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“I’m sorry, sir,” said Gregg. “They pushed past me, but I have the situation under control.”
Turner’s frown deepened. “Who pushed past you?”
“Karlsson and Browning, sir,” said Gregg. “I told them you weren’t available, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer, and Browning jumped me from behind, the little shit. I’m waiting for Security to come and collect them, sir.”
“For pity’s sake, Operator,” said Turner, getting up from his desk and walking across the room. “Your enthusiasm is admirable, but do you really think that arresting two senior members of the Lazarus Project is in the best interests of this Department?”
There was a long pause. “I don’t know, sir,” said Gregg, eventually. “It was a clear breach of protocol.”
Turner rolled his eyes. “Call off your alert and go back to your post, Operator. I’ll see Karlsson and Browning now.”
“Yes, sir,” said Gregg, instantly. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“It’s fine,” said Turner, and pressed his ID card against the black panel beside the door. The heavy locks disengaged, and he pulled the thick metal hatch inwards to reveal Matt Browning and Robert Karlsson standing in the corridor outside. Both looked dishevelled, and Browning was bright red in the face. Beyond them, he could see Tom Gregg peering along the corridor, a nervous look on his face.
“Gentlemen,” said Turner, “Operator Gregg was right, this is a breach of protocol. You couldn’t have sent a message telling me you needed to see me?”
Karlsson shook his head. “I didn’t want to run the risk of anyone reading it, sir.”
Turner smiled. “You’ve been here less than a year and you’re more paranoid than me. I suppose you’d better come in.”
“Thank you, Director,” said Karlsson, and stepped into the room. Browning followed him, casting one last dagger-eyed stare in Gregg’s direction. Turner closed the door behind them and gestured towards the armchairs that sat in front of the wall screen.
“Take a seat, gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s hear what’s so important that it was worth taking on my Security detail to tell me.”
“We’ll stand, if that’s all right with you,” said Karlsson. “But I would suggest you sit down, sir.”
Ten minutes later Turner’s mind was spinning, and he was glad he had taken the Professor’s advice.
“Does it work?” he said, gripping the arms of his chair. “Does it actually work?”
Karlsson looked at Browning, who took a step forward.
“It works in the computers, sir,” said Matt. “And it works in a test tube. We’ve carried out a thousand data runs in the last two days, using living vampire tissue. Every single sample has been clear of the vampire virus after we introduced our engineered gene.”
Turner looked at the young Lieutenant. Matt’s face was still flushed from his encounter with Operator Gregg in the hallway, but his eyes were clear, and his mouth was a straight line of determination. The Director had often dreamt of this moment, of a day when his scientists would walk into his quarters and tell him they had found a cure, but, now that it was happening, he found himself unable to fully process it. The scale of the Lazarus Project’s discovery – if it’s real, he reminded himself, don’t get carried away, for God’s sake, not yet – was scarcely comprehensible; if it did prove to be real, it would quite literally change the world forever. He ordered himself to stay calm, when what he really wanted to do was jump up from his desk and wrap Karlsson and Browning in a bear hug of sheer gratitude.
“And you can produce it?” he asked. “On a mass scale?”
Matt nodded. “The genetic structure is stable, sir. We can synthesise it as fast as the labs can churn it out.”
“So what’s the next step?”
“Under normal circumstances, we would schedule at least two years of rodent and primate testing before we even considered a human trial,” said Professor Karlsson. “But these are not normal circumstances, sir.”
“Indeed they are not,” said Turner. “So what’s our alternative?”
“Test it on a vampire,” said Karlsson. “A live vampire. But there are ethical—”
“Do it,” said Turner. “Immediately. I’ll get the Operational Squads to bring you subjects. Test it as soon as there are vampires in the cells.”
“Once we have their agreement, sir?” asked Browning.
Turner shook his head. “Test it whether they agree or not, Lieutenant Browning,” he said. “My suggestion would be that you don’t waste time asking them. Bring the results straight here, whatever time of day it is, whatever my schedule says I’m supposed to be doing. The very minute you have them. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” said Karlsson.
“Yes, sir,” repeated Matt.
“Good,” said Turner. “If this works, if this is what you say it is, I’ll make sure the world knows what you and your colleagues did. I promise you that. I want you to pass my profound gratitude on to every single member of the Lazarus Project. Will you do that for me?”
“Of course,” said Karlsson, an expression of pride rising on to his face. “Thank you, sir.”
“Thank you, Professor,” said Turner. “And you, Lieutenant Browning. Now get back to the labs. Go and find out whether you really have just saved the world.”
Jamie walked along the cellblock corridor, safe in the knowledge that his mother would already know he was coming.
He could hear her moving about in her cell, even though it was still more than a hundred metres away, and had no doubt that she would be frantically tidying. It was incredibly unlikely that he would notice if the square room was what she considered messy, but she would be mortified nonetheless; as a result, he slowed his pace, giving her time to make the cell immaculate.
Jamie knew that he should be with Ellison and Qiang, getting ready for the Patrol Respond they would be embarking on in less than an hour. The amendment to the Operational SOP – that they were to bring vampires back to the Loop alive from now on – had arrived on their consoles ninety minutes earlier and he should have been discussing such a radical change of policy with his squad mates. In the current climate, with public anger rampant and incidents of violence occurring with dizzying frequency, carrying out the new order was going to be fraught with difficulty; it was, Jamie knew from long experience, extremely difficult to subdue a vampire that didn’t want to be subdued.
Killing them was a lot easier.
