Battle Lines

by Will Hill

  The Science Division director turned and strode away down the corridor at a pace that surprised Matt; the man’s legs were so short he would not have predicted such speed was possible. At the end of the corridor stood a pair of doors with round windows at head height. A sign was fixed to the wall beside them:

  RESEARCH LABORATORY 2

  HUMAN/SUPERNATURAL RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING

  SURVIVABILITY/LETHALITY ANALYSIS

  Matt followed Cooper through the doors and into the lab.

  It was huge: a rectangular space with a high, flat ceiling and tiled floor. The entire room was painted white; its walls and ceiling gleamed almost as brightly as the metal benches that lined the walls and the computer screens that sat atop them. At least a dozen men and women in white coats were bustling between a wide arrangement of desks, a long wall full of files and folders, and rows of machines that Matt recognized: gene sequencers, hologram projection units, powerful supercomputer cabinets, 3D virtual database racks. At the back of the room, a row of six cells was set into the wall, shimmering with the same ultraviolet barriers that restrained the occupants of the detention block.

  “Welcome,” said Dr. Cooper. “I’m sure this must look pretty unimpressive compared with the Lazarus labs, but we call it home.”

  “It’s great,” said Matt. “What are your priority projects?”

  “Right now, investigating the advanced physical attributes of the Broadmoor escapees,” replied Cooper. “Generally, the same as always. Tactical analysis of vampire strengths and weaknesses, analysis of the virus itself. We work in tandem with Lab 3. They apply our work to weaponry and defense development.”

  “You use live subjects?” asked Matt. A chill ran up his spine. “I mean, other than the Broadmoor escapees?”

  “We do,” said Dr. Cooper. “Although I know what you’re thinking, and you don’t need to worry. What we do here is nothing like what Professor Reynolds was up to.”

  Matt had seen the interior of the original Lazarus Project labs. They had been nothing more than a sophisticated torture chamber, where vampires had been eviscerated, destroyed, and revived, and treated as nothing more than animals, all in the name of Reynolds’s headlong pursuit of a cure for their weaknesses, the precise opposite of what the rest of Blacklight had believed he was working on.

  “I hope not,” he said. “What he did was inhumane.”

  “I saw,” said Dr. Cooper. “I led the team that cleared out the labs after he was killed. It still gives me nightmares.” He smiled, but Matt didn’t think the doctor was joking—not entirely, at least.

  “There were two survivors,” said Matt. “A man and his daughter. Reynolds was about to destroy them when Jamie interrupted him. Do you know what happened to them?”

  “Patrick and Maggie Connors,” said Cooper, nodding his head. “They were released as soon as the investigation into Reynolds was complete.”

  “Really?” asked Matt. “We let two vampires go?”

  Dr. Cooper nodded. “The interim director ordered them released personally. Surveillance could probably tell you where they are, if you’re interested?”

  Matt shook his head. “That’s okay. I just find it odd that they got released and now the whole department is under orders to destroy the Broadmoor escapees. None of those men wanted to be vampires. It seems . . . inconsistent.”

  “It’s a gray area,” agreed Cooper. “Cal’s doing his best.”

  “I’m sure he is,” said Matt. His mind was threatening to run away with him, wanting to dig deeper at the moral questions that lay at the heart of Blacklight; he forced himself to focus on what he was there to do. “Can I see the escapees you’re holding?”

  “Of course,” said Dr. Cooper. “Follow me.”

  Matt did so, weaving through the rows of desks and benches. Several staff nodded at him as he passed, but most were engrossed in their work; the atmosphere was much the same as it was in the Lazarus Project complex, where he spent the overwhelming majority of his time. Dr. Cooper led him to the cell at the far left of the row and stopped outside the UV wall. Matt joined him, then looked into the sealed room.

