Chapter 21: 21: Ch-ch-changes

The atmosphere in our house the next morning was glum. Mum and I rarely argued, and never as loud as the previous evening. Neither of us knew how to handle it, so we did that typical English thing of saying nothing as we ate breakfast.

As I walked to school, relieved to get out of the morose atmosphere, my mood improved. Talking to Victoria had been liberating. I was having occasional moments of ‘maybe I shouldn’t have said that’ but on the whole I felt I was safe. If Victoria had any sinister plans to experiment on me or whatever, she was really taking the long way around.

A black van was parked on the road about a hundred metres from the school. I recognised it. One of Section 13’s.

A quick snap of fear hit me. What did they want now?

I considered walking away and going round the back of the school, but two men in black suits came up behind me. One of them took my arm.

“The boss wants a word with you,” he said, “Inside. Now.”

Lovely, I thought. Just what I need. More Major Wilson in my life.

When the van door opened, though, it wasn’t Major Wilson sitting inside. Instead there was Caleb, the American tech guy I’d seen at the school, and a man I didn’t recognise who in his mid-forties. He was dressed in a sharp black suit like the two men behind me and had a foppish haircut. Caleb was sat at the far end, concentrating on an array of monitors. He nodded at me. Something in the nod acknowledged that we had a bond I wasn’t aware of, and then I realised that Caleb, like me, was a survivor of the attack on Section 13.

“Ethan Hall, is it?” the other man asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Come on in, I won’t bite,” he smiled.

He had the type of smile that made you think biting you was exactly what he was going to do. I sighed and got inside. The man held out his hand. I shook it warily.

“Charles Moorecroft,” he said, “Head of Section 13. You report to me now.”

“I thought Major Wilson was the boss.”

The van door closed, and the suited agents stood guard outside. Who knew what they thought they were guarding it against? A sudden riot of schoolkids?

“Ah, yes. I mean the new head of Section 13. There’s a new sheriff in town, so to speak, and I’m it. Major Wilson has been suspended from duty pending an inquiry.”

“Inquiry into what?”

“Into how he allowed multiple supernaturals to infiltrate the organisation and cause so much damage. Frankly I doubt he will ever be allowed to resume duty.”

“Right,” I said.

Moorecroft spoke with a posh accent. He came across like a polite, Oxbridge educated civil servant. Quite the contrast to Major Wilson’s hard-man approach.

“So what do you want from me?”

“As I understand things – and you must excuse me as I’m still getting up to speed on all of this – Major Wilson recruited you to act as an informant on the Pryces.”

“He asked me to spy on them.”

“Yes. Well, following the attack on the Section, we’ve been looking a little more carefully at the Pryces and their activities. We think – though we can’t be sure – that they might have had a hand in the attack.”

I felt a chill in my bones. Was it possible that Victoria had organised the attack? If so she was responsible for a lot of deaths. If so, she’d lied to me. If so, I couldn’t trust her with anything.

Which was a big problem since I’d just trusted her with everything.

“She contacted you last night, didn’t she?” Moorecroft continued.

“How do you know?”

“We’ve been monitoring you, Ethan. Waiting to see if she would show herself as she said she would.”

“Monitoring me?” I repeated.

Moorecroft gave another of his neck-biting smiles but didn’t elaborate.

“What did she want?” he asked. It was a simple question. No threat of violence, no intimidation. He almost sounded bored, but I could tell he wasn’t. He expected me to answer honestly because of who he was.

“Search me.”

Moorecroft raised an eyebrow.

“Ethan, please. If we could dispense with the lying, things will go much smoother for everyone.”

“She invited me to visit her in Avebury this weekend,” I said.

“Why?”

“She said she wanted to show me a sanctuary. For, uh, monsters and stuff.”

Moorecroft nodded, “Yes. We’ve known about the sanctuary for some time. Up to now, however, the powers-that-be decided it was in our interests not to interfere. Major Wilson was adamant that something going on and he may well have been right. We’ve been granted permission to investigate further and gather Intel on what they are up to. Which is where you come in. Give me your phone.”

“My phone?”

Moorecroft held out a thin-fingered hand. I fished my new phone out of my pocket and gave it to him. Moorecroft passed it over to Caleb, who inserted a cable attached to a small laptop and tapped away on the keys. Satisfied, he nodded and handed the phone back to me.

“Done,” he said to Moorecroft.

“Done what?” I asked.

“Caleb has installed two bits of software. One to track where you are and the other a voice activated recording and transmission app. It will allow us to listen in on all your conversations with Victoria, both on the phone and in person. You are to keep this phone with you at all times.”

“Yay,” I said.

My sarcasm was lost on Moorecroft, but Caleb – who had returned to studying the monitors – gave me a wry half-smile.

“While you’re there I want you to find out what the Pryces are up to. I want you to observe, listen and ask questions. Then I want you to report back immediately.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Ethan, I’m not going to threaten you. You know enough about how we operate to understand that I could if I wished. I’m more of a people person than the former head. If you do this for us, I will do something for you. Something I guess you’ve wanted for a very long time.”

“Go on.”

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“I’ll tell you about your father.”

That took me aback. In all the chaos I’d forgotten about Wilson’s paternity test. He’d sent the technician to get it looked into shortly before the attack. I’d assumed that the whole thing had been dropped.

