by Will Hill
As the days passed, however, the fire that had burned so suddenly and fiercely inside him began to dwindle. The site was understandably updated extremely infrequently; the kinds of incidents that merited inclusion were, by their very definition, remarkably rare. Greg read every post and user comment dozens of times, searching for something new, something to get his teeth into. His own account of vampires and the men in black was burning a metaphorical hole in his son’s hard drive, but he could not summon up the nerve to post it. Instead, he watched, and waited, and hoped.
The post that changed everything appeared overnight.
It was anonymous, as they all were, but its author claimed to be a survivor of the attack on Lindisfarne by a doomsday cult called the Children of God that Greg vaguely recalled seeing on the news several months earlier. His account opened with a series of short paragraphs that made Greg want to cry.
THE ATTACK ON THE ISLAND OF LINDISFARNE WAS NOT CARRIED OUT BY “THE CHILDREN OF GOD,” AN ORGANIZATION THAT I DON’T BELIEVE HAS EVER ACTUALLY EXISTED.
THE ATTACK ON LINDISFARNE WAS CARRIED OUT BY A LARGE ORGANIZED GROUP OF VAMPIRES. I KNOW, BECAUSE I WAS THERE.
THAT NIGHT, I SAW MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS TORTURED AND KILLED. THAT NIGHT, MY DAUGHTER WAS LOST. THE AUTHORITIES HAVE REPEATEDLY TOLD ME THAT SHE IS DEAD. I CANNOT LET MYSELF BELIEVE THAT.
The post went on to describe the attack on the tiny island in stunning, horrifying detail: the red eyes and gleaming fangs, the blood and helpless screams, the fervent desire on the part of the attackers to violate and murder. It explained how the author escaped with a small number of others on a boat belonging to one of his neighbors, how his daughter was stopped in her tracks by the lifeless body of her best friend, and how the boat had left without her. The last thing the author had seen, as the boat pulled away from the dock, was his daughter’s blonde hair flying out behind her as she ran back onto the island.
The account continued beyond the attack itself, describing how the author had been visited multiple times in the aftermath by the local police and by a number of men and women who presented no identification. He was told that his daughter was missing, presumed dead, and warned not to talk to anyone about what had really happened to his home. The Children of God story was given to him and the other survivors wholesale, with the consequences for deviating from it made crystal clear. After a month had passed, he had been told that his daughter was officially dead, although no body had ever been found, and that the matter was now permanently closed.
To Greg, the post was nothing short of the Holy Grail.
There was no mention whatsoever of the men in black, as the author had not seen them. But he had seen the vampires, of that Greg had no doubt. The descriptions matched exactly what he had seen in his garden, and he didn’t believe that the government would let such accurate information be posted online, even if the website was a trap. There would be no reason for them to take such a risk.
He immediately posted a response, thanking the author for his bravery and honesty, and informing him that he was an inspiration. Then he did what he now knew he should have done the day he was first directed to the hidden website: He pasted his own story into the submission box and hit POST.
Greg had no way of knowing how many people had access to the website, but over the following forty-eight hours it seemed as though every single one of them posted comments on the two new accounts. Between them, they provided descriptions of both sides of the hidden world the site was devoted to exposing, the vampires and the men in black who hunted them, that were vastly more detailed than any of the others. They contained no visual evidence, but the words were more than compelling enough. Praise for the authors’ courage and commitment to the truth flooded in as discussions sprang up about the likely fates of Greg’s son and the man from Lindisfarne’s daughter. In among it all, the two men who had sparked the firestorm of activity began to correspond, tentatively at first, in the comments sections of each other’s post, then more regularly, via the encrypted instant messaging feature that the website provided.
Now they were about to speak for the first time.
* * *
Greg ran a program he had downloaded from a deeply paranoid Usenet board that he had also begun to frequent. When it was finished, he was safely hidden behind a labyrinth of proxies and IP diverters that would have taken the finest analyst at GCHQ an hour to unravel. Satisfied, he opened Skype, disabled video access, and waited for the call to come through.
Less than a minute later the computer’s speakers rang into life. Greg clicked the green ACCEPT button and watched as the connection was established and the counter began to run, indicating that the call was live. A second later a voice spoke to him across the Internet.
“Hello?”
Real, thought Greg. He’s real. Thank God.
“Hello,” he replied. “It’s good to talk to you, mate. Really good.”
“You, too,” said the voice. It was warm and friendly, with a thick northeast accent. “Wasn’t sure what to expect, to be honest. Part of me thought my door was going to get kicked down as soon as I clicked on your username.”
Greg laughed. “Me, too, mate. I’ve still got half an ear out for helicopters.”
The man on the other end of the line laughed heartily.
“What should I call you?” asked Greg. “I’m happy to do real names, if you are.”
“Not yet,” replied the other man. “No offense.”
“None taken,” replied Greg. “What then?”
“Call me North,” said the voice. “And I’ll call you South. How about that?”
“Works for me,” said Greg.
