Page 39 of Afflicted

She nods. “One of the generators was disconnected from the outer wires. The Afflicted would have been able to cross that initial alarm line unnoticed.”

I turn to look back at the screen, playing the video twice over. I don’t know what I’m expecting. Do I think it’ll suddenly change? That the fucking Houdini in the video won’t suddenly vanish into thin air?

“Wait a second.” I replay the video, leaning close to the screen, looking at the bottom corner. “There.” I point. “There’s someone there. You can see the top of someone’s head.”

Everyone leans over my shoulder, watching as the figure stumbles and the curve of a head covered in hair comes into view, before the image flashes back to the empty yard.

“Great, and then they disappear too.” Anderson slams an open palm against the table and sucks on his fangs. “This isn’t possible, though, is it? Someone’s tampered with the security footage.”

I straighten up and cross my arms over my chest. “Yeah, someone’s deleted a timeframe here, but there’d be evidence of that in the files. You can’t delete these frames without there being a trail.”

Sam scoffs. “You sure about that?”

“Sure. Whoever did this, they didn’t do a good job. Leaving this footage, that’s just a rudimentary cut job. They’ll have left a trail somewhere.”

Anderson rises to his feet and points at me. “You go through those files then and let me know what you find. You know what you’re looking for, and we need to know what happened here.” He shakes his head. “Why the fuck would anyone want Afflicted to flood the compound?”

“Revolutionaries,” Sam says, moving closer to the desk, her hands on her hips. “They want to take out the vamps no matter what. Boston’s been having troubles with them. They’ll even use a volatile force like the Afflicted, because the end goal is taking all of us out.”

I cast a glance over her face, and she shrugs.

“We’ll lay new trip lines, I’ll help rig them up tomorrow,” I say, not sure if even that will be enough. I have to believe it’ll help, but this isn’t good. If someone inside is working on this… I don’t even know where to begin looking. Humans? Who can roam free without a vamp noticing?

I look around the room at my colleagues, and they’re either very good actors, or all genuinely freaked the fuck out.

Something bad is coming. I can feel it.

* * *

The sun beatsdown on us as I test the newly laid trip lines. The alarm whirs as one of the other vamps steps on the sensor buried in the ground. Another one walks a little further, and the motion sensor secured to the tree sends a silent alarm to the smart watch on my wrist. The other vamps look down at their wrists, and I know it’s tripped the entire alarm system.

I rub a hand along my neck, humidity sending sweat running down my back. The horizon is heavy and black with an approaching storm.

“Braun, the battery banks are full, right?”

Braun looks up from his laptop and nods, rubbing beads of sweat from his top lip with the collar of his shirt. “Sure are.”

“Good.” I gesture at the gathering storm. “Last thing we need is to get caught in a power outage with a new system laid.”

He shakes his head, hissing out a breath. “Fucking humans, getting brazen like that. I mean, where the fuck do they get off, huh?”

I lean back against the tree I’m sitting under and sigh. “Captives tend to revolt, Braun. I’m surprised it took them this long.”

“Captives?” Braun laughs out loud. “They have it good! Three meals a day and a warm bed, that’s more than I damn well had growing up. You're too young to remember the Great Depression, well I’m not. These humans would be begging to be in a facility like this back in those days.”

“I hardly think that’s the same thing.” I meet his skeptical gaze. “Or maybe it is, in a way. You were the victim of a greedy government, and these humans are the victims of irresponsible vampires.”

“Victims?” Braun lets out a hacking laugh. “Irresponsible? This all happened because vamps wanted to protect the humans, remember? Those experiments were run so we wouldn’t need as much blood. They couldn’t have known it would go wrong.”

“The vamps thought they could outsmart science and created something they couldn’t control.”

Braun throws his hands up, spittle bursting from his lips as he laughs out loud. “You got this all wrong, King. The vamps who did all this, they’re heroes. They tried to make the world a better place.”

“You have a funny idea of heroism.” I gesture around vaguely with my hand. “This? It’s just existing. It’s notliving.”

“And you got a funny idea of living.” Braun plucks a stone from the ground and throws it across the grass. “This here, it’s heaven. We got everything we need.”

“Maybe you should ask the humans if they feel the same way about your supposed heaven.”

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