  It was sparse, but was still a far cry from the transparent cubes in which the unfortunate victims of Christopher Reynolds had been kept. In the room was a bed with sheets and pillows, a chair with a small table beside it, a sink, and a curtained-off area that Matt assumed contained a toilet. CCTV cameras peered down from all four corners of the room, presumably positioned to record the treatment of the cell’s occupant, which in this case was a man in his fifties, lying on his bed and reading a paperback book. He didn’t look up at Matt and Dr. Cooper, even as they began to talk about him.

  “Christian Bellows,” said Dr. Cooper. “He was recovered in the Broadmoor grounds. Put up no resistance when they brought him in and has been no trouble since he got here. He just likes to be left alone.”

  “What did he do?” asked Matt. “To end up in Broadmoor in the first place?”

  “Almost killed a postman,” said Dr. Cooper. “He had come to believe that the man was planning to kill him, so he attacked him with a kitchen knife.”

  “Jesus.”

  “He’s a paranoid schizophrenic,” said Dr. Cooper. “We have his treatment records and his pharmaceutical schedule. Don’t worry, we’re looking after him.”

  “Does he understand what’s happened to him?” asked Matt. Bellows looked calm and relaxed, like a man lying on the sofa in his living room.

  “Yes,” replied Cooper. “We had to tell him the truth. He has a long history of delusions, and his new surroundings could have played dangerously into that. He understands that he is ill, with an extremely rare disease, and that we’re treating him. He made peace with it quite quickly.”

  “So he’s cooperating?”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Cooper. “Which is more than I can say for the other one. Come on.”

  Matt followed the Science Division director to the next cell. It appeared to contain the same furniture and fittings as the one Christian Bellows was lying in, but where his had been neat and tidy, this one was a wreck. The bed had been stripped and thrown against the wall, the table had been smashed to splinters, and the curtain surrounding the toilet had been torn down and shredded. In the far corner of the cell a figure was huddled, its arms wrapped around its knees, its head lowered.

  “Alex Masterson,” said Dr. Cooper. “He was picked up breaking into a chemist’s in a town about fifteen miles from the hospital. He fought, but they managed to subdue him. We’ve kept him sedated since he was brought in.”

  Matt surveyed the wreckage of the cell. “It doesn’t look like it,” he said.

  “It’s been rather difficult,” said Cooper. “The standard dosages don’t work, or at least not consistently. We’ve never had captive vampires as powerful as these two. I suspect we have nothing that would work on Valentin Rusmanov.”

  “Probably not,” said Matt. “So you’ve examined them both?”

  Dr. Cooper nodded. “We’ve found no physical differences between them and other vampires. We think it must be the virus itself.”

  “What did he do?” asked Matt, his voice low. He was staring at the dark ball pressed into the corner of the cell. The vampire was motionless; it was impossible to tell whether he was even awake.

  “Masterson?” asked Cooper. “He committed a series of rapes in the nursing home where he worked. He’s a sociopath, pure and simple. Doesn’t understand why what he did was wrong.”

  “Good job he was picked up,” said Matt, his stomach revolving slowly.

  “I suppose so,” said Cooper. “Might have been better if they’d just destroyed him. But at least he can’t hurt anyone if he’s here.”

  Matt shook his head sharply, trying to clear it. Although this place was a far cry from the blood-soaked nightmare that had been the first Lazarus Project lab, the
sense of sickness, of banal, miserable horror, was just as palpable.

  “You said there are no physical differences?” he asked.

  Dr. Cooper nodded. “Like I said, we think it’s something in the virus itself. There’s a well-established correlation between age and power, and the theory has always been that the virus continues to mutate inside the carrier after they turn, increasing their strength and speed over time.”

  “Right,” said Matt. “But that doesn’t explain this.”

  Or explain Larissa, he thought. She’s frighteningly strong. And fast. And she’s barely been turned three years.

  “I know,” said Dr. Cooper. “Do you have a theory, Mr. Browning?”

  Matt nodded. “I do,” he said. “And if I’m right, it’s bad. Really bad.”

  “How can I help?”

