Will Hill - Battle Lines

“I know, sir,” she said. “You should tell him .”

“I will,” said General Allen. “One day, I definitely will.”

“He’ll appreciate it, sir.”

“Do you miss him?” asked the Director. “Are you looking forward to going home?”

Larissa considered this: two different questions, with two different answers.

“I miss him,” she said.

General Allen nodded. “I’m hearing nothing but great things about you,” he said. “Tim’s just about ready to adopt you. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“That’s nice to hear, sir.”

“We probably could, you know,” said Allen, his grey eyes suddenly fixed on hers. “Arrange a permanent transfer, I mean. What would you think about something like that?”

Larissa felt her stomach churn with desire. She pictured herself flying through the great open spaces surrounding Dreamland, eating and drinking and laughing with her friends in the diner at the edge of the runway, training recruits and helping NS9 on Operations throughout the length and breadth of this vast, unfamiliar country.

“What about Jamie?” she asked. “Could you have him transferred too?”

General Allen laughed. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Larissa, I can assure you of that. But I think the chances of Cal Holmwood letting that happen are somewhere very close to zero.”

Bob Allen watched as Larissa closed the door behind her, then got up and reached into his fridge for another beer. As he removed the cap, the sense of conflict that always arose in the aftermath of talking to Larissa made its presence known in his stomach, where it twisted gently. His excitement at discussing Blacklight’s new generation with the vampire girl was tempered by a sense of guilt, of having betrayed the man who was currently locked in a cell eight floors below his feet.

He had told Larissa the truth: one day he would meet Jamie Carpenter and, when he did, he intended to shake him by the hand and congratulate him. That wouldn’t be enough, but there were no words that were sufficient for what Jamie had done, no way to do it justice. Bob Allen would never have permitted a lone Operator to face a Priority Level 1 vampire, especially not one as old and dangerous as Alexandru Rusmanov; he doubted, in fact, whether he would have sent less than fifty of his finest Operators to face him. But Jamie had faced him alone, with minimal weapons and training, and prevailed.

Yet, despite his genuine admiration, Bob Allen feared Jamie Carpenter. Specifically, he feared how the boy might react if he ever found out the truth: that on both sides of the Atlantic, men he was expected to trust with his life were keeping his father’s survival a secret from him.

The Director drained his second beer and headed for the door. At the end of the corridor stood the elevator that would take him down to the detention level, where the man he had described to Larissa as one of his closest friends would be waiting for him, alone in the darkness.

Kate Randall wiped her eyes and splashed water on her face. It was the first time she had cried in almost two and a half days, a new personal best since the night a month earlier when she had watched her boyfriend die.

She was standing in the bathroom within the small suite of rooms that had been commandeered by ISAT, the Internal Security Assessment Team. In the centre was the interview room, containing a seat flanked by two metal cabinets of monitoring equipment, a desk and two plastic chairs. Outside the entrance to the interview room was a small lobby, separated from the rest of the Intelligence Division by a heavy steel door, which was accessed by a nine-digit code known only to three people. To the left of the lobby stood a door, leading into a small living room and kitchen. The thin plaster wall of the living room contained two further doors; one led into the small quarters that the ISAT Director had taken to sleeping in, the other into the bathroom where Kate had just stopped crying.

There was a gentle knock on the door behind her.

“One minute,” she called.

“Are you all right?” asked a male voice, full of concern.

“I’m fine,” she replied. “Just… give me a minute, OK?”

“OK,” replied the voice. “We’re ready when you are. Take your time.”

Kate wiped her eyes a final time.

Get it together , she told herself, sharply. He needs you.

She stared at herself for a long moment in the mirror above the sink; she took a deep breath, held it, let it out, then turned and opened the bathroom door. Major Paul Turner was standing in the small ISAT living room, his arms folded across his chest. He smiled at her, almost, but not quite, managing to hide the expression of concern she had seen on his face as she emerged from the bathroom.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready,” she replied.

Turner clapped her on the shoulder, his hand pausing momentarily before falling away, then led her out into the lobby and through the door to the interview room.

ISAT had been formed in the aftermath of Valeri Rusmanov’s attack on the Loop, in response to a claim made by his brother Valentin during the interrogation that had followed his defection to Blacklight.

Paul Turner had asked the ancient vampire whether he had any information regarding the existence of double agents inside the Department. The sad case of Thomas Morris, the former Operator who had betrayed them to Valentin’s brother Alexandru and had been responsible for the death of Julian Carpenter, had been assumed to be an isolated incident. Valentin’s answer had immediately cast doubt over that assumption; he had claimed to know with absolute certainty that Valeri had maintained at least one agent inside the Department since its expansion in the 1920s.

Valentin had been able to offer no support for this claim, no names, no dates, no incriminating evidence, and the thought that it may have been intended to sow distrust within Blacklight had immediately occurred to everyone. But then the Loop had been attacked, by a vampire army that had made its way undetected beneath the radar arrays and through the motion detectors and laser nets, and the double life of Professor Christopher Reynolds had been uncovered; he had been in the employ of Valeri Rusmanov his entire life. As Cal Holmwood tried to piece the wounded, reeling Department back together, Paul Turner had approached him and quietly explained that they needed to clean house, as a matter of urgency. Holmwood had agreed and instructed Turner, the Department’s Security Officer, to create a team to carry out the task.

“They’re going to hate you for this, Paul,” warned Holmwood. “But you’re right, it needs doing. When you’re ready to start interviewing, come and tell me. I’ll go first.”

Turner agreed, then set about the creation of ISAT, the first internal affairs team in the long, proud history of Blacklight.

Holmwood was right: they hated him for it. The knowledge that he was creating a team to investigate Operators leaked quickly through the Loop, and proved incredibly unpopular; it seemed cruel to subject men and women who had just fought for their lives, who had watched friends and colleagues fall at their sides, to new suspicion. The survivors felt they had proved themselves, that their loyalty had been shown beyond question. Paul Turner understood their position, but didn’t care. And the whispered consensus within the Loop was that why he didn’t care was obvious: as far as Turner was concerned, ISAT was a personal crusade. One of the Operators who died during the attack on the Loop was Shaun Turner, Paul’s twenty-one-year-old son, who had also been Kate Randall’s boyfriend.