Oslo, Norway. 2263 A.D.
“Come on, you coy bastard…. Where are you?” Brenden muttered, scanning the ancient exteriors of the buildings that lined the alley. His breath puffed out into the cold, crisp and still air. “You’re there somewhere. There’s no other place you can be.”
The camera he was searching for would be small and inconspicuous, if not hidden altogether. Security cameras could be tucked into the most unobvious places these days. A crack in a wood façade, a seam in plasteel plating, as pixels in an advertisement. But there were ways to spot them if you knew what to look for. After so many years running security for the Chronometric Conservation Agency and a very long life time of being generally sneaky, Brenden knew exactly what he was looking for.
He had spent most of yesterday, in between his normal tasks, staring at holo footage of himself and a dark-haired waif, standing in the parking area behind the building that was now at his back. He had played the video over and over, trying to figure out where the camera that had recorded the images had been sitting.
The building behind him, the one caught in the video background, was very old. The non-polarized windows were grimy with dirt. On the walls, old posters were plastered one on top of another, on top of another, until they had created a crazy quilt of images and Norwegian words he couldn’t read, the edges of the top sheets curling up and all of them yellowed and stained. A set of metal stairs ran up to a locked door. The door had a plasteel sheet over it, barring all entry. The stairs were rusty.
The little parking lot looked exactly the same as it had two months ago, when Brenden had brought the girl here. She had said her name was Helena and he had chosen to believe her. They had stopped behind the decrepit building to complete their bargain.
Brenden had fed upon her and then erased the memory. When she had blinked and stared at him, bewildered, he had given her the kroner they had agreed upon, the equivalent of five hundred standard credits. “You did fine,” he assured her. “Go and get yourself a good meal. You’ll need it.”
He had sent her on her way and not thought anything more about the matter. He had made many such bargains with many desperate and needy people around the globe, especially in the last year when the need for real blood had pushed him into roaming the streets for sustenance.
Brenden grimaced as he looked around the open area. The day was frosty but bright. Even with bright daylight he was unable to spot any camera holes, or any new scuffs or scrapes high up on the roof line that would show where a camera used to be mounted.
The camera had screwed him good and proper. He had looked around the area the night he had brought Helena here and seen nothing. There had been no surveillance, no wards, and no laser barriers. But this was one of the poorest sections of Oslo, tucked behind the railway yards. He hadn’t been expecting anything more sophisticated than locks on the doors. There was nothing here of value that needed more than that, so he hadn’t scanned the area with anything more than a casual glance.
But there had been a camera. That was indisputable. Three days ago, he had stood in Cáel Stelios’ study, in his house on Spetsopoula, and watched camera footage of himself feeding upon Helena while the Assemblyman had stood to one side, waiting for an explanation.
Yesterday, when he’d had the chance to think about how the camera had got there, the full implications of the video had registered. After endless replays, he had finally noticed that the camera had picked up almost flawless images of them, despite the dark of a moonless night. It was a 3D hologram camera. That meant serious money and very high tech equipment. Who would spend that sort of money guarding a crumbling old building like this one?
So far today, he had spent over an hour looking for the camera and had not found it yet. None of his senses could pick it up, which meant the camera had been shielded against all the common forms of remote scanning and wiping, and some less common types of scans, including all the techniques Brenden was using to find it.
Very high tech, indeed.
He spun on his heel in the snow, frustrated. He blew out his breath and glared at the empty parking lot where they had stood. He had to find the thing and track down who had made the tri-D and let it loose upon the world. When Ryan and Nayara eventually found out about this—and they would, he was sure—then Ryan would skin him and use his carcass for a floor mat. It would look better if he could at least explain why the camera had escaped his notice.
He could maybe avoid losing his viscera altogether if he could stop the video from leaking any farther than it had. He had to find the joker who held the original.
Brenden shoved his hands in his coat pockets, thinking it through. The camera had to have been a security camera. No one had put a normal camera there just to catch him feeding from a human because until two minutes before Helena and he had stepped into the alley, not even he had known what was going to happen, or where.
