Department 19: Battle Lines

by Hill, Will

  “What window?” asked Ellison, from out in the corridor.

  “There’s a broken window on the third floor,” said Jamie. “I saw it as we came in.”

  “Thanks for telling us,” said Morton.

  “Sorry,” said Jamie. “I thought you might have noticed it yourselves.”

  He shone his torch across the floor, following the footprints. They ended at the broken door, but that was far enough; they all knew where Alastair Dempsey had gone.

  “The escalators are twenty-one metres,” said Jamie, walking back out into the corridor. “There are two platforms, one on each side. If there’s no sign of him, we’ll check the east platform first. The tunnel was closed in 1917 and it’s sealed at both ends.”

  “What about the west tunnel?” asked Morton.

  “It was closed in 1994,” said Jamie. “The tracks are still there and the tunnel is clear. It runs north for about half a mile.”

  “Half a mile?” repeated Morton. “Don’t you think there might be one or two places to hide in half a mile of tunnel?”

  “We’d better get on with it then,” said Ellison, glaring at her squad mate.

  Jamie shot her a quick smile. “Agreed,” he said. “Morton, you stay on point.”

  “Yes, sir,” he replied, and started down the middle escalator, his boots thudding on the metal stairs. The beam of Morton’s torch rested steadily on the distant floor; Ellison’s and Jamie’s swept slowly in wide arcs as they followed him down towards it.

  At the bottom, Jamie immediately saw that there was no need to check the east platform. A thick layer of dust and dirt covered the floor tiles, in which Dempsey’s footprints were clearly visible; spaced widely and evenly apart, they disappeared through the arch that led to the west platform. It was darker at the bottom of the escalators; the lights in the station still worked, but Jamie had not asked for them to be turned on. He did not want to make it obvious to Alastair Dempsey that someone was coming.

  The three Operators stepped silently through the arch and emerged on to a perfectly preserved platform. The tiling on the walls and ceilings was immaculate, and a tube train sat silently on the tracks before them, its doors open, its seats empty.

  “What the hell?” asked Morton, his voice low.

  “It must be used for filming,” said Ellison.

  “It’s creepy.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Ellison, and smiled at her squad mate.

  The footprints headed north, then disappeared at the end of the platform. Jamie led his squad in the same direction, their T-Bones drawn, their torches casting bright white light before them. It was hot on the platform, and humid; the air was warm and musty, and seemed thick, almost solid. It smelt faintly rotten, and Jamie felt his nose wrinkle in mild disgust as he reached the end of the platform. He lowered his visor, twisted the dial on his belt to thermographic and looked down the tunnel; it appeared as a flat tube of dark red, with no detail whatsoever.

  The humidity’s blowing out the sensors, he thought, pushing the visor back up. Awesome. No thermographics, no satellite overlook, no console signal. Welcome back to the dark ages.

  A concrete walkway extended about three metres, until four wide steps led down to the tunnel floor. The train loomed over them, incredibly tall when viewed from the same level as its wheels. It seemed oddly threatening, as though it was merely sleeping; Jamie imagined its engines suddenly roaring into life, the flat metal front lurching after them in the darkness as they fled along its rails, and shivered. He turned his back on the train, felt his shoulders tense slightly, and shone his torch down the dark abyss of the tunnel.

  The tracks gleamed in the torchlight. Between and beyond the silver rails, the tunnel floor was dust and dirt. Toppled piles of crumbling bricks stood against the walls, and plastic bags full of goodness knows what were piled in shiny, sweating mountains. Rats scurried away from the beams, their feet clicking across the floor, their tails leaving trails in the dust and soot.

  “This way,” said Jamie, his voice sounding far less confident than he would have liked. He was suddenly very conscious of where they were, who they were looking for, and how far away help would be if something went wrong in this old, forgotten place.

  “Let’s do it,” said Ellison.

  Jamie nodded, and led his squad into the dark maw of the tunnel.

