“Lieutenant Browning,” said Turner. “Have you been to sleep?”

“I got a couple of hours, sir,” said Matt, stopping in front of the Director. “Is everything all right?”

Turner shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid it’s not. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come out with it. Kate Randall is in a critical condition in the Lazarus Project, and your father is in Cell D.”

Matt narrowed his eyes and studied the Director’s face, looking for some suggestion that this was a phenomenally out-of-character joke, but seeing only deadly seriousness.

“What are you talking about, sir?” he asked.

Turner looked steadily into his eyes. “This is going to be hard for you to hear,” he said, “but you’re a grown man, and I see nothing to be gained by shielding you from the truth. So here it is. Your father has been murdering vampires as part of the vigilante organisation known as the Night Stalkers. SSL itself appears to have been little more than a front, a way for the Night Stalkers to acquire their targets, set up on Dracula’s behalf and funded by a company that belonged to Valeri Rusmanov. Two nights ago your father and another man attempted to kill Pete Randall, but failed. Randall was brought here after life-saving treatment, and identified your father as his attacker. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but last night he arrived outside the authorisation tunnel, demanding to see you and threatening to kill both himself and two protesters from the camp. Kate tried to talk him down and he shot her in the neck. I shot him twice in the leg, and we were able to subdue him and bring him in. I’m very sorry.”

Matt stared, his mind empty of everything but a rising incredulity. There was just simply no way that what Turner had just told him could be true. It was absolutely ridiculous, surely nothing more than yet another joke at his expense in a lifetime full of them, this one perhaps the cruellest of all. It was so mean, and vicious, and unfair, but when he opened his mouth to tell the Director so, what came out was something entirely different.

“Kate got shot?” he asked, his voice a barely audible whisper. “Is she all right?”

Turner shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid she’s not. The bullet cut her carotid artery. They’ve stabilised her, but her condition is critical.”

Matt felt tears rise in his eyes. “Does her dad know?” he said. “Do Jamie and Larissa?”

“Not yet,” said Turner. “I’m telling them shortly.”

Matt nodded. He could barely breathe; his chest was locked tight with what he was distantly aware was the early stages of shock.

“You shot my dad?”

“Yes,” said Turner, and there was an audible tremor in his voice. “After he shot Kate, he turned the gun on himself, but I fired before he could pull the trigger again.”

“Why?” Matt managed. “Why did he do these things? Why did he kill those vampires?”

“Someone approached him,” said Turner. “We don’t know who it was, but they came to him and told him that vampires and humans were at war, and offered him a way to do something about it.”

Matt was pretty sure he nodded, even though he had barely heard the Director’s words and his mind was somewhere else. He was wondering how it was possible to go to sleep in one world and wake up in another, a world of vigilantes and attempted murders and botched suicides with his dad at the heart of it all.

“Can I see him?” he asked.

Turner nodded. “Five minutes.”

Tears sprang instantly into Matt’s eyes as he stepped into Cell D.

The standard metal bed had been removed to make room for the hospital bed that was now in the centre of the small concrete room. His dad was lying on it, his wrist handcuffed to its frame, his left leg wrapped in layers of white bandages. A trolley of monitoring equipment stood next to the bed, from the top of which a video camera was pointing directly at the bed; it was presumably how the medical staff were monitoring him.

His dad turned his head towards him as he walked slowly into the cell; he looked pale, and tired, and old. As Matt reached the side of the bed, the man lying on it began to cry.

“I’m sorry,” said Greg, the words cracking between low sobs. “I’m so sorry, son, I’m so sorry for everything. I always screw everything up. Couldn’t even kill myself properly and spare you the shame of having me as your dad.”

Matt stared. He had wondered, during the short walk down the cellblock, what he was going to feel when he saw his dad; now he was standing over him, it had become abundantly clear.

It was raw, blinding fury.

“Shut up,” he growled. “Shut up, just shut up. You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself, not after what you’ve done. You just can’t help yourself, can you? SSL was bad enough but this? What the hell am I supposed to think about all of this?”

His dad stared up at him, but didn’t respond; his skin was ashen, and his eyes were wide with shock, but Matt was in no mood to let him off the hook.

“Did Kate’s dad know that SSL was just a front for the Night Stalkers?” he asked. “Tell me the truth.”

“No,” said Greg, his voice a hoarse croak. “Pete never knew anything.”

“Why didn’t you tell him? Because you knew he wouldn’t have gone along with it? Because you knew he would have tried to stop you?”

His dad grimaced, but nodded.

“Is that why you tried to kill him?” asked Matt.

“I wouldn’t have if he hadn’t followed us,” said Greg. “If he hadn’t—”

“I don’t care,” he interrupted. “Did you try to kill him because he tried to stop you doing what you were doing?”

Another almost imperceptible nod.

“You disgust me,” said Matt, his voice hard and thick with anger. “I can barely even look at you. You tried to kill the only friend you’ve got, the one person who’s stood by you since Mum left and tried to help you, because some stupid crusade means more to you than a real person’s life. Kate is one of my best friends in the world, and you tried to kill her too. You tried to murder her. You pathetic, selfish bastard.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt your friend,” whispered his dad. “I told her not to come any closer, I told her so many times, and the gun just went off. I didn’t mean it.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Matt. “Not for a single second.”

His dad didn’t respond. Deep in his eyes, Matt saw a flicker of the anger that had scared him so badly when he was young, but it was faint, crushed down by guilt and failure. He squeezed his eyes shut, as the adrenaline left his system and exhaustion flooded back in, then looked down at the bed.

“It’s over, Dad,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you? There’s nothing I can do to help you this time. They’re going to lock you up and throw away the key, and you know what? I’m glad. You don’t deserve anything else.”

“You’re right,” croaked Greg “About everything. I know you hate me, son, and I don’t blame you. I hate myself more than you ever could, and I know I let everyone down. I just wish there was something I could do to make amends.”

“So do I,” said Matt. “But it’s too late for that. Far too late. Goodbye, Dad.”

He walked out of the cell without so much as a backwards glance.

Paul Turner walked through the main Lazarus Project laboratory and pressed his ID card against one of the doors in the rear wall, silently cursing the world’s apparent determination to make his life harder and more complicated.

We lock the infirmary for PROMETHEUS and within three days we get a critically injured Operator, her recovering father, and a wanted criminal with two bullet holes in his leg, he thought. We’ve got wounded men and women all over the bloody place. We’re going to be stacking them in the corridors if this continues.

He stepped through the door into a smaller room that had been built as a containment lab, a place where sterile experimentation could be carried out. It had been hurriedly converted into an individual infirmary, filled with state-of-the-art equipment from the main facility on Level C and permanently staffed by rotating members of the Loop’s medical team, all for the purposes of looking after the teenage girl lying unconscious on the bed in the centre of the room.