The last of my innocence died the day I saw a man explode in front of me.

Not that he was a man. When shot point blank in the chest, humans don't fill the room with an unearthly scream closely followed by a blast of light and sound.

And, of course, before that day I would have said that I didn't have much innocence left. Working in the government as I did, as good at following patterns and shadows as I was, you saw the shape of many things that most people were not aware of.

That most people were far happier not knowing that their government did.

I remembered telling Mike that if he wasn't sure about what he was getting into, then he should get out now, before it was too late.

He didn't listen, of course.

He never did.

I had an awful feeling that it was already too late for me. I was too far down the rabbit hole now.

The executioner, a greying man in a black suit, dressed in such a way as to make you look for a missing dog collar, walked up to the shattered window. "Code Fives leave a certain residue when they are neutralised, a powder." He theatrically let some of the powdery reddish brown substance that had been left behind fall from one hand. "Was this the chemical that Mike had with him?"

I stared at him, hating. I could tell full well that already knew the answer to this question. "What if it was? What does it matter to you? What harm can a dead-"

"The problem is that they're not dead," the cool voice of the woman standing next to me interjected. Her, I knew. A pale, seemingly passionless woman, her name was Dr Angela March. "They can be revived. And we don't know how."

"That's why your mate snatched the remains of one of them," the last actor in this little performance, Vaughan Rice, a large, dark man, said. "Because the leeches convinced him to. And trust me, this isn't going to work out well for him."

"So you see what we're dealing with, Ms Pembroke" said the executioner in a calm, reasonable tone of voice, as though he hadn't just shot someone, something, in front of me. "And, really, the best way to help Mr Colefield is to tell us as much as you can about what he's doing."

I looked down at my hands. This was... I didn't know what this was. "What will you do to Mike if you catch him?" I asked hoarsely.

"I assure you that, no matter what you've heard, we are not in the business of executing *anyone*."

I choked a little and pointed in the direction of the man shaped smudge.

He smiled thinly. "To execute something implies that it's alive in the first place."

"So you'll just let Mike go?"

"Mr Colefield has violated the security of this government facility..." he said, his voice trailing off before continuing. "But, no, if you help us and there is no permanent harm, we won't press charges for his misconduct."

I knew when I was beaten. "This is what I know..."

I wasn't there for the showdown on the bridge. I just got the edited details later. Mike survived. He was even welcomed back into the fold - a prodigal son.

As for me...

"You'll be pleased to know that everything was resolved more or less satisfactorily, Ms Pembroke," the anonymous man told me. "No code fives of consequence escaped, and Mr Colefield is even back in our employ. Which leaves us the one loose end in this affair..." he let the words trail off meaningfully.

I smiled icily at him. "Me."

"Indeed. You're a talented investigator, and you have a gift for seeing patterns. I'm sure you can see how you could be useful."

"And if I just want to walk?"

He opened his hands innocently. "We'd let you go. You haven't done anything wrong, except maybe be a little unwise in your choice of associates."

Dr March, from beside him, spoke up for the first time, her soft voice filled with conviction. "But you have to see what we're up against here. You've started to put it together yourself, haven't you?"

I began to shake my head. The only ideas that made any kind of sense with what I knew were too big, too... game changing, even with what I had seen today. Even after having seen a code five, or whatever they were calling it, expire in front of me.

"Nuclear winter," the man said. "It would block out the sun, allow them to walk during the day, take open control of us."

"What you probably don't know," Dr March added softly, "Is that they're working on artificial blood, so they don't need as many hosts - humans - to survive. That they've been working on isolating blood diseases so they can cull them from the herd efficiently."

"And that's just the tip of the iceberg," the man says. "We managed to discover some of their plans, even stop some of them. But we need to do better. Because unless we do, our free range days are over."

They stopped and looked at me expectantly.

They had to be full of shit. Terrorists I could believe in. Even the cold war didn't seem that long ago. But this? Undead, or code fives or whatever, they were seeking a global apocalypse so they could take over?

It just seemed too unbelievable.

