Department 19: Battle Lines (56 page)

“Yes,” replied Cooper. “We had to tell him the truth. He has a long history of delusions and his new surroundings could have played dangerously into that. He understands that he is ill, with an extremely rare disease, and that we’re treating him. He made peace with it quite quickly.”

“So he’s cooperating?”

“Yes,” said Dr Cooper. “Which is more than I can say for the other one. Come on.”

Matt followed the Science Division Director to the next cell. It appeared to contain the same furniture and fittings as the one Christian Bellows was lying in, but where his had been neat and tidy, this one was a wreck. The bed had been stripped and thrown against the wall, the table had been smashed to splinters, and the curtain surrounding the toilet had been torn down and shredded. In the far corner of the cell a figure was huddled, its arms wrapped round its knees, its head lowered.

“Alex Masterson,” said Dr Cooper. “He was picked up breaking into a chemist’s in a town about fifteen miles from the hospital. He fought, but they managed to subdue him. We’ve kept him sedated since he was brought in.”

Matt surveyed the wreckage of the cell. “It doesn’t look like it,” he said.

“It’s been rather difficult,” said Cooper. “The standard dosages don’t work, or at least not consistently. We’ve never had captive vampires as powerful as these two. I suspect we have nothing that would work on Valentin Rusmanov.”

“Probably not,” said Matt. “So you’ve examined them both?”

Dr Cooper nodded. “We’ve found no physical differences between them and other vampires. We think it must be the virus itself.”

“What did he do?” asked Matt, his voice low. He was staring at the dark ball pressed into the corner of the cell. The vampire was motionless; it was impossible to tell whether he was even awake.

“Masterson?” asked Cooper. “He committed a series of rapes in the nursing home where he worked. He’s a sociopath, pure and simple. Doesn’t understand why what he did was wrong.”

“Good job he was picked up,” said Matt, his stomach revolving slowly.

“I suppose so,” said Cooper. “Might have been better if they’d just destroyed him. But at least he can’t hurt anyone if he’s here.”

Matt shook his head sharply, trying to clear it. Although this place was a far cry from the blood-soaked nightmare that had been the first Lazarus Project lab, the sense of sickness, of banal, miserable horror, was just as palpable.

“You said there are no physical differences?” he asked.

Dr Cooper nodded. “Like I said, we think it’s something in the virus itself. There’s a well-established correlation between age and power, and the theory has always been that the virus continues to mutate inside the carrier after they turn, increasing their strength and speed over time.”

“Right,” said Matt. “But that doesn’t explain this.”

Or explain Larissa
, he thought.
She’s frighteningly strong. And fast. And she’s barely been turned three years.

“I know,” said Dr Cooper. “Do you have a theory, Mr Browning?”

Matt nodded. “I do,” he said. “And if I’m right, it’s bad. Really bad.”

“How can I help?”

“You said you examined them,” said Matt. He spoke slowly, as though carefully considering each word. “I assume you interviewed them as well?”

“We did.”

“What do they remember? About the night they were released?”

Dr Cooper shrugged. “Very little. Doctors, nurses, needles. Violence. Red eyes. Neither of them could give any specifics.”

“What about their bites?” asked Matt. “The ones that turned them. Were they still visible when they were brought in?”

“No,” replied Dr Cooper. “But then they almost never are. If the newly-turned has fed, the bite will usually have healed.”

“OK,” said Matt. “Do you have a terminal in here I can use?”

“Sure,” said Dr Cooper. “Over here.”

He led Matt to one of the long metal workbenches, flipped a monitor up out of its surface and raised a keyboard into place. Matt lifted himself up on to a stool and logged into the Blacklight network; Dr Cooper watched silently as he accessed the Zero Hour restricted section and navigated into one of the many folders containing raw footage of the Broadmoor attack.

“Do you know which wings they were being held on?” asked Matt.

“Bellows was on D wing,” replied Dr Cooper. “What are you looking for?”

“I’ll show you,” said Matt. He opened a file called D_WING_MAIN_CORRIDOR and watched as silent black and white footage began to play. The camera was positioned above a long corridor, in the middle of which a male nurse was pinned against a wall as two patients tore at his throat and chest. Blood pumped out, horribly dark beneath fluorescent lights, as he was dragged to the floor and fallen upon. A doctor ran for his life, his eyes wide, pursued by a patient with a scalpel in his hand. The patient’s eyes blazed almost white and his mouth was twisted in a snarl of pure joy.

