Ben's parents were freaking out and started to demand that Ben go home with them immediately. Gabriel ended up doing something to their memories, using his special vampire talent, to keep them from remembering the whole systematic lockdown thing. Instead, they would recall a perfectly lovely evening with their well-adjusted vampire son, before suddenly developing the urge to visit some relatives in Florida. And by relatives, he meant Council-approved security agents who would be able to protect them if Dr. Hudson showed up. Gabriel's power frightened me, and I hoped it didn't work on other vampires.
Dr. Hudson had managed to escape from his cell using a stolen ID badge, a tiny bit of plastic explosive tucked inside his shoe, and a spork. We weren't sure how the spork came into play. The UERT was still looking into that. Jane drove us to the office for safekeeping, and we were followed by the entire convoy of vampires, because Gigi insisted she would be able to crack open the security system and make it her digital bitch. Cal and Nik thought they could Sherlock Holmes some clues out of the polka torture cell using their special vampire gifts. Ophelia seemed to think she knew the building better than anyone else and could see some minute evidence that we wouldn't. And Georgie, Dick, and Gabriel just didn't want to be left out.
///
I was starting to wonder why everybody got special vampire talents but me, and then I figured not being set on fire by the sun was probably talent enough.
When Jane reviewed the security feed, the footage of the hallway outside Dr. Hudson's cell skipped ever so slightly at around ten P.M. While this seemed like a fairly innocuous thing to me, Gigi and Ben noticed that after the skip, a paper pinned to the bulletin board moved in the draft from the air-conditioning in exactly the same way every three minutes. Someone had looped the video with a blank section of footage after ten P.M., so we wouldn't be able to see who approached Dr. Hudson's cell door or in which direction they ran. The parking-lot feed showed a laundry cart being wheeled out to a van labeled "Markham Linen Services" at 10:07. The man pushing the cart wore a baseball cap pulled down over his face. He jumped into the driver's seat and peeled the van out of the parking lot at 10:08. The problem was that the Council didn't use a linen service.
When Gigi and Ben had failed to track who had logged into the security system to loop the video feed, Jane put her hands on the conference-room table, where our laptops, notebooks, and security logins were spread around messily. "OK, so you two are going to be locked down in the containment unit until further notice, for safety and so I can sleep during the day."
"The containment unit that Dr. Hudson was kept in to punish him for torturing us?" Ben asked.
"The containment unit that someone managed to sneak into, diddle with the security videos, and then bust him out of?" I added. "That doesn't seem kind of ass-backward to you?"
Jane thunked her head on the table. "You're right. It's counterintuitive. Also, the tech guys haven't been able to stop the polka loop, so it would probably drive you insane."
"This might be a bad time to note that the security system was accessed internally, so whoever broke Dr. Hudson out probably had help from someone who works for the Council," Ben said.
"Why would you tell her that?" I asked.
"To keep from sleeping in the polka torture cell," Ben told me.
"Fair enough." I slumped back into my comfy conference chair and stared at the ceiling. Who could have helped Dr. Hudson's liberator into the building? I didn't have any enemies here. The only person who had reason not to like me was Gigi, and she'd been nothing but sweet. Heck, people let me skip ahead of them in line for the copier because I was willing to take on Jane's schedule. Maybe it was someone on her "nope list"? Had some weirdo I'd banned from contacting Jane busted into the Council office and released Dr. Hudson so he could continue his medical poking and prodding?
But before I could pull up the nope list on my tablet, Ben slid a stack of papers in front of me. Really boring, science-y papers. I frowned.
"Cal has been helping me look into Dr. Hudson's research history," Ben said. "About twenty years ago, he wrote a paper for the Journal of Vampiric Medical Advancement called ‘The Next Stage in Vampire Evolution,' where he talked about splicing vampire DNA with samples from a snake."
"I'm sorry, what?" Ophelia cried. "I hired Hudson. I don't recall anything about reptile research on his CV."