On the other hand, someone clearly believed in what they did, at least some of it. Whoever was backing this unit had pull within the government, to be able to do the things I'd seen them do. And if they were right...

What decided me was that they were offering me a position on the inside, so I could find out for myself what was happening. I've always been curious - it's what has made me so good at my job - and this opportunity was just too tempting to turn down.

"Okay. You've convinced me." If they were wrong, I'd find the evidence. And if they were right... "Consider me your latest recruit."

I tried to forget that Mike was a part of the team as well. His presence, as always, acted like a strange attractor, both pushing and pulling me.

I didn't want to know which force was stronger.

"Excellent," the man smiled thinly. "I'm Pearse. I believe you already know Dr March. You'll be mostly working with her."

She gave me a slight smile, which I returned warmly. No sense in getting off on the wrong foot with the natives.

"Call me Frances," I said.

"Angie. I'll show you around, shall I?"

Mike caught my arm as I attempted to pass him, pretending that he wasn't there.

His touch both burned me and made me want to relax into it, the familiar mix of old hopes and pain.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I thought that would be obvious," I said with a hint of asperity.

"Look, do me a favour. Get out now, whilst you still can."

"I think I can decide what's best for me by myself. And I told you, I'm not doing any more favours for you."

I couldn't do this anymore. I needed to break out of my old patterns. Somehow.

"Yeah, well, you don't know how things are done around here yet."

"Why don't you tell me?"

"We don't do due process. We carry guns. We're even supposed to shoot first, ask questions later."

"I can't help but notice you're still working here."

I wasn't some wilting flower. I could handle myself, just as well as he could.

He glanced away. "Now you know why I was having second thoughts. But I can't leave, not now. You still have that option."

If, somehow, Pearse was right about what the code fives were doing. If they really were planning on enslaving humanity, then I had to stay.

"No, I really don't."

He sighed, in that way that let me know he thought I was being unreasonable.

It was times like this that I wondered what I had ever seen in him. (Still did see in him.)

"If you really are going to stay here regardless, there is one thing I'd really appreciate you doing for me."

I narrowed my eyes. "What?"

"Kirsty." I winced, internally, her name cutting me like a knife. "I need someone to keep an eye on her, make sure nothing happens to her."

I glanced around briefly, just to make sure that there was no one else around, before hissing, "Are you *insane*? She's already been used, kidnapped even, to get to you once. *They know about her.* You need to cut all ties with her. You *know* you need to cut ties with her."

He raised his hands as if he was shielding himself from me. "I know, I know. That's why I'm asking *you* to keep an eye on her. It's going to drive me insane if I don't know that she's alright."

Because, of course, Kirsty, his ex-best friend's ex-fiancee, was the most important person in his life.

Not me.

I should have told him to shove his request where the sun doesn't shine. I should have had enough self respect to just walk away from him then, and get back to the (important) duties I now had.

I shouldn't have cared.

But I did. And so I didn't walk away, didn't tell him to shove his request.

Though I did have enough self respect to make him earn it a little.

"This isn't just a simple request, Mike," I said, raising an eyebrow a little. "I very much doubt my new bosses would appreciate this allocation of my efforts."

He winced. "What do you want me to say, Frances? You know how important this is to me."

"A little begging might not go amiss." I might as well draw out the agony, experience how much he cares about her.

He got a sour look on his face. "This isn't fun, you know, but *fine.* Please, Frances, please would you keep an eye on an innocent woman for me?"

I had my doubts about how innocent she was, but I'd played this out enough.

"Fine. I'll keep an eye on your school teacher. But don't expect me to help you if something does happen." Even if it did cut me up inside.

His shoulders relaxed. "Thanks, Frances. I really appreciate this."

Of course you do, I thought bitterly. "Now, if you don't have any more unauthorised things you want me to do, I've got some actual things to look into," I said, and walked away, leaving him behind.

But never far away. Never far enough.

"What are you working on at the moment?" I asked Angie from my position in front of the computer in the corner of the lab.

"Countermeasures," she replied absently, staring down a microscope as she carefully added liquid to the slide she was looking at.