“Christ,” said Dr Cooper. “That’s horrible.”

Matt didn’t reply; he was watching the footage closely, waiting for what he was looking for. Two naked patients strolled down the corridor, past the twitching remains of the nurse; their eyes glowed, and their bodies gleamed with sweat. Matt hit PAUSE, freezing the image in place.

“There,” he said. “Look.”

“What am I looking at?” asked Dr Cooper, leaning in closer to the screen.

“This is minutes after the attack happened,” said Matt. “These patients have only just been turned. So where are the bites?”

Dr Cooper narrowed his eyes and leant in even closer. “I don’t know,” he said, eventually. “I can’t see any.”

“Me neither,” said Matt, his voice trembling. “And I think I know why.”

The doctor straightened up and looked at him. “Why?”

Matt turned away from the screen and faced him. “Because there aren’t any,” he said. “The Broadmoor patients weren’t bitten.”

Dr Cooper stared at him. “They… weren’t bitten?”

Matt shook his head. “Look, we know the bite itself isn’t what turns people. The plasma that coats their fangs initiates the genetic change; the bite is just how it normally gets introduced into the bloodstream. I think you’re right about the virus, that it evolves and increases the power of the vampire it has infected, but I think there’s more to it than that. I think that when older evolutions of the virus are introduced into a victim, the turn begins at a more advanced stage. My friend Larissa was bitten by the vampire who is supposed to be the oldest in Britain, and she’s already stronger and faster than almost any other I’ve ever seen, even though she was only turned a few years ago. I think there is a direct correlation between the age of the attacking vampire and the speed with which their victims develop.”

“So what are you saying?” asked Dr Cooper. His eyes were wide, his skin pale. “If they weren’t bitten, what the hell happened to them?”

“I don’t know for sure,” said Matt. “My guess is they were injected. With plasma from a very old vampire, that had evolved to the point where it could make the newly-turned this powerful.”

“Valeri Rusmanov?” asked Dr Cooper. He was visibly trembling, as though he was about to faint.

“No,” said Matt. His voice was little more than a whisper. “I’m afraid not.”

Cal Holmwood looked up from the report he was reading as someone knocked on his door, and sighed. It often seemed as though there were simply not enough hours in the day for him to deal with everything that he was expected to deal with, and he found himself yet again full of admiration for Henry Seward, who had run the Department with a smoothness that he was only now beginning to realise had been remarkable.

“Come in,” he called, and set the report aside.

The door opened and Andrew Jarvis stepped through it, his face tight and pale.

What now?
wondered Holmwood.
It won’t be good news. It never is.

Jarvis was the Surveillance Division representative on the Zero Hour Task Force and was widely respected within the Department. He had been recruited from GCHQ, the agency that monitored communications and provided intelligence analysis for the Security Services, and had quickly risen to second-in-command of Surveillance; the Division’s Director, Major Vickers, had joked on several occasions that he could almost feel Jarvis’s breath on the back of his neck.

“Captain Jarvis,” said Cal, forcing a smile. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m sorry to come unannounced,” said Jarvis, stopping in front of his desk. “But I thought you should see what’s just appeared on my desk.”

Holmwood sighed. “What is it?”

Jarvis held out a folder. Cal took it and put it down on his desk.

“Just tell me,” he said. “I’ve read enough reports today to last a lifetime.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jarvis. “Yesterday afternoon, Kevin McKenna published a post on his blog, which referenced red eyes, and men in black suits. He appealed for people who knew what he was talking about to come forward with their stories.”

“Oh Christ,” said Holmwood. “Where is McKenna now?”

“We don’t know, sir. He’s not at home and he hasn’t used his phone or his credit cards since yesterday.”

“Albert Harker has him,” said Holmwood. “Find them, Jarvis. I don’t care how you do it, just find them.”

“We’re trying, sir,” replied Jarvis. “Unfortunately, that’s not all.”

“Go on.”

“The first two comments on McKenna’s blog were long, detailed accounts that set off about a dozen Echelon alerts. One appears to describe the incident that took place on Lindisfarne last year, while the other refers to a girl who fell from the sky into a garden, and a helicopter that landed in a suburban street.”

