Will Hill - Battle Lines

As a result, the first dozen Operators that Turner approached about joining ISAT turned him down flat. They were too scared of the Security Officer, whose glacial grey eyes could turn even the boldest Operator’s insides to water, to tell him exactly what they thought of his project, but not to reject his offer. Turner didn’t hold it against them; he merely moved on to the next person on his list. He needed only a single Operator to share the ISAT burden, someone who could ensure his actions were above suspicion, and he would ask every single man and woman in the base if necessary. If they all said no, he would go back to the top of his list and ask them all again. But in the end, this proved unnecessary.

Kate told Jamie she was going to volunteer for ISAT before she did so; she wasn’t asking his permission, but she didn’t want him to find out from someone else. His response had been entirely as she expected.

“You’re kidding,” he said. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“I have my reasons,” she replied, looking him directly in the eye. “I’m sure you can work out what they are.”

“Of course I can,” he snapped. “Obviously I can. But have you thought this through, Kate? Like, really thought it through? Everyone’s going to hate you if you do this. Everyone.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Let them hate me.”

He had tried to talk her out of it for a further half an hour, but once it became clear that she was not going to be persuaded to change her mind, he had done the second thing she had expected: told her that he would stick up for her, no matter what anyone else said or thought. She had thanked him, and given him a long hug that had brought tears to her eyes and a lump to her throat.

Larissa and Matt had both been amazing in the aftermath of Shaun’s death, and could empathise with her, up to a point; both were living without the people they loved, in Matt’s case voluntarily, in Larissa’s as a result of what had been done to her by Grey, the ancient vampire who had turned her. They understood loneliness, and what it meant to miss someone, but they couldn’t fully appreciate what she was going through. Jamie was the only one who could, having watched his father die less than three years earlier.

Kate would never have dreamt of suggesting that her loss in any way compared to his. She had only been with Shaun for a couple of months, barely any time at all, even given the hyper-reality of life inside Blacklight. She knew the loss of her boyfriend didn’t come close to the loss of his father, and never tried to claim otherwise. But what it did mean was that Jamie understood the thing that she was struggling to find a way past, the same thing that had tormented him in the months that followed Julian Carpenter’s death: the fact that Shaun was gone , that everything he had ever been, everything he might one day have become, had disappeared into nothing. She was never going to see him again, and neither was anyone else. He wasn’t somewhere else, separated from her by distance or protocol or orders.

He was dead and he was never coming back.

Paul Turner’s eyes had lit up when Kate entered his office and volunteered for ISAT.

She had spent a lot of time with the Security Officer since Shaun had died, a mutual support system that had been observed with utter bewilderment by the Operators of Blacklight, many of whom had never genuinely allowed for the possibility that Paul Turner might have human emotions. And, in all honesty, Kate had answered his request to see her the day after Shaun’s death with a significant amount of trepidation; unlike Jamie, she had never spoken privately with the Security Officer and was not afraid to admit that she was scared of him. But he had welcomed her into his office that dark, terrible day with a warmth that she could never have expected or prepared herself for. He made her tea and asked her about his son; she told him about her boyfriend, and felt unsteady common ground form beneath them.

Kate had, in fact, become immensely fond of Major Turner, and she was increasingly sure the feeling was mutual. The last time she had gone to visit him, he had mentioned the prospect of her coming to meet Shaun’s mother once all this horror was over. Caroline Turner, who was Henry Seward’s sister as well as Paul’s wife, and who therefore must be going through a hell that Kate couldn’t even begin to imagine, with her son dead and her brother in the hands of the enemy, had apparently asked repeatedly to meet her. She had accepted gladly, and Turner told her they would arrange it when the time was right. As a result, her appearance at his door on the day she volunteered for ISAT was not a surprise. He had welcomed her in, and listened as she explained why she was there.

“Are you sure?” he asked, when she had finished.

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” he said, and hugged her. The sensation was so strange that for a long moment she stood stiffly in his arms, before gradually bringing her own up and wrapping them round his broad shoulders.

With Kate on board, ISAT was ready to go in less than a week. The rooms were equipped, the Intelligence Division briefed, and preliminary interviews carried out on the men and women who would be working for the team; this included Kate and Paul Turner, who insisted on going first. By this point, the Intelligence Division had been carrying out the most invasive background checks in the history of the British Intelligence Services for almost a month; they had been Turner’s first order as soon as ISAT was authorised by Cal Holmwood. Turner’s was complete and had come back spotless. But the revised checks were only half of the process; the other half was an interview, with the subject attached to a lie-detector machine more sensitive than any available to the public.

The ISAT machines measured the same variables as regular lie detectors – heartrate, breathing patterns, perspiration etc. – but did so with a precision that was unmatched. They returned results that were 99.9 per cent accurate; from a mathematical perspective, they were as close to infallible as it was possible to be. The Intelligence Division staff had attached pads and wires to Paul Turner’s body, and Kate had asked him the questions they had devised together; he passed, as no one had ever doubted for a second. Then Kate had taken her turn, followed by the eight members of the Intelligence Division that had been assigned to ISAT. All passed, and Major Turner had sent a message to Interim Director Holmwood, telling him they were ready for him.

That had been yesterday.

Cal Holmwood had also passed, to the surprise of precisely no one, and had given them the final order to begin. To avoid any possible accusations of agenda, they were taking the Operators in computer-randomised order; the first of them, Lieutenant Stephen Marshall, looked up as Kate and Turner entered the interview room. The pads and wires were already attached to his body, and his face bore an expression of outright contempt as they took their seats opposite him.

“Lieutenant Marshall,” said Paul Turner. “Do you need anything before we begin?”

Marshall’s face curdled with disgust. “Just get on with it,” he spat.

“As you wish,” replied Turner, and glanced over at Kate. She nodded, then opened her folder of questions to the first page.

“This is ISAT interview 012,” she said. “Conducted by Lieutenant Kate Randall, NS303, 78-J in the presence of Major Paul Turner, NS303, 36-A. State your name, please.”

“Lieutenant Stephen Marshall.”

Kate looked down at the table; set into its surface was a small screen, angled in such a way that it could not be seen by the interviewee. Two grey boxes filled it; these displayed the results of the two sets of monitoring equipment that were humming quietly away on either side of Lieutenant Marshall’s chair. After a millisecond or two, both boxes turned bright green. She nodded.