"Countermeasures?"

She pursed her lips in displeasure at whatever she was looking at. "We now know *how* the code fives can be resuscitated from their inanimate state - by adding some fresh code five blood to the remains. Now I have to discover a treatment process to make the specimens permanently non viable."

"How to make sure that they can never get back up again."

"Yes," she said a little distractedly.

"What are you trying?"

She stopped what she was doing to look up at me consideringly. "Is there a purpose to your questions, or are you just making conversation?"

"I'm trying to get a feel for what we do here. And what you're trying is part of a pattern." I shrugged, and gave her my best smile. "I want to have this kind of thing up here," I said, tapping my forehead, "Just in case it becomes important later."

She paused for a moment, studying me, before returning a small smile of her own. "I'm not used to anyone else being interested in these kind of details. Very well. I'm trying to find a chemical that will bind to the appropriate receptors in the remains."

"Hmm," I considered. "When you're getting close, could you give me an idea of the kind of chemicals you'd use?"

Her look became actively curious. "Why? Unless they're truly specialist, they shouldn't be hard to requisition using governmental authority."

"It occurs to me that, with all the scientific work that the code fives have apparently been doing, they might have also been working on this. So they might be trying to sequester supplies of the appropriate chemical, or at least keeping an eye on anyone else who is interested."

"You think you could track this kind of interest?"

"Shapes and pattern in the data. Shapes and patterns in the data."

"I'll keep you informed," she said, with a hint of approval.

"Is there anything we can help you with?" I asked Vaughan after he'd been standing in the doorway for about ten minutes, eyes quietly following Angie as she bustled around the lab.

His eyes slid towards me smoothly. "Yeah. Time for your training."

"Training?"

"Need to get you certified with pistols."

Guns? Me? Really?

"I thought my job was going to be backend. Out of the line of fire, like Angie."

"No such thing as out of the line of fire in this job. And Angie? The best shot with a pistol around here."

Angie spared the time to look up and give him a slight smile for the comment.

"He's right, you know," she said softly. "Don't think that they're going to leave you alone just because you don't go into the field that much."

*That* was a comforting thought.

"Besides, we're still a small enough outfit that you *will* be going out into the field," Vaughan said. "Come on."

Apparently I was going to have pistol lessons. Great.

"How did your first lesson go?" Angie asked when I returned to the lab.

I made a sour face. "Apparently, with a bit more practice, I might actually be able to hit the broad side of a barn from twenty feet."

She looked faintly amused. "It'll come, with practise."

"You mean that you weren't always the paragon of pistols?"

"No. It's a skill I developed after... after joining Pearse." She smiled a little bitterly. "Motivation helps. I have a young child that I'm never going to let them touch."

One child left, I mentally amended. She'd lost her husband and her other daughter in a car accident, according to her file.

"I guess that I'm doomed to mediocrity with a gun," I said lightly, trying to break the tension. "I don't have anyone special."

Angie seemed to take the offering and smiled. "Pearse will be glad to hear that."

"Which reminds me - I've got a fair few friends and contacts scattered in various places. What's policy concerning them?"

The levity left her face. "You have to assume that they may be compromised. Tell someone else when you're going to see them. Don't meet up with them after dark, if at all possible. And if you do... make sure that you have backup."

"That sounds like a surprisingly fun life."

She gave me a faint smile. "It's why what socialisation I have, I keep in team."

I raised an eyebrow. "I can just imagine Pearse being a real party guy."

Her lips spasmed upwards. "You've obviously got a firm grasp of his personality."

"Obviously."

"But it isn't as though I'd be going out anyway. Being a single parent is a full time second job."

"Monster hunting scientist by day, mum by night?"

"If only the second job was as easy as the first. And it isn't as though there's a plethora of vetted babysitters."

"I don't know. I can totally see one of Vaughan's soldiers subbing in a nursery."

I finally managed to get something resembling a snort out of her. "Don't. That image will haunt me for the rest of the day."

I couldn't help noticing that she really could be very pretty when she had that expression of bemused amusement on her face.

