by William Hill
Jamie looked at the instructor for a long moment, then picked up his knife and fork, and carried on with his breakfast. Terry sat back silently in his chair and watched the boy eat.
Stepping back into the Playground, Jamie was unnerved to see that a dozen or so people now stood around the edges of the circular room, silently watching him. In the middle of the line was a man in his fifties, wearing a dark suit on which were pinned row after row of brightly colored medals.
“Who’s that?” whispered Jamie as he and Terry walked toward the benches in the middle of the room.
“That’s Major Harker,” replied Terry. “I would stay away from him if I were you.”
For an hour they worked through the standard Blacklight field equipment. Jamie pulled on one of the black suits, clipping the battle armor into place, and placing one of the helmets with the purple visors onto his head. He flicked the visor down and was astonished to see the room light up into a series of color patterns. The walls and floor were a pale blue that was almost white, the fluorescent lights were rectangles of bright red, and Terry was a stunning mix of every color in the spectrum, from deep red knots at his chest and head to light green at the ends of his limbs. He raised the visor and looked at the instructor.
“This is amazing,” he said. “Does it respond to heat?”
Terry nodded. “The helmet has a cryo-cooled infrared detector built into it. The visor shows heat variance. Vampires show up on it like roman candles, bright red. Useful when you’re in the field, believe me.”
They moved on to weapons, Terry wheeling out a steel table and taking Jamie through the contents. The push of a button raised a thick concrete wall out of the floor and lowered a series of targets from the ceiling.
Under Terry’s supervision, Jamie worked through the weapons on the table. He dry-fired the Glock 17 pistol that every operator carried, loaded and reloaded, then took a stance and fired three clips of bullets into the targets in front of the wall. He shouldered a Heckler amp; Koch MP5 and moved through the selector switch, firing single rounds, three shot bursts, and finally a thrilling, rattling magazine’s worth of full auto. The targets shredded under the impact of the bullets, and a fine dust of concrete floated in the air.
Jamie’s arms were numb from the recoil and the vibration of the guns, but he felt exhilarated. He had sent a good number of the rounds thudding into the heads and chests of the targets, and he had heard Terry grunt his approval. But he was most excited because the next item on the table was the metal tube he saw hanging from the belt of every Blacklight soldier, the smaller version of the huge weapon Frankenstein had fired at Alexandru.
Terry lifted the tube from the table and told Jamie to come and stand in front of him. He clipped a flat rectangular gas tank to the teenager’s back and strapped a thick black belt around his waist. The tube sat in a plastic ring that hung from the right side of the belt; it felt heavy and dangerous.
“This is the T-18 pneumatic launcher,” said Terry, his voice solemn. “You can call it the T-Bone-everyone else does. It’s just about the most important thing you will ever own.”
“Why T-Bone?” asked Jamie.
“Because it’s like a stake-but bigger.”
Terry grinned at him, and Jamie grinned right back.
He lifted the T-Bone out of its holster. On the underside of the tube, a thick plastic rubber grip sat snugly in his hand, and his index finger rested lightly against a metal trigger. The weapon was heavy, and he braced the barrel with his left hand, casting a glance at Terry who nodded his approval.
“There’s a button on the top of the tank, behind your neck,” said Terry. “Turn it on. Gently.”
Jamie reached over his shoulder and flicked a metal switch. There was a brief rumble through his back and a low hissing noise. The instructor keyed a series of buttons on the remote control in his hand, and a thick spongy-looking target lowered in front of the concrete wall. It looked like a mattress with concentric circles printed on one side of it. Terry guided him gently to the opposite side of the room, directly in front of it.
“Widen your stance,” he said.
Jamie shuffled his feet an extra couple of inches apart, resisting the urge to look over his shoulder at the line of spectators. He could feel their eyes on him, and he would not give them the satisfaction of a nervous glance.
“Brace it against your shoulder.”
Jamie did so, feeling his arms settle into a comfortable position and the T-Bone lock into place against the ball of his shoulder.
“Aim.”