Clearly, from the angle of the camera, it had been set to monitor the ramshackle structure he was facing now. Brenden looked at the building closely. Whoever controlled the camera owned the building.
There was nothing on the back of the building identifying it in any way, although the plethora of old play bills plastered on the faded walls told him the building was, or had been, a theatre.
Brenden whirled again and hurried to the end of the alley, onto the mostly deserted street and around the corner. It was a bitterly cold night and only the hardiest souls were out and about. No one would care what he was doing.
He rounded the second corner and strode down the block, examining the faces of the buildings he was passing. This was a commercial district, but the businesses that occupied the buildings were ailing.
Then he reached the theatre and halted. The windows were dark. What once would have been banks of wood-framed glass doors with long brass handles were now boarded over with sheets of old fashioned MDF, giving the front of the theatre a forlorn and forgotten appearance.
The portico roof slumped and rubbish was scattered over the broad steps leading up to the doors. Someone had wrenched one of the heavy brass banisters out of its anchors and carted it away for the metal. The others were corroded and dirty.
Brenden stared at the place, his memory stirring. It wasn’t a memory of something he had experienced, for until a couple of months ago he had never been to Oslo. But the front of the building was familiar, nevertheless.
Brenden crossed over the road to the sidewalk opposite and turned to look at the theatre once more. The marquee was visible from here, but it was dark and voiceless. On the side of the building above the marquee, he could make out lettering in an elegant Edwardian script. Majestetisk Teater.
Even the name was oddly familiar.
He needed a full access terminal. The itchy feeling that he should know more about the theatre was growing stronger. So he glanced around the street to see if anyone would notice him disappear. The night was still and silent.
Brenden bent his knees and jumped for home.
The Chronometric Conservation Agency near-Earth satellite station, two hours later.
As usual, as soon as Brenden made it back to his office, five people latched onto him with problems. He attended to the most urgent, delegated the others, and checked his desk for messages. His implant was silent, so from one perspective it was a quiet day.
Once he was satisfied that everything in Security was running as it should, he shut his office door and pulled up the most relevant results for the Majestetisk Teater. The first headline gave him the answer.
He sat back, shaking his head. That was why the name of the theatre and the front of it had felt familiar. The Majestetisk Teater was where Christine Anderson, one of the most famous and celebrated actors of her time, had met the Duke of Hagenbrunn, over a hundred years ago.
Brenden called up some of the old clippings, browsing through them and filling in the blanks of his memory.
“I remember that story,” Nayara said, from just behind Brenden’s shoulder.
He forced himself not to jump or show how startled he was as he looked up at her. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I know.” She smiled. “I said your name twice, but you were too busy reading. Now I see why you were so distracted.”
Brenden nodded toward the screen. “I met her, once.”
“You worked in the entertainment industry?” Nayara seemed surprised.
“Security for entertainers,” he amended. “Body guards, property guards. I made a fortune.”
Nayara’s smile was warmer. “I’m sure. What was she like? Christine Anderson, I mean.”
“Glorious,” Brenden said. He looked back at the photo that showed her and the duke standing on red carpet. She wore a tiara and a sash. The duke wore a sword at his side. The image was timeless. They could have been born five hundred years before, instead of just one hundred. The ceremonial dress and the jewels of office would have been almost the same.
“I can see she is,” Nayara said. “She’s glowing. But what was she like as a person?”
“As sweet and gracious as her reputation. She was the genuine thing.” Brenden clicked to the next image, showing Christine heavily pregnant and chatting with people behind a rope line, the Duke hovering in the background. “She was winning awards and working her ass off. Then she gave it all up for him.”
“Perhaps she wanted to give it up anyway. Just because she was successful doesn’t mean she wanted to keep doing it.”
Brenden shrugged. “Maybe.”
“There’s always a real story beneath the surface,” Nayara said.
