Department 19: The Rising

by Will Hill

  “Matt?” Jamie said, and the boy nodded. He had noticed the seated figure now, the grey-blue tendrils of smoke rising above him. “This is Admiral Henry Seward,” Jamie continued. “The Director of Department 19. Sir, this is Matt Browning.”

  Seward hauled himself wearily to his feet, and extended a hand. Matt shook it, nervously.

  “How are you, son?” asked Seward. “That was quite a stunt you pulled last night.”

  “I’m not going home,” said Matt, instantly, and Seward laughed.

  “What do you mean?” the Director asked.

  “I mean, I’m not going back,” said Matt, firmly. “Not again. You’re going to have to kill me this time if you won’t let me stay. I want to help.”

  “That’s a laudable attitude,” said Seward. “But it’s not that simple. This is a highly classified branch of the British government, Mr Browning. You do not simply walk up, knock on the door and ask to join the club. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Matt. “I understand that you’re keeping the biggest secret in the world inside this base, and I understand that I’m never going to be able to forget the things I saw. This is the only place I want to be.”

  “You want to help, yes?” said Seward. “You want to do what Mr Carpenter here does, what the men who visited your house last year do?”

  “That’s right, sir,” replied Matt.

  “It takes months of training to become an Operator in this Department, Matt. Months of painful, tiring, gruelling training, for the privilege of spending your life in the darkness fighting monsters. Is that really what you want?”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt replied, but there was a moment’s hesitation before he did so, which Jamie knew everyone in the room had seen.

  “I don’t believe you,” said Seward, gently. “I believe you want to help us, I believe you want to be part of what we do here. But I’ve seen two generations of Operators come through this base, and I flatter myself I can tell the ones who are going to make it from a distance. And you, Mr Browning, are not one of them. That’s not an insult, I promise you; it’s just a fact.”

  Matt’s shoulders slumped, and tears began to brim in the corners of his eyes.

  They’re going to send me home again, he thought. Or worse.

  “I’ll take him back to the secure dorm, sir,” said Marlow. “We can start working on a cover story to send him home with.”

  Matt looked helplessly at Jamie, who felt his heart go out to him. He racked his brains for a way to help, to stop this before it was all over and Matt was gone, again.

  “Admiral,” he said, suddenly. “Maybe there’s something else we could consider?”

  Jamie saw Marlow roll his eyes, and ignored him. The Director turned to face him, and he continued.

  “He doesn’t have to be an Operator to help us,” he said. “You saw the files Intelligence put together when he was here last year; extremely intelligent, with particular aptitude for maths and science.”

  “How do you know that?” whispered Matt, a horrified look on his face. Jamie shot him a look of apology, but pressed ahead.

  “Why don’t we ask Professor Talbot if he needs more help in the lab, sir? Or an assistant – anything?” He could hear the desperation creeping into his voice, but he couldn’t help it. If this didn’t work, he couldn’t think of anything else he could do. Matt would be going home again, or worse; imprisoned in the Loop for the rest of his life, or – no, they wouldn’t do that. We’re soldiers, not murderers.

  I hope.

  “I’ll think about it,” replied Seward, and Jamie breathed an audible sigh of relief.

  “Sir, this is most—” began Marlow, but Seward waved a hand at him.

  “I know exactly what this is, Marlow,” he said. “I said I’ll think about it, and I intend to. Jamie, take Mr Browning below, get the boy some food, then return him to the secure dormitory. Major Turner, you stay with me, please. Dismissed, everyone.”

  Marlow rolled his eyes again, before striding out of the Director’s quarters. Jamie followed, gently pulling a confused-looking Matt behind him.

  Seward watched them go, waited until the door was closed, then told Paul Turner to sit down. The Major nodded, settled into the second armchair and faced his brother-in-law.

  “What am I doing, Paul?” Seward asked. “With these kids, I mean. What would my ancestors think of me if they could see this?”