  They swept the wide space with their torches, swinging them in slow, overlapping arcs. Water dripped from the ceiling, creating dark puddles topped with an oily film. The cables that powered the lights ran in thick bunches on the ceiling above their heads, black snaking tubes that reflected their torches back at them. They moved at a determinedly slow pace: the rails were slippery, the floor unsteady, studded with cracks and holes. It would be very easy to twist an ankle, and a long way back to the surface to have it dealt with.

  “Question,” whispered Morton.

  “What is it?” asked Jamie.

  “Has anyone actually thought about why Dempsey would be down here?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Ellison.

  “Exactly what I said,” hissed Morton. “It’s not like Dempsey worked for the tube, or was an engineer or a town planner. He didn’t even live in London, for Christ’s sake. So how come he knew about this place?”

  “Why don’t you ask him when we find him?” whispered Jamie. “Enough talk now. Let’s keep moving.”

  They passed several emergency exit doors, as Morton had predicted, but all of them were locked and none looked like they had been opened in the last hundred years. The squad moved steadily, all three silently aware that they would soon be reaching the end of the tunnel. Jamie could feel tension wriggling into his stomach, where it curled up in a tight little ball; he had expected the confrontation with Alastair Dempsey to have come by now, that the newly-turned vampire would have merely been hiding from the sun in the old tunnels, and therefore easy to find.

  He was certain they hadn’t missed him: the tunnel was simply not wide enough. Instead, he was starting to believe that Dempsey had flown back over his footprints and into the east tunnel, hoping that anyone who came looking for him would blindly follow the footprints half a mile in the wrong direction. Jamie didn’t give voice to this awful possibility; doing so would cement it in his mind, would force him to explain why he had led his squad the wrong way. He was trying to force down his anger at himself – arrogant, stupid, useless – when they reached the end of the tunnel and saw what was there.

  The circular passage had been sealed with a concrete plug that filled it to the edges on all sides. The grey wall was speckled black with dust and dirt, stained green by dripping water; its surface was still smooth, except for one small area near the right-hand wall of the tunnel. There, a dark hole absorbed the light of their torches, large enough for a grown man to squeeze through.

  “OK,” said Ellison, slowly. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

  Jamie didn’t respond. He walked forward, carefully stepping over chunks of fallen concrete, crouched down in front of the hole and shone his torch through it. The white beam illuminated nothing more than a few metres of identical wall, but picked out a splash of colour on the jagged edge of the hole itself. He shuffled forward and touched it with a gloved finger; it came away red.

  “There’s blood here,” he whispered. “This is where he went.”

  “Through there?” asked Morton. “Are you kidding me?”

  Jamie stood up and faced his squad mates. “No,” he said. “I’m not.”

  “What’s on the other side?” asked Ellison. “Could you see anything?”

  Jamie shook his head. “More tunnel, as far as I could tell.”

  Morton laughed, a strange, high-pitched grunt of a sound. “More tunnel? The whole tube network is on the other side of this thing. He’s gone.”

  “Maybe so,” said Jamie. “But I want to know where this leads.”

  “He’s gone,” repeated Morton. “Why can’t you just accept that?”

  �
�Why are you fighting us on this?” asked Ellison, fiercely. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong with me?” shouted Morton, his voice deafening in the quiet tunnel, his eyes wide with incredulity. “I don’t want to waste our time stumbling around under half of London and there’s something wrong with me? What’s wrong with the two of you? This is RIDICULOUS.”

  Jamie stared at his squad mate. The rookie’s eyes were wide and his skin was deathly pale; he looked like a ghost in the harsh light of the torch.

  “Operator Morton,” he said, as evenly as he was able. “If you don’t calm down, I’m going to send you back to the surface. Is that what you want?”

  Morton stared at him with resentment shining in his eyes. “Of course not,” he spat. “Sir.”

  Jamie took a step towards him. “Tell me the truth, John. Right now. Can you handle this?”

  “I’m fine,” said Morton. “I just think this is a bad idea.”

  You don’t look fine, thought Jamie. You look like you’re hanging by a thread. I nearly left you in the van and now I really, really wish I had.

