Hell's Teeth (Phoebe Harkness Book 1) (6 page)

11

Lucy and Griff were both waiting for me in Blue Lab 4 which, after escaping the hideously oppressive depths of ‘upstairs’, felt like a breath of fresh air and a home away from home.

They both stared at me in quizzical silence as I entered my own territory, finally shedding my winter coat and sliding into my lab whites. Both of them had faces like expectant puppies. Clearly the fact that I was two hours later than usual for work, and undoubtedly with only Miranda’s sketchy report of the scene in reception to go on, meant that they were waiting for me to spill the beans.

Problem was, I was on strict orders not to. Level One security clearance meant that I knew what I did. It also meant that no one else did, and part of the job role I had just been very unwillingly ushered into was to ensure it stayed that way.

“Morning,” Griff said eventually, when I was evidently not going to explain my tardiness.

“Morning,” I replied, as normally as possible. “Look guys, Trevelyan … isn’t coming in again.”

Lucy clapped her hands with glee at this news. “Yay! At least this means she hasn’t given the order to pull the plug on our funding yet. I told you things hadn’t gone as bad as you thought last night.” She paused mid-clap. “So did she turn up eventually then? I’m guessing too many margaritas and now a sick day.”

“No idea,” I lied, trying to keep it brief. “She’s not here, though, so as far as I’m concerned it’s business as usual. You guys keep working on Epsilon. I want all the data we worked up for the presentation running parallel with the overnight strains, match what we know against whatever new data have come in during the few precious hours we weren’t actually here last night.”

“I hear there was some excitement at reception this morning?” Griff probed, bringing me a coffee from the warming pot, which I took gratefully as I slid into my station and ran my hand across the screen, firing up the systems.

“Yup,” I said as breezily as I could manage. “Just some Cabal admin, that’s all.” He didn’t move away. “Our noble leader normally deals with this, but as she isn’t here, looks like I have to shake all the hands and kiss all the babies’ heads.”

Griff frowned at me. God, I am a terrible liar.

“That’s all?” he said. “Huh. We thought the men in black had taken you away to put a chip in your brain or something, Doc.”

I had a folder in my hand as I sat at my desk, and I slid it straight into my drawer, making sure neither of my team saw it. I was going to have to look through it ASAP, but I was doing everything in my power to keep Griff and Lucy out of this whole mess. The less they knew the better, as far as I was concerned.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” I said, amazed that I could even manage to say that, considering what I had just seen. As far as ordinary went, I was about as far out of it as I ever wanted to be.

“What did you mean when you said ‘you guys’?” Lucy asked suddenly, looking confused as she perched on the edge of Griff’s desk.

“What?” I asked distracted. I was staring at my screen, scrolling quickly through folders and sub-files.

“Just now, you said you wanted us guys to work the Epsilon data, me and Griff,” she elaborated. “So … what are
you
going to do then?”

I had just found the files I wanted on my system. I tried to keep the look of surprise off my face. With a gesture or two on screen I created a further subfolder, then I dumped them into a DataStream clip and unplugged it, pocketing the stick.

“I have to go out,” I said simply.

“Out?” said Griff perplexed. “But … you just got in.” I was acutely aware how unusual this was. I never go out. I even begrudge fire alarm tests. If I had my way, I would sleep in the lab. I had considered in the past if some kind of hammock could be arranged. It certainly would have saved me on rent.

I chugged my lukewarm coffee and retrieved the paper file I had just hidden in my drawer, pocketing it along with the DataStream stick.

“I know,” I said. “Sorry, just in and out today, needed to pick up some stuff. You two will be fine here, you both know what you’re doing, just … run the parallels okay? Admin stuff, while Trevelyan is off, that’s all.”

I had already shut down my system and was headed back for the door, completely forgetting my winter coat.

“Dr Harkness?” Griff called after me, sounding genuinely concerned. He caught up to me at the inner lab doors, my coat in his hand. I took it gratefully. “You
sure
everything’s okay?”

I waved a hand flippantly over my shoulder as I entered the long ultraviolet corridor.

“Nothing I can’t handle. Don’t worry,” I said.

Later on when things got bad, that claim would come back to bite me right on my arse.