  “They’d think you were doing your job, Henry,” replied Turner, immediately. “Carpenter may be an insufferable little brat, but he’s the most naturally gifted Operator I’ve seen in fifteen years, and an absolute born leader. He’s proven himself to be one of our very finest assets, regardless of how old he was when he was commissioned. And did you read the file on Browning? IQ of 196, top 0.1 per cent of the world’s population. The boy’s an official, documented genius, Henry; he knows about us, he wants to help, despite what happened to him, and he was brave enough to risk everything to try. So what are you supposed to do? Lock him up for the rest of his life, and let all that intelligence, all that courage go to waste? I think your ancestors would have made exactly the same decisions you have, sir.”

  Seward closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and regarded Turner with a look of immense affection.

  “Thank you, Paul,” he said.

  “It’s the truth, sir,” replied Turner. “You know I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t.”

  “I know,” said Seward.

  Turner waited for his Director to continue, to address the matter that he knew he had been asked to stay behind to deal with, but there was only silence. Henry Seward suddenly looked old to Turner, who had known him for more than ten years, had seen him when he was a fiery, ambitious young Operator, every bit as impulsive and pig-headed as Jamie Carpenter was now.

  The past weighed heavily on him, Turner knew; his wife, Caroline, whom Paul had married after a courtship that had lasted less than six months, worried endlessly about her older brother. Blacklight’s history was arguably both its greatest asset, and its most profound weakness; every decision that Seward made was second-guessed by long-dead men, legends whose example he spent every minute trying to live up to.

  “Henry?” he asked, gently. “Is there anything else?”

  Seward’s eyes focused, and he forced a narrow smile.

  “There’s a leak in the Communications Division, Paul,” he said. “I need you to find it, quickly and quietly; I want the person responsible in this office within forty-eight hours. Understood?”

  “Absolutely, sir,” replied Turner. “I’ll start immediately.”

  “I know you will,” said Seward. “Thank you. Dismissed.”

  Turner nodded, then stood up and walked across the study to the door. As he pulled it open, he took one last glance into the room; Admiral Seward was staring at the wall opposite his armchair, surrounded by the ghosts of the past.

  Jamie and Matt stood in one of the lifts as it descended towards Level G, where the dining hall was located. An Operator had joined them on Level C, taken a long look at Matt in his T-shirt and jeans, opened his mouth, then clearly decided that he just didn’t want to know and closed it again.

  The two boys were trying hard not to laugh, the natural response of teenagers everywhere who are placed in a situation where they know they are supposed to behave. The lift doors opened on Level G, and the Operator strode off down the corridor without a backward glance. Jamie and Matt waited for a few seconds, and then followed him.

  Matt walked alongside Jamie, stealing glances at the black uniform his – friend? Can I call him my friend? We’ve only met twice – was wearing, at the array of weapons and gadgets that hung from the belt around Jamie’s waist. Jamie noticed Matt looking, but said nothing. He remembered how utterly bewildering his arrival at the Loop had been, even though the circumstances had been somewhat different, and he knew how many questions must be jostling for position inside the teenager’s brain. Eventually, the first of them wrest
led its way to the front.

  “So how does it work?” Matt blurted out. “What you do. Are you like the police, just out there looking for vampires?”

  Jamie laughed, saw a look of embarrassment bloom on Matt’s face and moved quickly to reassure him. “Not really,” he said. “You have to understand what vampires are like. They don’t advertise themselves, or at least the vast majority of them don’t. They live in towns and villages, in houses and flats, just like everyone else. You can’t just go out there and look for them.”

  “Oh,” said Matt. “Sorry. That was stupid of me.”

  “Not at all,” said Jamie. “Think about it this way: how many vampires have you seen in your life?”

  “One,” replied Matt. “The girl in our garden.”

  “Larissa,” Jamie reminded him. “Right. Which makes you one of the tiny percentage of people who know they exist at all. But there are thousands of them out there, in every country in the world, in every town and city. You don’t see them because most of them don’t want to be seen, and they’re very good at hiding. And because in most cases, if you do see one, it’s the last thing you ever do.”

