“What’s your name, son?”

“Ethan Hall. And I’m not your son.”

Major Wilson ignored my snark and sized me up as a medic, who Wilson referred to as Doctor Pierce, removed the bandages around my chest. The wounds were still there, but they’d closed up and stopped bleeding. Two soldiers stood at attention at the door to the history classroom. It was bizarre standing next to a blackboard with notes about the Second World War written on it, surrounded by the military.

“They’re fairly light scratches,” Doctor Pierce said, “but we should get samples to the lab. There’s no telling what infection he might have picked up.”

“I feel fine,” I said. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Just a couple of scrapes, that’s all.”

“We’ll be the judge of that, son,” Major Wilson snapped.

I was seriously regretting opening my mouth earlier.

What the hell had I been thinking, stepping forward like that?

“I just want to go home,” I mumbled, trying to appeal to any sympathy that the Major might have for my plight.

He ignored me.

The doctor took swabs from the cuts, then placed fresh bandages around me, but that wasn’t much comfort. I didn’t want her getting a second look at the wounds. By the time that happened, I knew the wounds would have completely healed, and I’d have a serious problem. I realised I was one wrong step away from my nightmare scenario of being someone’s science project. I suspected that with Major Wilson in charge, I’d have a much shorter lifespan than otherwise.

“Fine for now,” Pierce said. “I’ll do a fuller exam on the samples at the lab. It’ll tell us if there’s any infection or mutation potential.”

Mutation?

I did not like the sound of that.

Major Wilson grunted and dismissed her with instructions to examine the others for similar wounds. Then he started drilling me with questions, demanding every detail of the incident with the USE as he referred to it. He interrogated me in a clipped, quiet tone that was more frightening than if he’d been barking them.

I did my best to answer the questions without revealing that I’d kicked the thing halfway across the playground.

Wilson was particularly interested in the other military unit.

“Who were they?” he asked.

I was treading a fine line between telling the truth and covering up my part in the incident. I suddenly didn’t feel like being co-operative. This guy had pointed guns at us, threatened to shoot us, marched my friends off, was interrogating me as if I’d committed a serious crime.

“I don’t know. I want a lawyer.”

It was the only thing I could think of to say, the kind of thing I knew from crime dramas you were supposed to say when you were in a tight corner.

Major Wilson’s reaction was entirely unexpected. He barked a sudden, short laugh. It had a cruel edge to it, a humourless laugh that told me I had absolutely no idea where I was or what I was dealing with.

“There’s no lawyer on the planet that has any sway here, son,” he replied, his voice soft again.

His hard, grey eyes bored into mine. Looking into them gave me shivers at the implied violence and I couldn’t hold his stare for long. This was a man who would do anything he believed necessary, no matter what the morality of it might be. I felt more scared of this guy than of the thing that had attacked me. That had just been a freaky, dumb animal type thing. In comparison, Major Wilson was sharp, intelligent, ruthless. And quiet.

That was what got me more than anything else. He didn’t raise his voice to imply a threat. He lowered it.

“You’d better not be holding anything back from me, son,” he said. “Tell me about the other outfit.”

I glowered, but realised I had better tell him as much as I could. The implication underlying everything he said and did was that he could, and would, make life very uncomfortable for me if I didn’t comply. he didn’t even need to state it. It was just there, a constant threat underpinning his words and actions.

“There was a woman,” I muttered.

Wilson nodded.

“A blonde woman?” he asked. His moustache twitched.

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“And as I’ve already said, I was at a school party and that thing chased me. I ran away and then these soldier types captured it and took it away. That’s all I know.”

I’d been repeating variations on the same theme for the past hour.

“Sir? Can I?”

A fresh-faced young man entered the classroom. He hesitated before going any further. The Major gave me another long stare and then nodded at the other man, waving him to come in.

“Proceed.”

“The hub has captured and erased all mobile footage of the USE, including posts on social media. All offenders have had their phones and computers locked until the greysuits get to them.”

“And the suits?”

“On the ground. All witnesses will have signed the Act within the next two hours.”

“At least one thing is going right tonight,” the Major replied. “Identification?”