“She didn’t have a surface,” Brenden said. “What you saw on the outside was what she was like all the way through.”
“So why are you getting angry about it?” Nayara asked him with a small smile.
“I’m not,” Brenden declared. “But I don’t understand people like Christine Anderson, who give up their entire lives for someone else.”
“You’ve never been in love?”
“Sure I have. Lots of times. But if they’d asked me to stay at home and polish their shields I would have given them back their shields. Forcefully. Giving up everything meaningful in your life for someone else’s betterment went out of style centuries ago.”
Nayara was smiling openly now. She tilted her head to one side and her green eyes picked up the light filtering through the polarized windows of his office. The heavy concentration of lights around Europe was coming into view on the face of Earth, hanging just above his office windows. “You’ve been to war many times,” she said.
“So?”
“Isn’t that a form of giving up everything meaningful in your life for someone else? If not for the country or the idea you’re fighting for, then for whoever is waiting at home for you to return.”
Brenden scowled. “It’s not the same thing at all.” He wiped the temporary memory of the screen, removing the clippings of Christine Anderson. The files he had opened arrayed themselves on the screen instead.
“Very well,” Nayara said and moved away from the desk. “You have the monthly reports for me?” she asked.
Brenden snagged the reading board that held the reports from the pile on his desk and gave it to her.
Nayara glided to the door of his office once more and paused with her hand on the door handle. “Self-sacrifice isn’t always a dramatic gesture,” she said.
“No, it’s a stupid one,” he told her.
Berlin, Germany-Austria Confederacy, 2263 A.D.
Brenden looked up at the glittering high-rise office block across the road. It wasn’t what he had been expecting. The male secretary had said nothing about the address being a commercial one. He had given no office number, either.
Vexed, Brenden crossed the road, stepping carefully through snow-melt and puddles. He was meeting the grandson of the last Duke of Hagenbrunn, and the current head of one of the most prestigious families in Germany. He had dressed appropriately, so tracking slush across floors wouldn’t help with the impression he was trying to make.
There was a reception desk in the front foyer with a real, live receptionist. There were no auto-directories that Brenden could see, so the receptionist had to be a permanent fixture. He looked up and smiled pleasantly as Brenden approached.
“I have an appointment with Sir Donald Winslow,” Brenden told him, using his rusty German. “Could you tell me where I might find him?”
“Could I have your name, please?” the receptionist asked in Common that was only slightly accented.
Brenden gave his name, which the receptionist checked against his register and nodded. “Please come this way, sir. I will call the elevator for you.”
“I can do that, if you’ll just tell me the floor and room number?”
The receptionist gave a small smile as he stepped around the big desk. He was carrying a security key. “Sir Winslow has the upper floor to himself and the elevator is locked. I must see you on your way, or you will not be able to speak to Sir Winslow at all.”
“Right. Got it,” Brenden growled, following the slender man over to the modest bank of traditional elevators. There were no bounce tubes or gravity wells.
The man pressed the pad to call a car and the doors opened immediately. “If you will just step inside, sir?”
Brenden stepped in while the man swiped his key and tapped the thirty-second floor—the top floor. Then he stepped out smartly, avoiding the closing doors.
There was another live receptionist waiting when the doors opened on the thirty-second floor. She smiled as warmly as the man in the foyer. “Please come with me, Herr Christos.” Her Common was just as flawless, as was her clothing, make-up and accessories.
He was led through a luxurious reception area that was empty of people and as quiet as a funeral parlor, and along a glassed-in passage that gave a glimpse of a darkened board room on the other side.
There were double doors ahead, both closed. The receptionist opened them and the bright morning sunlight burst through and dazzled Brenden. He threw his hand up to shield his eyes and halted.
“My apologies,” the receptionist said and the light was cut off. “I did not think. Please, come this way instead.”
Brenden blinked until his sight settled. The receptionist was opening one of the glass doors to the boardroom and he stepped inside the dark room with her. Farther along the same wall, there was a more ordinary door.