He looked down the barrel, lining up the two sights along the top of the weapon with the center of the target.
“When you’re ready, squeeze the trigger.”
Jamie waited. For a long moment, he stood motionless, letting his heart rate settle into long, shallow beats, focusing entirely on the target in his sights. He took a deep breath, held it, and then pulled the trigger smoothly toward him.
There was a deafening noise, and the T-Bone jerked hard against his shoulder. The metal stake exploded out of the end of the tube, so fast it was only a blur, and thumped into the middle of the target with a flat bang. There was a millisecond of calm, then the thin wire that had trailed the stake across the room began to whir back into the barrel. There was a moment of resistance as the wire pulled taut, but Jamie braced himself and the stake sucked out of the target, whirring back across the room and thudding into the tube, rocking Jamie back on his heels. He let the weapon drop to his side, and breathed out heavily, looking across the room at the hole the stake had made in the target.
The hole was perfectly round and sat dead center in the middle of the target. Terry walked past him, clapping him lightly on the shoulder and leading him across the room. Behind him there was a murmur from the spectators. Up close the hole was ragged around the edges, but there was no doubt about the accuracy of the shot. It had completely obliterated the dot in the middle of the target. Terry pushed his hand into the hole and whistled softly.
“That’s a hell of a shot,” he said. “A hell of a shot.”
Jamie flushed with pride. He wanted to explain to Terry how easy, how natural it had felt, standing there with the T-Bone against his shoulder, the only things in his mind the target in front of him and the weapon in his hands. He settled for saying “Thank you” in a low voice.
The instructor and the teenager walked back across the room and stopped next to the steel table. Still lying on the metal surface was a small cylinder that looked like a torch with a handle and a trigger, two rows of black spheres, and a large gun that looked to Jamie a lot like the grenade launchers he had used in a dozen computer games. He reached for the table, but Terry stopped him.
“You don’t need to worry about them for now,” he said. Then the instructor lunged for him, and Jamie, caught totally off guard, failed to even get his hands up in front of him. The flat of one of Terry’s palms crunched into his solar plexus and drove him back to the mat, gasping for breath.
“Get up,” said Terry.
Jamie defended himself better than he had during the night, deflecting some of the instructor’s blows and reading his feints, but he still found himself on the ground again and again. The cut on his forehead reopened almost at once, and Terry exploited it, dancing around at the edge of Jamie’s vision, where sticky blood ran into the corner of his left eye. A roundhouse kick appeared from nowhere, and he went down hard. As he pulled himself to his feet, he looked over at the spectators and saw Major Harker smiling. He redoubled his efforts and blocked punches and kicks, twisting his body out of the instructor’s range and launching several counterattacks of his own, clumsy, easily telegraphed blows for the most part, but a couple of punches slipped through Terry’s guard, and one landed flush on the end of the instructor’s nose, snapping his head back and sending a thin trickle of blood running down his upper lip. Terry grinned, smearing crimson across his teeth, and came toward Jamie again.
Jamie stood in the shower, watchi
ng tendrils of dark red diffuse in the water that was running down the drain. Every inch of him ached, and his torso was a rapidly darkening rainbow of purple and yellow bruises. He gently washed the blood and sweat from himself, then rested his head against the hard tiles beneath the showerhead and closed his eyes.
His mind was racing. He had been trying to slow it, to shift himself into neutral; Terry had warned him as he dismissed him that he was not done yet, and he was trying to squeeze every possible second of rest out of the break. But his mind was not obeying.
How did I get here? How did I get here? How did I get here?
He was trying not to think about his mother, or his father, or the life it was now becoming clear to him that he had left behind, but he couldn’t help it. The difference between the world of skipping school, avoiding bullies, the gray streets of the estate, and fights with his mom, and the world in which he now found himself was almost incomprehensible. He had no friends to speak of, not anymore, but if he had, they would not have believed him even for a minute if he had told them the events of the last three days. And he had no one to tell him that his mom was going to be OK, that he was going to find her and bring her home.
