Department 19: The Rising

by Will Hill

  “You’re asking me to let you murder with impunity?”

  “I am,” agreed Valentin. “But think of what I’m offering you in return; the burial of a grudge that you must have known would one day make itself apparent to you again. I don’t wish to lower the tone of our conversation, but you must also be aware that if I chose to do so, I could kill you before you had time to even reach again for that little splinter of wood on your thigh. And I’m asking so little in return, merely that you not shed too many tears over the deaths of a handful of people that you have never met, and never would have met.”

  Carpenter looked at Valentin, fear rising in his chest. He knew the vampire was right; he was hopelessly outmatched if their conversation turned physical. And there was something extremely tempting about the offer that was being presented to him: safe passage, in essence, from one of the three most dangerous vampires in the world. But the cost was huge; the acceptance, however tacit, of murder.

  “Why would you make this offer?” he asked, slowly. “Why would you not just kill me now, and render the need for a truce between us redundant?”

  “Mr Carpenter, the world is far more interesting with you in it,” replied Valentin. “I am neither of my brothers; I have no wish to spend my life at war, under constant threat of attack. I am a man of peace, as hard as that may be for you to believe. I think my offer would be mutually beneficial, and is somewhat generous. Do you not agree?”

  John was silent for a moment, as he considered what the vampire was saying. On the one hand, a truce with one of the most dangerous vampires in the world was a betrayal of everything Blacklight stood for. On the other, the chance to guarantee his safety from Valentin, for the rest of his life, was extremely tempting. And there was a third thing to consider: the very real possibility that refusing Valentin’s offer could very well be the last thing he ever did.

  “My family,” he said, carefully. “Extend your truce to cover my family, and we have a deal.”

  “Of course I include your wife in my offer,” replied Valentin, looking hurt. “I think the former Miss Westenra has suffered more than enough at the hands of my kind, don’t you?”

  “She has,” said Carpenter. “But I’m not just referring to her. I mean everyone who bears the name Carpenter, for as long as you live. I mean my children, and their children.”

  Valentin paused, his head tilted slightly to one side as he looked at John. Then he smiled, and nodded his head.

  “Done,” he replied, and extended a pale, delicate hand across the table. John reached out slowly, and shook it, once.

  “Done,” Carpenter agreed.

  “In which case, let us speak of less gloomy matters,” said Valentin, leaning back in his chair. “I hear that Jonathan Harker’s son is doing quite wonderful things in his role as head of your little group. I’d love to hear the latest news.”

  Jamie stared at Valentin for a long moment after the vampire finished speaking. There remained no hint of mischief on his handsome, ancient face, no telltale signs in his eyes or the curve of his mouth that he was toying with Jamie.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said, slowly. “My grandfather would never have made a deal with you.”

  “On what basis can you make that statement?” asked Valentin. “By your own admission, you never met the man, or knew anything of him.”

  “Exactly,” replied Jamie, fiercely. “You know I never met him, so you can tell me whatever you want and think I’ll have to believe it.”

  “What would be the point of that, Jamie?”

  “I don’t know,” spat Jamie. “To hurt me, and my family. To get a little bit of revenge for the fact that my granddad beat you in 1928.”

  Valentin’s eyes flared red.

  “Why do you think that what I’m telling you is negative?” asked the vampire. “Your grandfather made a deal with me, just as you and your colleagues have done. Why does what he did make you so upset?”

  “Because they’re different,” said Jamie. “We made a deal with you to try and protect the world from a monster. He made a deal that only helped himself.”

  “And your father,” said Valentin, softly. “And your mother. And you. You’re right, the deals are different. My deal with you will hopefully protect millions of men and women that neither you nor I will ever meet. Your grandfather’s deal made sure that the people he loved, the people he cared most about, were a little bit safer as they went about their lives. Are you going to sit there and tell me what he did was wrong? Honestly?”

  “It’s cowardly,” said Jamie, his face red with anger. “It’s weak.”

  Valentin looked at him with an expression of disappointment. “To put aside your own morals to protect the people you love is far from weak, Jamie. If anything, it is the exact opposite. He took the choice he made to the grave, carried the burden of it with him his entire life, and never told a soul, never begged for forgiveness or absolution. He did what he did, and he carried on. You cannot afford to continue to look at the world in such absolutes, such black and white. There is no good and evil, no heroes and villains. There are only people, with all their flaws; the sooner you understand that, the less the world can hurt you.”

  “The sooner I can be a monster like you?” asked Jamie. “Never.”

  Valentin sighed, his eyes returning to their usual dazzling pale green.

  “Jamie, your grandfather was a good man, who saved hundreds of lives, who made the world a better place by having lived in it. But was he perfect? Was he some paragon of virtue? Of course he wasn’t. Neither is Admiral Seward, or Major Turner, neither was the monster that you miss so much. Neither was your father.”

  “Don’t. Talk. About. My. Dad,” hissed Jamie, his voice as cold as ice.

  “I wouldn’t presume to,” replied Valentin. “I never met the man. But without knowing him, I can still promise you, with one hundred per cent certainty, that he wasn’t perfect. Because no one is. That’s what I’m trying to make you understand.”

