Page 84 of Almost Midnight

Brick nodded, once.

“Yes.” He made a fluid gesture towards Walker, almost a solicitous one. “I did, as it happens. And you needn’t sound so surprised, offspring. I owed the halfling.”

Nick thought about that.

He thought about what Walker had done, how he’d thrown himself in front of his vampire girlfriend, which was what had first gotten Walker dragged off to that van by the H.R.A. in the first place, well before they seemed to know who he was.

Slowly, Nick nodded.

He understood Brick. He understood why Brick would see it that way. Still, the fact that he’d go to that much trouble for a single hybrid was pretty amazing.

Nick frowned as the thought sunk in.

“It wasn’tonlyfor him, though,” he said. “Was it?”

“No.” Brick’s reply was swift, unapologetic. He glanced around the table, his crystal eyes harder. “I had others I strongly wished out of that facility, as well.”

Brick seemed to read some of Nick’s cynicism on his face.

“We had someone on the inside of that facility,” he explained, a touch more curtly. “We’d been monitoring it for months.”

“Why?” Nick asked.

Brick’s eyes flattened more.

“Because, as I told you, dear Naoko, something haschanged.It simply changed far faster than I had been expecting it to.” He stared at Nick, as if waiting for him to catch up. “This facility… you are familiar with it?”

“No,” Nick said.

Brick nodded, as if the detail was unimportant. “It is located on a large island. What used to be called ‘Madagascar’ on our old world. Do you remember?”

Nick nodded, feeling his body tense. “Yeah. I remember.”

“Thisparticularprison has been there for some time, but it was rarely used,” Brick went on, his words clipped as he drummed his fingers on the wooden table. “It started off as a research facility, in part. Recently, that changed.”

He shrugged, but his cracked-crystal eyes remained cold where they aimed at Nick.

“I found out a few months ago, they’ve been building it out for the past year,” he continued flatly. “Expanding capacity from several dozen cells on a single floor into something far more grim and comprehensive. My person inside has seen the plans for this, and for several other facilities the H.R.A. intends to build over the next year. The goal is the make the entire island into a massive complex, with both underground and aboveground areas for detention, scientific exploration, and forced labor.”

Brick adjusted his armored sleeves, and leaned back in his wooden monk’s chair.

“The majority of those cells were clearly designed to hold vampires,” he added. “But the plans also indicate the intention of detaining a large number of seers.”

Nick felt his jaw harden. “How many?”

“They already have capacity for three hundred thousand, as of a week ago,” Brick answered curtly. “According to my source, that is for only one of a half-dozen facilities on that island alone.” Brick’s clear eyes held Nick’s. “If they aren’t too particular about comfort, closer to half a million could potentially be housed in that one complex…already,as I said. And, as I also said, that is only one such facility, on one island, with other sites being proposed in other, equally difficult-to-access locations. My source estimates the numbers could be as high as four million on Madagascar alone. Eight to twelve million globally. With room to expand, if need be, for both the work camps and the holding facilities…”

Brick’s eyebrow rose.

“…Or contract, of course, if they decide the numbers are too large to manage.”

Nick didn’t want to understand.

He didn’t want to, but he did.

“You think it’s over,” Nick said, his voice now as hard as Brick’s. “The truce. The wafer-thin pretense of antagonistic races living together in peace. The whole system of ‘tamed’ vampires and hybrids. The specialization categories. The Midnights and Galileos and Centurions and all the rest. You thinkthat’swhat changed. You think they’ve decided to turn us into full-blown slaves. Or exterminate us, if they can’t.”

Brick’s stare flattened more.

---