More than human - Scomavi

Chapter 1

"I hate coming down here," Avi muttered under his breath as he and Scott stepped out of the underground lift. Three-quarters of the techs in Q Branch were undead, and while the air here didn't reek like the infested cemeteries did, the techs all made his hackles rise. "I don't bloody care what Mallory says –"

"They're not going to attack us," Scott said just as softly.

"Lying shit. They want to – that's what counts."

Scott shot Avi a grin as he put a hand on the door that led to the main work center. "True. And if they do..."

Avi nodded, hearing the unspoken words. MI6 regs about interspecies fighting only went so far, after all. They were all supposedly civilized beings here, but accidents happened.

MI6 had been four months without an incident, and that had been provoked by Sloane's attack. Even Avi could understand damaged, crazed, starving vampires gorging on whoever was at hand, and they'd all controlled themselves enough that no one died, though 0014 had been in hospital for two weeks after she'd been trapped in Boothroyd's old lab.

None of that made him feel any better about walking through the glass doors and into the work center.

Usually, the Double O's and Q Branch's techs met on neutral ground upstairs or offsite, where no one would feel cornered or outnumbered. But it was late on a Friday afternoon, and most of the techs should've been packing to go home for the weekend. Avi and Scott had the brilliant plan of going down to drop off what little kit was left over from their joint mission to Sydney, rather than wasting two hours to book a meeting room and get one of the techs to come aboveground. Pop below, drop off their gear, then head out for a Friday night on the town. Simple plan.

Now, though, Avi wondered if someone had started a bloody war or something and not bothered to notify the Double O's. Q Branch was packed. There had to be forty techs on duty at the moment, which meant something like thirty vampires. Thirty supposedly domesticated, supposedly in-control-of-themselves vampires, and every one of them would happily feast on a werewolf's blood, given half the chance.

He had to fight back the urge to growl and snap at the vampires who looked up from their computers to watch him and Scott pass. The same tension radiated off Scott like static electricity, feeding Avi's urge to fight, until he wondered if this had been a bloody stupid idea after all.

"Oh, fucking hell," Scott said with a sigh. "End-of-month reports."

"Bugger." Avi slowed and glanced back at the glass doors, wondering if it would be seen as a retreat if he and Scott turned around and left. End-of-month reports meant everyone had paperwork to do... and Avi honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd done any paperwork at all. "We've got, what... three, four months of backlog?"

"Before Sloane," Scott muttered, clearly also thinking in terms of a strategic withdrawal from the battlefield. "Right, new plan. First tech we spot –"

"Someone new," Avi interrupted, looking around for anyone he didn't recognise. There'd been a flurry of new hires after Sloane, with people quitting out of cowardice or getting sacked when they couldn't pass more stringent security requirements. Someone new wouldn't think to challenge MI6's two senior Double O's on the matter of paperwork.

"Please understand that the equipment we issue takes months – sometimes years – to develop," came a quiet voice, even and smooth, from down a nearby hallway.

Avi turned and saw a young man – surely too young to be anyone senior, despite his commanding tone. He was facing off against one of the human field agents – Sanders, Avi thought, though he tended to not pay attention to the humans. The young tech, though... He was definitely worth a second look. Avi' height, dark hair that made Avi's fingers itch to touch, a slender and graceful body concealed under the sort of cutting-edge fashion that a vampire would wear to the office. He didn't smell dead, though, so maybe he was a human trying to fit in – and a human tech was just what Avi and Scott needed.