“Great,” said North. “I don’t really want to be on for more than five minutes, if that’s all right with you. I’m about as well hidden as it gets, but I don’t think we should push our luck. So shall we get down to it?”
“Let’s do that,” said Greg, smiling in the empty quiet of his son’s bedroom.
“I’m sorry about your boy,” said North. “I can’t believe they put a helicopter down in the middle of your street. That’s incredible.”
“Cheers,” said Greg. “And I’m sorry about your daughter, I really am. As for the helicopter, I couldn’t believe it either. I thought I was dreaming. Thought it for a long time afterward, actually. When my son didn’t come back, I asked all our neighbors about the helicopter. None of them would even admit they’d seen it.”
“Bastards,” said North.
“They were just scared,” said Greg. “Like the government wants us all to be. What about the others who saw what you saw?”
“Same thing,” replied North. “If I ask any of them about it, any of the ones that are still here, that is, they tell me exactly what the cops told us to say. And you want to know the really screwed-up thing? They believe it. They really believe it. Like they’ve deleted the memory of what actually happened.”
Greg was extremely familiar with what North was talking about; he and his wife had done exactly the same thing when Matt had been returned to them, erasing the men in black and the girl and the helicopter from their previously well-ordered life.
“I know what you mean, mate,” he said, softly. “Trust me.”
There was silence for a long moment, but it was far from uncomfortable; it was the easy quiet of two people who are beginning to think they have found a kindred spirit.
“It’s weird,” said North, eventually. “I don’t talk much to anyone these days. It doesn’t seem worth the effort when I don’t trust anything I hear. Cops, government, TV, the papers. It’s all bullshit. I’m not saying I trust you, because I don’t, not yet. But even if you are just one of the men in black waiting to arrest me when you’ve found out how much I know, it’s good to be able to talk to someone. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” replied Greg instantly. “Part of me will always wish I di
dn’t know the things I know. I never wanted to. It all got dumped on me, and then I was told to shut up and forget it all ever happened. So this is good, mate. It’s a good thing.”
“I go to the mainland every week or so,” said North. “You know where I live, so that shouldn’t be a surprise. I go to Keswick, or up to Alnwick, sometimes all the way to Berwick, and I watch people. I watch them doing their shopping, holding hands, shouting at their kids, running for buses, and I feel jealous. I envy them for the things they don’t know, for the way they just live their lives one day to the next, not knowing the dangers that are all around them. I sometimes wish I could go back to that, like you said. But I know I can’t.”
“Neither can I,” said Greg. “We play the cards we’ve been dealt, right?”
“Right,” replied North. “I don’t care what happens to me anymore, and that’s the truth. My life ended when my daughter was taken away. But that doesn’t mean I want to die, at least not yet. What I want to do is get even, figure out a way to pay them back for what they did. And I want to warn everyone that what happened to you and me could happen to them next.”
“How?” asked Greg. “I want that, too, mate, but how? If we start telling people, we’ll disappear. You know that as well as I do. And no one will believe us anyway.”
“I know,” said North. “We need someone with a bigger voice than ours, someone it won’t be so easy for them to shut up.”
“And we’ll need proof,” said Greg, thinking about the blank faces of his neighbors, the scared expression of the policeman who had told him that there was nothing he could do about Matt’s disappearance, that an order had come down from the highest levels telling him to drop it. “If we had proof, maybe we could find a journalist who would do something. I mean, it’s the biggest story in the world, mate. If we could persuade someone to run it, that is.”
“What proof could we get?” asked North. “I’ve got nothing apart from what I saw. Have you?”
“No,” replied Greg. “Nothing.”
There was a second silence, longer than the first, which only ended when Greg’s cell phone began to beep. He picked it up from the surface of Matt’s desk and saw that it had been four minutes since they had started talking.
“I’m going to get off,” he said. He could hear the sadness in his own voice: He knew that when the connection was cut, he would be on his own again. “But we need to speak soon. We need to work out what the hell we’re going to do.”
“Agreed,” said North. “I’ll be in touch. Good to talk to you.”
“You, too, mate,” said Greg. He reached out and clicked the red button marked END, his hand trembling slightly as he shut down the computer.
He’d taken the first step. There was no going back.
14
GIRLS VS. BOYS
Edwards Air Force Base:
Detachment Groom Lake, Nevada, USA
Yesterday
The waitress set a bowl of chicken salad large enough to feed a family of five down in front of Larissa, rousing her from her thoughts and returning her to the fluorescent surroundings of Sam’s Diner. She thanked the woman and began to eat.
Her mind, as it often did, had drifted to Jamie. She was looking forward to calling him once the time difference allowed it; it was the middle of the night in the UK, and she didn’t want to wake him up. They had last spoken three days earlier, and things had seemed fine, superficially at least. She had asked about Kate and Matt, about his mom, about Frankenstein and the Department he had been born to be a part of, and Jamie had answered her with his usual enthusiasm, updating her on the new Lazarus Project, on Kate’s painful decision to join ISAT, and the ongoing efforts to bring Blacklight back to full strength. He had told her he missed her, and she had replied in kind, instantly and truthfully.