12

I managed to escape the Blue Lab complex without encountering anyone else. Even Miranda on reception was otherwise engaged dealing with a huddle of scrawny-looking techs from level six who were checking in for the day. This was a distraction for which I was ridiculously grateful. I was able to sneak out without the hundred or so questions she would doubtless have had for me. I headed for the main exit, feeling like a fugitive escaping a maximum security prison, certain with every treacherous step I took towards the main doors that at any moment, someone was going to call me back, demanding to know what on earth was going on. No one did.

The sight of Veronica Cloves waiting for me outside in the university quad, huddled behind the wheel of her demure acid yellow twin turbo Ferrari made my stomach flip. Of all people to get in a car with, I would not have chosen this woman. I would rather have climbed in a car with Oliver Reed after a serious night on the booze. To be fair, she didn’t look too happy about the pairing either as I slid into the passenger seat, shooting me a cool sideways glance. Neither of us were particularly pleased with the setup.

“You got the files?” she asked curtly, putting the car into reverse and executing an exciting handbrake turn in the crunching gravel and slush. A couple of nearby students actually had to leap out of the way.

“I did, but I don’t know what you expect to find on them. As far as I could see, they’re encrypted anyway.”

Cloves put the car in gear and shot us out of the campus parking lot with a squeal of tyres and a shower of pebbles. I wondered at this woman. Purple suits, a bright yellow car and the driving style of a demon – she was hardly low key. Perhaps all the media attention, all those chat shows and talking head panels had gotten to her over the years. Veronica Cloves, force of nature.

“That won’t be a problem,” she sneered with a shake of her sleek black bob, clearly flabbergasted by my naivety. “We have people for that.” She urged the Ferrari past the Mathematical Institute, along Kebel Road and out onto St Giles, blending us with the main off campus traffic of the city with only a smattering of panicked horns.

*

The last hour had been a worrying one for me. Down below in Interrogation Boardroom, after we had all watched the DataStream video again just for kicks, Mr Godfather, whose name I still hadn’t been given, explained that the reason I’d been brought in was not only because I was referred to directly in the ransom note (or threat, or whatever the hell it was) but also because Cabal, for all their influence and power, had overlooked one rather important thing in their quest to control our brave new world. They had forged no bonds whatsoever with the societies of the GOs. There were no vampire informants, no avenue to which Cabal could turn for information. The government that was dedicated to keeping its human population as human as possible, the government that poured almost endless funds into enterprises such as Blue Lab, defending our humanity, had not a single person placed inside the alternate society.

Humans mixed with the GOs of course; the GO rights movement lobbied on their behalf, and then there were the fans who haunted every vampire hotspot, hoping to spot an immortal. But not one such person was Cabal. I personally considered this a particularly idiotic oversight.

This, however, was apparently where I came in. With hooded eyes, the large nameless man explained that Cabal wanted me to make contact with the vampires, to act as a kind of unofficial ambassador, make links, dig around. Find out if anyone on their side of things might know what the hell was going on. And all of this because I had happened to catch the eye of the tousled-haired undead at the R&D presentation.

The one time I get flirted with, it gets me drafted into the secret service.

“I’m not sure what you expect
me
to find out,” I protested. “I’m a paratoxicoligist, not a private eye, and besides – and I’m sure this is more of a concern to
me
that it is to
you
– but if there really is a crazy vampire torturer running around the streets of New Oxford, there’s a good chance I could end up getting kidnapped and tortured myself.” These were two of my least favourite recreational activities, for the record.

The Cabal member had been utterly unconcerned. “You will not be working alone, of course,” he told me in his gravelly murmur. “Servant Cloves here will be at your disposal. She is, I assure you, more than just a reassuring face on the screens of our city’s inhabitants. She is also a most competent agent.”

From the look of shock and horror on Cloves’ face, this arrangement had clearly been news to her. She looked thoroughly appalled at the thought of working with me. It was clear testament to how much she was outranked by the nameless man, however, that she hadn’t argued. She simply opened and closed her mouth a few times, and then folded her arms and shot me a look of pure and undisguised hatred. Seriously, as if this was
my
idea of a good time.

The nameless man had slid a manila file across the desk towards me, advising that it was all the intelligence they had been able to gather on ‘your mysterious Allesandro’. I wondered briefly at what point precisely he had become
my
Allesandro.

“Where do we start?” Cloves had demanded, sounding very put out.

Servant Harrison stepped in. “As you may know, Dr Harkness, Vivienne Trevelyan, as well as being the area supervisor for your own division in BL4, was also over several other … more
sensitive
departments.”

