opened with a loud hiss. Cal took a deep breath, and pushed it.

  Julian Carpenter looked up at him with eyes that were deep-set and sunken, pushed back by months spent alternating between darkness and fluorescent light. His face was covered by a thick beard, and his hair hung down across his forehead; his razor was long gone, one of the many privileges that had been removed following his refusal to cooperate over Adam. His cell was now almost bare; his own clothes were gone, replaced by a grey T-shirt and trousers, the personal effects he had carried with him on his long quest across America, including his only photos of his family, now stored in a locker behind the guard post. It had hurt Cal’s heart to take them, but he had not hesitated; as far as he was concerned, Julian’s refusal to cooperate was tantamount to treason, a selfish betrayal of everything he had once professed to hold dear.

  “Cal,” said Julian. He was sitting on the bed with his back against the wall, his arms wrapped round his knees. “What an unexpected pleasure.”

  “Julian,” replied Holmwood, pushing the cell door shut behind him.

  “Taking my stuff I can understand,” said Julian. “But did you really have to put me on prison food? That was just cruel.”

  Cal fought back a smile; his old friend had not lost his ability to make him laugh in even the direst of circumstances, but he could not allow himself to be charmed. He needed to see the man curled up before him not as his friend, but as what he had become.

  An uncooperative prisoner.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You can have regular food again whenever you want, as well as your things back. Just tell me what you know about Adam.”

  “Let me see my family,” said Julian.

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Then we’re both screwed, aren’t we?”

  Holmwood took a step into the cell, his hands balling into fists. He was suddenly furious with his former colleague, at his stupid, reckless intransigence; he wanted to grab Julian and shake him until he saw sense.

  “If you really cared about your family,” he said, forcing his voice to remain steady, “you would tell me what you know. Adam might very well represent the only chance of finding a c
ure for Marie, and for reducing the threat your son faces every night. I don’t think you give a shit about anyone apart from yourself, Julian. This is about you trying to assert your influence over a situation you must know you can’t control.”

  Julian stared up at him and said nothing. His eyes, although sunken and red around the edges, still shone the same brilliant blue they always had.

  Jamie’s eyes, thought Cal. One thing you gave him that’s worth having.

  “I could have you tortured,” he said. “It would give me no pleasure, but I could. There are things I could order that even you wouldn’t be able to resist. Is that what you want?”

  Julian didn’t respond, or drop his gaze; his blue eyes remained fixed on his old friend.

  “Say something, for Christ’s sake!” shouted Cal. “What happened to the man I trusted with my life, Julian? Where the hell has he gone? I don’t recognise this person you’ve become.”

  “What do you want me to say, Cal?” said Julian, softly. “Things change. I used to have a family, and a career, and friends, but all I have left is something you want. And I’ll give it to you, Cal, gladly, if you give me one thing in return.”

  “I can’t let you see your family, Julian,” said Cal. “You know I can’t. You’d be saying the same thing if you were me, and you damn well know it.”

  “Maybe so,” said Julian. “But I’m not you. I’m just your prisoner.”

  “That’s right,” said Cal, his voice low and thick with anger. “You’re a prisoner. And that’s not all. You’re a disgrace to the uniform you used to wear, to the uniform your son now wears, and to everything you once stood for.”

  Julian opened his mouth to speak, his eyes flashing with fury, but Cal steamrollered over him.

  “I don’t want to hear it, Julian. You have forty-eight hours to voluntarily tell me everything you know about Adam. After that, I will use every means available to compel you to do so, and I will personally ensure that you never see daylight again. So I suggest you think very hard about what you want your future to be.”

  The first thing the vampire felt as he awoke was the cold.

  It surrounded him, pressing against his skin like razor blades; he was shivering before he even managed to open his eyes. The sky above him was black and blazing with stars; it hung low, looming down, inky and infinite.

  The vampire pushed himself up on his elbows and looked unsteadily around. He was lying in a field, the grass hidden by a covering of deep white snow. A wooden fence ran round the edge, and at the south-eastern corner stood an electrical substation; the wires hummed in the freezing air, the electricity setting his teeth on edge. In the distance, across a dark expanse, pale orange light bloomed against the horizon. The vampire shut his eyes, attempting to gather himself.

  For a terrible moment, he had no idea who he was; the searing cold seemed to have wiped his mind clear, leaving behind nothing but a vacuum. Where he was, and why, were unclear; the field and the substation were entirely unfamiliar. He squeezed his eyes shut more tightly, searching in vain if not for answers then for a clue, a single, solitary hint as to who he was and what he was doing in this snowy field. He only opened them again when a warm, pungent smell drifted into his nostrils, causing saliva to burst into his mouth in a torrent.

  Beside him, lying in a patch of newly melted snow, was a freshly killed deer. It stared blankly at him, its mouth ringed with terrified foam. Hunger rumbled through the vampire, and he felt his fangs slide into place as heat spilled into his eyes. He lurched to his knees, his frozen limbs screaming in protest, then buried his face in the deer’s throat, tearing at the soft flesh, digging for a vein or an artery. One split beneath his teeth and blood, still warm, spurted into his mouth; pleasure overwhelmed him and he threw back his head, his neck muscles standing out, his face coated with crimson. He rode out the wave of sensation, then clamped his mouth back over the pulsing vein and drank until he could drink no more.

