LITMIR.BIZ

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and he said that he was not going to tolerate it any longer.”

      “How would bringing down the jet accomplish that?” asked Jamie, without raising his head.

      “The Mina’s pilots that day were John and George Harker,” said Frankenstein. “Two descendants of arguably the most famous name in Blacklight history.”

      The image of the plaque in the rose garden burst into Jamie’s mind.

       Oh God. Oh God. Oh, Dad. What did you do?

      There was only one thing he didn’t understand; one final straw to cling to.

      “Why did Alexandru come for us, if Dad was working with him? Why would he want us dead?”

      “I don’t know,” Frankenstein said, simply. “Maybe Julian did kill Ilyana, and made a deal with Alexandru so that he would spare you and your mother. Maybe Alexandru double-crossed him. Or maybe he did let Ilyana live, and Alexandru double-crossed him for the sheer hell of it. It doesn’t matter now. He’s gone.”

      Jamie raised his head, and looked at Frankenstein with puffy, teary eyes.

      “Isn’t there any part of you that still believes in him?” he asked. “That believes he didn’t do it?”

      The monster turned his chair towards Jamie, rested his elbows on his knees and leant forward. “I believed in him for as long as I could,” he said. “I fought his case for months after he died. I examined every scrap of the evidence against him, reviewed every line of the data forensics report, checked and double-checked every word. I refused to even entertain the idea that Julian could have done such a thing; I threatened to resign a dozen times.”

      He looked sadly at Jamie, and took a deep breath. “I never found anything that would exonerate him. We buried John and George, and we waited for Alexandru to make his next move. But it never came. And as time passed, I eventually had to accept what everyone else had come to realise; that Julian had done what they said he had done, and I was just going to have to live with it, no matter how much it hurt my heart to do so.”

      Frankenstein sat patiently, watching Jamie. But Jamie wasn’t thinking about his father; he was thinking about his mother, and the awful way he had treated her after his dad had died, the terrible things he had said. Hot shame was flooding through him, and he would have given anything to be able to tell her how sorry he was, to tell her he was wrong and ask her to forgive him.

      “I was so angry with him for leaving us,” he said, eventually. “My mother always told me I was being unfair. But I wasn’t. He betrayed everyone.”

      “Your father was a good man who did an awful thing,” said Frankenstein. “He made a terrible mistake, and he paid for it with his life.”

      “And eight other people’s lives,” said Jamie, his voice suddenly fierce. “What did the people on the plane do to deserve what happened to them? Not be nice enough to anyone whose surname was Carpenter? How pathetic is that?”

      Frankenstein said nothing.

      “I’m ashamed to be his son,” spat Jamie. “No wonder everyone in this place looks at me like they do. I would hate me too. I’m glad he’s dead.”

      “Don’t say that,” said Frankenstein. “He was still your father. He raised you, and he loved you, and you loved him back. I know you did.”

      “I don’t care!’ Jamie cried. “I don’t care about any of that! I didn’t even know him; the man who raised me wasn’t even real! The man who raised me was a case officer at the Ministry of Defence, who went on golf weekends with his friends and complained about the price of petrol. He didn’t exist!”

      He leapt to his feet and kicked his fallen chair across the room. It skidded across the tiled floor and slammed into the wall.

      “I won’t waste another second thinking about him,” he said, his pale blue eyes fixing on Frankenstein’s. “He’s dead, my mother is still alive, for now at least, and we need to find her. I’m going to talk to Larissa again.”

      The monster stiffened in his seat.

      “What good do you think will come of that?” he said.

      “I don’t know. But I think she wants to help me. I can’t explain why.”

      Frankenstein stared at the teenager. He was about to reply when the radio on Jamie’s belt crackled into life.

      Jamie pulled it from its loop, and looked at the screen.

      “Channel 7,” he said.

      “That’s the live operation channel,” said Frankenstein. “No one should be using it.”

      Jamie keyed the CONNECT button on the handset, and then almost dropped it as a terrible scream of agony burst from the plastic speaker. Frankenstein stood bolt upright, staring at the radio in the teenager’s hand.

      A low voice whispered something inaudible, and then a man’s voice, trembling and shaking, spoke through the radio. “H-hello? Who i-is this?”

      “This is Jamie Carpe—”

      There was a tearing noise, horribly wet, and the scream came again, a high-pitched wail of pain and terror.

      “Oh God, please!” shrieked the man. “Please, please, don’t! Oh God, please don’t hurt me any more!”

      Jamie looked helplessly at Frankenstein. The monster’s face had turned slate grey, and his misshapen eyes were wide. He was staring at the radio as though it were a direct line to Hell.

      Something whispered again, and then the voice was back, hitching and rolling as the man who was speaking fought back tears.

      “You have to come,” the voice said, between enormous sobs of pain. “H-he says you h-have to come to him. He s-says if you d-don’t then you’ll n-never see your m-mother again.”

      Rage exploded through Jamie. “Alexandru,” he growled, his voice unrecognisable. “Where are y—”

      The man screamed again, so long and loud that the scream descended to a high-pitched croak. Something laughed quietly in the background, as the man spoke two final, gasping words. “Help me.”

      Then the line went dead.

      Jamie stared at the radio for a long moment, then dropped it on the table, a look of utter revulsion on his face. Frankenstein slowly lowered himself back into his chair, and looked at the teenager with wide, horrified eyes.

      “How would he have that frequency?” Jamie asked, his voice trembling. “How could he possibly have it?”

      “I don’t know,” replied Frankenstein. “It’s changed every forty-eight hours.”

      “So someone must have given him it in the last two days?”

      Frankenstein’s eyes widened, as the realisation of Jamie’s point sank into him. He pulled his own radio from his belt, twisted the channel selector switch, then spoke into the receiver.

      “Thomas Morris to Level 0, room 24B, immediately,” he said, and then Jamie gasped as the monster’s voice boomed out of the speakers that stood in the high corners of every room in the base.

      “You’ll wake the entire Department,” he protested. “What are you doing?”

      “Getting some answers,” replied Frankenstein.

      Barely a minute later Thomas Morris pushed open the door to the office and staggered inside. His face was puffy and his eyes were narrow slits, and he was yawning even as he asked them what the emergency was.

      “You’re Security Officer, Tom. So you can search the network access logs, correct?” asked Frankenstein.

      Morris rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I can do that,” he replied.

      “Good. I need you to search

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