by Will Hill
Black uniforms filled the room; a group of Operators were standing in one corner, staring around at their stricken friends and colleagues with looks of open disbelief on their faces. They were clutching broken arms and wrists, holding wads of bandage over cuts and gouges; they were clearly the Operators who had escaped with minor injuries, and Jamie told Matt to go and stand with them.
“Aren’t you staying with me?” asked Matt, panic in his voice.
“I have to go and help,” Jamie replied, softly. “You understand that, right?”
Matt looked at his friend, then pushed out his chin, his jaw set in a firm, straight line.
“Of course I do,” he said. “I’ll be fine down here. Go and do what you can.”
Jamie hauled his friend into a rough bear hug, then released him.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll come and check on you as soon as I can. I promise.”
“I know you will,” said Matt. “Just go, all right?”
Jamie nodded, and pushed open the infirmary door. He ran along the grey corridor, and rattled the CALL button beside the lift. It seemed to take an eternity to arrive, and Jamie had to stop himself hopping from one foot to the other with impatience. Then he heard the lift car slow to a halt, and watched the doors slide open in front of him.
Larissa was standing in the lift.
Her eyes were blazing red, and she had her Glock 17 in her hand; her shoulders were tensed, and she was floating a few centimetres off the ground. It was a look Jamie had seen before, on countless missions, but it had never made him as happy to see it as it did right now.
Larissa’s eyes flared as she saw him. She opened her mouth to say something, but Jamie didn’t give her the chance; he hurtled into the lift and wrapped his arms round her, and held on to her as though his life depended on it.
Sleep, when it eventually came to the Loop, and the survivors of Valeri’s attack, did not come easily. Exhaustion, both physical and mental, finally drove the Operators who had either been uninjured, or had been discharged from the infirmary, to their quarters and into their beds, where nightmares awaited them.
The Loop was alive with rumours of the worst kind; no one knew how many Operators had died in the attack, how many were wounded, or turned. Everyone knew that Admiral Seward had been taken by Valeri Rusmanov, and everyone knew that Jamie and his team had brought Frankenstein home; this was news that on any other day would have been cause for celebration, but the Colonel’s condition had merely added to the sense of fear and desperation that permeated the Department 19 base.
There was one question being asked more than any other, throughout the wide, shockingly quiet corridors of the Loop, a question that everyone who had survived agreed needed answering quickly, and well: who was going to lead them with Henry Seward gone?
Jamie and Larissa slept curled up against each other in Jamie’s narrow bed. It was a violation of Blacklight protocol, and their own rules, but neither of them cared; they had been apart as the world had descended into chaos, each of them fearing they would never see the other again, and they had no intention of being parted again so soon.
Matt slept next door, his head swathed in bandages. He had waited patiently in the infirmary until the early hours, until the doctors had tended to the critically and seriously injured Operators, of which there were a frighteningly large number.
Kate lay awake in her bed, far from the sweet void of sleep, her mind racing with images of Shaun, a cruel slideshow she appeared powerless to stop. She had watched, feeling utterly useless, as Paul Turner had carried his son into the Loop, with Cal Holmwood at his side. She had wanted to offer to help, to offer to share the Security Officer’s grief, but she had not been able to make herself do so; instead, she had merely watched.
Colonel Holmwood sat at the desk in his quarters, working. He had finished video calls with the Chief of the General Staff and the Prime Minister, bringing them up to date on what had happened, and answering their panicked questions as honestly as he was able. He had set a watch on the grounds of the Loop, had scrambled the sensor arrays and kept the entire Department at Ready One. Now he was trying to make sense of what had happened, of how things had fallen apart so completely.
Frankenstein slept heavily in a cell on Level H of the huge base; the heavy sedative that Jamie had injected into his throat had still not worn off, and he had shifted back to his human form without waking, sparing him the agony of transformation. He slept curled in the corner of the heavily locked and guarded room, his grey-green chest rising and falling slowly, his face twisted with the pain of bad dreams.
