Will Hill - The Rising

The former was an insult to her intelligence, and she hated being thought of as stupid almost as much as she hated being patronised. The latter was even worse; she knew, with absolute certainty, that they both believed she had a crush on Jamie.

Kate was a girl with a highly developed sense of self-awareness, and would have admitted, had anyone asked her, that there had been a tiny period of time during which she had possibly, just possibly, thought about Jamie in that way.

During the madness of Lindisfarne and the days that followed it, days in which the shape and course of her life had been altered forever, when she had been faced with decisions that she would spend the rest of her days second-guessing, he had been there, by her side, helping her through it. He had rescued her on Lindisfarne, as the bodies of her friends and neighbours lay discarded on the streets she had grown up in, and saved her life, all their lives, by destroying Alexandru Rusmanov. Then, when it was over, she had seen him with Frankenstein, and with his mum, and for a few short moments, she thought that she had maybe been a little bit in love with him.

Maybe.

But the feeling had passed, and passed quickly; partly because it was obvious to her from the moment they woke up at the Loop on the morning after Lindisfarne that he had fallen for Larissa, and that Larissa felt the same way about him, but also because in the cold light of day, away from the blood and the screams and the horror of the night before, the aura that had glowed around him as he stepped forward to face Alexandru was gone. She loved Jamie; in the months since her home had been attacked he had become one of the two closest friends she had ever had, and she would have done anything for him.

But she was not in love with him.

That was what hurt her most about the deception that he and Larissa were perpetrating; she was genuinely, unreservedly happy for them both. She had waited and waited for them to tell her, convincing herself they were looking for the right moment, until she had been forced into the bitter realisation that there wasn’t going to be a right moment. They weren’t waiting for anything; they had decided to keep her in the dark.

Well, to hell with that, she thought. Tomorrow I’ll tell them I know. No more of this.

After all, it wasn’t as if Kate had been without problems of her own to deal with in the aftermath of Lindisfarne; real problems, unlike the adolescent nonsense occupying her two supposedly best friends.

After they had arrived at the Loop, after the wonderful, heart-stopping moment when the news had been passed to her that her father was among the survivors who had made it to the mainland in John Tremain’s fishing boat, Kate had been escorted down to the secure dormitory on Level B and crashed into a deep, dreamless sleep. She had slept until a female Operator, in the same black uniform that Jamie and his colleagues had been wearing when they arrived on Lindisfarne, shook her awake six hours later and told her that she needed to get dressed and follow her up to the Loop’s Ops Room.

She had done so without complaint, still half-asleep, rubbing her eyes as they made their way into a lift and up to Level 0. The Operator had pushed open the Ops Room door, and held it wide; Kate walked through it, and looked around the large circular room.

There was only one other person in there, a strikingly handsome Latino man in his mid-forties, wearing the now familiar all-black uniform, and sitting casually on the desk at the front of the room.

“Miss Randall?” he asked. His expression was entirely neutral; there was no malice there, no threat, but no warmth either, and for a second, the strangeness of the situation she had found herself in sank into her, and she felt a sharp rush of fear as she nodded.

What if they’re going to lock me up for what I saw? What if I’m never going to get out of here? What will happen to my dad?

“My name is Major Christian Gonzalez,” the man said. “I’m the Interim Security Officer at this facility. Please, take a seat.”

Kate did as she was told, crossing the wide room and sitting in one of the plastic chairs that were ranged round a grid of long tables. She turned it so she was facing Major Gonzalez.

“Did you sleep well? Is there anything you need?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Good,” he said. “That’s good. Now, Kate – do you mind me calling you Kate?”

She shook her head again, and his lips curled at the edges.

“Thank you,” he said. “So, Kate. We have a problem, you and I. We need to work out what we’re going to do about it.”

“What problem?” she asked, her voice low and nervous.

“That you were never supposed to see the things you’ve seen. The creatures that attacked your home last night, the men who rescued you; as far as the general public is concerned, none of them exist. Neither does the building you’re standing in now. And that’s the way we need it to stay.”

Fear pulsed up Kate’s spine.

They’re going to lock me up. I’m never going to be allowed to go home.

Major Gonzalez saw the look on the teenage girl’s face and smiled.

“We’re not going to hurt you, Kate,” he said, his voice kind. “We’re the good guys. But we do need to protect the security of what we do, and that means you have a decision to make. A big one.”

“What do you mean?” Kate managed. “What decision?”

Major Gonzalez picked a small sheaf of paper from the desk he was sitting on, and showed it to Kate.

“This is the preliminary report into the events of last night,” he said. “It is based on statements from eyewitnesses, including senior members of this organisation. It describes the circumstances leading to the destruction of one of the most powerful vampires in the world at the hands of a teenage boy with nothing more than the most basic training, and the actions of the men and women that helped him. It mentions you, several times. It says that you exhibited remarkable bravery and resolve in leading Mr Carpenter and his colleagues to the monastery where Alexandru Rusmanov had made his base, and that you continued to demonstrate those qualities when confronted with a hall full of hungry vampires, led by one of the most evil creatures ever to walk the earth. It claims you destroyed one of the vampires yourself. Is that true?”

The memory of the previous night burst unbidden into Kate’s mind. She remembered the screams and the crunch of weapons as the small group of men and the vampire girl fought valiantly against monsters that outnumbered them five to one, remembered the spray of blood and the tearing of flesh and bone, remembered with shuddering revulsion the vampire who had held her, and the sensation of his sharpened fingernail tracing a line across her neck. Then she remembered the primal roar that had echoed through her head as she sank her teeth into his arm and tore at it like a mad dog, the warmth of his blood coating her from head to toe after she plunged a metal stake into his heart, and the subsequent sense of overpowering elation that had shaken her to her core.

“That’s true,” she said, quietly. “I destroyed one of them.”

Christian Gonzalez smiled at her again, and this time the smile was wide, and dizzyingly beautiful. She felt his approval wash over her, and thought she might blush.

“Well done,” he said. “Very well done indeed. That you survived as long as you did on an island overrun by vampires, that you were then able to play the part you did in their defeat, is why you now have a decision to make. The first option is as follows: you can return home, with a cover story explaining your whereabouts for the last twenty-four hours, and never tell anyone about the things you saw. You’ll have to sign the Official Secrets Act, you’ll be monitored to make sure you comply with it, and if you don’t, you will be discredited so that no one believes you, to the extent that the likely result will be a period of evaluation in a secure psychiatric hospital. But you’ll be able to resume your life as it was before the events of last night, and you’ll be reunited with your father.”