  “You said you examined them,” said Matt. He spoke slowly, as though carefully considering each word. “I assume you interviewed them as well?”

  “We did.”

  “What do they remember? About the night they were released?”

  Dr. Cooper shrugged. “Very little. Doctors, nurses, needles. Violence. Red eyes. Neither of them could give any specifics.”

  “What about their bites?” asked Matt. “The ones that turned them. Were they still visible when they were brought in?”

  “No,” replied Dr. Cooper. “But then they almost never are. If the newly turned has fed, the bite will usually have healed.”

  “Okay,” said Matt. “Do you have a terminal in here I can use?”

  “Sure,” said Dr. Cooper. “Over here.”

  He led Matt to one of the long metal workbenches, flipped a monitor up out of its surface, and raised a keyboard into place. Matt lifted himself onto a stool and logged into the Blacklight network. Dr. Cooper watched silently as he accessed the Zero Hour restricted section and navigated into one of the many folders containing raw footage of the Broadmoor attack.

  “Do you know which wings they were being held in?” asked Matt.

  “Bellows was in D wing,” replied Dr. Cooper. “What are you looking for?”

  “I’ll show you,” said Matt. He opened a file called D_WING_MAIN_CORRIDOR and watched as silent black-and-white footage began to play. The camera was positioned above a long corridor, in the middle of which a male nurse was pinned against a wall as two patients tore at his throat and chest. Blood pumped out, horribly dark beneath fluorescent lights, as he was dragged to the floor and fallen upon. A doctor ran for his life, his eyes wide, pursued by a patient with a scalpel in his hand. The patient’s eyes blazed almost white, and his mouth was twisted in a snarl of pure joy.

  “Christ,” said Dr. Cooper. “That’s horrible.”

  Matt didn’t reply; he was watching the footage closely, waiting for what he was looking for. Two naked patients strolled down the corridor, past the twitching remains of the nurse; their eyes glowed, and their bodies gleamed with sweat. Matt hit PAUSE, freezing the image in place.

  “There,” he said. “Look.”

  “What am I looking at?” asked Dr. Cooper, leaning in closer to the screen.

  “This is minutes after the attack happened,” said Matt. “These patients have only just been turned. So where are the bites?”

  Dr. Cooper narrowed his eyes and leaned in even closer. “I don’t know,” he said, eventually. “I can’t see any.”

  “Me neither,” said Matt, his voice trembling. “And I think I know why.”

  The doctor straightened up and looked at him. “Why?”

  Matt turned away from the screen and faced him. “Because there aren’t any,” he said. “The Broadmoor patients weren’t bitten.”

  Dr. Cooper stared at him. “They . . . weren’t bitten?”

  Matt shook his head. “Look, we know the bite itself isn’t what turns people. The plasma that coats vampire fangs initiates the genetic change; the bite is just how it normally gets introduced into the bloodstream. I think you’re right about the virus, that it evolves and increases the power of the vampire it has infected, but I think there’s more to it than that. I think that when older evolutions of the virus are introduced into a victim, the turn begins at a more advanced stage. My friend Larissa was bitten by the vampire who is supposed to be the oldest in Britain, and she’s already stronger and faster than almost any other I’ve ever seen, even though she was only turned a few years ago. I think there is a direct correlation between the age of the attacking vampire and the speed with which their victims develop.”

  “So what are you saying?” asked Dr. Cooper. His eyes were wide, his skin pale. “If they weren’t bitten, what the hell happened to them?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” said Matt. “My guess is that they were injected. With plasma from a very old vampire, plasma that had evolved to the point at which it could make the newly turned this powerful.”

  “Valeri Rusmanov?” asked Dr. Cooper. He was visibly trembling, as though he was about to faint.

  “No,” said Matt. His voice was little more than a whisper. “I’m afraid not.”

  49

  PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

  Cal Holmwood looked up from the report he was reading as someone knocked on his door, and sighed. It often seemed as though there were simply not enough hours in the day for him to deal with everything that he was expected to deal with, and he found himself yet again full of admiration for Henry Seward, who had run the Department with a smoothness that he was only now beginning to realize had been remarkable.