Out on the grounds of the base, two-man patrols walked slowly round the long perimeter, T-Bones at their shoulders. The men were exhausted, to the point of collapse, but they did not complain. Their thoughts were with their friends, their colleagues, lying injured in the infirmary or cold in the morgue, and they would not let them down by dropping their guard.
Eventually, with incredible, painstaking slowness, the watery yellow sun hauled itself into the sky to the east, and the Loop let out a collective sigh of relief.
The long, seemingly endless night was over.
Now would come the morning after.
86 DAYS TILL ZERO HOUR
51
A COUNCIL OF WAR
Jamie woke to the sound of both his and Larissa’s consoles beeping into life.
He groaned, and fumbled across the top of his bedside table, trying to locate it. Beside him, Larissa stirred, stretching her arms above her head.
“What time is it?” she asked, sleepily.
“I’ve no idea,” replied Jamie. His fingers closed round his console, and he held it up in front of his half-open eyes.
ALL/COMPULSORY_LIVE_BRIEFING/OR/0900
As he read the message, Jamie felt for his watch, and held it up beside the console. The digital screen told him that it was 8:35am. He groaned, deeply.
“It’s eight thirty-five,” he said. “There’s a briefing at nine. Compulsory.”
“For who?” asked Larissa, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
“Everyone,” replied Jamie, and swung his legs out of bed. Larissa’s hand fell on his shoulder; he paused, and turned to look at her. Her black hair was spread out across the thin pillow, and fell carelessly over one of her eyes. She looked, in Jamie’s deeply biased opinion, as beautiful as she had ever done.
“Last night really happened,” she said, softly. “Didn’t it?”
He nodded, slowly. “It happened,” he said. “The question is, what happens now?”
Twenty minutes later Jamie and Larissa stepped out of the lift on Level 0, and found themselves in the middle of a crowd of Operators. Men and women in black uniforms were milling about in the corridor outside the door to the Ops Room, their conversations exclusively concerned with what had befallen Department 19 the previous night.
Information still appeared to be scarce; Jamie heard a number of what he hoped were wild pieces of speculation as he and Larissa picked their way through the crowd towards the door. There were rumours that they had lost half of the Department’s Operators in the attack, that a second vampire assault was going to take place as soon as the sun set, that there had been, or possibly still were, as many as twenty-five Operators loyal to Valeri Rusmanov, who had helped him decimate their ranks. He felt Larissa’s hand flutter briefly across his lower back as they made their way through, a sure sign that she had heard the same things as him.
At the door to the Ops Room they found Jack and Patrick Williams leaning against the wall. The two brothers were pale, and wore expressions of tight concern on their faces, but both smiled as Jamie and Larissa approached.
“All right?” asked Patrick.
“All right,” agreed Jamie. “Under the circumstances.”
“Jack told me about what you did,” said Patrick. “In Paris. Well done, mate. Bloody well done.”
“We did it,” said Jamie, looking squarely at Jack, who grinned.
“Hav
e you told everyone?” asked Patrick.
Jamie shook his head. “I didn’t know who to tell, to be honest with you,” he said. There was a moment of tangible sadness, as the four Operators’ minds turned to Admiral Seward. “I haven’t even thought about writing a report. But I had the Security Division put him in one of the non-supernatural cells on H, so I’m pretty sure word’s got around by now, though.”
“How’s he doing?” asked Jack.
“No idea,” said Jamie, softly. “He was still transformed when they took him down, and still tranquillised. I’m going to go and check on him as soon as this is over, whatever it is.”
“A werewolf,” said Patrick, in a low voice. “That’s unbelievable.”
“I should have thought,” said Jamie. “I saw him get bitten, the night he fell. I just didn’t think about it, until it was too late.”