  A chill raced up Matt’s spine.

  “We have sixty-five Operational Squads here at Blacklight,” said Jamie. “Three Operators per squad. About half of them are on active duty at any one time, the rest are either on rotation here in the Loop, or overseas, or on leave. The system you used to get back here is called Echelon, a monitoring system that scans all electronic communication for certain key words – phone calls, emails, internet posts, everything. When something happens like the 999 call you made, the system flags it, and one of the active squads is immediately sent out in response. So in that way we’re not unlike the police; we respond to emergencies that appear to involve the supernatural.”

  Jamie checked to see whether he was losing Matt’s attention, but saw only excitement and curiosity in the teenager’s eyes.

  “Also, here in the base, we have an Intelligence Division,” he continued. “They investigate patterns of vampire activity, maintain surveillance on Priority Level vampires, and work to infiltrate the vampire community. Like the SIS investigating a terrorist cell, understand?”

  Matt nodded.

  “Right. From their work come the strategic operations, missions designed to actively disrupt the vampire world: destroying safe houses, interrupting the black-market supply of blood, that kind of thing. There are less of them than the emergency ops, but they’re almost more important, in the long run. They’re how we take the fight to them, rather than just responding to what they do.”

  “Got it,” said Matt. “So you’re like the police and MI5 rolled into one. For vampires.”

  “Pretty much,” laughed Jamie, and was heartened to see Matt smile, shyly. “That’s pretty much it exactly.”

  “It’s crazy,” said Matt. “Doesn’t it feel crazy?”

  “The weird thing is, it doesn’t,” said Jamie, honestly. “It feels completely normal to me now. I just get up every day and go to work.”

  The two teenagers reached the door to the dining hall. The large, bustling room always reminded Jamie of the first time he had eaten there, during a break in the training he had begun the day after his mother had been abducted. He had been battered and bruised, bleeding and more tired than he would have ever thought it was possible to be, but Terry, the instructor, had told him something that had given him the resolve to keep going.

  What your dad did, I don’t blame you for. I’ll judge you on your actions, not his.

  With those words, Terry had been the first member of Blacklight apart from Frankenstein, who had reasons of his own to be loyal to Jamie, to show any faith in him.

  At the time – before Lindisfarne, before the revelations Thomas Morris had unleashed before he died – Julian Carpenter had been believed to be the greatest traitor in Blacklight’s long, blood-soaked history. His father’s actions had hung round Jamie’s neck like a millstone, tainting almost everyone in the Loop’s opinion of him. But not Terry’s; the instructor had made it clear that he didn’t give a damn what Jamie’s father had done or, as was eventually revealed, hadn’t done. It was something Jamie had never let Terry forget, much to the gruff, battle-hardened instructor’s embarrassment.

  Operators milled around the dining hall, chatting casually to one another, or to the doctors, scientists, engineers and administrators who kept the Loop functioning. Jamie led Matt to the back of the queue, where they each took a plastic tray and shuffled their way along the counter. Matt’s eyes widened as he approached the seemingly endless trays of food, and he realised it had been a long time since he had last eaten. His stomach growled, loudly, and the female Operator in front of him cast him a look of surprise.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Sounds like you need to eat something quick,” said Jamie, grinning. “It’s not going to help our case with Admiral Seward if he hears you fainted in the dining hall.”

  “I suppose not,” said Matt, an embarrassed smile on his face. Then he turned towards the long metal counters and began piling his plate high with food from what seemed to be every tray within reach. Jamie watched, helping himself to a large plate of pasta, then carried it over to an empty table near the corner of the room. Matt followed behind him, already picking at his plate with his fingers, and they sat down to eat.

  “So,” said Matt, around a huge mouthful of mashed potatoes. “How did you end up here? I mean, I remember what you told me that night in the infirmary, about descendants of the founders, but it didn’t make a lot of sense, to be totally honest with you.”