"Well, that's my job done for the day. Back to finding the undead," I said, and started typing on the computer.

"Thanks," she said in her soft way, and I really wasn't sure if she was being sarcastic or not.

"You're doing better," Vaughan said as I managed to hit the target with eight out of ten shots.

It was the fifth of these intensive classes and I was at least starting to be able to hit the target on a reliable basis.

"You're not saying that in a way that's filling me with joy," I said.

He shrugs. "You haven't been blooded yet. I don't fancy your chances out there, in the real world."

I carefully put the gun down before my hands could start to shake at the reminder about what this was all *for*. "Thanks for the encouragement."

"It's nothing against you. It's hard to shoot something that looks human. And you haven't lost anyone yet."

"Is that a requirement around here?"

"It's the reason most of us are here. Mike lost Jack. I lost my unit in the Gulf. And Angie lost her husband."

"Who's Pearse lost?"

He laughed, short, loud. "I don't know. Maybe no one. He's got his god, after all."

"You're not religious?"

"Nah. Got enough problems here and now. Anyway, one last target for the day. Assume firing stance." He waited until I'd replaced my headgear, picked up my pistol and got into position before clicking the remote.

Mike's picture appeared in front of me.

I put the gun down again, and turned towards Vaughan. "The fuck?" I asked.

"That's the other thing about us mere mortals. We've all got the people we care about, the people who we'd hesitate before shooting. The people who the leeches would love to come at us through. Yours wasn't hard to figure out. And the way loverboy is going? You might want to get used to the idea of doing this," he said as he raised his own gun and shot Mike's picture several times in the chest coolly.

I stared at him furiously. "From the eyes you've been making at Angie, who you're after isn't exactly that hard to figure either."

"I'm a hell of lot less worried about Angie coming a cropper than loverboy."

I wished I could argue, wished I could defend Mike, but his request was still burning in the back of my mind. He'd already gone in half cocked when something happened to her. Who's to say it wouldn't happen again?

"Come on," Vaughan said, clapping me on a shoulder. "I figure I owe you a pint after that. Maybe we can commiserate over how both our interests are obsessed with someone else."

"Who's Angie's obsession?"

"Her husband. Who else?"

"Isn't he dead?"

"Nah. He's down below. He was turned and dusted along with one of Angie's daughters."

So that hadn't been a car accident that they'd died in. Or at least not just a car accident. And...

I winced. "Doesn't that mean that she's working..."

"Yeah. Maybe then she'll be able to let him rest in peace."

For the second time in my life, a man exploded in front of me.

We were in a quarry, surrounded by stone cutting equipment, in the middle of a raid.

There had been some odd movements in the mining sector. Not that the UK had much of that any more, which is why it was odd that recently several companies had started up, buying a lot of tunneling machinery.

Of course, the enemy could have their own reasons for wanting to build tunnel networks.

I had presented my findings to Pearse and he had approved the investigation, which had turned up abnormalities at this particular company.

With wide open spaces, Vaughan had wanted to raid during the night, for a shot at catching some leeches in the net.

So here we were.

And I'd been proven right.

By a man exploding in front of me.

"Does it ever get any easier?" I asked Vaughan when I could speak again.

He smiled, white teeth bright in the darkness. "Oh yeah. Soon we'll have you popping leeches left, right and centre."

"Great. Just what I've always wanted."

Vaughan turned to face the squad. "Okay, people. Spread out! Let's make sure that no one escapes."

I indicated the cleared foreman's hut with a thumb. "I'll be fine here."

My job might not be quite as backend as I'd like, but I could still try my best to keep out of combat.

Besides, there was a computer here. Who knew what I might be able to glean off it?

Vaughan nodded. "Roberts, keep an eye on her. Frances, give a yell over the comms if anything happens."

I booted up the computer. To my utter lack of surprise, it was password protected.

I didn't think that I was going to be that lucky.

I sighed, powered down the computer again and crouched behind the desk so I could start taking it apart. I could just take the hard drive back with me to access it back in the lab.

There was a thump and the sound of someone falling.