“This door has a wall on the other side, blocking the sunlight,” the receptionist said. “Then you can orient yourself and adjust.”
“Thanks,” Brenden said gruffly. He felt stupid and exposed. Clearly, the receptionist had figured out he was a vampire and was making allowances. It was usually the other way around. Vampires made allowances for humans with their weaknesses and vulnerable bodies, and their slow, slow reactions.
She opened the door and while the light that came through was bright, it wasn’t direct, stunning sunlight. Brenden stepped through and the receptionist moved around him and led him into the room proper. This was clearly a private door into the boardroom from the big man’s office. The stub wall extended for five feet, then the room opened up.
Because the office was on the top floor, they had taken advantage of the fact. All three walls were solid glass from floor to ceiling. So was half the roof, which soared up thirty feet to meet the building proper where it turned into a normal roof. The brilliant morning sunlight bathed the room in incandescent brightness.
Brenden narrowed his eyes against the light. It was just a bit too bright and direct for his comfort. The sun was a pulsating disk hanging in the sky directly in front of the windows.
“Donald, perhaps it would be a good idea to polarize the windows so our guest can see?” The woman’s contralto voice was low and rich, the accent educated and upper class British. She spoke perfect Common.
“What? Oh, yes, yes.” That was a man, on Brenden’s right. There was the sound of purring. A motor of some sort, Brenden guessed, and running very quietly.
Then darkness rose, spreading around them, finally blotting out the light. Brenden tracked the shade as it moved up the windows, over onto the roof, until it met the solid wall. The room fell into what felt like a dim early evening light, except the sun still hung, a subdued copper penny, in the sky outside the windows.
Brenden blinked again, adjusting.
Coming toward him was a slender woman wearing black and white. She had very red lips and black eyes and her skin was pale and flawless. Her hair was quite black and cut in a short style that Brenden found oddly feminine, despite preferring long hair on women. She was beautiful in a stark way. She was all form and minimal decoration.
She smiled, showing even white teeth and held out her hand. “I am Harriet Winslow. It is very nice to meet you, Mr. Christos.”
He shook her hand, which was long and slender, like her. Her grip, though, was strong.
“I must apologize for dazzling you with the light,” she added. “We have had very little to do with vampires and aren’t used to the differences between us.”
“You know I am vampire?” Brenden asked.
“You didn’t think we would let you step into this room without running a background check?” The question came from the man on Brenden’s right.
Brenden turned to face him. “Not everyone is as thorough as I would be under the same circumstances, Sir Winslow.”
Donald Winslow was old. Brenden’s own research had warned him the man was nearing his century mark, but despite his wealth he had not qualified for regeneration.
Winslow was in a wheelchair, yet his tanned face was barely lined and his shoulders were wide and strong. He sat upright, his silver-haired head erect and his brown eyes studying Brenden under strong brows. Winslow had lost the use of his legs from a climbing accident thirty years ago, which had also disqualified him for regeneration, for spinal cord injuries were one of the few traumas the medical industry had not yet learned how to heal.
Winslow’s chair sat in front of the big, fully-automated desk. He had moved out from behind it to greet Brenden. “You’ve come a long way to speak to me in person, Mr. Christos,” Winslow said. “Please sit and speak.”
“Thank you.” Brenden sat in the chair Winslow indicated, while his wife nudged one of the barrel chairs around to face them both. She lowered herself into the chair in a way that made the most of her long legs. Brenden found himself watching her rounded hips fold as she sat. The black and white gown split and fell to either side of her knees, revealing the same milky white, glowing flesh. She was as young as Winslow was old.
Both of them were watching him expectantly.
“It is about the Majestetisk Teater, in Oslo,” Brenden began.
Winslow stiffened.
“Then you are not here about advanced security procedures,” Harriet said.
“I apologize for the deception but it was necessary, as I’ll explain in a moment.” Brenden leaned forward. “There is a highly advanced security monitoring system watching the theatre. I didn’t understand why such lengths had been taken over a building that is ready for demolition, until I looked into who owned the theatre and the building’s history.”
