Dead Matter

17

It was just past dusk when the call came in from Nicholas, rousing me out of sleep in the White Room chair I had zonked out in. I headed back to the Gibson-Case Center. At this time of evening, the lights within the center made it come alive as if it was a living organism. I entered the main lobby, intent on stopping by the information kiosk where Jane had disappeared before heading back to the secret door leading to the castle. I was surprised when I got to it and found Nicholas actually working there. The back of the kiosk had been dismantled, and little green blocks of circuit board were strewn everywhere. His long brown hair was falling out of its ponytail onto his face, causing him to constantly blow it out of the way as he examined the circuits and machinery. When he noticed me watching him, he stood up straight and gave a formal nod of his head.

“Won’t be but a moment,” he said in that thick English dialect of his. “Just have to put this back together first.”

With Matrix-like speed, Nicholas flew into action reassembling the machine. The parts looked like they were leaping off the floor back into the machine with only the hint of his hands grabbing for them catching my eye. In seconds, the machine was up and running, the only slow part of the process being the main screen of the directory booting up.

“There we go,” he said. He gestured toward a nearby arch farther along the shopping promenade in a direction I hadn’t been before. “If you’ll walk this way…”

We headed off through the archway into another section of the building that opened up to another, larger glass-covered atrium. Through the center of it ran an elevated platform that looked like wrought iron that I had seen in old pictures of Pennsylvania Station before it had been modernized. Along its rails a train car made of frosted glass and iron arrived into the station with a dull hum. Nicholas bounded up the steps to it.

“You have your own monorail?” I asked, taking the steps two at a time to catch up to him. When I reached the top of the stairs, Nicholas was already standing in the doorway of the car, holding it open for me. I stepped into it, looking around at the other passengers. Vampires? Humans? Other? I couldn’t tell, but suddenly being enclosed with the lot of them caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand on end.

Nicholas seemed to sense my distress and put a hand on my shoulder. It was freezing. “Don’t worry,” he said, looking at the other occupants of the car. “They don’t bite. Well, not most of them, anyway.”

“Comforting,” I whispered.

We rode on for several minutes in silence. I simply couldn’t speak as I took in the marvels of modern architecture all around us. Iron and glass cathedrals built in the name of commerce and luxury rose up all around us, the train itself just another sleek element weaving its way through it all. I would have ridden on forever if Nicholas didn’t prompt me to follow him when the train slowed into the next stop.

We headed down another set of ironwork stairs and off into what looked like an Old World dining district full of people. Once we were sufficiently blended with the crowd, Nicholas fell in beside me.

“So,” I said slowly. “Do you get this a lot? Your building eating people?”

Nicholas paused before answering, as if carefully choosing what he said next.

“There’s a lot that goes into running a complex such as this. Those guards you encountered the other day, for instance.”

“The living statues?” I asked. “What about them?”

Nicholas walked, his arms folded across his chest as we pressed on through the crowd, most of whom looked like they had just gotten out of work. “They were created to make people disappear in a way entirely different than your girlfriend ‘disappeared,’ if you catch my meaning.”

The color drained from my face as I remembered them swiping at me with their stony claws, and I paused, feeling a little faint at the thought of it.

“Not that anything like that happened with your Jane,” Nicholas said, steadying me with his encouraging tone. “At least, I don’t think so.”

We continued walking through the dining promenade of the complex in silence as I waited for Nicholas to say something more. When he didn’t speak up, I did instead.

“Do you have any idea how this happened?”

“Maybe,” he said, and then started off again, this time at a vampiric pace that I could barely keep up with. I broke into a run, hoping not to draw the attention of other people.

“Nicholas!” I whispered, even though he was well ahead of me. I doubted he could hear me so far away, but he stopped and turned to look back. “Could you slow it down a bit? So not preternatural here.”

In a movement I couldn’t see, I blinked and he was once again standing directly in front of me, causing me to stop short, knocking me into an older fashionista walking by.

“Sorry,” I said. She gave me a typical dismissive New York look and walked off in a huff. I turned to Nicholas.

“My apologies,” he said. “Sometimes I forget myself. But I think I may have an answer for you. Come.”

When Nicholas walked off this time, he kept his pace slowed so we were walking side by side, which I appreciated. At the end of the concourse he headed for a singular set of elevator doors. As we approached, I noticed two more of those living statues standing to either side of them, giving me a moment of hesitation. Their heads turned to us, the movement only barely perceptible to me even though I knew what to look for now. Nicholas gave them a dismissive wave and the two creatures shifted their attention back out over the concourse once again.

Once Nicholas and I were in the elevator and the doors closed, I asked, “Where are we going?”

“To get answers,” he said. “Hopefully.” Nicholas fell silent, his stillness unnerving me the rest of the ride up. When the doors opened, he stepped out of the elevator and into a low-lit football field-sized room full of video monitors, computer consoles, and at least two dozen vampires working them. One entire wall consisted of monitors only. As we walked in, most eyes in the room turned and fixed themselves on me. I let out a long, slow breath.

“Come,” Nicholas said, sensing my reluctance to leave the elevator.

