Natalia frowned. “Why did you say sorry?”
“When?”
“Just then. You said sorry, then that you hadn’t realised how hungry you were. Why were you sorry?”
Matt shrugged. “I saw you smile at how fast I was eating,” he said. “It’s just what people say.”
“Perhaps you apologise too often,” said Natalia.
Matt sat back in his chair. “What makes you say that?”
“I hear you say sorry many times. But you are a brilliant scientist, and a good friend, and you have nothing to apologise for. I wonder if you know that.”
Matt grimaced. “It’s hard for me.”
“To do what? Believe in yourself?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” said Matt. “I felt like a disappointment for a long time. It’s a hard habit to shake.”
“Because of your father?”
His eyes widened with surprise. “I … yeah. Maybe. I think I always felt like I should apologise for not being the kind of son he wanted.”
“If you are not what he wanted, he is an idiot,” said Natalia, and smiled fiercely at him. “He should have been proud every day to be your father.”
Matt felt heat rise into his cheeks. “Thank you,” he said. “I think he is now. But I wish we could go back in time and have you tell him that.”
“I would tell him.”
He smiled. “I know you would.”
Natalia smiled back at him, then frowned as a shadow fell across their table. Matt looked up and saw an Operator he didn’t recognise standing over them, his helmet under his arm, his face set and solemn.
Oh shit, he thought. We’ve been here before. Why are neither of my super-powerful vampire friends ever with me when this type of crap happens?
“Can we help you?” asked Natalia.
The Operator glanced at her, shook his head, and fixed his gaze on Matt. He put the helmet carefully down on the table and extended his hand towards the teenager. Matt took it, a look of profound confusion on his face, and was almost jerked out of his seat as the Operator pumped his arm up and down.
“I’m Tom Johnson,” he said, in a thick American accent. “You’re Matt Browning, right?”
Matt nodded; bewilderment had robbed him of the ability to form words.
“Awesome,” said Johnson. “I just wanted to tell you that me and the rest of Intelligence heard about what you did in San Francisco. Driving into a brick wall on purpose to take out a double agent? That’s insane, dude. Seriously.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Matt saw a smile spread across Natalia’s face.
“Thanks,” he said. “That’s good of you to say. I didn’t really plan it, to be honest.”
Johnson laughed. “Probably a good thing,” he said. “You might have had second thoughts. Your neck all right?”
Matt touched his fingers to the foam brace. “Getting there,” he said. “This comes off tomorrow.”
Johnson nodded. “Glad to hear it. And apologies for the interruption, I just wanted to say hello. You two look after yourselves, all right?”
Matt nodded. “Thanks. We will.”
Johnson turned and strode across the room to where a group of Operators were waiting for him. They exited the canteen, and Matt turned to Natalia as the doors swung shut behind them.
“Well,” he said. “That was different.”
Jamie walked along Level B, concentrating on keeping his feet on the ground.
He wanted to fly down the grey corridor as fast as he was able, but he shared Larissa’s instinctive reluctance to demonstrate his vampire abilities inside the Loop. It was not that his colleagues were unused to seeing such powers – the Blacklight base was one of the few places in the world where they might be considered unremarkable – but rather that they felt like something that separated him from the ranks of Operators, a sensation he took no pleasure in.
Jamie had flown back from Brenchley as the eastern sky had begun to purple, reaching the hangar minutes before dawn broke over the horizon. After Larissa had departed, he had spent the rest of the long night deep in thought, his mind churning as it sought answers and explanations. His anger had eventually given way to a profound sense of loneliness, of having everything that he most relied on ripped away from him, and that loneliness had in turn been replaced by self-pity and bitter tears, as he silently raged at the unfairness of it all. He did not deserve the lies he had been told and the betrayals he had suffered; he had always tried to do the right thing, and had received only heartbreak in return. The eventual drying of his tears had been accompanied by a burst of self-loathing at having acted like such a child, like a spoilt brat who believed the entire world revolved around him.
Finally, as the darkness began to soften and lift, determined clarity had settled on him. The intermingled issues of his father and Frankenstein could wait, as could the decision about what, if anything, to tell his mum.
What could not wait was Larissa.
As soon as he touched down on the concrete floor of the hangar, he had sent her a message asking if she was awake. He had received no reply by the time the lift had carried him down to Level B, so he had walked quickly along the corridor and knocked on her door. There had been no response, and his supernaturally sharp ears had detected no sounds of movement from inside her quarters, so he had gone reluctantly to his room and slept fitfully, his mind whirring with worry. He had climbed back out of his bed barely two hours later and pulled a clean uniform on, trying all the while to quiet his increasingly frantic brain.
It’s fine. It’ll be fine. She just didn’t want to talk to you last night, and you can’t really blame her for that. Go and find her and tell her you’re sorry and sort it out. It’s not too late.
But there had still been no answer to his repeated knocks on her door or increasingly frequent messages, and no sign of her in the canteen or the Playground or the Briefing Rooms on Level A. He had sat through a routine Operational review with his feet tapping and his fists clenching and as soon as it was finished, after what felt like a thousand hours, he had sent a message to the one person he could ask for help in finding Larissa. To his enormous relief, Kate had replied immediately.
IN MY QUARTERS. WHAT’S UP?
Jamie stopped outside his friend’s door, took a deep breath, and knocked on it, hard. A second later it swung open and Kate appeared, a slightly quizzical look on her face; it took all of Jamie’s self-control not to hug the breath out of her.
“Morning, Jamie,” she said. “Everything all right?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Can I come in?”
“Of course,” said Kate, and stepped aside.
Jamie walked into the small room and stood beside Kate’s desk as she closed the door behind them. “Have you seen Larissa?” he asked. “Today, I mean?”
Kate laughed. “What is it with you two? I had her asking the same thing about you yesterday. Can’t you keep in touch with each other without my help?”
“Have you seen her or not?”
Kate frowned. “No,” she said. “Not today. What’s going on, Jamie?”
He grimaced. “We sort of had a fight.”
“I’d worked that much out for myself,” said Kate. “What about?”
Jamie hesitated; he didn’t want to tell her, didn’t want to tell anyone. But he had thrown the promise they had all made to each other in Larissa’s face, had deliberately used it to make her feel guilty, and it would be unforgivably cowardly if he did not apply it to himself.
No more secrets.
He lowered himself into Kate’s chair and began to talk. To his great relief, his friend listened in silence; she allowed him to plough through the whole story of his trip to Norfolk with Frankenstein, his reunion with his father, and the terrible conversation between himself and Larissa, without interruption or reaction. But as soon as he was finished, she shook her head and stared at him with eyes full of anger.