LITMIR.BIZ

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young girl into the blood bank, said the man had red eyes. He told the nurse he thought it was probably a junkie.”

      Beta laughed. “He’s probably right. But not the kind he’s thinking.”

      The three shadowy shapes pushed open a door marked RESTRICTED, and moved on.

      “Fifth call in three nights,” said Gamma. “Is Seward punishing us for something?”

      “It’s not just us,” answered Alpha. “It’s everyone. Every squad is flat out.”

      “I know,” replied Beta. “And we know why, don’t we? It’s because of…”

      “Don’t,” said Gamma, quickly. “Don’t talk about him. Not now, OK?”

      A small noise emerged from behind Beta’s helmet, a noise that could easily have been a laugh, but she let the subject drop.

      “You were pretty hard on the police,” said Gamma. “The old Sergeant looked terrified.”

      “Good,” replied Alpha. “The more he pretends that tonight never happened, the safer he’ll be. Now no more talk.”

      They had reached the hospital’s blood bank, the door of which was standing open. Alpha stepped slowly into the dark room, and flicked the light switch on the wall.

      Nothing happened.

      He pulled a torch from his belt, and shone it up at the light fitting. The bulb was smashed, leaving a ring of jagged glass surrounding the filament. A slow sweep of the torch revealed carnage; the metal shelves of the blood bank had been ransacked. Blood and shattered plastic dotted the surfaces, and pooled and piled up on the floor.

      “Don’t come any closer.”

      The voice came from the corner of the room, and Alpha instantly swung his torch towards it. Two more shafts of white light joined its beam, as Beta and Gamma stepped into the room and followed their squad leader’s example.

      The beams illuminated the trembling figure of a middle-aged man, crouching in the corner of the room. At his feet lay a sports bag full of plastic sachets of blood. In his arms was a girl, no more than six years old, with an expression of pure terror on her face. The man had a razor-sharp fingernail to her throat, and was looking at the three black figures with an expression of desperate panic.

      Alpha reached up, turned a dial on the side of his helmet and watched his view of the room change. The helmet contained a cryocooled infrared detector, which showed the heat variance of every object within the visor’s field of vision. The cold walls and floor of the blood bank were a wash of pale greens and blues, while the little girl was darker, studded with patches of yellow and orange. The man bloomed bright red and purple like a roman candle, distorting Alpha’s vision.

      “I’ll kill her if you come any closer,” the man said, shifting nervously against the wall. He tightened his grip on the girl’s throat, and she moaned.

      Alpha twisted the visor’s setting back to normal.

      “Stay calm,” he said, evenly. “Just let the girl go, and we can talk.”

      “There’s nothing to talk about!” yelled the man, and jerked the girl off her feet. She cried out, her eyes wide with terror, and Alpha took a half-step forward.

      “Let the girl go,” he repeated.

      “This isn’t right,” said Beta, in a low voice.

      Alpha flicked his head towards her.

      “Don’t make a move without my go,” he warned.

      Beta snorted with laughter. “Please,” she said, then pulled a short black tube from her waist, pointed it into the corner of the room and pressed a button.

      A thick beam of ultraviolet light burst across the blood bank. It hit the man’s arm and the girl’s face dead on, and both instantly erupted into flames. Screams and the nauseating smell of burning skin filled the air, as Gamma gasped behind her visor.

      The little girl wrenched herself free of the arm that had been holding her, beating furiously at her face until the flames were extinguished. She dropped to her knees, tore open one of the plastic pouches of blood, then drank hungrily, slurping the crimson liquid into her mouth.

      The man watched her, a helpless look on his face, then suddenly seemed to notice that his arm was burning. He began to leap around the corner of the room, beating at the limb with his good hand. When the flames were out, he pulled a blood bag from one of the shelves, and devoured its contents. As Squad G-17 watched, the girl’s face and the man’s arm began to heal before their eyes, the muscle and tissue regrowing, the skin turning pink and knitting back together. When the injuries were healed, so completely that there was no evidence that they had been there at all, a process that took only a matter of seconds, the girl looked up at the man, and wailed.

      “Daddy!” she cried, her mouth a wide oval of disappointment. “You said this would work! You promised!”

      The man looked down at her with an expression of great sadness.

      “I’m sorry, love,” he replied. “I thought it would.” He looked over at the three dark figures, which hadn’t moved. “How did you know she was turned? The poor thing sat in a bath of ice for an hour so she wouldn’t look hot to those helmets of yours. Her teeth only just stopped chattering.”

      Beta reached up and lifted her helmet from her head. The face beneath it was a teenage girl’s: beautiful, pale and narrow, framed by dark hair that brushed her neck. She wore a wide smile, and her eyes glowed red under the bright lights of the blood bank.

      “I can smell her,” Larissa Kinley replied.

      The little girl hissed, her eyes flooding the same red as Larissa’s.

      “So it’s true,” said her father. “Department 19 has a pet traitor. How can you hunt your own people? Don’t you have any shame?”

      Larissa took half a step towards him, her smile fading.

      “You are not my people,” she said, in a voice like ice. Alpha gently laid a hand on her arm, and she stepped back, without taking her eyes from the man in the corner of the room.

      Gamma removed her helmet, and shook her head. Short blonde hair flew back and forth above a pretty, heart-shaped face, from which blue eyes stared out above a mouth that was set in a firm line.

      “Was it you two who hit Lincoln General last month?” asked Kate Randall.

      The man nodded, his eyes still nervously fixed on Larissa.

      “And Nottingham Trent the month before that?”

      He shook his head.

      “Are you lying to me?” Kate asked.

      “Why would I lie?” the man replied. He appeared to be on the verge of tears. “You’re going to stake us both anyway, so what would be the point?”

      “That’s right,” said Larissa, a wicked smile on her face.

      The little girl began to cry. The man placed his hands on her shoulders and whispered soothingly to her.

      Alpha looked over at Larissa, who rolled her eyes. Then he reached up, and removed his helmet.

      The boy beneath it was no more than sixteen or seventeen, but his face looked older, as though he had seen, and most likely done, things that had taken their toll. A jagged patch of pink scar tissue peeped above the collar of his uniform and climbed across the right side of his neck, stopping before it reached his jaw. His face was handsome, and possessed of a stillness more befitting an older man. His blue eyes were piercing, but he trained them tenderly on Larissa.

      “Nobody is staking anyone tonight,” said Jamie Carpenter. “You know the new SOP. Pass me two restrainers, Kate. Lazarus can have these two. I don’t think they’re dangerous.”

      The man began to cry along with his daughter.

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