He climbed out of the shower and dressed himself, wincing in pain. When he pushed open the door that led back into the Playground, he gasped; the large circular room was now crowded with people, lining every inch of the curved walls. There were scores of soldiers in their black uniforms, doctors, scientists, and several older, extremely serious-looking men with at least as many, if not more, medals than Major Harker was wearing. Terry was standing at the end of the room next to the raised platform, his arms folded, his eyes fixed on Jamie, and Jamie walked toward him, trying not to look at anyone apart from the instructor.
He stopped next to Terry, who mouthed, “Don’t be scared” at him as he approached. The instructor helped him into a set of the black armor, then presented him with a series of items; weird plastic versions of the Glock and the MP5 he had fired earlier, a plastic stake with a rubber handle, and a plastic T-Bone that was just an empty tube with a handle beneath it. At Terry’s urging, he stepped up onto the platform and walked out into the middle. It was a large circle of black rubber, at least fifteen feet in diameter, which seemed to be a treadmill that moved in every direction; Jamie took a step forward, and the rubber moved underneath him, returning him to the middle of the circle. He took two quick sidesteps to the right, and the surface moved faster, keeping him again in the middle. He turned back and looked at Terry, who motioned him down toward him. Jamie crouched next to the instructor, who handed him a helmet with a matte-black visor and then spoke to him in a low voice.
“This simulation is extremely advanced,” Terry said. “It’s the final part of a training program that normally lasts nine months. No one has ever attempted it with as little training as you’ve had-in eleven years, no one has ever finished it on their first run-so no one is expecting anything. So just try not to panic and do your best, all right?”
Jamie nodded, and as he stood up and put the helmet on, he realized he wasn’t scared. He wasn’t even nervous; he was excited. The helmet shut out the Playground entirely; he could no longer see the platform or the screen, or hear the excited whispering of the watching crowd. Then Terry’s voice spoke directly into his ear, telling him that they were starting the simulation, and a second later, he was standing in the cavernous hallway of a stately home. He looked around him, then moved his gloved hands around in front of his face, and voiced a silent “Wow” as they moved in front of his eyes in photo-real high definition, the smallest detail intact. He took a step forward, and he moved a step into the hallway. He turned in a quick circle, and the room rotated smoothly around him. Reaching down, he pulled the T-Bone from his belt and looked at it. The weapon he could see in his hands was identical to the one he had fired earlier; he could see the metal projectile nestled inside the barrel. He placed it back in its holster and drew the Glock from his hip; it also appeared to be fully functional inside the simulation, the barrel clear, the clip full.
“OK, whenever you’re ready,” said Terry, his voice loud in Jamie’s ear.
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked.
“Just explore the house. It’ll all become clear.”
Jamie took a deep breath and started forward. He crossed the grand hallway quickly, heading toward a wide staircase that took up most of one end of the room. As he approached the first step, he heard a snarl above him and jerked his head up. A vampire in an elegant dinner suit had appeared at the top of the staircase and crouched, as though readying itself to leap down on him.
Jamie slid the T-Bone smoothly out of its holster, brought it to his shoulder in one fluid motion, and pulled the trigger. The stake shot out of the tube and crunched into the vampire’s chest, punching a circular hole through the flesh and bone, before retracting on its pneumatic wire. Before it thudded back into the barrel, the vampire exploded in a gaudy shower of blood and gristle that pattered softly onto the thick carpet of the staircase. Jamie kept the weapon in his hand and crept toward the first stair.
Movement caught his eye, and two more vampires dropped from the high, shadowy ceiling onto the staircase. Jamie’s mind, clear and cold as ice, did the math quickly.
One stake in the T-Bone. Two vampires. No time to fire it twice.