  When he was sated, the vampire rose to his feet. Steam was billowing from him in a thick cloud as the snow that had covered him melted, and his mind pulsed with the regained memory of himself. What he had been doing, the trail he had been following, returned to him in a nauseating rush, although why he had found himself lying in a field beside a dead deer still remained unclear. He pushed the sleeve of his coat back and looked at his watch. The time was irrelevant; the day was what mattered. There was a hole in his memory, and the vampire wanted to know exactly how deep it went. He read the small numbers in the date window and felt his lips curl into a thin smile.

  It was two days later than he was expecting.

  Somehow, somewhere, he had lost forty-eight hours.

  The vampire dug his hands into the damp pockets of his coat and found a crumpled piece of paper in one of them. He pulled it out and unfolded it. Three words were scrawled on it, in a handwriting he didn’t recognise.

  For several long seconds, he merely stared at it. Then understanding flooded through him, as he realised what the words meant, and who had written them. He stuffed the note back into his pocket and buttoned his coat with fingers that were still numb.

  I have to tell them, he thought. They need to know that I found him. That there’s still a chance.

  The vampire known as Grey lifted himself easily off the ground, and flew steadily towards the distant light.

  Valentin Rusmanov knew something was wrong the moment he touched down on the roof of his building.

  His home, which was not so much a house as an entire block of Central Park West reconfigured into a vast mansion, was equipped with a remarkable array of security systems: laser grids, pressure pads, motion-sensor cameras, decibel monitors, thermal evaluators. The small electronic panel that was resting in the inside pocket of his suit jacket should have begun to beep as soon as he landed on the tiled terrace between the roof gardens and the glass dome that topped the building, giving him thirty seconds to disarm the system before his home was locked down.

  Instead, there was nothing.

  Valentin took the panel from his pocket and had his suspicions instantly confirmed. Where there should have been a pattern of green blocks representing the various zones of the alarm system, there were only two words of glowing red text.

  SYSTEM FAILURE

  Valentin narrowed his eyes and felt his fangs slide smoothly down from his gums. He floated quickly across the roof, noting the dead blooms of jasmine and nightshade that hung limply in their marble pots, and found what he was expecting: the ornate double doors that controlled access to the roof, smashed to splinters. Valentin let out a low growl, and floated silently through the hole where they had stood.

  The staircase that led down from the roof opened on to one end of the corridor that ran the length of the top floor of the building, the floor which contained Valentin’s private suite of rooms. In the more than a century since he had taken ownership of the building, tens of thousands of guests had danced and drank and laughed and killed in its many rooms, at party after debauched party. But at every single event, each one thrown with the ancient vampire’s legendary style and generosity, there had been a single, non-negotiable rule.

  Nobody went to the top floor.

  Ever.

  That rule had evidently been broken in his absence. The corridor’s blood-red carpet was tracked with dirty footprints, and the pictures that had covered the long walls had been lifted from their hooks and smashed on the ground. Valentin surveyed the carnage, his heart accelerating in his chest. The corridor contained a mere fraction of his art collection, but had been home to several of his favourite pieces, including a Francis Bacon triptych that not even the most exhaustive record of the man’s works had ever listed. He floated slowly forward, trying to control the rage that was building within him, and gripped the handle of the door to his study. He took a deep breath before turning it, steeling himself for what he was sure he was going to see.

  The room had been destroyed.

  Valentin’s beautiful ornate de
sk, which had been carved from dark mahogany when the nineteenth century was still new, had been reduced to splinters and piled in the middle of the floor on top of a Persian rug that was now little more than lumps of coloured string. The shelves had been torn down from the walls, their contents smashed and scattered; next to the broken remnants of a pair of Chinese terracotta warriors lay the deflated corpses of three basketballs and the shattered glass of the tank they had floated in. His armchair had been shredded, its beautiful navy blue leather torn and hacked beyond repair, its stuffing spilling out like intestines. And spray-painted across the walls and ceiling, in a dozen different colours, was a single word.

  For almost a minute, Valentin didn’t move; he was frozen to the spot by the scale and frenzy of the invasion, his eyes wide, his face pale, the initial shock and outrage already evolving in the pit of his stomach into a boiling, howling fury beyond anything he could remember.

  Something in the centre of what was left of his desk caught his eye: a narrow sliver of dark pink. Valentin forced his body into action, floated across the room, and picked it up with his long fingers. It was a Bliss cigarette, one of many that had sat in an ornate rosewood box on his desk, and had miraculously survived the ransacking. Valentin placed it between his lips, found a match, and lit it, dragging the smoke deeply into his lungs. The potent mixture of tobacco, heroin and human blood thundered into his system, and he felt an ethereal calm settle over him.

  You should have expected this, he told himself. Valeri was here the day before you left. You should have known there would be a price to be paid for what you did.

  Valentin finished the cigarette and ground it beneath the heel of his shoe. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he wasn’t sure what he should do next. His first instinct was to bellow for Lamberton, the butler who had served him faultlessly for almost a century. But Lamberton was gone, his heart torn from his chest by Valentin’s own hand, punishment for an act of stupidity that had threatened to blacken his master’s name along with his own. It was a misjudgement that still made Valentin furious with disappointment; Lamberton’s affection for his master had been exploited by the traitor Richard Brennan, and his determination not to trouble Valentin with the problem had left the ancient vampire with no choice but to destroy his oldest companion.