Monster Like You

Chapter 2

I was dragged out of bed in the middle of the night. Gervase Hunnisett's voice, my director, sounded rather alarmed on the phone. I looked at the clock in surprise, which showed the beginning of the fourth, rubbed my eyes, but I could not understand why the director himself was calling me and why he asked me to come. Moreover, I had to come not to the headquarters, but to some completely unfamiliar address. Apparently, it was somewhere outside the city. Investigations didn't usually start so suddenly. And the gathering point has always been the headquarters of the Corps.

"Yes, Gervase, of course, I'll be there soon," I promised, not really waking up.

Pressing "hang up", I sat motionless in the dark for a couple of minutes, closing my eyes and fighting the urge to lie down again. Just the day before, my group returned from an investigation in the south of the country. It was a serious matter. One of the residents of a small rural village decided that it was too difficult to sow and harvest. Since there were gifted magicians in his family, he tried to take advantage of this: he sent all sorts of trash to the neighbors and forced them to go to him for help.

By the time we figured it out and figured him out, a lot of different troubles had happened. In a hurry to stop the misfortunes, our group worked almost around the clock. After the funding cuts, the number of support staff decreased dramatically, so investigators, experts and analysts more often had to take part in tedious surveillance, including at night. When I got home, I was counting on at least a week of quiet work in the usual office mode, but something went wrong.

I could only be glad that I lived alone and I didn't have to explain to anyone where I was going in the middle of the night and why. However, my own loneliness rarely upset me at all.

I did not waste time and effort on long packing. Pulling on tight casual trousers and the first sweater that came to hand, I poured coffee into a thermocup, got into sneakers that were lying in the middle of the hallway from the last evening run before a business trip, gathered my long hair into a high "tail" and, pulling on a short leather jacket, went down into the yard.

The street was quiet, dark and excessively fresh, as happens in the capital only on the outskirts in the early morning at the beginning of spring. The cool air was invigorating, so by the time I dived into the pleasantly smelling interior of a brand-new car, I was able to throw off the viscous web of drowsiness. A sip of coffee and the music that came to life with the engine made me smile. Catching my own reflection in the rearview mirror, I was pleased to note that despite the lack of makeup, hairstyles, lack of sleep and my "almost thirty", I still looked pretty cute this godless early morning. This lifted my spirits, and, gliding through the almost empty streets in a cherry-red sedan, I began to sing along to the radio.

Taking advantage of the early morning and the absence of traffic jams, the navigator, into which I scored the address sent by Gervase led me through the city center. Low long houses surrounded by large courtyards were replaced by skyscrapers rushing up. Among them, there are still isolated old houses built during the domination of magicians. This mixing of the old and the new with the gradual disappearance of the old perfectly reflected the state of affairs in Great Britain: the new order was replacing the old one step by step.

Gradually, the skyscrapers and pretentious buildings of the center were replaced again by the more boring architecture of the outskirts, and then by small private houses of the suburbs. Beyond the border of London, the still wide highway turned out to be completely empty. Soon I had to turn it off onto a narrower road. Here the forest approached the asphalt on both sides, and there were almost no lanterns, so only the headlights scattered the predawn darkness.

Turning again, I came to a country road, which in a few minutes led me to a huge three-story country house, stylized "antique" and surrounded by a high fence. The large wrought-iron gates were open, so I easily drove into the inner territory. Cars of the Civil Law Enforcement and Medical Aid Corps were already crowding here, flashing bright signal lights on the roofs. Nearby stood the well-known black massive all-terrain vehicles of the Cerberus Corps.