LITMIR.BIZ

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in pain. Only one coherent thought pulsed in his mind, over and over, the one thought that kept him going.

       Mum.

      Chapter 16

      EVERY BOY’S DREAM

      Jamie slowly pushed open the door that Terry had walked through. His ribs hurt and his arms were heavy. A loud hum of noise, voices mingled in conversation, greeted him as the door opened.

      It was a cafeteria. Down one wall ran a long counter from behind which a number of men and women were serving piled helpings of breakfast; yoghurt, cereals, eggs, bacon, sausage, towers of brown and white toast. The rest of the room was full of long plastic tables, around which were sat groups of black-clad soldiers, doctors and scientists in white coats, and men in suits. A few of them looked up as he entered, but the stares and whispers he was expecting didn’t come. Instead, the people turned back to their food and Jamie joined the end of the line.

      He piled a plate as full of eggs, bacon and toast as was physically possible and stood self-consciously by a trolley of empty trays, looking for Terry. A hand shot up in the far corner of the cafeteria, and Jamie headed gratefully towards it. He slid into a plastic seat opposite the instructor and dug hungrily into his breakfast. Terry watched him silently, chewing his way steadily through a bowl of oatmeal, and after a few minutes he spoke.

      “So you’re Julian Carpenter’s son? That must be tough.”

      Jamie sighed around a piece of toast. “Looks like it,” he replied.

      “Awful thing your dad did,” said Terry.

      The teenager was tired, more tired than he had ever been in his life, and his temper was short. He slammed his cutlery down on the table, hard enough that a number of people on the surrounding tables jumped.

      “So you have a problem with me as well?” he growled. “Is that what all that crap in there was about? Punishing me for what my dad did?”

      Terry stared at him.

      “All that crap in there,” he replied coolly, “was about trying to keep you alive when they let you out of here. Consider yourself lucky we only have time for the basics. What your dad did, I don’t blame you for. I’ll judge you on your actions, not his.” The instructor took a sip from a cup of coffee. “I can’t promise you everyone here will see it the same way though. Just so you know.”

      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 were 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 coloured medals.

      “Who’s that?” whispered Jamie as he and Terry walked towards 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 armour into place, and placing one of the helmets with the purple visors on to his head. He flicked the visor down and was astonished to see the room light up into a series of colour 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 colour 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 cryocooled 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 trolley 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 trolley. He dry-fired the Glock 18 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 & Koch MP5 and moved through the selector switch, firing single rounds, three shot bursts, and finally a thrilling, rattling magazine 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 trolley 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 trolley 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 centre 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 towards 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

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