  Jamie’s head was spinning as he tried to stay calm, to think through what he was being told rationally. Then something the vampire had said came back to him, and he gasped.

  “You still honour the deal, don’t you?” he asked, his voice low. “I was never in any danger from you, was I?”

  Valentin shook his head. “No, Jamie,” he said. “You were not. But only I knew that, and I didn’t want to tell you until it was necessary to do so.”

  “Why not?” asked Jamie. “This could have been so much easier if you had.”

  “If I had what?” asked Valentin, smiling. “Told Seward and the others about a seventy-year-old deal with a man who died several decades ago? Why would they have believed me?”

  “Why should I then?”

  “Because it’s the truth. And because you killed my brother, yet you’re sitting in front of me breathing in and out. Surely that is sufficient?”

  “You told me you didn’t like Alexandru,” said Jamie, slowly.

  “And I told you the truth,” said Valentin. “But in matters of family, especially in families as old as mine, honour outweighs personal feelings. Or is supposed to.”

  Jamie considered this for a long moment, then sighed deeply. “I can’t believe he never told anyone,” he said. “My granddad. I can’t believe he kept your deal a secret.”

  “It’s not that remarkable, Jamie,” said Valentin, smiling gently. “Haven’t you ever done anything you didn’t tell anyone?”

  Jamie flinched, noticeably, but Valentine didn’t react, outwardly at least. Although Jamie wouldn’t have noticed if the vampire had; his mind was suddenly elsewhere, drifting back to the conclusion of the first Zero Hour Task Force meeting, and the event he had finally told Larissa and Kate about.

  32

  THE DEPTHS OF KNOWLEDGE

  THREE DAYS EARLIER

  Jamie was first out of the Ops Room as the second Zero Hour Task Force meeting drew to a close.

  He waited in the corridor while the member
s of the group filed out. He wanted to thank Professor Talbot for standing up for him when Brennan asked what justified Jamie’s presence on the Task Force, and reminding him that Jamie had taken down a Priority 1 vampire. He’d been surprised, and grateful.

  Professor Talbot emerged, and gave Jamie a quizzical look.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I just wanted to thank you,” Jamie replied. “For what you said. To Brennan.”

  “There’s no need,” said Talbot, but he smiled. “I merely told the truth. You killed Alexandru. I doubt anyone else in that room could have done the same.”

  “Nevertheless. Thank you.”

  Professor Talbot nodded. “Walk with me,” he said, and set off down the corridor.

  Jamie fell eagerly into step with him.

  “It must be very difficult, being you,” continued Talbot. He didn’t look at Jamie as he spoke, but his tone was kind. “The son of a traitor. Then the son of a hero, all over again. The boy who destroyed Alexandru, but who lost Colonel Frankenstein. It must be a heavy burden for you to carry.”

  You have no idea how heavy, thought Jamie. No idea at all.

  “It’s difficult sometimes,” he said, feeling embarrassed at the crack in his voice. “When I got here, everyone hated me for what they thought my dad had done. But I was trying to save my mum, and I didn’t really care about anything else. Then when we got back from Lindisfarne, everyone applauded, like I was some kind of hero, because of what I did to Alexandru. But then they realised that Frankenstein was gone, and everyone knew that if I had listened to him instead of Thomas Morris, things probably would have turned out differently. I couldn’t tell them that what happened to Frankenstein made me feel worse than any of them, that I blame myself more than they can possibly blame me. But I can’t wave a wand and bring him back. He’s gone.”

  “And your father?”

  Jamie felt the familiar pang of pain in his chest that gripped him whenever he thought, really thought, about his dad.

  “It was easier to hate him,” he said, eventually. “When I thought he had abandoned us, when I thought he was a criminal and a traitor, I didn’t want him back. I missed him, but I didn’t want him back. Does that make sense?”

  Talbot nodded.

  “Now I know the truth, that he died because he was trying to protect me and my mum, that Thomas Morris framed him and he never did the things they said he did. That he was a hero. And knowing that…” He paused, and looked up at Talbot. “Knowing that was like losing him all over again,” he finished.

  There was a long moment of silence, broken eventually by the Professor.

  “Are you finished feeling sorry for yourself?” asked Talbot, and Jamie recoiled.

  “What…” he managed, but the Director of the Lazarus Project rolled over him.

  “You’ve had it hard, Jamie. I don’t dispute that, and I feel for you, and for your family. But self-pity is nothing more than self-indulgence, and it’s something you should have grown out of by now.” Talbot looked at Jamie; his face bore no malice, and there was no anger in his voice, but Jamie still felt as though he had been punched in the stomach.

  “What you do every day,” continued the Professor, “saves lives. It saves souls from damnation. It’s important, and you do it well. It should be enough for you, to know that you make a difference every time you put that uniform on and go out there, helping people that can’t ever thank you. You should be too old to care so much about what other people think.”

  Jamie was reeling. The Professor’s casual demeanour as he lectured him had caught him completely off guard.

  Why the hell is he saying this to me? Who the hell does he think he is?