There had been no explanation for the change in SOP. Jamie had heard the subject being discussed at length as he made his way down through the Loop, thanks to his supernatural hearing, and the prevailing view seemed to be that it was a PR exercise, a way for Blacklight to try and improve their standing among the sections of the population who believed that vampires deserved the same treatment as humans. None of the Operators – or at least, none that he had overheard – had raised the possibility that had immediately occurred to him as he read the new orders, a possibility that he dearly, desperately hoped was the truth.
Matt and his team have made a breakthrough, he thought. And we’re bringing them vampire test subjects. I’m absolutely sure of it.
Jamie heard his mother stop moving and resumed his usual pace, his boots clicking on the floor beneath him. He wanted to talk to Kate about the change of orders, and he really wanted to find Matt and ask him what was going on, but he needed to see his mother first, despite the guilt he felt whenever he did so.
The previous evening, in the officers’ mess, he had told Kate the truth about his reasons for not telling his mother that his father was still alive. He knew that Kate – and Matt too, in all likelihood – thought it was a selfish decision, a way for him to get back at his dad and exercise power over a situation in which he had been left in the dark for so long, but that genuinely wasn’t the case. He had not told her, and would not tell her, because he could see no good that could come from it, and because he had no desire to cause his mother more pain than she had already suffered.
He knew that it was very likely the same rationale that Frankenstein would use for not having told him the truth about his father, and as such placed him dangerously close to hypocrisy, but he was sure, deep down, that it was not the same thing. Had he been told the truth, he could have done something about his father being alive, helped him, or brought him in, or something. Whereas there was nothing his mother could do from inside her cell, and it would only be cruel to increase her feelings of helplessness. When this was all over, when Dracula rose or fell and Blacklight survived or was destroyed, he would tell her, and take the consequences of his decision on the chin.
Jamie walked out in front of the UV wall that sealed his mother’s cell and smiled. She was sitting on their old sofa with a magazine in her hands, and looking up at him with a ludicrously unconvincing expression of surprise, as if trying to make it clear that she definitely hadn’t known he was coming and definitely hadn’t scrambled to give the cell a quick once-over before he arrived.
“Hello, love,” she said, and gave him a wide smile. “It’s nice to see you. Are you coming in?”
“Hey, Mum,” he said. “I was planning to, if that’s all right?”
“Of course,” she said.
His mother got up and busied herself with the tea tray as he pressed his ID card against the black panel on the wall. The purple barrier disappeared and he stepped into the cell, leaving the front open behind him; it was a violation of basic security procedures to do so, but he doubted he could find a single person inside the Loop who believed his mother represented any kind of a threat.
“Here you go,” said Marie, holding out a steaming mug. He thanked her, took it from her hand, and settled on to the sofa as she lowered herself into the armchair opposite.
“How are you, Jamie?” she asked.
“I’m all right, Mum. Yourself?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” she said. “Not a lot really happens down here.”
“I suppose not,” he said. “Doesn’t Valentin visit you any more?”
“He does,” said Marie. Her eyes narrowed slightly, as though she wasn’t sure whether she had said the right thing. “It’s nice to see another person now and again.”
“I bet,” said Jamie. He had avoided even glancing into the ancient vampire’s cell as he passed it, but had still been able to feel Valentin’s eyes following him.
“What about you?” she asked. “Still no word from Larissa?”
Jamie grimaced. “No, Mum,” he said. “No word from her.”
“Oh,” said Marie, and forced a smile. “Well, I’m sure there will be soon.”
Jamie laughed. “Why would you think that?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why would you think we’ll hear from her soon, Mum? She left in the middle of the night without saying goodbye and she removed her chip so that nobody would know where she’d gone. Does that sound like the behaviour of someone who’s about to have a change of heart and come home?”
“I don’t know,” said Marie. “I’m sure she had her reasons.”
“Yeah,” said Jamie. “Me. I’m the reason.”
His mother shook her head. “That’s ridiculous, Jamie. Why would you say something so stupid?”
“We had a huge fight that evening,” he said. “You know we did. And three hours later she was gone. You can’t tell me to pretend there’s no link between the two?”
“I’m not saying that,” said Marie. “I just don’t like to see you being so hard on yourself. I didn’t know Larissa, but I don’t believe anyone would throw away their entire life because they had a fight with their boyfriend. What was it about, Jamie? Can you even remember? Because I bet it wasn’t anything important.”
He bit his tongue. His memory of that evening, of their argument and what it had been about, was crystal clear, but he could not tell his mother that.
“You’re right, Mum,” he said. “I can’t remember.”
He sipped his tea as his mother stared at him, a sympathetic expression on her face. He gave her a thin smile, but her gaze didn’t change; it was unnerving.
“What?” he asked, eventually. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re a teenager, Jamie,” she said, her voice low and gentle. “Only for another couple of years, but you’re still one now, and teenagers never believe their parents have ever been through anything that might be relevant to what’s happening to them. But I would hope you remember that you’re not the only person in this room who knows what it’s like to lose someone they love.”
Jamie felt his heart lurch in his chest. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “It’s not the same thing, I know it isn’t. I just miss her, Mum. There, I said it. I know you weren’t her biggest fan and I know part of you thinks I’m better off without her, but I really miss her.”
His mother gave him a fierce smile. “I know you do, Jamie,” she said. “Did you know my parents didn’t approve of your father when we got together? Did I ever tell you that?”
Good judges of character, thought Jamie, and instantly chastised himself for such unnecessary viciousness.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t know that. Why didn’t Nan and Granddad like him?”
She shrugged. “They were snobs,” she said. “Simple as that. They wanted me to marry a lawyer or a banker, someone who could look after me properly, and your dad was just a lowly civil servant at the Ministry of Defence. Well, we all thought
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