“I think so,” he said. “I hope so.”

“Good,” said his mother, and handed him a mug of tea. “I’m very pleased to hear it.”

“So what are you going to do, Mum?” he said. “Now that you’re free to go?”

She settled down on the sofa beside him, and sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. I like the idea of sitting in the sun, so I suppose I might go away for a little while. France, maybe, or Italy.” She looked at him, a small, hopeful smile on her face. “You could come with me, you know. I’m sure you deserve some time off.”

Jamie smiled at her. “I think I probably do,” he said. “Maybe I’ll ask Major Turner for a holiday.”

“Maybe you should,” she said.

Silence settled over the cell as they drank their tea. Jamie knew his mother wouldn’t push it, that she likely already believed that he wouldn’t be accompanying her on whatever trip she decided to take, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her that she was probably right.

“So what now?” she asked, eventually.

“I don’t know,” he said, and shrugged. “It will take months to put the Department back together, and I don’t even know for certain whether they’re going to. They might decide that—”

“That’s not what I meant, Jamie,” she said, gently. “I meant what now for you? Are you going to take the cure?”

He grimaced. “Not now, Mum,” he said. “Please. I’ve barely had a second to think since we got back from Carcassonne.”

“What is there to think about?” she asked. “You either want to be a vampire or you don’t.”

“It’s not that simple,” he said. “The official policy is for everyone who was turned to take the cure, without exception, but I’m not even sure whether I want to be an Operator any more, never mind whether or not I want to take the cure.”

“What about Larissa?” said his mother. “What does she think?”

Jamie grunted with laughter. “She’s already cured,” he said. “She never wanted to be a vampire, so she took it the second she got back to the Loop. But she’ll be going home to America any day, so it doesn’t really matter what she thinks. She didn’t come back for me.”

His mother put down her mug and gave him a gentle smile. “You have to do what you think is right, love,” she said. “That’s all you can do.”

What you think is right, thought Jamie, as he got out of the lift and stepped into the airlock. That’s great. But what if you don’t know what that is?

Ellison floated a centimetre above a deep leather armchair in the officers’ mess with a bottle of beer in her hand, and waited for her friends to join her. It was barely lunchtime, early to start drinking, but every Operator who had gone to France had been given forty-eight hours off, and she saw no point in wasting them.

She had gone to the infirmary when she woke up, but had been told that she would have to wait until tomorrow at the earliest to receive the cure. In truth, she had not been entirely disappointed; she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life as a vampire, but she would be lying to herself if she tried to claim that she would not miss the remarkable power that came with being one. The feeling of floating in the air, completely unshackled from gravity, was utterly intoxicating.

She had spent much of the last thirty-six hours grieving for Qiang. She did not have the slightest doubt that he had died doing his duty, but she couldn’t help but wonder whether things would have been different if PROMETHEUS had not been suspended before it was complete. If Qiang had been turned, would he still be alive? And if she had not been, would she be dead? There was no way for her to know, but she doubted she would ever stop asking herself the questions.

The door of the mess swung open, and she managed a smile as Jack Williams and Dominique Saint-Jacques walked through it. It was instantly obvious to her that Dominique was still a vampire, whereas Jack had taken the cure. They smelled different, but there was more to it than that; there was something indescribable, something she could only perceive on an instinctive level that she could not have explained. Dominique seemed somehow brighter than Jack, as though he was simply more alive.

“Mind if we join you?” asked Jack, as they arrived beside her table.

“I suppose not,” she said, and smiled at him. “I’m supposed to be meeting a handsome stranger, but the two of you will do until he gets here.”

“What an honour,” said Dominique, but he was grinning as he lowered himself into one of the empty chairs.

“Who else is coming?” asked Ellison.

“Angela,” said Jack. “Laura O’Malley, Ben Harris, Tom Johnson and a bunch of others. Almost everyone who isn’t in the infirmary.”

“All right,” said Ellison. “Get a drink, you two, quickly.”

Jack nodded, and strode towards the bar. Ellison and Dominique waited in easy silence until he returned with an armful of beers. He set the bottles down on the table, and settled into his chair.

“OK,” said Ellison, and lifted a bottle. “Before anyone else arrives. To Qiang, and your brother Patrick, and Frankenstein, and everyone else we’ve lost. To fallen friends.”

Dominique and Jack sat forward and raised bottles of their own.

“Fallen friends,” they repeated.

Kate looked round as the door to her room opened again, an impatient expression on her face. She was still tired, and weak, but she was already bored of lying in bed, and had been silently counting down the minutes until Jamie and Larissa came back to see her again.

“It’s about time,” she said, as the door swung open. “I was starting to think you weren’t—”

The words died in her throat.

Standing in the doorway, being supported by one of the Loop’s doctors, was her father. His face was pale, and he looked older than he ever had, but his eyes were bright, and the smile on his face was wide and shining with love.

For a long moment, they simply stared at each other. In the end, it was her dad who found his voice first.

“Hello, love,” he said. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you.”

Jamie stopped outside the square room that had been home to Valentin Rusmanov for almost a year and looked through the ultraviolet wall.

The ancient vampire was sitting on his sofa. He lowered the newspaper he was reading, and smiled. “Good afternoon, Jamie,” he said. “Come to say goodbye?”

He frowned. “Are you going somewhere?”

“Not right this minute,” said Valentin. “Tomorrow, in all likelihood. Come in, by all means.”

Jamie entered his override code into the panel on the wall and walked into the cell.

“Tea?” asked Valentin, getting to his feet.

Jamie smiled. “No more tea,” he said. “I’ve drunk enough to last a lifetime.”

“That’s a physical impossibility,” said Valentin. “But as you wish. Do sit down.”

Jamie nodded, took a seat in one of the plastic chairs, and looked at what was now the second oldest vampire in the world.

“What’s the plan?” he asked. “Are you going back to New York?”

“Eventually,” said Valentin. “But there’s no hurry. All this time spent inside a concrete box has given me quite the wanderlust.”

Jamie smiled. “I can imagine it would. I presume you won’t be taking the cure then?”

“I suspect not,” said Valentin, and smiled. “I have been a vampire for more than five hundred years. I don’t know how to be anything else.”

“You could learn?”

“No,” said Valentin. “I don’t think I could.”

“Fair enough,” said Jamie. “It’s your life.”

Valentin nodded, then narrowed his eyes. “What about you, Jamie? Have you made a decision?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know.”

“It’s a simple choice,” said Valentin. “Human or vampire. You’ve been both. So pick one.”

“If it’s so simple, then you choose for me,” said Jamie, heat flickering behind his eyes. “Tell me what I should do.”

Valentin looked at him with clear sympathy. “I’m not your father, Jamie,” he said. “You’re a grown man, and you need to do what feels right to you. But if you did want a small piece of advice, it would be this. There is a beauty to living a real life, with its phases and stages, in which you change and you grow. To live like I have is unnatural. Fun? Yes. Exciting? Yes. But in the end, it is not really living.”