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Jamie had checked the time stamp on the message. It had arrived at 7:30am, when he had apparently been so soundly asleep that he hadn’t even heard it beep. He had quickly done the time-zone maths in his head.
Half past eleven in Nevada. Late.
He had considered calling her anyway – he didn’t think she would be too annoyed if he woke her up – but had decided to let her sleep. Now, as he contemplated the scale and horror of what he had just been told in the Ops Room, he wished he had made the call; it would have been good to hear a genuinely friendly voice. For a second, he considered walking round and knocking on the door to the quarters next to his own, the quarters occupied, technically at least, by one of his best friends, but knew it would be a waste of time.
Matt Browning was almost never in his room these days, unless he was asleep. Jamie knew he had turned down the chance to move into one of the larger quarters inside the Lazarus security perimeter, and while he admired the reasoning behind his friend’s refusal, a spirited attempt to avoid devoting his every waking moment to his work, he thought it had, in fact, been largely pointless. Matt’s life now revolved entirely around the Lazarus Project, and that was that. Jamie missed his friend, but wasn’t annoyed with him; how could he be, when what Matt had devoted himself to was arguably the most important project being carried out in the whole of Blacklight? However, he did think he should try to press Matt into having a drink in the officers’ mess, or at least into sharing a table at lunch; it had been a while since they had talked for longer than a minute or two in a corridor, when both were on their way somewhere else.
On the other hand, it had been barely seventy-two hours since he had talked to Larissa, but he still missed her terribly. They had spoken for almost an hour over a secure 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?
AH: That’s fine.
JS: So. Albert. You approached me and offered me this interview. Why don’t you start by telling me why.
AH: Thank you. I wanted to give this interview so that people know the truth.
JS: The truth about what?
AH: About vampires, Mr Supernova. About Blacklight. About my family.
JS: Now you see, my bullshit detector just went off straight away. Because you just said the word vampires.
AH: That’s right. I did.
JS: Well, let’s get this out there then. Your position, what you’re saying to me, is that vampires are real? They exist, right now, in the real world.
AH: That’s correct.
JS: And why would you expect me to believe something so ridiculous?
AH: Because it’s the truth.
JS: Do you have any proof? Anything to back up your claim?
AH: Just my word.
JS: I sent a car to collect you for this interview from a homeless shelter, Albert. I can see needle tracks on both your arms. And you think I should take your word for something like this?
AH: That’s entirely up to you, Mr Supernova. I can’t make that decision for you.
JS: Oh, I’ll make it for myself, don’t you worry about that. So. Before we get on to the supposed existence of these vampires, tell me something else. Tell me how you would be in a position to know about them, if they were real. Because it seems to me like everyone else thinks they’re fiction, and I’ve got to tell you, you’re off to a pretty bad start when it comes to being convincing.
AH: You are aware of my surname?
JS: I am.
AH: And, as a journalist, I would presume that you are a well-read man?
JS: I suppose so. Reasonably.
AH: And you don’t see the connection?
(pause)
JS: Dracula. You’re talking about Dracula?
AH: Very good, Mr Supernova. Dracula, yes. My great-grandfather was Jonathan Harker, the hero of Stoker’s story. Which, in truth, was a work of historical fact, rather than the fiction it has been portrayed as.
JS: You take a lot of heroin, don’t you, Albert?
AH: That is immaterial.
JS: So Dracula wasn’t a story. It really happened. Am I understanding you here?
AH: You are. It happened much as Stoker wrote it down. He overheard the tale from Abraham Van Helsing, who he crossed paths with here in London.
JS: Van Helsing was real too?
AH: Obviously. The sooner you get your head around these simple facts, the quicker and less painful this process will become.
JS: Don’t get snippy with me, mate. Remember who’s paying who.
AH: I apologise. Yes, Mr Supernova, Van Helsing was real, as was John Seward, and Quincey Morris, and Arthur Holmwood, whose great-grandson sits in the House of Lords as we speak. And so was my great-grandfather. They were all as real as you and I.
JS: Meaning Dracula was real too.
AH: Correct. He was real, and he died, as Stoker described. And my ancestor and his friends came home. But Dracula was not the only vampire in the world, merely the first. Others followed, in time.
JS: And?
AH: And my great-grandfather and his friends were given the authority to deal with them. On behalf of the Empire.
JS: By who?
AH: By Prime Minister William Gladstone. In 1892.
(pause)
JS: You’re serious, aren’t you? This isn’t a wind-up.
AH: I am deadly serious, Mr Supernova. This is the biggest secret in the world, a secret that my family and others have kept for more than a century. And I’m telling it to you.
JS: Why? I mean, apart from the money.
AH: My family and I are… not close.
JS: So you’re doing this out of spite? I mean, if this is all real, if you’re not crazy, then my guess is you’re going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble if I find someone to run this.
AH: That’s my problem. But yes, I imagine they won’t be thrilled.
JS: Are you in danger? More importantly, am I?
AH: Not as far as I know. But I offer no guarantees, Mr Supernova. Blacklight operates entirely outside the laws that govern you and I.
JS: Blacklight?
AH: The organisation that hunts vampires and keeps them secret. That’s not its real name, but is what it has always been called. It evolved from the four men who survived the encounter with Dracula.
JS: What is it?
AH: I’ve never seen the inside of it. But it’s something like a special forces unit for the supernatural.
