by Will Hill
“Easy,” he whispered. “Take it easy.”
“Is he still here?” asked Morton. He swung his flashlight as he spoke, aiming it into the distant corners.
“I don’t know,” hissed Jamie. “I can’t see any better than you can.” He flicked down his visor, desperate for it to be clear, then pushed it back up. His flashlight picked out a flash of something that skittered away from the beam, a long pink tail trailing behind it. He circled slowly, trying to keep his flashlight steady, trying not to let his hand shake.
“What do we do?” whispered Ellison. “Sir? What do we—”
Jamie felt the air shift behind him a millisecond before Eric Bingham thundered through the middle of his squad, sending the three of them crashing to the ground. He hit the concrete hard and saw the vampire disappear away into the darkness. He leaped back to his feet, ignoring the pain that was shooting through his shoulders, and shone his flashlight in the direction Bingham had flown, heart pounding in his chest, blood roaring in his head. He saw something move, tried to follow it with his beam of light, but lost it.
Ellison and Morton climbed to their feet and closed in around him.
“We’re sitting ducks,” hissed Morton. “He can see us, but we can’t see him. We need to pull back.”
“Calm down, operator,” said Jamie. “Just find the target.”
“We need to pull back,” repeated Morton, his voice low and unsteady.
“You heard him, John,” said Ellison. “Let’s do our job.”
“I see you!” screamed Eric Bingham. His voice echoed around the warehouse, seeming to come from everywhere at once. “I see you very well!”
Jamie tried to ignore the adrenaline that was pulsing through him, to push away the terrible screeching voice of the vampire and focus on the task at hand. He took a long step in the direction he had seen Bingham disappear, controlling his breathing, letting the darkness flow over him, willing it to reveal its contents.
“We need to pull back,” said Morton again, but Jamie ignored him. He was waiting for the telltale shift in the air that meant the vampire was moving. He pulled the MP5 from his belt, pressed his flashlight against its barrel, and stopped, listening to the silent warehouse, feeling the air on the skin of his face.
Movement.
Behind him.
Jamie spun on the balls of his feet, raising the MP5 and pulling its trigger as he turned. Fire licked from the barrel as deafening reports crashed through the enclosed space of the warehouse. His flashlight’s beam illuminated his squad mates as they threw themselves to the ground, then picked out something moving at head height, twisting and fluttering, trailing sprays of gleaming red blood behind it. He heard a guttural scream, then silence.
Morton was first to his feet, his eyes blazing, his flashlight’s beam blinding as he pointed it at Jamie’s face. “What the hell are you—”
Jamie reached out and knocked the flashlight aside. “Look,” he said, and shone his own light onto the warehouse floor, where splashes of crimson appeared in the beam. Jamie followed them toward a dark patch of the warehouse floor, which became horribly clear in the bright beam of the flashlight.
“Christ,” breathed Ellison.
Eric Bingham was lying in a rapidly spreading pool of blood, staring up at them with wide, frightened eyes. He was middle-aged, probably nearer to fifty than forty, and looked remarkably small on the wide expanse of concrete. His chest was a ruin of bullet holes, and his right arm lay shattered at his side.
“Please,” he said, the words sending blood cascading down his chin. “I don’t know. I told them. Please.”
Beams from Morton’s and Ellison’s flashlights joined Jamie’s own, illuminating the sorry sight before them.
“I missed,” said Ellison. “When he charged us. I missed my shot.”
“So did I,” said Jamie. “It happened fast. It nearly always does.”
“Jamie—” began Morton.
“Don’t worry about it,” interrupted Jamie. “It’s done. Ellison?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Finish it.”
“Yes, sir,” repeated Ellison. She stepped forward, drawing her stake.
Bingham watched her with uncomprehending eyes. “Please,” he repeated. “I told them. I promise. Please.”
Ellison paused for a moment, beyond the reach of his one functioning arm. Then she darted forward and planted the stake in the vampire’s chest. There was a loud crunching noise before Eric Bingham exploded in an eruption of flying blood. Ellison leaped backwards, avoiding the worst of the mess, and placed the stake back in its loop on her belt.
* * *
“That was all wrong,” said Morton.
The three operators were back in their van, strapped in and ready to move on. Jamie had ordered the driver to wait while he requested an operational update from the Surveillance Division, hoping that one of their remaining targets might have been identified since they had departed from the Loop. The connection had been established, and he was waiting for any new information to be transmitted to them.
“What was?” asked Jamie. He had been staring at the touch screen, but something in his squad mate’s voice made him turn his head.
“That,” replied Morton. His face was pale, almost gray, and his eyes were glassy. “The vampire. Bingham. It . . . wasn’t right.”
“We did what we needed to do,” said Ellison. “Nothing went wrong.”
“I’m not saying it did,” said Morton.
“Why did it feel wrong?” asked Jamie.
“I’m a soldier,” said Morton. “Or at least I was. I’ve fought enemies in every corner of the world, but nothing like that. That wasn’t human.”
