Department 19: Zero Hour (23 page)

Kate was waiting in the corridor, a wide smile on her face. Larissa felt a similar expression rise on to her face as she let the door swing shut, despite her concern for Jamie; there had always been something irresistible about her friend.

“Hey,” said Kate.

“Hey yourself,” she said, and pulled her into a tight hug. Kate didn’t struggle in the embrace, not that doing so would have done her any good; Larissa was now far, far stronger than any human, and if she decided to hug someone, they were going to be hugged whether they liked it or not.

“OK?” asked Kate, frowning.

“Fine,” said Larissa. She released her grip and stepped back. “You?”

“I’m all right,” said Kate. “Are you sure
you
are? You’re acting like you haven’t seen me in months.”

“It feels like that,” said Larissa. “Sometimes.”

The mixture of amusement and concern on Kate’s face warmed her heart. Her relationship with Jamie was endlessly complicated, without even taking into account whatever was going on with him now; her relationship with Matt was compromised, if only slightly, by the fact that she had once almost killed him, even though she hadn’t meant to. But her relationship with Kate? That was something she could understand, that appeared impervious to the shifting sands their lives were now all built on. Larissa was absolutely certain that if they had met in the real world, away from all the madness and darkness that now surrounded them on a daily basis, they would still have been friends. They were compatible, in that easy, impossible-to-define way that separates friends from acquaintances.

“Let’s get something to eat,” suggested Kate. “I skipped breakfast.”

Larissa hesitated.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Kate. “It’s cool if you don’t want to; you don’t have to think of an excuse.”

Larissa shook her head. “It’s not that, not at all. I
do
want to. But I need to talk to Jamie first. There’s something going on with him.”

“When is there ever not?” said Kate, smiling. “But you’re going to be here for a long time if you’re waiting for him to come out.”

Larissa frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“He came out twenty seconds after you,” said Kate, and pointed down the corridor towards a pair of double doors. “He went into the hangar.”

“Are you serious?”

Kate nodded.

“Hang on for a minute,” said Larissa, then turned and rocketed along the corridor, heat rising in the corners of her eyes. She slammed through the double doors and scanned for her boyfriend. There was no sign of him, but she could smell him; the familiar scent was faint but unmistakable, confirmation that Kate’s eyes had not deceived her.

Larissa flew to the hangar doors and floated at the edge of the shade, centimetres away from the sunlight that would cause her to burst into flames. She couldn’t see Jamie anywhere, even with her supernatural eyesight. She stared for a long moment, then flew back the way she had come, descending to the ground in front of Kate, who looked at her with narrowed eyes.

“Everything all right?”

“I’m not sure,” said Larissa. “I don’t think so. But if he doesn’t want my help he can deal with it on his own.” She smiled. “Right now, I’m starving.”

The two girls found a table in the corner of the canteen on Level G and took their seats. Kate had a bowl of fresh fruit, some yoghurt, and a mug of steaming black coffee. Larissa, whose supernaturally enhanced metabolism made putting on weight all but impossible, had filled her own plate with bagels, bacon, scrambled eggs, fried tomatoes, and mushrooms. She attacked her breakfast as Kate filled her in on developments in the Security Division.

“… the ISAT thing is still there, you know? I don’t think either Paul or I are ever going to truly be rid of it. Everyone kind of grudgingly accepts that it needed doing, and everyone feels better now it’s done, but it’s going to take them all a long time to forget what is was like sitting in that chair while we asked them whether they were a traitor or not. And it’s all still messy, with Shaun and working with his dad every day, but it’s OK. It’s getting easier.”

“Good,” said Larissa, through a mouthful of eggs. “That’s good.”

“What about you?” asked Kate, tipping yoghurt on to her fruit. “How much of your head is still in Nevada?”

Larissa grinned. “Funny. Really funny.”

“Sorry,” said Kate, smiling. “I just think it’s sort of amusing that you think we don’t know you wish you were still there. You’re not as good at hiding things as you think you are.”

Oh, really?
thought Larissa.
You’d be surprised, my friend. Very surprised.

“I miss it,” she said. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t. I miss the open spaces, and people that didn’t look at me like I was something too dangerous to turn their back on. But when I was there I missed you and Jamie and Matt. So what does that tell you?”

“That you haven’t found somewhere you can be truly happy yet?”

Larissa shrugged. “Maybe. The grass is always greener, right?”

“So they say,” said Kate. “But you and Jamie are good? Everything’s OK?”

Larissa considered the question for a second or two.
Were
they all right? If Kate had asked Jamie, she suspected that he would have already said yes, everything was cool. But she wasn’t quite so sure; the conversation about what it would be like if they were both vampires had shaken her, and refused to leave her mind, and her concern over whatever was wrong with him now had been joined by anger that he had disappeared after the Zero Hour meeting without talking to her. And on top of those problems, worse by far than either of them, was the secret she carried with her every minute, the secret that grew heavier with each day that passed without sharing it with her boyfriend.

“I think so,” she said, eventually. “I hope so, at least. It’s hard, me being what I am and him being normal. It makes things weird, and even though he swears he can handle it, I never quite believe him. Is that bad?”

Kate smiled. “No,” she said. “I think that’s fine.”

She nodded. “It’s not just that, though. The America thing is always there too.” She paused for a second. “General Allen tried to persuade me to stay, did you know that?”