  “I’m telling you this for your own good,” said Talbot, as though he could read the teenager’s mind. “I believe in you, and I want you to believe in yourself. And if you won’t, then I’ll keep at you until you do. Because someone has to.”

  They walked on in silence, Jamie churning with grief and a sensation that was new, and alien; he found himself feeling a swell of affection for the man walking beside him.

  His mother loved him, he knew that, and he loved her back with all his heart. But since she had been turned, since she had discovered the truth about Department 19, about her late husband and the life her son had thrown himself so completely into, what she mainly did was worry about him. She was so grateful every day when he returned home safely, when she heard his footsteps echo along the corridor of the detention level as he made his way down to visit her, that parental discipline was the furthest thing from her mind.

  And although she was safe in the cells, she was isolated from him, from the world he was a part of; he told her everything he could, but there was still a wall between them, beyond the ultraviolet barrier that separated them physically.

  He had confided in Larissa, and she had told him it was part of growing up, part of becoming a complete person in his own right, separate from the parents that had raised him. She had warned him it could be a painful process, for him and his mother, and Jamie believed he was starting to understand what she had meant.

  All of this merged into the affection he was now feeling for Professor Talbot; he was proud of the things he had done, he was thankful that the men and women of Blacklight treated him as an equal, as an adult, but there were times when he yearned to feel like a kid again, like the boy he had been not that long ago. Talbot’s words had reminded him of what that felt like, and he was grateful for it.

  Despite all that, he was still seventeen, and it was not in his nature to receive a lecture without at least attempting to answer back.

  “What’s the Lazarus Project?” he blurted out. He prepared himself for a reprimand, but instead, Professor Talbot smiled at him.

  “Come and see for yourself,” he replied.

  Jamie stared. “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “Always,” replied the Professor.

  When they reached the lift at the end of the grey corridor, Talbot pressed the F button on the control panel, and the lift began to descend. They waited in silence until the lift slowed to a halt, and the doors slid open. Talbot stepped through them, Jamie following.

  He was as excited as he could ever remember being.

  Since its announcement in Admiral Seward’s speech, the Lazarus Project had remained a mystery; no one knew what went on behind the heavy white doors in the depths of the base.

  But now Jamie Carpenter was going to find out.

  Larissa and Kate are going to puke when they find out I’ve been down here, he thought, a mischievous smile on his face. Although I’m probably not going to be able to tell them.

  He followed Professor Talbot along the main corridor of Level F, a long grey hallway indistinguishable from every other in the Loop. When his companion stopped outside a large white door, Jamie felt a burst of excitement in his chest, like a child on Christmas morning. He couldn’t wait for Talbot to open the entrance; it was all he could do to stop himself hopping from one foot to the other in anticipation.

  Talbot keyed a long series of numbers and letters into the panel beside the door, then lowered his face to a black lens and let a green laser slide across his eyeball. With a series of heavy thuds, the locks that separated the Lazarus Project from the rest of Blacklight disengaged, and the door slid open with a loud hiss and a rush of air. Jamie was suddenly wary, and he grabbed the Professor’s arm as the old man was about to push the huge white door.

  “Wait,” Jamie said. “Aren’t you going to get in trouble for letting me in here?”

  Talbot laughed. “My dear boy,” he replied. “Admiral Seward may be in charge of every other level of this facility, but down here, what I say goes. You have nothing to worry about.”

  With that, he pushed the door open, and Jamie got his first look inside the Lazarus Project.

  The room beyond the door was long and wide.

  It was bright white: the floors were white tiles, the walls and ceiling were p
ainted a flat matt-white, the desks and surfaces were a gleaming metallic white, the coats worn by the doctors and scientists were white. It was a wide rectangle, with a high ceiling. Along one wall stood a row of silver cabinets; they hummed in the quiet, studious atmosphere of the room, rows of lights blinking in erratic patterns on their black displays.

  A grid of desks had been positioned in the room, four sets of eight. Some of these were occupied, by men and women who barely glanced up from their screens as Talbot and Jamie entered. The wall to Jamie’s left was half-filled with shelves, upon which stood an enormous number of grey box files, labelled with long combinations of letters and numbers, and half with long benches covered in an amazing array of laboratory equipment. Jamie saw all this with his peripheral vision; his attention was dragged instantly to the centre of the room, and what stood there.

  On the floor, a wide circular lens had been placed; its mirror was attached to the ceiling directly above it. Between them, spinning slowly, was a three-dimensional hologram of a double helix: thousands of tiny spheres, the majority red but a significant minority blue, linked by transparent white bars. As he watched, a single sphere on the arm of the double helix closest to him suddenly enlarged, and spun out of the pattern. Unintelligible lines of code appeared next to it, then the sphere changed colour, from red to blue, and shrank back into its place on the strand.

  A woman in a white coat, who looked barely older than Jamie, got up from one of the desks, walked over to the hologram and peered at the sphere that had just changed colour. Apparently satisfied, she returned to her seat.

  Beyond the hologram, set into the middle of the rear wall, was a thick airlock door. Biohazard signs flanked it, and red letters were printed on to the wall above it.