“The theatre is a part of my family’s personal history,” Winslow said. “But then, you know that already, do you not?”
“I remember,” Brenden agreed.
“Of course,” Harriet said softly, in a tone that sounded like she was chiding herself. “You would have been a part of those times as much as you are these.”
“I remember,” Brenden told her, “because for a while, I worked for Ms. Anderson’s company, providing security. I was a part of her security detail when she was travelling.”
“Then you have a far more intimate connection with my family than I had supposed,” Winslow said. “Does your connection have anything to do with the theatre in Oslo?”
“It’s the reason I thought I should speak to you in person, rather than through the nets.” He chose his next words carefully. These people were already awkward around him. There was no need to farther underline their differences. “The security camera monitoring the back of the theatre recently recorded some footage that, if it were to become public, would embarrass a number of people.”
“Whatever did you do behind the theatre, Mr. Christos?” Harriet Winslow asked. There was a thread of amusement in her voice.
“Me?”
“I hire only the best, Mr. Christos,” she replied. “They are above corruption because I pay well and they have professional reputations to maintain. Any footage from our security monitors is confidential and treated with high security. The only way you could possibly know that embarrassing footage was recorded is because you were a part of that footage.”
“Call me Brenden,” he told her, a smile of appreciation for her mental agility. “I was part of the video, yes. I’m here because when I tried to find who owned the theatre, I discovered that it was owned by you, sir.” He glanced at Winslow. “You don’t have even an umbrella corporation over it. It’s not owned by your enterprise here.” He looked up at the grand roof. “You own it personally, Sir Winslow. Given the theatre’s history and the connection with your family, I can understand that. But what you need to know is that a copy of your security footage is out there. Somewhere.”
There was a short, stunned silence.
“Impossible,” Winslow declared. “My wife runs a very tight ship.”
“A copy came to you?” Harriet Winslow asked.
“Indirectly. Now I need to find the source. I figured you’d like to know you’ve got a leak, too.”
Winslow shook his head. “I find this very hard to believe, but I cannot understand why else you might be here.”
Brenden pulled a small reading board out of his jacket and held it out. “You can see for yourself. I converted a copy. You can watch it right now.” He mentally crossed his fingers. He preferred that they not see the clip. There was no need to broadcast his transgressions any farther than he had to.
Winslow shook his head. “Not right now.”
“I will,” Harriet Winslow said, holding out her hand.
With a sigh, Brenden handed the board over.
She placed it on the desk next to her. “For later,” she said. “For right now, let’s discuss next steps.”
“You need to talk to your security company, ma’am,” Brenden told her. “The leak came from there. I would like to know who has the clip.”
She glanced at Winslow, then rose gracefully to her feet. “Very well,” she said.
“Now?” Brenden asked, startled.
“Is the matter not urgent?” she asked. “You would not prefer that any stray copies be rounded up as soon as possible?”
“Of course,” he said, standing up.
“I’ll be back before you miss me,” she told Winslow, as she turned and walked toward the big doors. “Penelope! Please have the car brought around!” she called out.
Brenden nodded at Winslow. “Thank you for your assistance.”
Winslow shook his head. “A minor matter. Harriet will sort it out for you.” He was already moving the chair back around the desk, the quiet motor purring. Brenden had been dismissed.
As Brenden followed Harriet Winslow over to the door, the glass walls and roof depolarized, flooding the room with brilliant light once more.
Brenden stepped out and shut the door thankfully behind him. Contact with humans who didn’t know and understand vampires always left him feeling edgy and tense.
Harriet Winslow was standing just beyond the door, waiting for him, one hand on her slender hip. It was a reminder that he still couldn’t relax completely, yet. He still had to negotiate through the next hour or so, until he could bid the fourth Mrs. Winslow goodbye and get back to the station.
He painted a polite smile on his face. “Lead the way,” he told her.