With his left hand, he drew the MP5 from his belt, slid the selector switch to full auto, and sprayed the staircase from left to right with bullets. The rounds tore through the knees of the vampires, dropping them writhing to the ground. He replaced the submachine gun in its holster, transferred the T-Bone to his left hand, drew the stake with the rubber grip with his right, and sprinted up the stairs. The three movements took less than two seconds, and out in the Playground one of the watching soldiers drew in a sharp intake of breath. Jamie reached the vampires, who were screeching and howling on the rapidly reddening carpet, and plunged the stake into their chests, one after the other. He stepped back quickly, and when they exploded, only a light mist of blood sprayed against the body armor on his chest. He turned on the staircase, checking behind him, and saw a fourth vampire, this one a woman in a beautiful flowing ball gown, speeding silently across the hallway toward him. He dropped the stake, drew the T-Bone to his shoulder, led the running vampire by a few feet, and fired.
The stake slammed through her heart, obliterating it.
This time the explosion was smaller, almost petite, and she was gone before the metal cable was fully rewound. Jamie reached down and picked up the stake, placed it back in the loop on his belt, and made his way up the stairs.
Terry allowed himself a small smile. Standing against the wall, watching the teenager’s progress on a bank of monitors that had been raised from the floor of the circular room, a soldier whistled softly through his teeth.
“He’s good,” he said, shaking his head admiringly.
“He’s better than that,” said the soldier next to him. “He’s a natural.”
A sharp laugh, like the bark of a dog, echoed through the room. The two soldiers turned and looked at Major Harker, who was watching one of the monitors with his fists clenched tightly by his sides.
“The hallway is child’s play,” said the major, his eyes never leaving the screen. “Let’s see how he does in the garden.”
But Jamie passed through the garden, an overgrown labyrinth of ivy and oak trees, without any trouble. He used his weapons in perfect combinations, never allowing a vampire within ten feet of him, staking and moving, disabling them from long distance with the pistol and the MP5, identifying the primary threat in each situation and dealing with it first. He moved along the narrow stone paths cautiously but not slowly, never presenting a stationary target that the vampires could surround. When the garden was clear, he kicked open the door of the crumbling stone shed that stood next to the garden’s gate and went inside.
It was dark, so he pulled a thin black torch from his belt and swept it quickly across the room.
Against the back wall, no more than eight feet away from him, the beam picked out the pale face of a girl, her fangs clearly visible as triangular points of white, and he drew the MP5 and fired a volley of bullets ten inches below where he had seen the face. Something screamed in the darkness, and he brought the torch back up and shone it against the rear wall. The girl’s face was still where it had been, although now it hung limp against her chest, blood coursing from its mouth. He stepped forward, widened the beam, and was surprised at what he saw.
The girl was in her late teens, and she was fixed to the wall by heavy handcuffs around her wrists and ankles, in a deeply uncomfortable-looking spread eagle. The bullets from his gun had turned her chest to dark red jelly, but she was still alive, and as he approached, she raised her head and howled at him. Jamie took a half step back, despite himself, then pressed forward as the girl’s head slumped back down.
He shone the torch along each of her limbs to the handcuffs. She was chained at full stretch; there was no way she could apply any leverage to the bolts and free herself. Even so, Jamie drew the stake from his belt, raised it above his shoulder, and stopped. The wounds in the girl’s torso were already starting to heal, and Jamie decided he would leave her. She was no threat to him secured to the wall, and killing something that was immobilized, even a vampire, felt like murder. Instead he left the shed and walked through the wrought-iron gate that led out of the garden.
He worked his way through the rest of the grounds of the mansion, luring two vampires down a narrow alley between two garages and spearing them both with a single T-Bone shot, a kill so audacious that a spontaneous round of applause broke out in the Playground until it was silenced by a ferocious look from Major Harker. Jamie stepped lightly over the fans of blood the vampires left on the walls, made his way across a courtyard toward the estate’s main driveway, and only at this late stage, did he feel the cold fingers of fear grab at him.
The driveway was wide enough, but it was flanked by two towering rows of trees, the branches of which met high above, forming a dark green tunnel. As Jamie began to walk down it, he was reminded of the approach he and Frankenstein had made to the Loop, but when the branches began to move and rustle, he was plunged back into the night his father died, and terror threatened briefly to overcome him.
