Qiang narrowed his eyes. “What is it?”

“I don’t know for sure why we’ve been told to bring vampires back to the Loop,” he said. “None of us do. But I think Qiang is right, and I’m not going to hand people over to be lab rats against their will. I won’t do it.”

“So what are you suggesting?” asked Ellison. She was frowning, but her eyes were clear, and her voice was steady.

“I’m going to ask them if they want to be cured,” said Jamie. “If they say yes, then great, we’ll take them back. But if they say no, I’m letting them go. I understand that would mean breaking the new SOP about twelve hours after it was changed, but I don’t care. Imprisoning innocent people isn’t what we do. If you don’t want any part of it, I’ll understand, and I’ll take full responsibility when we get back. But this is what’s happening.”

He looked at his squad mates. He dearly hoped they would agree, that they would back his decision, but he knew he couldn’t blame them if they didn’t; asking them to disobey a direct order on the basis of guesswork was hardly fair.

“I am with you,” said Qiang.

“Me too,” said Ellison. “Do it, Jamie.”

He smiled widely. “Thank you,” he said. He pulled the van door open again and looked in at the vampire couple. The woman was rocking their baby gently on her lap, and the man had one hand in the box, stroking the cat as she fed her kittens. They looked round at him, nervous expressions on their faces.

“I have a question for you,” said Jamie. “I need you to answer it honestly, OK?”

“OK,” said the woman.

The man nodded.

“Do you like being vampires?” said Jamie. “And by that I mean, if there was a way that you could go back to normal, is that what you would want, or are you happy as you are?”

The couple looked at each other.

“I know I speak for both of us,” said the woman, “when I say that there is nothing in the world we’d like more than to be normal again.”

“In which case,” said Jamie, “I have a feeling this might just be your lucky day.”

Matt looked down at the stretcher, his heart thumping in his chest.

Beside him were Paul Turner, Professor Karlsson and one of the doctors from the Loop’s infirmary; the four of them were standing silently inside one of the Lazarus Project’s sterile laboratories, wearing paper boiler suits that would be incinerated later. The lab was a long rectangle, with a row of stretchers standing in its centre. Machines and monitors stood either side of them, and the rear wall contained three large plastic windows, revealing small square rooms beyond.

The woman lying on one of the stretchers had already been sedated; her eyes were closed, her heartbeat showing as spikes on a running graph on one of the monitors, in perfect time with the slow beeps ringing out of the speakers. She was middle-aged, her hair dark, her skin pale; she looked peaceful, as though she was enjoying a well-deserved rest.

“I’m going to say this one more time,” said Matt, without taking his eyes off her. “Are we absolutely sure we should do this?”

“She signed the release,” said Turner. “We explained the risks. I say do it.”

“I agree,” said Karlsson.

Matt took a deep breath, and nodded. He walked across to a stainless-steel bench, opened the door of a small fridge sitting on its surface, and took out a plastic bag full of blue liquid with a label stuck to its side. What was printed on the label would have meant nothing to anyone outside the Lazarus Project; if the cure was cleared for release to the public, Matt was sure the tabloids and the TV news would give it a catchy name, but for now it was simply known as Sample Formula 5204R56J. Its blue colour was artificial, the result of a dye that was added to each active sample to provide an additional level of precaution; the rule of thumb inside the Lazarus Project was that anything blue should be handled with the utmost care.

Holding the bag gently in his gloved hand, Matt walked back across the lab and handed it to the doctor, who made a series of notes on his clipboard, attached the bag to an IV drip, and punctured the seal. The four men watched in silence as the blue liquid ran slowly down a plastic tube and disappeared through a needle into the woman’s forearm.

“Let’s move her,” said the doctor. “Quickly.”

Turner nodded. He took hold of the monitoring trolley as the doctor gripped the corners of the stretcher, and together they wheeled the woman and the machines connected to her towards the far end of the room. Matt walked ahead of them, as Professor Karlsson brought up the rear, and pressed the button on the wall beside the window on the left. It slid silently upwards; the Director and the doctor wheeled the woman beneath it and into the room. Turner pushed the trolley into the corner as the doctor clipped the stretcher to the rear wall of the room, locking it in place. The two men exited, and Matt pressed the button again, lowering the thick plastic window back into place. He joined his colleagues, shivering as though he had just got out of a cold shower.

“What will it mean if it doesn’t work?” asked Turner, his eyes fixed on the unconscious woman.

“It might not mean anything,” said Karlsson. “The dose might need adjusting, or the formula itself. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“How long?” asked Turner. “How long until—”

The woman on the stretcher opened her eyes and let out a scream of such deafening volume and pitch that Matt physically recoiled; he staggered backwards, his eyes wide with shock. Her eyes boiled with red-black fire, so intense that her features were hidden from view by the roaring glow. She twisted on the stretcher, her scream seeming to go on forever.

“What the hell?” shouted Turner. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” said Karlsson, his voice low. “We have no model for an adult human reaction.”

“We have to stop it,” said Matt, raising his voice to make himself heard over the awful noise of the screaming.

“How?” asked Karlsson.

“She signed the release,” said Turner.

“I don’t care what she signed!” shouted Matt. “We have to stop it now!”

Turner took a half-step towards him. “I can’t let you go in there, Matt. Please don’t try it.”

He stared at the Director, his face full of unbearable, shameful heat. Turner looked back at him with an expression that Matt had never seen before; it was almost as if the Director was silently pleading with him not to make things worse.

He wants to stop this too, he realised. But he can’t. He knows he can’t.

The bloodcurdling scream finally died away, leaving the woman twisting silently on the stretcher.

Maybe it’s over, thought Matt, turning back to the window. Maybe that’s it.

The woman burst up off the stretcher, so fast that she was little more than a blur, and slammed into the ceiling with an impact that Matt felt through the soles of his boots. She hung suspended in the air, screeching and clawing and gibbering, hammered into the ceiling again, then rocketed towards them, thudding into the plastic window; it looked like some huge, invisible hand was hurling her back and forth across the room. She crashed into the rear wall, sending the stretcher and the trolley of machinery flying; sparks and shards of metal exploded into the air, but the woman was already out of range, soaring up towards the ceiling before curving impossibly in mid-air and hitting the plastic window face first. There was a loud snap as her nose broke; bright crimson blood squirted against the plastic and ran towards the floor. Her screeches reached an inhuman pitch, and all four men retreated, holding their hands over their ears as she was flung around the room, leaving trails of blood on the white walls.