  “Come in,” he called, and set the report aside.

  The door opened, and Andrew Jarvis stepped through it, his face tight and pale.

  What now? wondered Holmwood. It won’t be good news. It never is.

  Jarvis was the Surveillance Division representative on the Zero Hour Task Force and was widely respected within the Department. He had been recruited from GCHQ, the agency that monitored communications and provided intelligence analysis for the Security Services, and had quickly risen to second in command of Surveillance. The division’s director, Major Vickers, had joked on several occasions that he could almost feel Jarvis’s breath on the back of his neck.

  “Captain Jarvis,” said Cal, forcing a smile. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m sorry to come unannounced,” said Jarvis, stopping in front of his desk. “But I thought you should see what’s just appeared on my desk.”

  Holmwood sighed. “What is it?”

  Jarvis held out a folder. Cal took it and put it down on his desk.

  “Just tell me,” he said. “I’ve read enough reports today to last a lifetime.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jarvis. “Yesterday afternoon, Kevin McKenna published a post on his blog that referenced red eyes and men in black suits. He appealed for people who knew what he was talking about to come forward with their stories.”

  “Oh Christ,” said Holmwood. “Where is McKenna now?”

  “We don’t know, sir. He’s not at home, and he hasn’t used his phone or his credit cards since yesterday.”

  “Albert Harker has him,” said Holmwood. “Find them, Jarvis. I don’t care how you do it, just find them.”

  “We’re trying, sir,” replied Jarvis. “Unfortunately, that’s not all.”

  “Go on.”

  “The first two comments on McKenna’s blog were long, detailed accounts that set off about a dozen Echelon alerts. One appears to describe the incident that took place on Lindisfarne last year, while the other refers to a girl who fell from the sky into a garden and a helicopter that landed in a suburban street.”

  Holmwood stared. “Kate Randall’s father? And Matt Browning’s?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jarvis. “We’ve tracked the IP addresses from where the comments were posted. They were behind a maze of proxies and aliases, but we got the locations eventua
lly. Lindisfarne, Northumberland, and Staveley, Derbyshire.”

  “Where are Randall and Browning?”

  “Missing, sir. We found Randall’s car at Berwick train station this morning. No tickets were bought using his name. We’re working on the assumption that they are either with, or on their way to meet, Kevin McKenna and Albert Harker.”

  Holmwood stared for a long moment. “Why am I hearing about this now, Captain Jarvis?” he asked, his voice low and angry. “You were in the Zero Hour meetings. You know that Albert Harker is a priority.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Jarvis. “We’re tracking more than thirty of the Broadmoor escapees and keeping tabs on the rest as best we can. We’re badly understaffed, and this didn’t appear important to anyone who isn’t Zero Hour classified. It fell through the cracks, sir.”

  Holmwood looked at the captain for a long moment. “All right,” he said. “It is what it is. I’ll bring Jack Williams up to speed. No one else needs to know about this. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jarvis.

  * * *

  Kate Randall waited for the electronic locks to disengage, then pushed open the ISAT security door.

  Her mind was full of worry—for Morton, for Jamie and Ellison, and for Matt—but not the anger she had felt only months earlier when Jamie had rejected her offer to help in similar circumstances. She was proud of herself for having reached a point where she no longer assumed the worst of her friend, no longer assumed that his decisions were designed to diminish or damage her, when, in fact, they tended to represent the opposite: a well-meaning, if slightly patronizing, desire to protect her.

  She headed for the lounge, where she hoped Paul Turner would be; she wanted to tell him what had happened to Jamie’s squad. She was so deep in thought that she didn’t see the nervous-looking woman standing in the reception area, and walked straight into her.

  “Oh God,” Kate said, stumbling and grabbing the reception desk to steady herself. “I’m really sorry.” She looked around and found herself face-to-face with a glowing red gaze.