“It was,” said Jamie. “Don’t let yourself start to think otherwise. It was a human being with a disease, a disease that gave him unnatural power. It wasn’t a monster, or a demon, or anything like that.”
“It was all wrong,” repeated Morton. He stared at Jamie, who didn’t look away; he believed he knew what his squad mate was really saying.
He was scared. I think he’d forgotten what it feels like.
“I’m not a soldier,” said Ellison. “I never have been. But I’d be willing to bet I’ve killed more living things than the two of you put together. Was Bingham stronger and faster than them? Yes. Was he more frightening? Definitely. But he was still just a target, one that needed taking down. Think of it that way, John. Trust me, it helps.”
Jamie glanced over at Ellison, whose attention was fixed on her squad mate.
I got lucky here, he thought. With her. Very lucky.
On the control screen, a gray download bar was replaced by a window containing two lines of text. Jamie glanced up and read them.
M-3/FIELD UPDATE RESPONSE
NO NEW INFORMATION AVAILABLE
Jamie returned his gaze to John Morton, and made a decision. “I’m pulling the rest of this operation,” he said. “We’re going back to the Loop.”
Ellison frowned. “We’ve got five and a half hours until our window closes, sir.”
“I understand that,” said Jamie. “But I’m not going after unidentified targets with a newly commissioned operator who is having trouble. It isn’t safe.”
“I’ll be all right,” said Morton instantly. “Really. I just need to get my head around it.”
“I know what you’re going through,” said Jamie. “And believe me when I tell you this doesn’t have to be a big deal. But we’re going home.”
“Don’t do this,” said Morton. “Please. We’ll be a laughing stock before we even finish our first operation.”
“That’s enough, John,” said Ellison, shooting him a sharp sideways glance. “If he says we’re done, we’re done.”
“It’s all right,” said Jamie. “This is on me, I promise you.”
I hope
that sounded convincing, he thought. Because I’m really not sure it is.
* * *
Jamie addressed his squad as soon as they stepped down onto the concrete floor of the Loop’s hangar.
“Good work,” he said. “Honestly. There’s one less vampire out there, and we came home in one piece. That’s a good day around here, trust me. Go and get some rest, and I’ll message you as soon as I have tomorrow’s schedule. Dismissed.”
His new squad mates faced him. Ellison’s skin was pale, but her eyes were sharp, and Jamie already found himself full of admiration for her. She nodded, gave him a quick smile, and headed for the elevators. Morton lingered a moment longer. His face was tight with anger, his jaw clenched, his mouth squeezed shut.
“Something you want to say, Operator?” Jamie asked.
Morton held Jamie’s gaze for a long moment, then shook his head. “No, sir,” he said, then turned and strode away across the hangar.
Jamie watched him go, guilt churning in his stomach.
He had lied to Morton, lied to them both—what their squad had done was far from good work. They had destroyed the first of their targets, but cancelling an operation once it was under way was going to mean questions from his superiors. He had turned it over and over in his head on the way back to the Loop and was already second-guessing the decision he had made.
Maybe Morton had been right, and the rookie operator had just needed some time to get his head around what had happened with Bingham, to face his fear and deal with it. Maybe he had overreacted, panicked at the first sign of potential trouble. But in the short time Jamie had been a member of Blacklight, he had seen too many people hurt, too many people killed, to take chances. The stakes were simply too high.
He had told the truth about one thing: He would make sure any negative fallout from the aborted mission fell squarely on him. He would not let Morton or Ellison take the blame for his decision.
Jamie scanned the hangar for the duty officer and signaled him over.
“Is there a debrief?” he asked.
“No, sir,” replied the officer. “Written reports only, sir.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
The man nodded and went back to what he was doing. Jamie set off in the other direction, heading toward the elevator at the end of the Level 0 corridor. He was relieved that he was not required to brief the interim director; he had no desire to explain what had happened now.
It could wait until the morning.
Two minutes later Jamie was standing outside the door to his quarters, almost exactly halfway along the long, curving corridor on Level B. He pulled his ID card from its pouch in his uniform, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. A pile of divisional reports teetered on the surface of his small desk, but he didn’t so much as glance at them. Instead, he dragged his uniform from his body, hung it on the hooks behind his door, and flopped down onto his bed. His eyes closed, and thirty seconds later he was asleep.
* * *
Thud.
Jamie’s eyes fluttered, and an involuntary groan emerged from his lips. His brain swam slowly into action, feeling thick and heavy.
Thud. Thud, thud.
The noise reverberated through his tired skull as he forced his eyes open. He reached for his console and read the white numbers at the top of the screen.
02:32:56
Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud.
He swore loudly, swung his legs down from his bed, and made his way across his quarters. He pulled his uniform back on, then opened the door.
Standing outside in the corridor was Jacob Scott, the veteran Australian colonel. Behind him, their faces pale, were the members of the Zero Hour Task Force.
“Lieutenant Carpenter,” said Colonel Scott. His usually warm tone was curt and businesslike. “You need to come with us.”
