The applause that exploded through the crowded room was deafening, punctuated by shouts and cheers as the entire Department rose to their feet, clapping and yelling and grinning. The members of the Lazarus Project were swallowed up by the crowd, and as Matt’s hand was pumped up and down, as praise filled his ears and he was jostled back and forth by the gloved hands of dozens of strangers, he was able, just for a moment, to almost forget about PROMETHEUS.

Almost.

Matt scanned the crowd as the men and women of Blacklight filed towards the Ops Room door.

Paul Turner was standing in front of the stage, talking to James Van Thal and Dominique Saint-Jacques; the Director was smiling slightly, the result, Matt suspected, of having given his first briefing in a long time that had not made the majority of the audience want to kill themselves. On the other side of the room, he saw Natalia walking side by side with Kate Randall, and felt a surge of warmth in his stomach as he dragged his gaze away and continued his search for Jamie Carpenter. Matt had seen his friend when he had been ordered to his feet by the Director, smiling proudly at him from maybe ten rows back, but now he couldn’t locate him; he was about to conclude that Jamie had already left the room, when a voice spoke into his ear.

“Hey.”

Matt jumped, and whirled round. Jamie was standing in front of him, his face tight with worry, his skin pale.

“Jesus,” said Matt. “Do you forget how quiet you are or do you just like sneaking up on people?”

“Sorry,” said Jamie. “Can we talk?”

Matt nodded. “I was looking for you to suggest the same thing,” he said. “Let’s go to my quarters.”

“All right,” said Jamie, and forced a tiny smile. “Lead the way.”

Matt closed the door of his quarters as Jamie sat down in the chair beside his desk. He opened his mouth to speak, but his friend beat him to it.

“I’m so sorry, Matt,” he said. “About what happened in the lab. I should have known you would never do anything to hurt my mother. I just wasn’t thinking straight.”

Matt smiled. “It’s all right,” he said. “No harm done.”

“It’s not all right,” said Jamie, fiercely. “Stop being so good about this. Shout at me, or call me a dick, or something. I deserve it.”

Matt shrugged. “What good would that do?”

“It might make you feel better.”

“Would it?” he asked. “Or would it just make you feel better?”

Jamie stared at him for a long moment, then grunted with laughter and looked down at the floor. “You’re so bloody clever,” he said. “You can see right through me, can’t you?”

“What I can see is that you’re having a hard time and you made a mistake and you want to beat yourself up for it,” said Matt. “I can’t stop you if that’s what you want to do, but I don’t think it’s healthy, and I don’t think it’ll help. So I’m sorry if you need me to be angry with you, because I’m not. I don’t have time to be.”

Jamie raised his head. “There are people inside this Department who think I’m arrogant,” he said, and smiled. “That I think I belong at the centre of everything. Were you aware of that?”

Matt smiled. “I may have heard a comment or two along those lines.”

“Just one or two?”

“Maybe half a dozen,” he said. “At the very most.”

“Right,” said Jamie, his smile widening. “I can see their point, in all honesty. The last couple of years have been defining ones for the Department, and for better or worse, whether by design or blind luck, I’ve been in the middle of most of it. Would you say that was fair?”

“I would,” said Matt. “So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that, for a while, I started to think I was the hero. It’s embarrassing to say out loud, but I really thought everything depended on me, that whether or not we won or lost was always going to come down to me. But I was wrong. You’re the hero, Matt.”

He frowned. “What are you talking about, Jamie?”

“All the vampires that me and the other Operators have destroyed, all the fighting and chasing and all the people who’ve died. What has any of it really achieved? Valeri and Alexandru are dead, and that’s good, that’s genuinely, objectively good. But we didn’t stop Dracula rising and now we can’t even find him. We can’t stop the country tearing itself apart, can’t stop the awful things people are doing to each other. But a cure? This bloody miracle that you and Natalia and Karlsson and the rest of Lazarus have come up with? It saves lives, and it gives people back what they lost. It might even give us a chance to stop Dracula. It changes everything, and I’m so proud of you I barely know where to start.”

Matt stared at his friend. A lump had risen suddenly in his throat, and he found himself incapable of forming a reply.

“My mother got what she wanted more than anything because of you,” continued Jamie. “She hated being a vampire, so much more than I ever wanted to hear, and now she doesn’t have to be one any more. The same goes for the couple I brought in last week, for everyone recovering in the infirmary right now, and for thousands of people around the world. Every single one of them gets a second chance. Do you understand what you’ve done, mate? I mean, do you really, truly understand the magnitude of it?”

“I get it,” said Matt, his voice low. “Thank you. That means a lot.”

His friend fixed him with a fierce smile. “You deserve it. You all do.”

Matt leant back against his door; if the lump in his throat grew any larger, he feared he would not be able to breathe.

“Are we OK?” said Jamie. “I know you said you’re not angry with me, but you need to know that it’s all right if you are. What I did was unforgivable.”

“We’re OK,” he said. “Honestly. Do I wish you hadn’t done what you did? Yeah. I do. Was I angry with you afterwards? I was furious, and I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t. But I knew, even while it was happening, that it wasn’t really you, that you weren’t in control of yourself. You hurt me, and you scared me, and it’s important to me that you understand that. But it’s done. Let’s move on, all right?”

Jamie nodded. “All right.”

Matt paused as a thought occurred to him, one that had been driven from his mind by his friend’s outpouring; he walked across his quarters and dug through the piles of files and boxes that covered both the surface of his desk and a significant amount of the surrounding floor. He found what he was looking for, a white plastic box, and carried it over to his bed.

“What’s that?” asked Jamie.

“This is why I was looking for you,” he said. “It’s a swab kit. I need to take a sample from you.”

Jamie frowned. “A sample of what? Blood?”

Matt shook his head. “We’re moving into a new research phase, and it’s really hard to get reliable histories from vampires. Most don’t know who turned them, and even if they do, they don’t tend to know anything more about them. But your vampire history is clear, and it involves probably only the second vampire that ever existed. I need a sample of the plasma on your fangs, so we can start trying to draw some conclusions. Is that all right?”

Jamie nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Whatever you need.”

Matt smiled, outwardly at least. He didn’t like lying to his friend, especially given the exceptionally kind things that Jamie had just said about him, but it was the only option; there was simply no way he could tell his friend the truth. He opened the kit, took out a small glass jar and a plastic scraper, and looked at Jamie.

“Thank you,” he said. “This is probably going to feel a bit weird, but it’ll be over quickly. Can you open your mouth and bring your fangs out?”

“OK,” said Jamie. “Be careful, though. They’re sharp, and a single drop is all it takes. I know we’ve got a cure now, but take it from me, you don’t want to go through the turn unless it’s absolutely necessary.”