Holmwood stared. “Kate Randall’s father? And Matt Browning’s?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jarvis. “We’ve tracked the IP addresses from where the comments were posted. They were behind a maze of proxies and aliases, but we got the locations eventually. Lindisfarne, Northumberland, and Staveley, Derbyshire.”

“Where are Randall and Browning?”

“Missing, sir. We found Randall’s car at Berwick train station this morning. No tickets were bought using his name. We’re working on the assumption that they are either with, or on their way to meet, Kevin McKenna and Albert Harker.”

Holmwood stared for a long moment. “Why am I hearing about this now, Captain Jarvis?” he asked, his voice low and angry. “You were in the Zero Hour meetings. You know that Albert Harker is a priority.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Jarvis. “We’re tracking more than thirty of the Broadmoor escapees and keeping tabs on the rest as best we can. We’re badly understaffed, and this didn’t appear important to anyone who isn’t Zero Hour classified. It fell through the cracks, sir.”

Holmwood looked at the Captain for a long moment. “All right,” he said. “It is what it is. I’ll bring Jack Williams up to speed. No one else needs to know about this. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” said Jarvis.

Kate Randall waited for the electronic locks to disengage, then pushed open the ISAT security door.

Her mind was full of worry – for Morton, for Jamie and Ellison, and for Matt – but not the anger she had felt only months earlier when Jamie had rejected her offer to help in similar circumstances. She was proud of herself for having reached a point where she no longer assumed the worst of her friend, no longer assumed that his decisions were designed to diminish or damage her, when, in fact, they tended to represent the opposite: a well-meaning, if slightly patronising, desire to protect her.

She headed for the lounge, where she hoped Paul Turner would be; she wanted to tell him what had happened to Jamie’s squad. She was so deep in thought that she didn’t see the nervous-looking woman standing in the reception, and walked straight into her.

“Oh God,” Kate said, stumbling and grabbing the reception desk to steady herself. “I’m really sorry.” She looked round and found herself face to face with a glowing red gaze.

“Oh, Kate,” said Marie Carpenter, her eyes instantly fading back to their usual pale green. “I’m so sorry. Did I frighten you?”

“No, Mrs Carpenter,” said Kate, smiling. “I’m fine. Are you OK?”

Marie nodded, her usual nervous expression back on her face. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m sorry about my eyes. I can’t… it just happens. I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK,” said Kate. “Honestly. I’ve seen far scarier things than you, believe me.”

Marie smiled. “I’m sure you have.”

Kate looked at her friend’s mother, deep affection rising in her chest. Marie was dressed in a pair of dark red slacks and a pale blue blouse. She looked every inch the middle-class housewife she had been, which made her seem incredibly out of place inside the Loop, a place of endless black and grey.

“Is this where you work?” asked Marie, looking around the small ISAT reception. “Jamie told me you were doing something important, but he said he couldn’t tell me what it was.”

“This is it,” said Kate. “It’s called ISAT. It’s… sort of an internal affairs department.”

“Is it dangerous?” asked Marie. “Sorry, silly question. Of course it is. Everything here is dangerous.”

“I didn’t think it was going to be,” said Kate. “Unpopular, yes. But it’s turned out to be more dangerous that I thought. Like you said, I probably shouldn’t be surprised.”

“No,” said Marie. She had clutched her hands together in front of her stomach and was wringing them gently. “Probably not.”

“What are you doing here, Mrs Carpenter?” asked Kate, gently. “Did someone send for you?”

“Oh,” said Marie, her face brightening. “A young man came down and told me I had to have an interview and brought me here. He was very polite.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Kate, smiling. “I’m sorry, the schedules keep changing at the moment. If I’d known, I’d have come down to get you myself. The interview is nothing to be worried about, I promise. I’ll be there, so you won’t be on your own. Just stay here and someone will come and get you.”

“I’ll do that,” said Marie. She smiled, an open, lovely smile that warmed Kate’s heart. “I’ll wait right here.”

“OK,” said Kate. “I’ll see you in a minute.”

She left Jamie’s mother standing beside the reception desk and walked into the lounge. As she had hoped, Paul Turner was there; he was sitting on the sofa, holding a piece of paper in his hands. He looked up as she entered, and the look on his face filled her with instant concern.