Kate shook her head.

“Well, he did,” said Larissa. “He said he could get Cal Holmwood to agree to a transfer.”

“What did you say?”

“I asked him if Jamie would be able to come too. Allen said he’d like nothing more, but that there was no chance in hell.”

“Descendant of the founders and all that,” said Kate.

“Right,” said Larissa. “But here’s the awful thing. I almost said yes anyway.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I wanted to, though.”

“But you
didn’t.
And if that doesn’t tell you how you feel about Jamie, and where your loyalties really lie, I don’t know what will.”

Larissa looked at her friend and felt something shift inside her. “There’s something else, Kate,” she said. “Something I overheard, that I wasn’t supposed to. Something I think Jamie would want to know, but I’m just—”

“Don’t even think about it,” interrupted Kate, her eyes flashing with sudden anger. “If you’re keeping some secret from Jamie, I don’t want to know anything about it. We said we wouldn’t do this, Larissa, the four of us, and I for one meant it.”

“I know,” said Larissa. “No more secrets, I remember. But this is something—”

“Didn’t you hear me?” asked Kate. “I said I don’t want to know. You want my advice? Tell your boyfriend whatever it is. Secrets get out eventually, we both know that, so just tell him now. It’ll be better in the long run.”

Will it?
wondered Larissa.
I’m really not sure about that.

“OK,” she said. “I’m sorry for bringing it up. Let’s talk about something else.”

Kate smiled. “No problem,” she said. “Let’s talk about Zero Hour. That should cheer us up.”

The two girls burst out laughing, drawing curious looks from the surrounding tables. Zero Hour hung over the Department like the sword of Damocles, ever-present and seemingly unstoppable. Each Operator had been forced to find their own way of dealing with it; some had withdrawn to the point of mutism, others had taken to training obsessively in the Playground and the simulators. Kate, Larissa was pleased to see, had clearly decided that making fun of the situation was the best approach.

“Right,” she said. “The end of the world is always good for a laugh.”

Kate nodded, her laughter subsiding. “That’s the thing, you see. That’s what I can’t get my head around, why the numbers I just read out make no sense.
It’s the end of the world
. I mean, not like if an asteroid hit the planet and everything died, but the end of the world we recognise. The one we understand.”

“Unless we’ve got it all wrong,” said Larissa. “And Dracula is just planning to keep his head down and not bother anyone.”

Kate laughed again, but her good humour was clearly gone. “Do you think that’s likely?”

“No,” said Larissa.

“Me neither,” said Kate. “I think it’s all going to burn unless we stop him. I just don’t know whether I believe we still can.”

Larissa nodded. That was the fear that lurked at the back of her mind, at the back, she suspected, of every Operator’s: that it was already too late to stop what was coming, that the digital display in the Ops Room ticking relentlessly down to Zero Hour was little more than an affectation, and all their planning and preparation would turn out to be nothing more than futile gestures against a darkness that was implacable.

“I have to,” she said. “Otherwise what’s the point? We might as well just hang up our uniforms and spend our last days on a beach somewhere.”

“Don’t tempt me,” said Kate, smiling widely.

“Who’s tempting?” said Larissa. “I could fly us both to Mustique in about two hours. Just say the word.”

“I think Cal might have something to say about that,” said Kate. “Court martial, in all likelihood.”

Larissa sighed extravagantly. “You’re probably right. Maybe next year, if there is one.”

The two Operators finished their breakfast in a silence full of warmth and camaraderie. When the plates and bowls were clear and the mugs were empty, Larissa sat back in her chair and looked at her friend.

“Serious question,” she said. “What chance do you give us when Zero Hour arrives? One in ten? Twenty? Worse?”

Kate shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I wouldn’t say the odds were good. I’d say they were far
from
good, if I’m honest.”

“Me too,” said Larissa. “But here’s the weird thing. I wouldn’t change where we are, and what we’re doing, for anything. I’ve thought about this a lot, about the different ways my life could have gone, so I can say it with absolute certainty. Right here, right now, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“Me neither,” said Kate, instantly. “Despite everything with my dad, and Shaun, there’s nowhere I would rather be than here. Sometimes I think it would be nice to be lying in a warm bed somewhere out there, with no idea of the darkness all around me. And it probably would be. But you know what? I’d rather know what’s coming, and have the chance to at least try and do something about it. Even if we fail, and Dracula rises and the world burns and eighty million people really do die, I’d rather be able to tell myself that I tried.”

Larissa grinned.

“Amen to that,” she said. “A-bloody-men.”

Jamie Carpenter was pulled out of a dream about his father by the loud beep of his console.

He reached for the plastic rectangle and stabbed blindly at its screen with his finger, hoping to hit the exact section that would dismiss the message causing the ungodly noise. He missed, and when the beep rang out again he forced open his eyes and hammered the screen so hard it almost cracked.

In the dream, he and his dad had been standing in the living room of their old house in Brenchley. The window was broken, and the coffee table was smashed, and Jamie knew it was the night his dad had died, the night that Alexandru Rusmanov had come for them. His mother wasn’t there; in reality, she had been standing against the wall opposite the window, her hands clutching her face, her eyes wide with terror. But in the dream, it was just the two of them. His father had been saying something, something that Jamie couldn’t understand, although he had been sure it was important. His console had woken him before he could ask his dad to repeat it.