Department 19: Zero Hour by Will Hill

out there.”
    “Awesome,” said Simon. “Now we wait.”
    “For what?” asked Justin.
    Simon smiled. “For the shit to hit the fan, mate. That’s what.”

Jamie Carpenter paced back and forth in the lift as it rose steadily through the Loop, trying to convince himself not to be angry with his mother and Frankenstein.
    You know where it comes from. You know it’s them worrying about you, wanting to protect you. You know it isn’t as patronising as it sounded.
    He
did
know that, deep in his heart, and in his bones. But it did nothing to dampen the fire that was threatening to burst through him and burn everything in its path.
    Looking for a father figure to replace Dad. Such bullshit.
    Jamie had told the truth in his mother’s cell; for a long time, he had been furious with his dad for leaving them, but had reached a place where he had been able to forgive him. He had never believed the stories that had been spread about Julian, about the plot he had supposedly been involved in, but there had clearly been
something
going on that he and his mother had been in the dark about. Now he knew what, he was able to understand, and forgive.
    What still made him angry was the posthumous canonisation of his father; he was discussed in revered tones as some kind of superman, a legendary Operator, one of the great men of his generation. Which may all have been true – in fact, part of Jamie hoped it was – but did nothing to lessen his belief that his dad’s death had been completely avoidable. The frame that Tom Morris had placed round him had clearly looked convincingly damning, but Jamie didn’t believe that it could have withstood serious investigation, not with the resources the Department had at its disposal. If his dad had turned himself in to any of the men Jamie had suggested to Frankenstein, he was certain the truth would have been uncovered. Which might have meant that the whole chain of events that had seen his mother turned into a vampire and Frankenstein turned into a werewolf played out differently, or not at all.
    Instead, Julian had run for home, attempting to deal with the threat on his own instead of asking for help, and had been killed by the very men who would have stood beside him if he had given them the chance. His behaviour had been reckless, and stupid, and entirely predictable; he had walked right into Tom Morris’s trap, the opening move of a plot that would not be fully revealed until a dark night on Lindisfarne, more than two years later.
    He should be here now, helping me through this. Not dead because he was too stupid to trust the Department he gave his life to.
    Jamie had lied to his mum about one thing: he did miss his dad, terribly so at times. But the torture had not yet been devised that would have compelled him to admit so to anyone.
    The lift doors slid open on Level A. He stepped out and set off on a walk he could have done blindfold; he had long since lost count of how many times he had been summoned to the same small suite of rooms, occupied first by Henry Seward and now by Cal Holmwood. As he strode down familiar corridors, he allowed himself a moment to dwell on the other thing he had overheard as he stood outside his mother’s cell, the thing that had
really
made his blood boil.
    How dare they talk like that about Larissa? And Frankenstein claiming it’s just some clichéd teenage rebellion? How dare he? How dare either of them?
    Jamie strode round the corner, nodded to the Security Operator, and pushed open the door to the Interim Director’s quarters. Cal Holmwood looked up from behind the mountain range of files and folders that seemed to permanently cover the surface of his desk, and beckoned him forward.
    “Jamie,” he said. “Christ, get in here. Give me an excuse to stop all this bloody reading.”
    Jamie grinned, feeling his anger start to subside. “Aren’t you enjoying life behind a desk, sir?”
    “Watch it, Lieutenant,” said Holmwood, but he was smiling as