“What is this place?” I asked, stepping into the room despite the chill running up my spine from the company I was joining.

“Welcome to the heart of Blood City,” he said, walking over to one of the banks of computers where one of the vampires sat. Working at the computer console made the vampires look even more lifeless than usual. “Move.”

The vampire stirred, letting out a long, deliberate sigh, and stood up. “God, I hate working a double,” he said to Nicholas. “I mean, living for an eternity is one thing, but try spending it at one of these stations…? It’s boring times ten thousand.” The vampire noticed me standing there, and then turned back to Nicholas with a grin. “You bring your lunch to work today, boss?”

“Hush.” Nicholas gave him a stern look and the grin disappeared off the vampire’s face. He sat down at the console’s only chair. “He’s my guest.”

“Sorry,” the other vampire said. He looked around, blurred away from us, and reappeared moments later with a second chair. He pushed it toward me. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” I said. The other vampire nodded and was gone.

“Now, then,” Nicholas said, tapping away at the keyboard, “let’s see what the Gibson-Case Center can tell us.” A series of camera feeds popped up on the wall of monitors and began whirring by quickly. “This may take a while.”

“Good,” I said, “then maybe we can get back to what I just asked you. What is this place?”

“Think of the Gibson-Case Center as a human body of sorts,” Nicholas said. “Consider this room, then, as the heart. No, better yet, the brain.”

“Did you design all this?” I asked.

Nicholas nodded and gave a smile that looked a little sad.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “When you told me you were an architect, I assumed it had been for the castle.”

“Some of that was my handiwork, yes,” he said, “but all of this modern-world design rising up around us is my doing as well.”

“All of this?” I said. “Impressive.”

“Thank y-” Nicholas started, but he stopped as he darted his hands out at the keyboard.

“Here we are,” he said, reaching for the mouse and selecting one of the frozen images on the screen. He clicked it, enlarging it to full screen. He pressed “play” and from the feed of a high-angle camera we watched the image from earlier of Jane being sucked into the information kiosk while I stood by, ineffectual. I turned away from the final moments of it feeling rather humiliated.

“It is as you spoke,” Nicholas said. “I am sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” I said, still pained by the image. “Sorry for my loss?”

“No, I’m sorry,” he said, “because until I saw it for myself, I doubted the validity of your claim.”

I was puzzled. “Why would I make something like this up?”

Nicholas looked sheepish and leaned back in his computer chair. “We’re not the most trusting when it comes to dealing with humanity, given our history together. I know Brandon told me to help you, but I was still wary when I was told I was supposed to help someone from your organization.”

“Excuse me?”

Nicholas held up his hands defensively. “Try to see it from my perspective. Your organization has done its fair share of damage to our kind.”

I could feel my temper rising, even though I was here for his help.

“Yeah, well, maybe our distrust of you has something to do with your people constantly draining our blood,” I said, perhaps a little too loud. The room around me fell silent, except for the sound of chairs pushing out and rolling back. Every last vampire was standing, fangs popped, and watching the two of us.

Nicholas stood, but took his time. “May I remind you that you are a guest here?” Nicholas said. His face drew tight. “And I am trying to help you.”

Realizing that I was outnumbered by a considerable margin, I sat myself back down in the chair. “Sorry.”

Nicholas sat and turned back to the screen. The rest of the room settled down as well.

Nicholas went back to working at the keyboard. “I’m going to run the time stamp of this event against the rest of the systems in the building. See if anything anomalous comes up…”

“Great,” I said, then added, “Thank you.”

“Although perhaps I should take you back to the castle,” he said.

Had I pissed him off? I looked around the room. Most of the vampires had returned to what they had been doing. “I’m fine, really.”

Nicholas shook his head, his face softening. “It’s not that. This is going to take a while.”

I nodded. “Fine,” I said. “I should probably check in on Connor and Aidan anyway.”

At the mention of Aidan’s name, Nicholas turned away, but not before I saw a flare of hatred well up in his eyes. It reminded me of the tension I had felt when the two of them had run into each other in castle corridors with us.

“Whoa, there,” I said. “Did I say something wrong? What’s wrong with you two anyway?”

Nicholas stood. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Come, let me take you back to the castle.”

“Wait,” I said. “Do you have something against Aidan? Is there something I should know? He’s Connor’s brother so I’d like to know if I should be keeping an eye on him.”

Nicholas paused, taking his time to weigh something, and then spoke.

“I’d definitely keep your eye on him,” he said. “I wouldn’t exactly call him… trustworthy. I would not… What is the expression? Ah, yes, I would not trust him as far as I could throw him, which is a considerable distance.”

“What did he do to cross you?” I asked.

“Let’s just leave it at the fact that he isn’t trustworthy,” Nicholas said. He headed for the main doors leading out of the control center. They hissed open like we were leaving the bridge of the USS Enterprise. From the petulant way he was walking off, he might as well have been stomping and pouting. “Come. I have much to do if I am to help you and protect my building’s systems at the same time. I don’t have time to babysit.”

“Sure thing, Nick,” I said, letting the subject go for now. I had enough problems of my own to contend with.