  “You’ve made that clear,” he said. “I’m going to do it anyway, so can we count on you? That’s all I’m interested in right now.”

  Morton took a deep breath, and glanced over at Ellison. She was staring at him with huge concern on her face.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, looking back at his squad leader. “You can count on me.”

  It was tight, but the three Operators made it through the hole without tearing their uniforms or breaking any of their equipment.

  The tunnel beyond the concrete wall was structurally identical, but Jamie realised within ten paces that this was a very different space to the one they had just walked through. The walls of this new section of tunnel were covered in paint; graffiti had been sprayed from floor to ceiling, wild patterns of pink and green and white, loops of yellow and gold. Faces stared down from the curved walls, grotesque figures with huge, gaping mouths and staring eyes. Letters emerged from beneath layer upon layer of aged paint, creating words that were not words at all. The three Operators scanned their torches slowly over the chaotic mural, taking it in.

  “This is crazy,” said Ellison, her voice low. “Who did all this?”

  Jamie shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “It must have taken years.”

  Morton said nothing; he was staring at the graffiti with wide eyes, his mouth hanging open.

  “Come on,” said Jamie. “Let’s keep moving.”

  They pressed on, spaced out across the tunnel. The tracks came to an end about a hundred metres from the concrete wall, prompting Ellison to point out that this could not be part of the main tunnel system. Her comment hung ominously in the air; Jamie could not think of a single reassuring response. As they made their way down the tunnel, his torch picked out a cylindrical object leaning against the wall and he stopped to look at it.

  It was a large metal drum, scorched black on the inside by fire. There were lumps of charred wood in the bottom, and the surrounding floor was covered in ash and scraps of newspaper. Jamie reached down, picked up a handful, and let it drift away between his fingers. Ellison and Morton had carried on down the tunnel, their torch beams glowing beyond them. He watched them, his mind working, then shone his torch into the drum. The beam picked out something white and he leant down to get a closer look.

  It was a small pile of chicken bones, picked clean of all their meat. Jamie stared for a long moment, then realised what he was looking at. He was looking at the remains of someone’s dinner.

  His eyes widened. Then he took off after his squad mates, his boots thudding across the floor, his torch beam jerking up and down as he ran. Ellison and Morton heard him coming and turned to face him, questioning expressions on their faces.

  “Ready One!” yelled Jamie. “There are people down here! Ready One!”

  He skidded to a halt and shone his torch past them, down the dark tunnel. And, at the edges of the beam, he saw shapes start to move.

  Lots of shapes.

  36

  SIN CITY

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, USA

  Larissa had been in Las Vegas for just over eighteen hours.

  After her friends told her the amazing news about their furlough, she raced to her quarters, threw the small collection of civilian clothes she had brought with her across the Atlantic into her gym bag, and arrived in the hangar almost five minutes early. Tim appeared a few moments later, a wide smile on his tanned face, closely followed by the rest of her friends. They piled into one of the black SUVs that lined the wall of the hangar, Tim in the driver’s seat, Kelly beside him, Larissa sandwiched between Kara and Danny in the back.

  “Music,” demanded Kara, before Tim had even turned on the engine.

  “I’m on it,” said Kelly, pulling a wire out of the car’s centre console and plugging it into her phone. She hit shuffle and pounding drums and juddering bass thudded through the car as Tim turned the key in the ignition.

  “Where’s Aaron?” asked Larissa. “Isn’t he coming?”

  “Didn’t get a pass,” said Tim. “I checked with the Director, but he said they can’t spare him right now.”

  “Unlike the rest of us,” laughed Kara. “We’re clearly all expendable.”

  “You definitely are,” said Tim, peering round and grinning at her. She aimed a half-hearted punch in his direction, but he dodged it, put the car in gear, and pulled out of the hangar. Fifteen minutes later they passed through the Front Gate; ten minutes later they were speeding east along Highway 375, the big car steadily eating up the miles that lay between them and Las Vegas.