But in the middle of the conversation there had been a space, a hole that they both seemed to be aware of but that neither of them mentioned. Larissa knew it came from her, from the same issue she had been wrestling with since shortly after her arrival in Nevada, that she still couldn’t bring herself to raise with her boyfriend.
Or with anyone else.
She finished her mouthful of food and took a long swallow of her root beer, the dark pungent liquid that was just one of the many small delights that NS9 had to offer.
“You still with us, Larissa?” The voice was gentle and full of mockery, and she smiled. Kara, one of NS9’s squadron of helicopter pilots, was looking at her with a quizzical expression. Her bright green eyes, full of humor, shone out against her dark brown skin and jet-black hair.
“Sorry,” she replied, her smile widening. “I was just wondering what the chances were of me finding some more interesting dinner company.”
Kara burst out laughing as Danny and Kelly, both operators in their second years of service with NS9, bellowed in mock offense. Kelly, the tall, heavyset Tennessee girl who had grown up on the banks of the Mississippi, pounded her hand on the table, her face a mask of perfect outrage. Danny, the loud, gregarious Virginian son of parents whose exploits in the CIA were still classified at the highest level, made as if to stand up and leave, so disgusted was he by Larissa’s insult.
Aaron, the pale, quiet Israeli intelligence analyst who looked like a librarian but refused to talk about the things he had done as a member of Mossad before coming to Nevada, grabbed Danny’s shoulders and pulled him back down into his chair, laughing as he did so. Larissa observed this pantomime with a comforting warmth spreading through her chest.
Her transfer to NS9 was a bridge-building mission, part of the new commitment made by the supernatural Departments of the world to pool their resources and intelligence, a commitment forged in the aftermath of the attack on the Loop and the abduction of Henry Seward. She had been ordered to spend two months in Nevada, during which time she was to select six American operators who would help fill the holes left by Valeri Rusmanov’s assault. Operators had been dispatched to every Department in the world with similar assignments; when they were complete, Blacklight would be the first fully multinational Department, staffed by men and women of every race and nationality.
Out of the corner of her eye, Larissa noticed Tim Albertsson looking at her. Tim had been the second person she had met when she arrived in the western desert, and was technically her direct superior for the duration of her stay, although he had never given any impression that he thought of them as anything other than equals, and tended to phrase his ideas for how she should spend her time as requests, rather than orders. The special operator was immensely popular within NS9: polite, gregarious, effortlessly charming.
And clearly, obviously, attracted to her.
Larissa was not by nature an arrogant person, but she was sure that her reading of the situation was correct. She was mostly flattered, although part of her found it slightly disconcerting; Tim Albertsson was twenty-five years old, and, although she was twenty herself, almost twenty-one, she still looked like she was seventeen.
I always will, thanks to Grey, she thought. Stuck at seventeen while everyone around me gets old. Brilliant.
Nonetheless, she liked Tim. He was open and positive and generous, and she couldn’t resist flirting him with him, just a little. She certainly wasn’t encouraging him to do anything about the feelings she was sure he had for her, at least not consciously; she was in love with Jamie and would never do anything to hurt him. But he was a long way away, and she couldn’t help enjoying that Tim liked her.
The fact that they spent most of their time together did not help the situation. Tim had asked her to help him train a new intake of NS9 recruits, which was apparently one of the responsibilities that came with his mysterious rank. They had been working on the same group of nervous, eager men and women for more than a week now, and today had been the day that Tim had asked her to show them what they were really dealing with.
* * *
Nine nervous faces stared at Tim and Larissa.
The recruits were in a line at one end of the NS9 physical training facility, the round room that had been the direct inspiration for the Loop’s Playground. For eight days, they had been put through their paces under Tim’s watchful eye, while Larissa watched from behind the one-way glass of the observation gallery, offering comments and suggestions when it seemed appropriate. The recruits had run, and fought, and run, and fought. They had been dragged through the endless gleam of the White Sands desert for forty-eight punishing hours, forced to endure the sucking anguish of sleep deprivation, challenged to improvise and plan as their minds and bodies screamed for rest. They had practiced endlessly with the tools of their new trade: the T-Bone pneumatic stake launcher, the Heckler & Koch MP7 submachine gun, the HK416 assault rifle, the Glock 17, the UV beam guns and grenades. They had been taught strategy and tactics, urban and rural pacification, use and maintenance of vehicles, and hand-to-hand combat, with no credit given for whatever training they had done in the past. Every one of them was bruised, and every one of them had bled on the dark blue floor of the room they were standing in.
None had quit.
Now, for the first time, Larissa was standing before them, listening as Tim introduced her.
“Larissa Kinley is a Department 19 lieutenant, ladies and gentlemen. She’s also a vampire. If anyone has a problem with that, raise your hand now, and I’ll be happy to show you exactly how much patience I have for ignorance in my recruits. Anyone?”