I hadn’t known actually. Colour me out-of-the-loop.

“Our findings from an internal search this morning show that approximately fifteen minutes after your last conversation with her, she wiped her own internal hard drive here in the system. We don’t know why; we are working on retrieving the information. However, we
have
found the ghost of a trail which suggests that immediately before she wiped her entire work board clear, she remotely downloaded several files onto your personal workstation.”

I was surprised.
Mine
? Why on earth would she do that? And why hadn’t I noticed?

“We have been unable to retrieve these from your system this morning,” Servant Harrison sounded slightly embarrassed. “You have a rather … impressive set of personal firewalls set up, Dr Harkness. It does
not
suggest a trusting nature.”

Good
thing
really
, I thought, considering people had been trying to hack my system to hell while I was strolling to work.

“We could break through
eventually
of course,” he assured me. “But as time is something of an issue here, it will be far easier for you to simply log on, find these files, and extract them. We want to know what’s on them.”

*

And so now here I was, driving away from the lab in Veronica Cloves’ funhouse-coloured Batmobile, with a DataStream stick of encrypted information my boss had hidden in my computer, and a worryingly slim file of intel on a vampire I barely knew. This was an odd Tuesday morning, all told.

“Nice ride,” I commented. “Not very subtle for a secret agent though.”

“Cabal doesn’t have secret agents,” Cloves snapped. “It’s important the population know that we have nothing to hide. Why do you think I spend so much time on the DataStream? People fear a shadowy, faceless government. Give it a friendly face, mine to be exact, and everyone’s happy. As far as New Oxford is concerned, Veronica Cloves is a sweet-natured and reassuring voice in the darkness. Cabal cares deeply about its people. That’s the message. I’m as visible as I can be.”

“You were pretty visible in that purple suit at the lecture,” I nodded.

“Where are we headed, Harkness?” Cloves glowered at me, not rising to my comment. Clearly she was still fuming that she and I were apparently Cabal’s version of Cagney and Lacey. Not that she would know who that was if I pointed it out. No one watches the classics except me.

I needed more of a plan than I had currently formed. Ideally, I wanted to hole up in a Starbucks somewhere and read through the file on the vampire, but not with Cloves at my side. I didn’t like the woman, and certainly didn’t want her breathing down my neck all day. Part of me was still distracted by the fact that Cabal even
had
files on the vampire. Did they have similar files on every known and named GO? Did they have them on humans too? I pictured a vast warehouse filled with filing cabinets somewhere deep underground, and a dusty folder with my own name, containing everything from old diary pages to my hard-earned primary school swimming certificates.

“Look, if you seriously want me to do this, we’re going to have to do it my way,” I said, sounding far more resolute than I felt. “You want me to schmooze vampires on behalf of Cabal, and you want me to do it under the radar. Well, I don’t think rocking up to the district with a high ranking and very public Cabal figurehead next to me is perhaps the most subtle way to do it.”

Cloves glanced at me sidelong. “I’m
hardly
thrilled about this arrangement myself,” she said. “But it sounds awfully as though you are desperate to ditch me.”

I bit my tongue. I would have called an exorcist if I thought it could get rid of her. “I just think we can save time if we divide our labours,” I said. “You work on decrypting the mystery files my boss thoughtfully dumped in my computer. Trust me, I would be absolutely no help at all with all that superspy stuff, anyway. I can’t even do Sudoku.”

“And you?”

“You can drop me at my place, Bartholomew Road, down in Iffley, east of the river. I have to read up on my vampire homework if I’m going to make contact with this guy from the presentation tonight.”

“Tonight?” Cloves snapped. “Time is rather of the essence, Dr Harkness. We need to move on this as quickly as possible.”

I sighed. This woman’s attitude was grating on me already. “I might not have had much interaction with the GOs, Servant Cloves, but I am fairly certain of only one fact, and that is that they are definitely night owls. There’s not much to do with them while the sun is up. Unless you want to play giant Jenga with a lot of coffins.”

Cloves snorted down her nose most attractively and hung a left, heading the car into my neighbourhood. She had probably never even been to such a poor district before. From the look on her face, she didn’t have much interest in slumming.

“So what is your plan for this evening then?”

My mind went to the small business card which was now in my apartment, sitting on my bedside table. Sanctum, the vampire club.

I raised my eyebrows, surprising myself with my own suggestion. “I’m going clubbing.”