Rachel Caine - Fall of Night

‘Claire, I can’t fight him!’

‘Why not?’

Liz seemed to be at a loss for words. She took Claire’s hand and pulled herself up to her feet. Claire switched on the light, and Liz seemed about to object; she winced and reached for the switch.

Claire stopped her. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked. ‘Are you going to live in the dark, locked in here? Afraid to look out, answer the door, leave? Yes, he’s out there, and he’s clearly not going to leave you alone until one of three things happens: he hurts you, and gets arrested, or he makes a mistake, and gets arrested, or you stop him.’

‘You want me to kill him ?’

‘I didn’t say kill. I said stop. That means defend yourself. There’s a difference between losing a fight and giving up. If you want to fight, come with me.’

‘I—’ Liz looked at her for a long, uncertain moment. ‘You’re different. I thought that from the beginning when you got off the plane, but it’s more than just surface, more than just how you look. You’re really different. You got … strong.’

‘In Morganville, you only get strong,’ Claire said. ‘Or, I guess, dead. But yes. And I know this isn’t Morganville, but we can still act for ourselves. Come on. First lesson is how to defend yourself with what’s around you …’

Liz hesitated when Claire pulled her toward the kitchen, and stared toward the door. ‘Is he still there, do you think?’

‘Maybe,’ Claire said. ‘I don’t really care. Let him get frostbite out there, or get arrested for trying to peep. Don’t play his game. Play yours.’

‘I don’t have a game.’

‘You will,’ Claire promised her, and gave her a smile that was probably every bit as scary as anything Derrick had in him. ‘You will.’

Myrnin hadn’t given Claire a whole lot of information about her new mentor, only a name (Irene Anderson) and the fact that she had once lived in Morganville, and been Myrnin’s assistant. It was fairly impressive that she’d survived the experience, but that hadn’t given Claire much context for what Anderson would be like.

Turned out that she was awesome .

For one thing, she was a whole lot younger than Claire had expected – mid-thirties, maybe. And when Claire knocked on her office door, she thought she’d arrived in the wrong place, because the petite woman standing there had no desk, and was wearing overalls that had seen better days, and was using some kind of very small handheld blowtorch on a pile of metal.

‘Just a sec,’ she said, without taking her eyes off what was happening. It was more like ten seconds, but then the woman shut off the burner, set it aside, and made a quick note on a pad of paper nearby. ‘There. Got it. So, you’re my ten o’clock, right?’

‘I’m Claire Danvers. You’re—?’

‘Dr Irene Anderson.’ The woman shoved goggles back on her head, and they slid off to hang hilariously off of her blonde ponytail, then clattered off to the floor. ‘I know, not what you were expecting, am I? Everybody says that. Including my own family. Hi.’ She came around the workbench and offered Claire her hand to shake. It was a decisive, firm grip, and she held Claire’s gaze long enough for it to be evident she had blue eyes to go with the blonde hair. Shane probably would have called her hot, though Claire was never sure exactly what his scale seemed to be … it had more to do with attitude than type. ‘Good to meet you. You’re young to have survived a year or two doing what you were doing.’

‘Are we not supposed to mention …?’

‘Morganville? Sure, you can. Sorry. Native caution is very normal. I’ve always been so careful about not discussing Myrnin that I often forget to use his name even when I’m able. Speaking of the man, I hear he’s better now.’

‘Better than he was when I got there.’

‘Ah. That’s good. I didn’t want to leave, but he was just too unstable for his good or mine, and I thought it was better if he had a vampire assistant for a while. Did he?’

‘I – don’t know. He’s never told me much about people he worked with before me. I know that he, um …’

‘Killed a lot of them? Yes, I know that too. And, of course, he killed the sainted Ada. He’ll never get over her .’ That earned an exasperated eye roll, which stopped when Dr Anderson noticed Claire wasn’t smiling. ‘What?’

‘Ada’s – well, dead, I guess. I suppose technically this would be the third and final time. As in, not coming back.’

Dr Anderson covered her mouth with one hand, and closed her eyes for a brief moment. ‘How’d he take that?’

‘Not very well,’ Claire admitted. ‘He kind of lost it. But he’s better now. I think it helped, letting go. He still has these – episodes, but they’re not as bad as they used to be most of the time. More aggravating than terrifying.’

‘That’s quite a change,’ her new professor said, and looked at Claire with more assessment. ‘You’ve done something I was never able to do, then. Congratulations. I was informed Myrnin had cracked the code on the disease—’

‘We’re calling it Bishop’s Plague these days.’

‘Ah. Bishop’s Plague … but now I think you had more to do with solving it than he did. Right?’

Claire didn’t answer. She looked around the office – though it was more junk room and lab than office – and saw a small, cluttered table stuffed in the corner. It had a duct-taped, sagging office chair, but no visitor accommodations. ‘Is this where we’re going to work?’

‘This? No. Definitely not. I was just tinkering while I was waiting for you. Before we go, you’ll need ID.’

‘I have a student ID card—’

‘Not that.’ Dr Anderson went to her desk, opened and closed drawers, muttered, and finally came up with some kind of black magnetic strip card with a logo on it that looked eerily familiar – the Founder’s sign. She typed and moused on the computer, then ran the card through a mag strip device. ‘Here. Press your thumb in the box where it says.’ She passed Claire a small tablet device, and Claire did as requested. While she did, the tablet clicked, and she realised it had taken a picture, too. Before she could ask about it, Dr Anderson took it back and tapped on the screen, then took the mag strip card she’d made and put it into a small white device attached to the computer.

It made some soft whirring sounds, and thirty seconds later, it spit out a finished ID card, complete with picture and thumbprint. Dr Anderson examined it, pronounced it good, and decorated it with an MIT lanyard as she handed it over. ‘Wear it around your neck,’ she said. ‘No tying it on your belt, or backpack, or wearing it as a headband, and trust me, I’ve seen students try to do all those things. If it’s not in the right place, you’ll get a visit from security, and you really don’t want that. Where we’re going, security’s very, very serious.’ Dr Anderson, Claire saw, was already wearing her own ID. It looked identical, except for the photo. ‘If you cut your hair or dye it, or your physical profile changes at all, you get new ID. It has all kinds of data encoded in it. Sounds Orwellian, right? It is. Get used to it.’

Claire scrambled to follow as Dr Anderson shucked her lab coat, tossed it on a hook, and led the way out of the office and down the long hallway to a sealed door with an electronic pass reader on it. Anderson buzzed in, but when Claire started to follow her through, the other woman stopped her. ‘Use your card after me,’ she said. ‘If you come through without swiping, alarms will go off. Like I said. Secure.’

Claire nodded, and let the door shut before she ran her own badge and got a green light to enter. She slipped the lanyard back over her head and stepped through into a very different world.