  Jamie considered the sheer enormity of Matt’s question; the chain of events that had brought him into Department 19 had begun more than a hundred years ago, when his great-grandfather had been employed as the valet to Abraham Van Helsing. Even the more immediate reasons, which involved his father and a vampire he had killed in Budapest almost a decade earlier, were still tortuously complicated.

  “That story’s going to have to wait a bit,” Jamie replied. “Let’s save it for when we’ve got more time, OK?”

  A lot more time.

  Matt nodded, then attacked his plate anew. Over Matt’s shoulder Jamie saw Larissa and Kate enter the dining hall, and waved them over. A look passed between them that Jamie didn’t like in the slightest, but when they had filled their trays, they picked them up and headed in his direction.

  At least they’re still acknowledging my existence, thought Jamie. That’s something, I suppose.

  He finished his food, pushed the plate aside and watched the two girls pick their way through the tables and chairs. They stopped behind Matt, who was still demolishing his plate, completely oblivious to their presence, and looked down at the teenager in the civilian clothes with curiosity on their faces.

  “Who’s your friend?” asked Larissa.

  Matt spluttered, almost choked on a mouthful of food, swallowed, then turned round to see who had spoken. He saw Larissa smiling down at him, and all colour drained from his face. Larissa watched it happen, frowned and then her eyes widened with terrible recognition.

  “What—” she began, but then Matt was moving, leaping up out of his seat, sending it crashing to the floor with a clatter that drew the attention of everyone in the room, and running to Jamie’s side, putting the table between himself and Larissa.

  “Oh Christ,” breathed Jamie.

  He leapt to his feet, and grabbed Matt’s shoulders. The boy was physically shaking, his body trembling in Jamie’s grasp, his eyes wide with terror.

  “Matt!” he shouted, not caring that the rest of the Operators in the dining room had now fallen silent as they watched him and his friends. “Matt, it’s OK! Calm down, OK?”

  “What the hell is going on?” demanded Kate. “Who’s he?”

  “That’s him,” said Larissa, distantly. “The boy from the garden. The one I hurt.”

  “What?” snapped Kate. “I thought they sent him home weeks
ago? What’s he doing here?”

  “He risked his life to come back here because he wants to help us,” said Jamie, rounding on her. “I’d call that pretty admirable, wouldn’t you?”

  Kate looked at him for a moment, then dropped her eyes. Jamie turned back to Matt. The boy was still staring at Larissa, his eyes wide; Jamie stepped in front of him, and shook his shoulders hard.

  “Matt!” said Jamie. “Larissa is on our side, OK? She defected from the vampires, and they almost killed her because she did. She’s one of the good guys, OK? Matt?”

  Slowly, Matt’s eyes began to focus, and his shoulders, which had felt like iron bars when Jamie grabbed them, began to relax. Then Matt blinked, and looked at Jamie.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He sounded as though he was on the verge of tears. “I’m sorry, Jamie. It was just a shock. I’m sorry, OK?”

  “Stop apologising,” said Jamie, and grinned at Matt. “You’re fine, everyone’s fine. But you’ve got to try and relax, because I want you to meet my friends. All right?”

  Matt nodded. Jamie stepped aside and the four teenagers faced each other across the table. Around them, the other Operators returned to their food, satisfied that there was going to be no more excitement.

  “Matt, this is Kate,” said Jamie. “Kate lived on Lindisfarne when… well, it’s another long story.”

  Kate smiled. “It’s a pretty good one, though,” she said, then laughed as Matt extended his hand towards her, in a peculiarly formal manner. “It’s nice to meet you, Matt,” she said, taking the offered hand and shaking it gently.

  “You too,” said Matt, and a shy smile crept across his face.

  “And you’ve already met Larissa,” said Jamie. It was a risky joke, but he knew that if this was going to work, he had to defuse the tension between his new friend and his girlfriend, and do it quickly.

  Larissa smiled guiltily, then frowned, as though she wasn’t sure how to respond. But mercifully, Matt broke into a broad grin, and extended his hand towards her, which she gratefully took.