“Hey,” said Larissa, sharply. “It wasn’t too late. You found him and you brought him home. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“She’s right, Jamie,” said Jack. “He’s still alive, thanks to you. If we’d got there half an hour later, he wouldn’t be. That’s the thing to focus on.”
Jamie nodded, then peered through the window in the Ops Room door. He could see Cal Holmwood beneath the wall screen with Admiral Seward’s assistant; Marlow was typing furiously into a keypad, opening window after window on the huge screen.
“What’s going on in there?” he asked “Why aren’t they letting us—”
The words died in his throat as a second Operator walked across the Ops Room and stood next to Cal Holmwood. The face was even paler than usual, but the robotic stillness, and the piercing grey eyes were unmistakable.
It was Major Paul Turner.
“Jesus,” said Jamie, his voice low. “What the hell is he doing in there?”
Larissa and the Williams brothers turned to see what he was looking at. He heard Larissa gasp, as they saw what he saw.
“The man’s a machine,” said Patrick, his voice little more than a whisper.
“His son’s body is barely cold,” said Larissa. “You’d think he might take a morning off.”
“Why?” asked Jack, his voice solemn. “How would that help Shaun?”
The question hung in the air as the four of them watched Turner and Holmwood confer with each other, while Marlow waited for further instructions. Cal Holmwood suddenly turned towards the door, looking directly at them. They froze, caught, but Holmwood merely rolled his eyes and beckoned them into the Ops Room.
Jack pushed open the door, and they filed in, taking seats at the desks nearest the front. Behind them, the clamour of conversation dwindled as the throng of Operators followed suit. Holmwood and Turner stood beneath the huge screen, waiting for them to settle. Once every Operator was seated, Jamie noticing painfully as they did so that there were a large number of ominously empty seats left over, Marlow clicked a series of commands on his console, and ten windows opened on the giant screen, containing the pale, tightly drawn faces of the ten Directors of the world’s supernatural protection Departments. White text sat at the bottom of each window, announcing the country that the person in the window represented: America, Russia, Germany, China, Japan, Canada, India, Egypt, South Africa and Brazil.
“Can you all hear me?” asked Cal Holmwood. The ten Directors affirmed that they could, and he continued. “As Deputy Director of Department 19, it falls to me to lead this briefing. It is not a job I relish, nor one I have ever sought. I have been proud to serve one of the greatest men in the history of this organisation, who was taken from us last night. Admiral Henry Seward.”
There was a murmur from the assembled Operators, and from the ten men on the screen.
“The situation is still unfolding,” said Holmwood. “And details remain sketchy. But this is what we know so far. Last night, a vampire army led by Valeri Rusmanov attacked us; the specific purpose of the attack is not yet clear, although the capture of Director Seward can be assumed to have been at least one of its objectives. In the course of repelling the attack, sixty-eight Operators of this Department lost their lives, and a further fifty-three were injured. This, as you all know, accounts for more than half of the Blacklight roster.”
There were audible gasps, both from the black figures inside the Ops Room and the foreign Directors on the wall screen.
Sixty-eight, thought Jamie, his mind swimming. I never could have believed it would be so many.
Larissa squeezed his hand, as Holmwood continued.
“The attack was successfully halted only by the deployment of a last-resort weapons system that was unknown to anyone in this Department beyond the Director himself. I am now given to understand that his fellow Directors were aware of its existence?”
“That’s correct,” said General Robert Allen, the Director of the American NS9. “It was a Director-only protocol. As you said, it was last resort only.”
“Thank you,” replied Holmwood. “We are still assessing the damage that deploying the weapon may have caused, particularly as regards to the ongoing security of the Loop, and possible public relations risks. But it worked; for that much we are to be grateful.”
He’s furious, Jamie suddenly realised, as he looked at Cal Holmwood. He’s absolutely furious that only Admiral Seward knew about the weapon.
“We have come to the conclusion that Valeri’s attack was facilitated by the man we knew as Professor Richard Talbot, the former Director of Department 19’s Lazarus Project.”