From my position, I could see the soldier Vaughan had left with me, Roberts, lying still on the floor.

There was also the feet of someone standing next to him.

Oh god.

There was someone else in here with me.

I very slowly reached for the pistol at my side and slid it out of the holster as sounds of someone rifling through the filing cabinet came from the other side of the desk.

Okay.

Okay.

I could do this.

I popped up and pointed my gun at... an ordinary looking woman dressed something like a secretary.

"Stop!" I yelled.

She froze for a moment, then turned slowly towards me, hands raised, still holding onto some sheets of paper.

"What's happening, Pembroke?" came Vaughan's voice over the comm.

"I've got an intruder here. Roberts is down."

"You're a new member of the team, aren't you?" the woman asked, at the same time Vaughan yelled, "Drop her!"

"You don't want to hurt me, do you?" the woman asked.

My grip was sweaty on the grip. "I'll shoot you, if you so much as move."

"You haven't quite drunk the kool aid, yet, have you? I don't want to hurt you. *We* don't want to hurt you," she said, taking a slow step backwards, towards the door.

"Stop!" I said again. "And just like you didn't hurt him?" I asked, nodding towards Roberts' body.

I could shoot her. I could.

"He would've shot me. They kill us here, no questions asked."

I could hear Vaughan panting through the comm. He'd be here any second.

"Take another step, and I *will* shoot you," I said, trying to force as much conviction as I could into my voice.

She smiled, suddenly. "You're a good person. Don't let them take that away from you," she said, then turned and ducked out of the doorway.

Finally my paralysis ended, and I managed to get a few shots off.

Too late.

I collapsed bonelessly into the chair behind the desk, resting the gun limply on the surface in front of me.

"You alright, Pembrooke?" Vaughan asked, shining a torch through the window of the foreman's hut.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. She's gone."

"You're lucky. From this distance, you should've been dead. That pistol on safety?" he asked, shining the torch towards the gun on the desk.

"Crap, no," I said, sliding the safety on.

"Thanks. I'd hate to get shot by mistake," he said sardonically as he came in and squatted besides Roberts, checking his neck.

"She said that she didn't want to hurt me."

He shook his head. "Yeah, well, that didn't help Roberts. He's dead."

I held my head in my hands. "Shit! I should've... I mean, I meant to..."

He sighed and rose to his feet. "Look, I'll walk you back to the van. We've almost secured the site. If she's still around here, we'll get her."

"She was after something in the filing cabinet," I said numbly. "I think she got some of it, but there might still be more here."

"We'll keep it safe. You can come back tomorrow, during the day." He shone his torch around my neck. "Did she bite you?"

"No. No, she didn't get that close."

"There's no blood, but we'll get Angie to check you over anyway. Just in case."

"I'm sorry to have dragged you out of bed," I said, a little distantly.

"That's quite alright," she said, studying the side of my neck with an ultraviolet light. She looked up, offering me a faint smile. "I'm always on call, just in case."

I tried to smile back, but I couldn't quite manage it.

Things still didn't feel quite real yet.

It hadn't hit.

But it was coming. It was definitely coming.

"Congratulations," she said finally. "You've managed to avoid being bitten."

"Great."

She looked at me with something approaching concern."Can I get you something sweet? Maybe some tea with plenty of sugar?"

I normally wasn't much of a tea drinker, but... "Just about now, that seems like a really good idea," I said, finally managing to offer her a smile, if a wan one.

She bustled off and came back a few minutes later, a cup of steaming tea in hand. I gratefully took it off her, and started sipping.

She rested a hand on my shoulder lightly. "I know you said that you don't have anyone special, but do you know anyone who could stay with you, just for tonight?"

My mind immediately jumped to Mike, but I couldn't, not tonight.

I shook my head.

She pursed her lip. "It's not the best accomodation, but I do have a guest room you could stay in for the rest of the night."

I felt warm for the first time since... since and smiled more naturally at her. "Thank you. That would be really... I'd really appreciate that."

She smiled back at me. "That's sorted then. You're the only person I have to treat tonight, so drink up and I'll take you home."