“We’re running it through the database, but so far we’ve got nothing. We’ve never seen anything like it – though a lot of the footage we’ve retrieved has been blurry. We’re checking our paper records now, which would be a lot faster if we had them all digitised as I’ve repeatedly...”

“Now is not the time, Caleb. As I’ve repeatedly said, there isn’t room in the budget for it. If it was up to me, we’d have burnt the records years ago as it is.”

Caleb, who had an American accent, pursed his lips.

“Yes, sir,” he acknowledged.

“Keep digging, nevertheless. This thing didn’t come out of nowhere. Media?”

“Escaped lion from a private collection,” Caleb said. “The classics never fail.”

“Alright. Keep the usual eye on anyone else posting on social media about this thing. Make sure the local greysuits shut down persistent squealers hard. You know the drill.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. There’s nothing more to be done here. The thing has gone. We’ve locked down the incident. Have the other four signed the Act?”

“In triplicate, sir.”

Dr Pierce returned and informed Wilson that my friends and the teacher had no visible scarring and their stories all confirmed my version of events. I gathered they’d been separated and interrogated one-by-one.

“What do you want me to do here?” Dr Pierce asked, indicating me.

“Recommendation?”

“I didn’t find anything foreign,” she replied, “but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. I need the lab for a full analysis.”

The Major considered, “Bring him with us back to HQ. Find out what you can. If there’s nothing, process him the same as any other civilian and cut him loose. I’ve got further questions for him, anyway.”

“Just what I was hoping for, more questions,” I muttered.

Major Wilson’s moustache twitched. It was the slightest movement.

I was pretty sure it was his version of a smile.

“Don’t worry,” he said in a suddenly mock-amicable tone, “If you come with us, there’ll be plenty of time for me to answer all the questions you must have.”

“Really?”

Finally, some answers.

“No,” Major Wilson snapped.

With that, he left me with the doctor and the two soldiers.

I walked right into that one, I thought.

*

I was escorted to one of the vans which, for all their military upgrades, were dated by a good fifteen years.

I didn’t see Dee, Jess or Forrest on the short walk outside and hoped they were okay.

Six of the soldiers climbed in the back with me. Someone produced a black turtleneck sweater and handed it to me. It was too big, but I put it on, anyway.

Then I was locked in a metal cage fitted behind the passenger seat. I wasn’t handcuffed, but I was still a prisoner.

“What?” I yelped as I was shoved into the cage.

“It’s for safety,” one of the soldiers commented, “Just in case.”

“Whose safety?”

The soldier shrugged as if the answer was obvious.

As we drove away, I could hear the engine needed a tune-up and remembered Major Wilson’s words about a limited budget.

We drove through the night in silence.

The soldiers ignored my weak protests, and I gave up fairly quickly. I was too drained from the night’s events to feel scared, though I should have.

I reminded myself that I was still hoping to get some answers and studied the six soldiers. Their faces were impassive. Not bored. They reminded me of the look you see on the faces of the Queen’s Guard at Buckingham Palace. Not going to crack a smile no matter how hard you tried.

The squad leader pulled off his helmet.

“So that was a total waste of time,” he said.

The other soldiers murmured in agreement, taking it as a signal that they could relax slightly. We’d been on the road for an hour.

“I remember when this job used to involve some real action,” one of the men said. He was the oldest of the group, maybe late forties. A battle-hardened face.

There were more murmurs of agreement.

“Yeah, well, perhaps if your generation hadn’t been so bloody good at your job back in the Jurassic Period, there’d be more for us to do,” someone said.

There were low chuckles. I saw a chance to cut in.

“What is it you actually do, anyway?”

Six pairs of eyes swivelled in my direction as they remembered my existence. Six jaws snapped shut. The squad leader paused.

“Monsters exist. We neutralise them. If you tell anyone about it, you’ll end up in a deep dark hole,” he replied.

The rest of the two-hour journey passed in stony-faced silence.

By the time we arrived at our destination, I knew had a major problem - pun intended. The scratches on my chest had healed completely. On a second examination, the doctor would know something wasn’t right with me. By now, I wasn’t under any illusions about what the squad leader had meant when he’d used the word ‘neutralise’.

Section 13 killed monsters for Queen and Country - and I was becoming increasingly certain that, somehow, I was one of the things they hunted.