  Larissa spent the first hour of the journey overcome with a guilt that was almost physical. She had reconciled herself with Kelly’s logic, that if General Allen was trying to do something nice for her, she should just be grateful and accept it. But that acceptance had been quickly replaced by worry over what Jamie and Kate and Matt would think about what she was doing. She hoped they would be pleased for her, that they would not resent her taking the opportunity to have some fun, but couldn’t quite convince herself; they would be working and fighting while she drank and danced and gambled. By the time the Vegas skyline appeared on the horizon, she had pushed her concerns deep down inside herself. They were still there, however, twisting gently, seemingly indestructible.

  They checked into a vast hotel with three towers and its own beach. Kara had called ahead and Larissa quickly found herself in an express lift, her bag in one hand, a plastic key card in the other. She emerged on the twenty-seventh floor and followed the long, winding corridor until she found her room. She pushed open the door, reaching for the light switch even though her supernatural eyes could see perfectly well in the gloom, then noticed the view from her window, and stopped.

  Wow, she thought. That’s pretty amazing. Fair enough.

  The Strip stretched away below her, flanked on both sides by ludicrous recreations of landmarks of the world: the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Sphinx of Egypt. Cars cruised along the eight lanes of tarmac, thick beams of multicoloured light blazed into the night sky, and everything was bright and loud and full of life.

  Larissa tore her gaze away from the view, which was so uniquely, brilliantly American that it brought a wide grin to her face, and returned her attention to the light switch. She found it on the wall beside the door, spent several minutes wondering why it was refusing to turn the lights on, and was on the verge of smashing it to pieces when she noticed a slot intended to house her room key; she slid it into place and warm yellow light filled the room. She unpacked her bag, hanging her clothes in the vast wardrobe and arranging her toiletries on the huge granite sink in the bathroom, then pulled her phone out of her pocket and called Kara. The helicopter pilot told her they were meeting downstairs in five minutes, outside the sports book. Larissa had no idea what a sports book was, but told her friend she would see them there.

  Since then, it had all been a
bit of a blur.

  Larissa found the sports book, which turned out to be nothing more than a huge version of the betting shops that were found on every English high street, and met up with her friends. They were full of the laughter and happiness that came with being able to temporarily put down the enormous weight of NS9 and the permission to have fun without feeling guilty about it. Tim led them straight to the nearest bar and the drinks began to flow; they continued to do so as they set up camp at one end of a craps table, as Kara ushered them first into a cab and then into a restaurant inside a hotel that had been built to resemble Venice’s Grand Canal. More drinks, a brief introduction to the world of blackjack, then another cab back to their hotel and a club that was little more than a large black box. Then dancing.

  So much dancing.

  By this point, Larissa had also made a startling, wonderful discovery; flexing the muscle that made her fangs descend and her eyes begin to flood red also sobered her up, instantly. Her friends, on the other hand, were not so lucky; Danny was the first to go, staggering away into the night, promising to meet them all for breakfast. Kelly was next; one minute she was sitting on a leather sofa in the corner of the club, chatting away amiably to anyone who would listen, the next her eyes had closed and she was snoring gently.

  “She needs to go to bed,” said Kara.

  “Agreed,” replied Tim, then cast a long look at Larissa.

  This is it, she thought. Kara will take Kelly back to her room and it’ll just be you and Tim left and he’ll suggest you get more drinks and you won’t have a good reason to say no. Then he’ll suggest you dance. And then you know what he’ll try and do. Again.

  She stared at him for a long moment, their eyes locked on each other. Then Tim dropped his gaze and looked at Kara. “I’ll take her back,” he said. “You two have fun. I’ll see you both in the morning.”

  Kara grinned happily and kissed Tim on the cheek as he scooped up the sleepy, protesting Kelly and guided her towards the club’s exit. He nodded at Larissa as he left, an unknowable smile on his handsome face. She watched him go, unsure of exactly what she was feeling: relief, unquestionably, but also a cold sliver of something it took her a second or two to put her finger on.