Will Hill - The Rising

Thirty seconds later a black van pulled to a halt in front of the two policemen.

The windows of the vehicle were as dark as the panels of its body, and it sat low to the ground on heavy-duty, run-flat tyres. The noise of its engine was incredibly loud, a deep roar that Pearson and Fleming felt through their boots. For almost thirty seconds, nothing happened; the van stood motionless before them, squat and strangely threatening under the fluorescent light emanating from the hospital’s side entrance behind them. Then, with a loud hiss, the vehicle’s rear door slid open, and three figures emerged.

Fleming stared at them as they approached, his eyes wide. Pearson, who had seen things over the course of his career that the younger man would not have believed, was more adept at hiding his emotions than his partner, and managed to keep his confusion, and rising unease, from his face.

The three figures that stopped in front of them were dressed head to toe in black: their boots, their gloves, their uniforms, belts and military-style webbing. All black. The only splash of colour was the bright purple of the flat visors that covered their faces, visors attached to sleek black helmets that looked like nothing the policemen had seen before. There was not a millimetre of exposed skin to be seen; the newcomers could easily have been robots, such was the anonymity of their appearance. On their belts, two black guns hung in holsters alongside a long cylinder with a handle and a trigger on one side. It was obviously a weapon, but it was not one that either of the policemen recognised.

The tallest of the figures stopped in front of Sergeant Pearson, the shiny material of its visor centimetres away from his face. When the figure spoke, the voice was male, but it had a flat, digital quality that Pearson knew from his time on the Met with SO15 meant the person behind the visor was speaking through several levels of filter, to avoid the possibility of voiceprint identification.

“Have you signed the Official Secrets Act?” the black figure asked, turning its visor-clad face sharply between the two policemen, who nodded, too intimidated to speak. “Good. Then you never saw us, and this never happened.”

“On whose authority?” managed Pearson, his voice shaking heavily.

“The Chief of the General Staff,” replied the figure, then leant forward until its visor was a millimetre from the Sergeant’s nose. “And mine. Understood?”

Pearson nodded again, and the figure drew back. Then it stepped past him and strode into the hospital. The other two dark shapes followed.

“The blood bank is—” began Constable Fleming.

“We know the way,” said the third of the figures in a digitally altered female voice.

Then they were gone.

The two policemen looked at one another. Sergeant Pearson was visibly shaking, and Constable Fleming reached a hand towards his partner’s shoulder. The older man waved it away, but he didn’t look annoyed; he looked old, and frightened.

“Who were they, Sarge?” asked Fleming, his voice unsteady.

“I don’t know, Dave,” replied Pearson. “And I don’t want to know.”

The three black-clad figures strode through the bright corridors of the hospital.

The tall one, the one who had spoken to Sergeant Pearson, led the way. Behind, shorter and slimmer than the leader, came the second of the trio, who appeared to glide across the linoleum floor. The third, shorter again, brought up the rear, its purple visor sweeping slowly left and right for any sign of trouble, or witnesses to their presence. As they passed the double doors that led to the hospital’s operating theatre, the tall figure at the front motioned for them to stop, and pulled a radio from his belt. He keyed in a series of numbers and letters, then activated the handset’s wireless connection to his helmet’s comms network. After a pause of several seconds, he spoke.

“Operational Squad G-17 in position. Alpha reporting in.”

“Beta reporting in,” the second figure said, in a metallic female voice.

“Gamma reporting in,” said the final squad member.

Alpha listened as a voice spoke on the other end of the line, and then replaced the radio on his belt.

“Let’s go,” he said, and the squad moved on into the hospital. After only a matter of seconds, Gamma spoke.

“So who made the 999 call?”

“The nurse at reception,” answered Alpha. “One of the night porters saw a man leading a young girl into the blood bank, said the man had red eyes. He told the nurse he thought it was probably a junkie.”

Beta laughed. “He’s probably right. But not the kind he’s thinking.”

The three shadowy shapes pushed open a door marked RESTRICTED, and moved on.

“Fifth call in three nights,” said Gamma. “Is Seward punishing us for something?”

“It’s not just us,” answered Alpha. “It’s everyone. Every squad is flat out.”

“I know,” replied Beta. “And we know why, don’t we? It’s because of…”

“Don’t,” said Gamma, quickly. “Don’t talk about him. Not now, OK?”

A small noise emerged from behind Beta’s helmet, a noise that could easily have been a laugh, but she let the subject drop.

“You were pretty hard on the police,” said Gamma. “The old Sergeant looked terrified.”

“Good,” replied Alpha. “The more he pretends that tonight never happened, the safer he’ll be. Now no more talk.”

They had reached the hospital’s blood bank, the door of which was standing open. Alpha stepped slowly into the dark room, and flicked the light switch on the wall.

Nothing happened.

He pulled a torch from his belt, and shone it up at the light fitting. The bulb was smashed, leaving a ring of jagged glass surrounding the filament. A slow sweep of the torch revealed carnage; the metal shelves of the blood bank had been ransacked. Blood and shattered plastic dotted the surfaces, and pooled and piled up on the floor.

“Don’t come any closer.”

The voice came from the corner of the room, and Alpha instantly swung his torch towards it. Two more shafts of white light joined its beam, as Beta and Gamma stepped into the room and followed their squad leader’s example.

The beams illuminated the trembling figure of a middle-aged man, crouching in the corner of the room. At his feet lay a sports bag full of plastic sachets of blood. In his arms was a girl, no more than six years old, with an expression of pure terror on her face. The man had a razor-sharp fingernail to her throat, and was looking at the three black figures with an expression of desperate panic.

Alpha reached up, turned a dial on the side of his helmet and watched his view of the room change. The helmet contained a cryocooled infrared detector, which showed the heat variance of every object within the visor’s field of vision. The cold walls and floor of the blood bank were a wash of pale greens and blues, while the little girl was darker, studded with patches of yellow and orange. The man bloomed bright red and purple like a roman candle, distorting Alpha’s vision.

“I’ll kill her if you come any closer,” the man said, shifting nervously against the wall. He tightened his grip on the girl’s throat, and she moaned.

Alpha twisted the visor’s setting back to normal.

“Stay calm,” he said, evenly. “Just let the girl go, and we can talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about!” yelled the man, and jerked the girl off her feet. She cried out, her eyes wide with terror, and Alpha took a half-step forward.

“Let the girl go,” he repeated.

“This isn’t right,” said Beta, in a low voice.

Alpha flicked his head towards her.

“Don’t make a move without my go,” he warned.

Beta snorted with laughter. “Please,” she said, then pulled a short black tube from her waist, pointed it into the corner of the room and pressed a button.