Apparently not.

*

I only half paid attention as Moorecroft detailed my assignment. I had no intention of going along with his bugging plan. Instead, I tried to work out how to get what I wanted without giving anything away. If they heard anything about my powers I’d have a target on my back, but I’d still have to give them something.

The question was how much.

My other concern was whether trusting Victoria Pryce had been a mistake.

Once Moorecroft had finished, I got out of the van and it drove away. Lurking a few metres away, Deepak had been observing the van. He’d seen me get in and waited.

“Now what’s going on?” he asked as we headed into school.

“I thought you didn’t want to know? You were the one saying we should forget all about it.”

“Well, yeah, that was when I thought it was over. Looks like it isn’t though. So what’s going on?”

“Not now. After school, okay?”

The day went by quickly, for a school day at any rate. It wasn’t great. Our little group had splintered overnight following Jess’s flare-up in the library. Dee kept giving me weird glances and said we ‘needed to talk.’ By the third time he brought it up, I was getting annoyed with him. Jess, in contrast, wasn’t talking at all and kept giving me frustrated glances, or ignoring me. Even Forrest was quiet. A wedge had been driven between the four of us after Jess’s outburst and Dee’s dismissal of the discussion the previous day.

I guess we were all playing moody teenagers to the max.

After school I headed to the garage. Dee tagged along.

“Come on, mate,” he said, “What was the black van all about? It was those military types that took you away, wasn’t it?”

“Dee, we shouldn’t talk about it. You were right yesterday. Official secrets and all that.”

“No mate, look, I need to know.”

“You need to know?” I repeated, “Since when?”

“Can you trust me on this? I need to know what’s going on.”

I looked at Dee, puzzled by his tone. He was usually easy going, a bit of a joker. He didn’t seem to take anything seriously at the best of times.

The garage was empty. Joe had taken the night off and left a note about a spray paint job that needed doing. I had a set of keys to the garage; Joe trusted me to lock up.

Dee was still loitering, his persistent questions irritating me.

If I didn’t want another friend getting angry with me, I needed to say something. I took our phones into Joe’s little office and dropped them in a drawer, left the office, closed the door behind me and climbed into the driver seat of the BMW. Dee climbed into the passenger seat beside me.

“Okay, fine. In a nutshell those military types have asked me to spy on the other group. I’m heading to Avebury this weekend with a mission I guess. James Bond stuff.”

“James Bond, yeah, right,” Dee scoffed.

“I’m serious. Look there was stuff that happened the other night. Crazy stuff. It got dangerous.”

“Go on,” Dee said.

I told him the rest of the events of that night. The attack. The werewolf. The doctor-demon. I told him about Section 13, Major Wilson and Victoria Pryce. I told him that Wilson, and now Moorecroft, thought she had something to do with the attack, but that I wasn’t sure. I didn’t tell him about my powers, or why Victoria wanted me to go to Avebury - or about Moorecroft’s promise connected to my father.

Dee sat and listened, frowning and not asking questions. He didn’t raise an eyebrow when I dropped the ‘monsters exist’ line, nor when I added ‘and there’s a secret government agency dedicated to exterminating them’ bit.

All in all, he was taking it too calmly. I suspected he was about to start laughing at any second, accusing me of making up some fantastical tale. Instead he listened quietly as we sat in the car.

“This is dangerous stuff, mate,” he said once I’d finished, “You shouldn’t get involved with this. At all.”

“Well I am involved in it.”

“No, you need to walk away. You’ll get yourself hurt or killed. You need to drop this right now. Tell Moorecroft you can’t do it. Don’t go to Avebury. Tell Pryce you aren’t interested.”

“Hang on, mate, since when did you tell me what to do?”

“Since stuff went crazy,” Dee said, “This is – you’re just a kid. What do you know about spying on people? These groups, they’re dangerous. They’ve got weapons and they kill. And that’s before you take the monsters into account.”

“Mate, I appreciate your concern and everything but I’m doing this.”

“Why?” Dee asked, his voice rising.

“I have my reasons,” my voice rising as well. We were almost shouting.

“Well you’re just going to have to un-have your reasons,” Dee said, “You aren’t going, and that’s final.”

“Dee, what the actual hell? What are you talking about? Ever since that thing chased me you’ve been, I dunno, weird. And now you’re telling me I can’t do something?”

Dee put his head in his hands and swore. He gritted his teeth and made a decision.

“That’s just it, though, mate. I don’t think it was chasing you.”

He swore again, then continued, “I think it was chasing me.”

Dee later claimed I ‘screamed like a five year old’ at what happened next. For the record, I didn’t. Honest. I would have been justified in doing so if I had though.

In front of my eyes, Dee transformed. His body grew by about six inches, his school uniform stretching and exposing his midriff as his arms and feet poked out of his suddenly too small clothes. I heard a button on his shirt pop. His skin tone shifted from pale brown to pale blue. His hands grew and his nails stretched to sharp points and turned the colour of obsidian. His ears became pointed, his whole face taking on an otherworldly, elfin quality. His eyes slanted upwards as the pupils were replaced with a white-blue iris. His teeth became pointed.

Dee turned to face me, his blue clawed hands open, his face apologetic.

“So, uh, there’s a few things I need to tell you...” he said.

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