Marlow punched a series of keys, and a photo of Talbot appeared on the screen, filling Jamie’s stomach with revulsion. “I know him,” said General Allen immediately, his voice low. “That’s Christopher Reynolds. He worked for us, a long time ago.”
“I’m sorry?” said Cal Holmwood. “He worked for you in what capacity?”
Allen looked uneasily into the camera. “He ran a special weapons division here in the desert,” he said. “Then he disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” asked Colonel Ovechkin, the Director of the Russian SPC. “How do you mean disappeared?”
“I mean disappeared,” replied Allen. “Emptied his labs, destroyed all his work, murdered his entire staff and disappeared. We’ve been looking for him for ten years.”
“And you never told us this?” asked Ovechkin.
“It was classified,” said Allen. “At the highest level.”
“That’s a shame,” said Cal Holmwood, tightly. “Because all twenty-three scientists of the Lazarus Project died last night, at this man’s hand. All the information was gone, and his work destroyed; only the actions of one of our Operators stopped him escaping again.”
“I’ve never seen the words Lazarus Project on any update,” said Allen. “You can’t blame me for you not telling me what you were doing over there.”
“You’re right,” said Holmwood. “Although I am not the Director, and the decision was not mine to make, this illustrates the central problem that has plagued our Departments since the beginning. We simply do not trust each other. Am I wrong?”
The ten foreign Directors stared at him, Ovechkin and Allen with faces like thunder.
“If we did,” continued Holmwood, “then perhaps this man could have been prevented from killing twenty-three innocent men and women last night, or from helping Valeri Rusmanov to cause the deaths of sixty-eight more.” His voice was rising, as he struggled to contain the rage that was building inside him. “So I’m going to ask you all a simple question, gentlemen. Are we on the same side, or aren’t we?”
There was complete silence in the Ops Room, as the Blacklight Operators hung on Cal Holmwood’s every word. On the screen, the ten Directors looked down from their offices, in every corner of the world, their expressions full of concern.
“I spoke this morning to my superiors in London,” said Holmwood. “They have authorised me to declare war on Valeri Rusmanov, and on his master, Count Dracula. From this point forward, this Department’s first priority is the recovery of Hen
ry Seward from wherever Valeri Rusmanov has taken him. Its second is the destruction of both Valeri, and Dracula.”
He turned back to the screen. “From you gentlemen, many of whom I have fought beside over the years, I will expect nothing less than your complete support and assistance as we work towards these goals. If you do not feel able, or willing, to provide us with that, then tell me now, and relations between us will be terminated. There is no more room for secrecy, or political manoeuvring, or distrust; we face a common enemy, and we will stand together, or we will fall alone.”
He fell silent, and stared up at the screen. The ten Directors looked at each other, their faces wide with shock. It had never occurred to any of them, as they received Holmwood’s request for an emergency conference, that he would present them with such an ultimatum, and it had left them reeling.
Colonel Ovechkin was the first to regain his composure.
“I do not appreciate your tone,” he said, slowly. “But I believe that you are right, that the time for rivalry has passed. You should consider the resources of the SPC at your disposal, Cal.”
Thank you, Aleksandr, thought Holmwood, relief bursting through him. The stoical, hugely experienced Russian Colonel had been the man whose cooperation he wanted more than any of the others, even more so than General Allen’s. The rest will follow now, just you watch.
He was right.
One by one, the other Directors offered their cooperation, and their support. Cal Holmwood thanked them all, in turn, and told them he would speak to them when he had an implementable strategy for the recovery of Admiral Seward. Then he instructed Marlow to sever the conference link, and turned back to face the men and women of Blacklight.
Somewhere to Jamie’s left, an Operator began to applaud. It was a lone sound for several seconds, before it was joined by a second pair of hands, and then another, and another, until the room was full of deafening acclamation for Cal Holmwood.
