Texas Medical Center
McGovern Commons
Houston, Texas
Morning of the Red Storm
Yuki Nitobe stood with a phone pressed to one ear and her hand covering the other. There was so much noise around her. Sirens, people yelling, other reporters doing nearly hysterical standups for their networks, and all of that against the constant, dull roar of the massive fire that was consuming half of the buildings at the nation’s largest research facility. Walls of flame reached into the morning air and above those were towering columns of dense black smoke. It was looking at the furnaces of Hell itself. Even a quarter mile from the inferno the heat was oppressive, and strong winds were blowing flaming cinders into the trees and onto the roofs of other buildings. Dozens of streams of high-pressure water arched into the blaze but with no noticeable effect.
“Luther,” yelled Yuki, “are you watching TV? Are you seeing this?”
“Yes,” said Swann weakly.
“What?”
“Yes,” he said louder. “I can see it. It’s… God, it’s awful.”
“Did you watch my recap?”
“Yes. Is it true?”
“It’s true,” she said, then she flinched as something exploded deep within the conflagration. A ball of burning gas curled upward, veined with black and lit from within by intense heat.
“Are you all right?” demanded Swann.
Yuki wanted to tell the truth, to say that she wasn’t all right. Not even a little. But she said, “I’m fine. It’s just that this is insane. Why would they do this? This is a medical facility. It’s neutral ground. Everyone knows that.”
It was one of the very few areas where both sides of the war found common ground. There would be no attacks on a very short list of facilities. Hospitals were at the top of the list, along with water purification plants, working farms, nuclear power plants and the power grid. Attacks on those would hurt everyone, blood or beat. That same accord also forbade either side from using such places as refuges or bases. Sadly, most schools were not included as safe zones. Not enough of the more aggressive power players on either side respected schools, and the more radical elements distrusted the content of what might be taught.
The Texas Medical Center was the closest thing to hallowed ground as there was in the world. Humans and vampires could both get cancer, and that university was doing important advanced work in cancer screening and treatment.
“Who are they, Yuki?” asked Swann. “The news said that someone took credit for it. Some group called the Red Empire, but I’ve never heard of them. Do you know anything about them? What do they want? Why target the hospital?”
Yuki looked around to make sure no one was paying attention to her and then she moved into the relative shelter of the side of a parked ambulance. “Listen, Luther,” she said quickly, “do you understand why they picked this place?”
“No… I…”
“Christ, Luther, get your head out of your ass. Don’t you know what they’ve been doing here?”
“Um… yes, research. Vampire genetics and—”
“No,” she snapped. “Not that. Everyone’s doing that. Luther, the fire started in the Rykerson Lab.”
She heard him gasp and Yuki knew that now Luther Swann understood.
After New York, after the first outbreak, after the patient zero of the Ice Virus plague began to kill, and after that vampire was finally brought down in a hail of gunfire, his body was brought here for study. Since then there had been wild rumors and conspiracy theories in which different groups—human and vampire—claimed that the patient zero had not, in fact, died in New York. The rumors claimed that he could not die, that he was some unknown breed of vampire with extraordinary healing powers. They said that he was being kept alive so that the human military scientists could use him to create some kind of biological weapon that could be used against all vampires. It was wild speculation and a lot of it was straight out of comic books. But there was always some truth in these urban myths. Yuki and Luther both knew that all too well.
The patient zero of the vampire plague had been brought there to the Texas Medical Center.
Michael Fayne had been brought there.
And now the entire medical center was burning.
Burning.
Burning.
“Luther,” she said into the phone, “remember what the man said in that video? He said, ‘You think you have seen war, but you have not. The Red Empire rises. All hail the Red Emperor.’ God, Luther, I think maybe those crazy rumors have been true all along. I think Michael Fayne—or whatever he’s turned into—is still alive.”
“No,” said Swann, but it was clear that he wasn’t disagreeing with her. He didn’t want this to be true. The horror was there in his voice, though. The realization. The understanding.
“Michael Fayne is the one they’re talking about, Luther,” said Yuki. “He’s the Red Emperor.”
She watched the building burn and turned to look at the faces of the people in the crowd. Some of them were probably vampires, she knew. They had probably seen the video on their phones or tablets, or listened to it on their car radios as they drove to see the blaze. All of them looked afraid.
No, they looked terrified.
This was more than an act of terrorism. This was more than the entrance of a new player to the tortured game of war and bloodshed. This was much bigger than that. The world had somehow just changed.
And everyone—consciously or subconsciously—knew it.