“What for?” asked Frankenstein.

“I’m taking her with me,” Jamie replied. He saw the look on the monster’s face, and he stopped what he was doing and faced him. “She didn’t do it, Victor. I know she didn’t. If you can’t believe me, that’s fine, but I trust her, and I’m taking her with me.”

“Jamie,” said Morris. “If she didn’t do it, then who did?”

“I don’t know,” replied Jamie. “All I know for certain is that it wasn’t her.”

Morris swallowed hard, then looked at Jamie, his face solemn, his eyes wide. “I think there’s something you should know,” he said. “But it’s not my place to tell you.”

Frankenstein stiffened in his chair. “Shut the hell up, Morris,” he said, his voice laced with threat.

Jamie looked at his two companions. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Morris lowered his eyes. “Ask him,” he said, pointing at Frankenstein. “Ask him where he was when your father died.”

Jamie stared at the monster, who was looking at Morris with open fury. Then the teenager’s head seemed to split open, and the memory of that night flooded into his mind.

Eight policemen wearing black body armor and carrying submachine guns were arranged across the driveway, the barrels of their weapons pointing toward the door that Julian was walking through.

“Put your hands above your head!” one of the policemen shouted. He was a huge man, wearing a full balaclava and a riot helmet that looked comically small atop his enormous shoulders. Jamie stared at the giant figure, blind terror coursing through him, and saw that the man’s tree-trunk arms were different lengths. “Do it now!”

Horror beyond anything Jamie had ever felt ripped through him, dumping ice-cold water down the length of his spine and turning his legs to jelly. He looked at Frankenstein.

Nonononononononononononononononononononononono nononononono.

His throat closed, and he gasped for air, bending over and placing his head between his legs, his hands gripping the thick pads on his knees, as he tried not to collapse.

Think of your mother. Don’t let her down now. Think of your mother.

He forced himself back upright and looked at Frankenstein. The monster was staring at him with a look of utter anguish on his face, and he had extended his hands across the table, as though he was reaching for Jamie.

The sight of the gray-green hands at the end of the monster’s uneven arms broke Jamie’s paralysis, and he recoiled, backpedaling away from the table.

“Jamie—” the monster began, but he was cut off.

“You were there,” said Jamie. “I remember now. You were there when they shot my dad.”

“Jamie, I—”

“Were you there or not?” screamed Jamie. “Don’t lie to me anymore! Were you there?”

Frankenstein shot a look of pure murder at Morris, who was looking at his hands, then returned his gaze to the teenager in front of him.

“I was there,” he said.

Jamie felt numb; as if he might never be able to feel again.

“Don’t you ever come near me again,” he said, his voice trembling. “I swear to God, I’ll kill you if you do.”

He turned his attention to Morris, who stared at him with the look of a man who has just committed a crime he knows he can never atone for.

“Tom,” Jamie said, “if you were willing to come to Lindisfarne with me and Larissa, I’d be very grateful. If you don’t want to, I understand. But I need the code to her cell, either way.”

Morris stood slowly up from the table. He avoided the gaze of Frankenstein, who was staring silently at him with hatred burning in his eyes.

“The code is 908141739,” he said, in a low voice. “Give me five minutes, and I’ll meet you in the hangar.”

“Thank you,” said Jamie. “Thank you very much.”

Then he turned and ran out of the Ops Room, toward the elevator at the end of the corridor.

Larissa was lying on her back in the middle of the floor when he ran down the cellblock. She sat up and smiled at him when he skidded to a halt in front of her cell.

“Back so soon?” she asked.

“I told you I would be,” he replied between deep breaths. He composed himself and looked at her.

“I know where my mother is,” he said. “I’m going to finish this, one way or the other, and I could use your help.”

She stood up slowly and stretched her arms above her head.

“There’s not much I can do from here,” she said.

Jamie reached over and pressed the buttons on the keypad beside her cell. The UV field disappeared.

Larissa walked out of her cell and kissed him quickly on the cheek. “Let’s go,” she said.

41

THE EASTERN FRONT

SPC Central Command

Kola Peninsula, Russia

The two Blacklight helicopters descended toward the SPC base, their engines roaring in the freezing air, their rotors churning the falling snow into spinning flurries. Their wheels skidded across the icy surface as they touched down, then the doors were flung open and Admiral Seward led the rescue team toward the SPC control room.

Twenty Blacklight operators ran across the snow, dark shapes moving quickly through a landscape of pure white. The men shivered as the Arctic wind whipped through the mesh of their uniforms; snow slid in torrents down their purple visors, obscuring their view.

They reached the entrance to the base, skidding and sliding to a halt in front of a ragged metal hole where the heavy airlock door should have been.

“Christ,” muttered one of the operators.

The door had been ripped out of its frame; it lay to one side, buckled and twisted like an empty drink can. The hinges that had held it in place were eight-inch cylinders of solid steel, more than two inches in diameter, and the vacuum seal that connected it to its housing should have been able to withstand an earthquake almost twice as strong as the Richter scale was able to measure.

“Alert One from here onward,” said Seward, and stepped through the hole.

Snow was piled high on every surface in the control room and lay in deep drifts against the sides of the desks and tables that had until very recently been the work stations of the SPC duty staff. In places it had turned a bright pink, as blood soaked up from beneath it.

Admiral Seward almost tripped over the first corpse.

It lay in front of the empty doorway, the body of a man who could have been no more than nineteen or twenty. He was covered in snow, and Seward ordered the men to clear the man’s body. They knelt and brushed the snow away with their gloved hands, uncovering the dark gray SPC uniform inch by inch.

There was a gagging sound from one of the men working at the man’s waist, and Seward stepped up next to him. The man turned away, his hand over his mouth, and the admiral felt his gorge rise.

The soldier had been pulled in half.

Below his waist there was nothing but an enormous quantity of blood, covering the floor in a thick pool.

Admiral Seward split the rescue team into two groups and addressed the first.

“Clear this room,” he told them. “I want these men taken out of here. The rest of you, come with me.”

He left Major Turner overseeing the recovery of the bodies in the control room and led the rest of the men deeper into the base. They walked slowly along a wide gray corridor and into an elevator that stood open at the end of it. Seward pressed the button for the first underground level.

“Search this building floor by floor for survivors,” he said. “I don’t want anyone left behind.”

There was a ringing noise, and the doors slid open. The operators filed out, split into two-man teams, and started checking the doors that ran along both sides of the corridor. Seward watched them until the elevator doors closed in front of him, and he began to descend again.