“Am I in trouble?” asked Jamie. He couldn’t think of anything he had done that would warrant such heavyweight attention, but nor could he think of any other reason why most of the senior operators in the Department would be knocking on his door in the middle of the night.
“Nothing like that,” replied Colonel Scott. “There’s a situation that requires our attention.”
Jamie groaned. “You couldn’t have messaged me?”
“Not while ISAT is ongoing,” replied Scott. “Until they’re finished, we can’t assume electronic communications are secure.”
Jamie glanced at Paul Turner. “This is serious, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes, Lieutenant,” said Colonel Scott. “It’s serious.”
13
SOCIAL NETWORKING
Staveley, North Derbyshire
One week earlier
Greg Browning put on his headset and prepared to talk to a man he had never met.
He was sitting at the desk that had been his son’s, in the room where Matt had slept until he was taken away by the government and their faceless, terrifying men in black. It was now almost a month since Matt had disappeared for the second time, and three weeks since his wife had taken his daughter and left him. If their son returned, he supposed there was a chance that she might come back, but he didn’t really care one way or the other; something had broken inside his wife when her son went missing for the second time, and he no longer recognized the woman she had become. In truth, Greg had been relieved when she finally packed her bags. With her gone, there was nothing to distract him from the only thing that still interested him: making the government pay for what it had done to his family.
His boss had tried several times to talk to him about what he referred to as his obsession, but Greg had refused to discuss it. When he had eventually been called into the office and told that he was being let go, he had not been surprised; his work had been slipping for months, since the first time Matt had been taken. He bore his boss no ill will—the man was incapable of seeing the truth of the world around him.
A mental-health worker from the local authority had visited him several days later, presumably at his former employer’s suggestion, and he had answered her questions with unfailing politeness. Shortly afterward, a Disability Living Allowance check had arrived, followed by another a month later. The checks were proof that the council had categorized him as mentally ill, but he saw no need to correct them—there was a pleasing symmetry to local government financing his crusade against the government.
It was like a snake volunteering to eat its own tail.
* * *
Three days after the government had stolen his son away in the night for the second time, Greg had defied his wife’s hysterical protests and started a systematic search through the history on Matt’s computer. He had immediately found a long list of sites about vampires and the supernatural, but nothing he considered out of the ordinary; it was mostly kid’s stuff, about blood and fangs and things that went bump in the night. But, as he had been about to close the machine down, an instant message had appeared in the corner of the screen. He had followed the instructions it contained, not really knowing why he was doing so, and found himself looking at a website that felt like the first genuinely real thing he had ever seen.
The site, which had no name and a URL that was a seemingly random string of numbers and letters, was devoted to a simple concept: that vampires were real and that the government was aware of their existence and maintained a top-secret force to police them. It contained written accounts, blurry photographs, snippets of crackly audio recording—nothing that would have convinced the casual observer. But Greg Browning was far from a casual observer: He had watched an unmarked helicopter land in the middle of his quiet suburban street, stood aside as men dressed all in black forced their way through his house, pointing submachine guns at him and his son. And in his garden, he had seen a girl whose body was so severely injured that she could not possibly have been alive rear up to bite a man wearing a biohazard su
it before tearing his son’s throat out in front of his eyes.
The website didn’t possess the smoking gun that he would need to blow a big enough hole in the government for the truth to leak out, but Greg saw immediately that it was close.
Tantalizingly close.
Almost without thinking, he had opened his son’s word-processing program and started to write. He poured every detail he could remember about the night his life was changed forever onto the page, writing at furious speed, ignoring his wife’s pleas for him to leave Matt’s room, to just leave everything alone. It took him most of the night; the sun was peeking its head over the horizon when he hit SAVE for the final time. With a trembling hand, he copied and pasted the text into the box on the website’s posting form, then paused as a terrible thought belatedly occurred to him.
What if this wasn’t real? What if it was all a trap?
He had followed the instant message’s instructions and used a proxy server to access the website, but he had no idea how secure such things really were. What if the website was nothing more than an elaborate snare designed to trick people who knew the truth into admitting it, so they could be disappeared? What if he was about to paste a huge target onto his own forehead?
Greg closed the browser and turned off the computer. He sat staring at the dead monitor screen for a long time, waiting to hear the sirens in the distance that would mean they were coming for him, until he eventually flopped down onto his son’s bed and fell into a light, uneasy sleep. When he awoke the following morning, he turned the computer back on, intending to delete the browser’s history and maybe destroy the machine itself.
That’ll be the end of it, he thought. Case closed.
But he quickly discovered that he couldn’t do it.
Instead, he yelled for his wife to bring him his breakfast and settled in to read the entire website, from start to finish. When he was done he was a changed man, full of a fire he had never previously known and the desire to do something, anything, about what was going on around him. He understood that what had happened to Matt was no isolated incident; there were accounts of missing children from all around the world, children who had disappeared from quiet streets or been dragged from their beds by faceless black shapes. He started checking the website on an hourly basis, and continued to do so as his marriage, his job, and his life collapsed around him.
