LITMIR.BIZ

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video connection, Jamie battered and bloodied by the operation he had just returned from, Larissa bright and smiling, eight hours behind him, her day just getting under way. The pleasure and excitement in her voice as she told him about Dreamland, the NS9 base, and the men and women who inhabited it, was bittersweet to his ears. He knew she had been furious with Holmwood for selecting her for the NS9 secondment, and he knew she missed him as much as he missed her, but she now had a levity about her that he both relished and feared.

      He was happy that she was happy: God knows she deserved it after what had happened to her over the last few years, and what had been done to her during the attack on the Loop, when she had been burned down to little more than bones. But he was also jealous of her temporary new life, away from the darkness that surrounded Blacklight, that seemed to follow him wherever he went; jealous that she was meeting new people and experiencing new places, new things. And a tiny piece of him, the vicious, self-loathing part that had been birthed by his father’s death and nourished by years of bullying and loneliness, kept asking the same two questions, whispering them in the darkest recesses of his mind.

       What if she forgets about me? What if she doesn’t want to come back?

      He pushed such miserable thoughts aside and climbed off his bed. He pulled a bottle of water out of the small fridge beneath his desk and headed out into the corridor, pulling the door to his quarters closed behind him, trying to focus on nothing more than the task at hand.

      Jamie logged in to the terminal at the front of Briefing Room 4 and found his squad’s target list waiting for him. He moved it up on to the wall screen behind him, and waited for the rest of his newly activated squad to arrive.

      They kept him waiting for less than two minutes. Morton and Ellison burst through the door, clad in their dark blue training uniforms, red-faced from what Jamie knew would have been several minutes of running along the curving corridors of Level 0 in search of the right room. They were caked in sweat and drying blood, but their faces wore identical expressions of determined enthusiasm.

      “Good to see you both,” said Jamie. “Get lost on the way up here?”

      Morton looked about to deny it, but Ellison opened her mouth first. “Yes, sir,” she said. “The corridors all look the same, sir.”

      “You’ll get used to it,” said Jamie, and smiled at his squad mates. “Trust me.”

      The two rookies nodded, clearly relieved.

      “Take a seat,” Jamie said, motioning towards the empty plastic chairs that surrounded the long table in the middle of the room. Morton and Ellison did as they were told as Jamie watched them, wondering if he had been so nervous and eager to please when he first arrived at the Loop.

      I don’t think I was, he thought. I didn’t give a damn about anything apart from my mum. I acted like I owned the place.

      He flushed at the memory, but only slightly. He had done what he needed to do to get his mother back, and that was all that had mattered. He knew he had annoyed plenty of Operators in the process, and that not all of them had forgiven him for what they had perceived as arrogance and a disrespectful attitude.

      “Operators,” he said, his voice even. “This morning, Interim Director Holmwood authorised MOVING SHADOWS, a Priority Level 1 operation being carried out by the entire active roster of this Department. What you can see on the screen behind me is our little piece of it.” He tapped a series of keys on the console’s touch screen and the first name on the target list was replaced by a digital scan of a hospital admission record. “Last night,” he continued, “an unknown vampire force conducted a mass escape from Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire. Surveillance footage and satellite thermal imaging suggest that all released patients have been intentionally turned, and Science Division analysis indicates that they are significantly more powerful than usual newly-turned vampires. All of which means we now have almost three hundred potentially highly dangerous vampires on the loose. MOVING SHADOWS is a search and destroy mission, intended to eliminate this new threat in as short a timeframe as possible. Any questions so far?”

      Morton raised his hand and Jamie nodded. “Why are you telling us this, sir?” he asked.

      “Your training has been suspended,” replied Jamie. “As of right now, you are active Operators in Department 19, until such time as this operation is concluded. When it is, you go back to the Playground. But not until then. Do you understand?”

      Morton nodded, the colour draining from his face. Ellison looked at him with wide eyes as she raised her hand.

      “Yes?” said Jamie.

      “You said search and destroy, sir,” said Ellison. “Right?”

      “That’s right.”

      “How is that going to work?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “I mean, people are going to expect the patients to be found, sir. The media is going to go absolutely crazy, and the families of the escapees are going to demand to know what happened. We’re talking about vulnerable people here, sir, people with severe psychiatric issues.”

      “Not any more,” said Morton. “Now we’re talking about vampires.”

      Ellison shot her squad mate an extremely sharp glance, then returned her attention to Jamie.

      “The media doesn’t know anything yet,” he said. “When it leaks, which we have to assume it will, we’ll make sure they don’t run it. Anyone who lives near the hospital is being handled, and when it becomes necessary to tell the public about what happened to the patients of Broadmoor, the Security Division will devise a cover story. I’ve no idea what that will be, before you ask, and it’s not something you need to worry about. What you do need to worry about are the five vampires we’ve been ordered to destroy.”

      “OK, sir,” said Ellison, although unease had clearly settled over her. Morton gave her a furious look, then whispered something Jamie didn’t catch. Ellison turned on him, her eyes blazing with anger, and opened her mouth to reply.

      “Operators!” barked Jamie, causing them both to jump in their seats. “This is not a training exercise. This is the real thing. You will give me your complete attention right now or I’ll assume that you aren’t ready for this and send you back downstairs. Is that what you want?”

      “No, sir,” they chorused.

      “Good,” replied Jamie. “That’s good. Because this is a Priority Level 1 operation, the kind that Operators die on. The footage demonstrating the power of these escaped vampires is extremely disconcerting, so let’s focus, shall we? I want us armed and triple-checked and ready to go in one hour, so it might be useful for us to know who the hell we’re looking for.”

      Morton and Ellison leant forward, their attention fully focused on their squad leader. Jamie forced a tension-breaking smile and began to brief them on what was waiting for them beyond the walls of the Loop, knowing even as he did so that nothing he said could truly prepare them.

       I’ll just be pleased if I bring them both back alive.

      8

      THE LOST HARKER

      THREE MONTHS EARLIER

       TRANSCRIPT

       INTERVIEW WITH ALBERT HARKER. JUNE 12 2002

      (tape begins)

      JOHNNY SUPERNOVA: Right, it’s on.

      ALBERT HARKER: What’s on?

      JS: The tape recorder. It’s recording.

      AH: Oh. Fine.

      JS: Please say your name for the tape.

      AH: Albert Harker.

      JS: OK. I’m going to call you Albert, if that’s cool?

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